Ten Essential Bob Dylan Albums

James Mangold's "A Complete Unknown," starring Timothee Chalomet as the 1961-1965 Bob Dylan, has been getting rave reviews. Chalomet captures Dylan's brooding and iconoclastic postures of that era to a tee. Other great performances include Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, and Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash. Anyone old enough to have lived in the 1960s will find something in the movie to appreciate. 

For me the high point of the film was Chalomet's rendition of Dylan singing "The Times They Are A-Changin'" at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival. Mangold's direction of that scene captures what Dylan really meant to the civil rights and youth movements of the time; the audience connected with Dylan in a way that labor movement activists had connected with Seeger and Woody Guthrie decades earlier. It was a connection that Dylan himself ultimately could not or would not sustain, much to the disappointment of various activists and movement leaders. 

I ultimately found the movie disappointing, for two main reasons. First, even though Joan Baez and Sylvie Russo (who is actually Dylan's then-girlfriend Suze Rotolo; Dylan asked Mangold not to use her real name) are portrayed as strong, independent women who ultimately (in not so many words) tell him to fuck off, one is left feeling that both of them would have sacrificed their political identities and activism FOR Dylan if he had only been more willing or able to commit to a relationship. As such, the film seems to imply that Baez and Russo would sell out their ideals for a traditional American romance--which reduces them to a tired Hollywood trope IMHO. 

Second, the film reinforces the myth that Pete Seeger was somehow opposed to Dylan "going electric" at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, the performance at which Dylan was allegedly booed by the majority of the audience (ostensibly for betraying the sound of pure folk music.). Seeger addressed this matter a number of times before he died, always emphasizing the same two points: (1) there was no opposition to electric instruments. Indeed, blues great Howlin' Wolf had played an electric set at the festival the day before Dylan. (2) The problem with Dylan's set was that the sound mixing was so terrible that Dylan's lyrics could not be heard, at least not without an auditory struggle. Especially for the Dylan of that era, a performance with indecipherable words defeated the point. 

The film did get me back to listening to Dylan's music. Below are what I consider to be ten of his most essential albums. Note that not one of them was recorded in the 21st century, even though Dylan has recorded a number of albums since 2001. It's not that his 21st century output has been bad as much as the fact that his 20th century output included so many iconic classics. Here they are: 

10. Time Out Of Mind (1997): Includes the classics "Love Sick" (which somehow ended up in a 2004 Victoria's Secret ad), and "Make You Feel My Love" (which has been covered by more than 450 different artists, most notably Adele). 

9. Oh Mercy (1989): An album that will always have great meaning for me, in large part because it came out the same year I moved to Oshkosh from Rochester, New York. Moving to the Midwest was not something I did easily or without trepidation, but I remember that this album somehow inspired me to venture into new territory. "Political World, "Everything is Broken," "Ring Them Bells," and "Disease of Conceit" remain as four of my all time favorite songs--the last two strike a chord with my Catholic upbringing. 

8. Slow Train Coming (1979): This was the first of three albums that represent Dylan's Born Again Christian phase. There are a number of great songs on it, but "Gotta Serve Somebody" is about as perfect a Dylan song as you can get. It's preachy without being too overbearing or hypocritical. 

7. Blonde on Blonde (1966): Dylan does not usually get credit for being one of the pioneering figures in the "progressive rock" movement of the 1960s and 1970s, yet Blonde on Blonde most certainly inspired that movement. In vinyl terms, it was one of the first double albums to include great tunes on each of the four sides. It also featured a mix of genres--certainly grounded in folk rock--but sending out word to other artists of the time that it was okay to push the musical envelope. My favorite song on the album is probably "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again," a 7-minute epic that stayed in heavy rotation on FM radio for many years. 

6. Nashville Skyline (1969):  Dylan's foray into full-blown country music. As I watched the movie "A Complete Unknown," I wondered if "I Threw It All Away" was meant for Suze Rotolo or Joan Baez. 

5. Blood On The Tracks (1975). I listened to this album in high school, and it moved me greatly even though I did not have the emotional sophistication at the time to grasp the turmoil reflected in so many of the songs. "Simple Twist Of Fate" is a wonderful example of Dylan's ability to narrate a story in third and first person in a seamless way. Not sure how he does that. 

4. Highway 61 Revisited (1965): Probably the greatest folk-rock album ever recorded, groundbreaking in the best sense. Every song on it became iconic. The best known is "Like A Rolling Stone," which forever changed the sound of 1960s popular music. The lyrics open themselves up for numerous interpretations, and Al Kooper's intro organ never gets old to this day. 

