My mom thinks “Lil Uzi Vert” is a term my brother made to win at Scrabble.

Bob no pic.twitter.com/EIn9zmNWMZ

— Adam Koford (@apelad) March 27, 2020

Two seconds in:

“My #5 in the bottom is better than my #9 or #10 on the top.”

Bottoms everywhere:

I am so happy right now. Maybe it’s the sake but let me tell you, Bob Dylan is the reason I got into the music in the first place, the reason I still write and record, the reason I have an album coming out, the reason poetry can penetrate into my skull. I was a kid in rural Alaska and couldn’t jive with the pop scene, with 50 Cent and Korn and Justin Timberlake and whatever else my older brothers were playing. I discovered Bob Dylan when I was 14 years old and it spoke to me deeper than anything else. It just made sense.
And who was this guy making this music? Not the greatest guitar player, no. Not the best singer. Not conventionally attractive. Maybe it’s because I’m curly haired with a big nose too, but I saw this guy and thought, “huh, he makes it work.” And he wrote line after line of stuff that just made living that much more interesting. And so I started writing songs, started playing guitar, started ingesting the music of a pre-rock and roll America, and just listening.
Again, it was in deep rural Alaska where there was one television channel and one Christian radio station with slow, slow internet, so the world was so limited, I was newly homeschooled and a loner but when I bought Blonde on Blonde I’d play Visions of Johanna on repeat and imagine the streets of New York, the amphetamine physiques and glamorous smoking women and heat pipes coughing and a kind of urbane beat transcendence, then listen to, say, Nashville Skyline and imagine being married, with children, happy and content, reading scriptures and enjoying the pastoral sun, or, as a high school senior, playing all of Blood on the Tracks and imagining being in my thirties, divorced, listening to lines I couldn’t hope to understand but knowing, maybe, someday I would, whether I wanted to or not.
And there were all the other Bob Dylans, all the new and old Bob Dylans, all the past Bob Dylans in the very present moment all presented in those various albums, and I and everyone else could move through them, could listen to all these many people in one person, and I began to realize that I, along with everyone else, was a continuing series of many different selves that just had a brief moment of time to breathe, and that was okay.
Last summer I was working in the seasonal fast casual restaurant I’ve worked at for half a decade and we finally closed for the night. A long day. One of the owners and a friend knew I was going down to Nebraska for a time to hang out with a buddy. He’s older. Thick Maine accent. He was at another booth.
“Hey,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Heard Dylan is playing in Nebraska.”
“Yeah.”
“You gonna go?”
“I don’t know. It’s two weeks after I’m supposed to be there.”
He didn’t blink or turn his eye from me, but he paused. You could hear the silence, it was so loud.
“You’d be a fool not to go.”
“Okay,” I said.
“If you don’t go, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. Go.”

And so I did, and it was magical. Saw him with floor seats in Omaha, Nebraska, and when he did “Girl From the North Country” on piano, it reminded me of a dead friend and I cried. It was wonderful.
As the world is locked into this pandemic and last year feels a million moments away for us all, I thank my friend for telling me that. I had wanted to see Dylan for half my life, and I actually did.
In 1998, when Bob Dylan won a Grammy for Time Out of Mind, he went on stage and said this:

Accepting a Grammy for Album of the Year for Time Out Of Mind in 1998, Dylan said:

“And I just want to say that when I was sixteen or seventeen years old, I went to see Buddy Holly play at Duluth National Guard Armory and I was three feet away from him…and he looked at me.”

I think about that quote a lot. The feeling that someone, somewhere, can inspire us to do better, to do something decent and moving and perhaps even honorable. I know when I was a kid, it was as if Bob Dylan looked at me, and that has made all the difference.
I hope all of you have had that moment with someone, or something, and in silent dark times you can gather back those images and sounds from your memory for strength and resilience. Stay safe everyone. Much love. Shalom.

An early work. Her Critique on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. привет товарищ.

2020 continues to spectacular for new music and just about nothing else.

Too young. Thank you for the amazing legacy of music you’ve left us Adam, even if we can’t share it with you here any longer.

Hey you old fucks better be staying in your houses!

Go fuck yourself, buddy,.

I’m sorry but one of the most brilliant power pop lyricists is a huge stretch. Stacey’s Mom was a vapid hit song. His soundtrack work was strong but this website gets entirely too hyperbolic whenever someone dies.

THIS BLOWS ASS!

Yeah is kind sad the dude died so young, but to say his catalog is worth any praise is a fucking stretch.

Gay

Will do. Literally.

WTF are you talking about. His music was horrible. It’s very sad that he passed and way too young at that but that doesn’t mean his music had any merit. That said, I wish his family all the support in this very difficult time. This is beyond sad.

I heard he wanted out so he could snitch on New Yorkers who aren’t social distancing.