Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan is like sushi. There´s something repulsive about sushi that some people never manage to get over. On the other side of the coin, it inspires such fanatical passion in those who love it, that its devotees are inevitably trying to convince the repulsed to try it one more time, to approach it with a fresh frame of mind. I could go on, but I´ll leave the analogy at that (it doesn´t work if you´re Japanese, I imagine).
I´m sure some people love Bob from the start, but for the many of us, he´s an acquired taste. Maybe acquired isn´t the right word either, because it often takes only one song or one album, heard at just the right point in our lives, to be won over for life. And once you fully experience the levels that his music can work at, there seems no limit to how deeply you can explore him; there´s just so much music and so much documentation of him and his amazing life, not to mention the fact that there always seems to be more stuff being made by and about him. In 1966 John Lennon caught a lot of slack for saying the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, but if you must compare a musician with the Son of Man, it would be more apt to say something like this: Dylan's story has such profound mythological implications that to the artistic-minded person, studying his life can provide as much inspiration as does the New Testament to the spiritual layman. But, of course, that´s just one listener’s opinion.
The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan seeped through my ear’s resistance in 1996, because the lyrics of “Don’t think twice, it’s all right”, perfectly encapsulated the mood of the breakup I was going through at the time. His songs have comforted people that way at least a billion times, I imagine.

Bradley Bergey

Last night I went to an art exposition in Poble Sec at Iluminarte (http://iluminartefotos.blogspot.com). A friend of mine, Bradley Bergey (http://www.crywonder.com), is one of the most interesting contemporary painters I’ve met. There are a lot of artists, illustrators & graphic designers out there today, and just by living in a city and walking the streets on a daily basis (and watching TV, of course), we’re all awash in cool & often unique visual images. In the last few decades it has become progressively more difficult to create 2-dimensional pieces that stand out from the constant stream of respectable art coming at us, but Bradley’s work definitely does stand out. His pieces combine an obvious obsession with materials & process (incorporating collage, wax, and elaborate layering and scraping techniques) with conceptual ideas that dwell in the realm of fundamental psychology and mythology. There are a few lines from William Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech that often echo through my head when I come face-to-face with vital artworks, whether visual, literary or musical:

...the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again… leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.

Bradley has a distinct ability to present those universal truths with a freshness that’s devoid of the least pretension. There’s an archetypal eeriness to his work that can stop you in your tracks, because the themes he presents in the most intriguing of his paintings spring directly from the core issues we all experience in our lives and minds. Click on his website link above for a fast and simple presentation of some of his pieces.

Neil Young and Joni Mitchell

My memory of the first time I ever heard Neil Young is lost in the stratosphere, but After the Gold Rush was probably the first album I ever permanently ingested. It was definitely the first album I over-listened to, but I can’t say I really got sick of it, because even today it sometimes seems as fresh and beautiful as ever. Neil has a defined gruff edge that really attracts the lone wolf in all of us. He’s like the grown-up child of the woods who made it in the big city, who recognizes its grotesque sides but can’t keep himself away from it. Music marketers would call it his brand, but it seems so genuine that he becomes this endearing figure, and I couldn't resist empathizing with and emulating him.
Joni Mitchell had a very similar thing going on, but hers was wrapped in femininity. When I was fifteen my dad bought Blue on CD, and those first chords of “All I Want” sucked me in like a vacuum cleaner filled with sirens. If you get into that album, it stays with you for life like some comforting safe-haven, one in which the ridicule of any thought or emotion is the gravest sin.
Throughout high school, I slowly assumed all of their records and those of the artists they were most associated with: Crosby, Stills & Nash, Van Morrison, Dylan, Baez, Ritchie Havens, America, James Taylor, Fred Neil, Tim Buckley, Cat Stevens, The Band, Paul Simon. I was into other stuff, too, lots of classic rock (a lot of which I never put on any more), but those big time singer-songwriters from the 60s and 70s were really my core interest and have remained so despite a wide broadening of horizons.