3. The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963): The album that led everyone to believe Dylan was the new Woody Guthrie. Epic songs that inspired a generation of topical folk-singers. "Blowing In The Wind" remains as the best known, but "Masters of War" and "A Hard Rains-A-Gonna Fall" (which imagines the world post-nuclear holocaust), both of which seethe with baby boom generation anger and fear, remain as my personal favorites. 

2.  The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964): The title track remains inspiring after all these years, but "When the Ship Comes In" (which was the first song Dylan performed at the 1963 March on Washington) is for me his most hopeful and optimistic song. In fact I still listen to it whenever I allow myself to get too depressed about our collective future--it helps to get me back on track. 

1. Bringing It All Back Home (1965): When I teach "The Rhetoric of Rock and Roll," occasionally a student will ask me what I think is the greatest album of all time. My answer changes from year to year, but "Bringing It All Back Home" has got to be near the top of the list. In vinyl terms, it includes an electric side with bluesy tunes--all with provocative lyrics and social commentary--and an acoustic side that is Woody Guthrie 2.0. I don't think any other song has impacted me as much as "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)," which I am pretty sure I heard for the first time in the early 1970s on some college radio station broadcasting from a New Jersey campus (I was living in New York City at the time). 

Go see the movie! 

The 2024 Tony Awards: Celebrating Paul Krugman

Every year since 2003, I have given out Tony (Palmeri) Awards for the year's outstanding media. This is the first time since 2010, when I recognized the remarkable video documentarian (and Oshkosh native) Colin Crowley, that I am awarding only one Tony. In 2024 the award goes to the Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, the Princeton University economist who announced in December that he would no longer be a regular contributor to the New York Times opinion page, contributions that he's made since January of 2000. Though I've disagreed with Krugman many times, I've always admired his ability to communicate his thoughts about complex [and often divisive] topics in a language that most everyone can understand. That is, Krugman has played the public intellectual role in a way few academics can pull off. 

Before diving into my reasons for celebrating Krugman, I'd like to explain why I am not handing out any other awards this year. Quite simply and depressingly, 2024 was the worst year for American journalism and punditry since 2003--the year the mainstream corporate media enabled the duplicity and depravity that gave us Operation Iraqi "Freedom." (More than 20 years after deposing the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein, the US government today remains silent as the current Iraqi government carries out unlawful executions at a staggering rate.). 

In 2024, mainstream media in its coverage of the presidential election proved once again that when it comes to anything Trump related, the freedom of the press as the great "bulwark of liberty" will be sacrificed in the name of what is good for the news as a BUSINESS. New York University journalism professor and media critic Jay Rosen provided a framework for how the 2024 election should be covered that mainstream media ultimately failed to incorporate in any meaningful way. Rosen tweeted: 

Not the odds, but the stakes. That's my shorthand for the organizing principle we most need in journalists covering the 2024 campaign. Not who has what chances of winning, but the consequences for American democracy. Not the odds, but the stakes.

Instead what mainstream media provided us was essentially a repeat of 2016: obsession with polling data, treating bad faith actors known to flood the media space with "alternative facts" as credible sources, allowing blatantly false claims in political advertisements to go unchallenged, and framing Mr. Trump's anti-democratic tendencies as accusations made by his political opponents rather than as empirically verifiable facts. And while it is true that the so-called liberal spaces of mainstream media assisted establishment Democrats in covering up President Biden's decline until the June debate made it no longer possible to do so, that paled in comparison to the persistent "sanewashing" of Trump.

I think when future generations look back on the American continent of 2024, they will be hard pressed to explain the results of the Mexican presidential election compared to what transpired in the USA. In June of 2024, in a country still struggling to reign in a culture of toxic male machismo, Mexico elected its first female president--who also happened to be a climate scientist by trade. Meanwhile the United States elected a climate change denialist who also happened to be twice impeached, convicted of 34 felonies, found liable for sexual assault, and led an insurrection after he lost in 2020. No doubt future generations will somehow have to conclude that mainstream media had something to do with these topsy turvy results.

Maybe the worst mainstream media offender of 2024 was, sadly, the New York Times. Media critic Dan Froomkin's excellent analysis and critique of NYT publisher A.G. Sulzberger's speech at Oxford University demonstrated convincingly that the paper was not willing to go to bat for its OWN definition of independent journalism. For Froomkin, Sulzberger communicated two messages to media critics very clearly in his speech:

1. You will earn my displeasure if you warn people too forcefully about the possible end to democracy at the hands of a deranged insurrectionist.

