Dylan Palin '66

I remember it as if was yesterday. I brought home my new copy of Blonde on Blonde and slapped it immediately on the turntable. I started in the middle with "(Most Likely) You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine" because I was already familiar with "Rainy Day Women #12 and 35" that opened Side 1. Before I got to the end of "You Go Your Way", I knew that this was the best album I had ever heard, and that opinion has never left. After the appearance of countless wonderful bands from the late '60's through the '70's, I still call Blonde on Blonde the best album ever recorded, and so do a lot of other people.

A few months later a Triumph motorcycle would alter the history of rock music forever. The creator of the 1966 masterpiece double album would hide out in Woodstock to recover and regroup his thoughts. The softly spoken, somewhat religious, bearded man that would later emerge would never be the angry speed freak again. Nor would he ever bring us another "Visions of Johanna". "One of Us Must Know", "Memphis Blues Again", or "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands". Instead he would continue to be one of the leading icons of the entire scope of baby boomer culture, and we would be celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Bethel.

Please forgive me, Bob, for comparing you in any way to the most endearing symbol of American evil in my lifetime, but I feel I must explain this once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon to those who may not see it as clearly as I do. When Bob Dylan developed his iconic persona in 1965-66, he was a product of marketing by his manager, just as are most all celebrities. His marketed persona may have been as a quiet recluse, but it sure as hell worked, didn't it? When he reappeared as a changed man a couple of years later, that worked, too, even though few will try to claim that any of his post '67 work truly rivals that of the previous two years. You could call the whole thing the Sixties Dylan Phenomenon. That was then and this is now.

Sarah Palin has been playing a dangerous game with the American public, and particularly the mainstream media, since early 2008. As with the Republicans' whole concept of socialism for the rich and screw everybody else, the danger is all ours, not hers. That was then and this is now. President Obama's inauguration will be remembered as the current generation's Woodstock. Did you really think it was some of the nonsense referred to as music being produced by this generation? We tuned in, turned on, and dropped out. They are saying yes we can! Bob Dylan rarely gave interviews to the press, and when he did, they almost never were the interviews the press actually wanted. They were obtuse little sound bites of nonsense. He pouted a lot and said very little, and the public's clamor for more just got louder and louder. Sound familiar?

The Wicked Witch of Wasilla wants to be coy, secretive, and manipulative with the press and public just as Dylan did back then. We bought it all the way to our trek to Bethel in 1969, but that was then and this is now. Bob Dylan had already produced the album that would not be topped. Dylan had preceded Wheels of Fire, Electric Ladyland, and The White Album. He had already made his mark on the music of our generation. Is this comparable to the accomplishments of the most despicable politician America has ever seen? Of course not, but the marketing strategy is bone-chillingly similar. The WWW is as likely as not to re-emerge as the MMM instead of the WWW. The Mistress of Massive Makeover could easily become massively threatening to the sanity and international image of our country.

The biggest problem we have with the then and now concept is our modern media. The media protected JFK from all the Marilyn Monroe rumors out of deference to good taste. They don't do that anymore, except for this particular bewitching politician. There was no Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Fox News, or hate AM back in the '60's, but we are inundated with them all now. We've come a long way from John Wesley Harding and Cronkite's removal of his black plastic glasses. The yes we can people do not have the luxury of remaining quiet in the face of a media so corrupted by money that they promote a lying quitter as if she was a treasured cultural icon.