2. You prove your value to me by trolling our liberal readers.

As someone who has been a NYT reader and subscriber for many years, it's hard for me to disagree with Froomkin's analysis. Paul Krugman has not commented on the changing (sinking?) journalistic and editorial standards at the Times, but one has to wonder if his decision to leave was motivated at least in part by not wanting to be associated with a news organization that trolls its own core readers. 

Regardless, allow me to spend the remainder of this post celebrating Paul Krugman's writing. Over the years he has come up with dozens of concepts and arguments that have provoked me to think more critically about topics, reconsider my own thoughts, and/or write about certain topics myself. Let me just provide five examples: 

1. Kakistocracy: I'm sure he was not the first to use the term, but when Krugman described the Trump cabinet as a "kakistocracy" it struck me as the most perfect descriptor possible. A kakistocracy is "a form of government in which the worst persons are in power." (In his most recent substack piece, Krugman comments on Trump's sudden betrayal of his MAGA base to align his views more closely with his wealthy donors, and reaches this spot-on conclusion: "What all three of these reversals suggest to me is that the 2024 election wasn’t a victory for populism or actually any kind of 'ism.' What it did, instead, was deliver the levers of power into the hands of people who can be bought.")

A kakistocracy indeed.

2.  The Confidence Fairy. I happen to work at a University recently decimated by austerity budgets manufactured by highly paid external consultants. In justifying austerity, UW System administrators assert the same tired rhetoric politicians use when slashing programs that benefit workers: these tough decisions will result in short-term pain, but ultimately build confidence in the System and inspire great taxpayer and private stakeholder support. That is, somehow an institution can build confidence by destroying it. It's kind of like a pathetic variation of the Vietnam era admonition that we had to "destroy the town to save it." Look for Krugman's "confidence fairy" to make a grand return in Republican discourse later this month as they try to rationalize why we need massive cuts to the federal budget while giving more tax breaks to the richest one-percent. 

3. Zombie Ideas. This might be my all-time favorite Krugmanism, discussed extensively in his 2020 book Arguing With Zombies and summarized in a column entitled How Zombies Ate The GOP's Soul: 

"A zombie idea is a belief or doctrine that has repeatedly been proved false, but refuses to die; instead, it just keeps shambling along, eating people’s brains. The ultimate zombie in American politics is the assertion that tax cuts pay for themselves — a claim that has been proved wrong again and again over the past 40 years. But there are other zombies, like climate change denial, that play an almost equally large role in our political discourse."

Krugman shows how the Republican party has been overrun by zombie ideas. If the party is ever to rescue itself from Trumpism at the national level and its Trump-lite derivatives in the states, it will have to come to grips with what Krugman says here: 

Think about what is now required for a Republican politician to be considered a party member in good standing. He or she must pledge allegiance to policy doctrines that are demonstrably false; he or she must, in effect, reject the very idea of paying attention to evidence.

It takes a certain kind of person to play that kind of game — namely, a cynical careerist. There used to be Republican politicians who were more than that, but they were mainly holdovers from an earlier era, and at this point have all left the scene, one way or another. John McCain may well have been the last of his kind.

What’s left now is a party that, as far as I can tell, contains no politicians of principle; anyone who does have principles has been driven out.

The Republican Party is right now held way too tightly in the grips of MAGA for those words to even be heard. But heard they must be if we are ever going to be able to return to a "normal" two party system. To be clear: the Democrats have their own variety of dysfunctions, most notably the establishment's fierce opposition to the progressive wing of the party. But factional disputes and fear of progressive upstarts is not the same as requiring delusion as the price of admission to the party ball. Not even close. 

4. The Years Of Shame: On the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Krugman wrote a short piece that literally provoked former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to cancel his New York Times subscription. The piece said in part:

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

Krugman's piece stuck with me for a long time, and on the 20th anniversary of September 11th I wrote a Krugman-inspired piece on 2001-2021 as our nation's "third score of shame." 

5.  The Public Intellectual Style: What I've most admired about Paul Krugman is his ability to write for a general audience. This is not an easy thing for academics to do, and most fail at it. In 2011 he wrote another short piece explaining his efforts to write in a conversational tone. I was impressed, though not surprised, that his "bible" for commandments on how to write clearly is George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language," a work that--when I first read it in graduate school back in the 1980s--transformed my entire outlook on what I should be doing as a budding academic. Few public intellectuals demonstrate Orwell's commitment to clarity as well as Paul Krugman. 

Dr. Krugman has left the New York Times, but he most certainly has not stopped writing. His excellent substack, "Krugman Wonks Out," is well worth your time. And it's free!  

Congratulations to Dr. Paul Krugman for being the sole recipient of the 2024 Tony Award.