Bob Dylan, have an opinion?

As a great artist he has continued to evolve. I found especially moving his last CD Time out of Mind with superb production by Daniel Lanois. He now sings poignantly about the approaching long night. (He did have a near death experience a couple years ago when he was treated for fungal pericarditis.) Unfortunately he did not sing any of these songs when he toured with Paul Simon. His Oscar winning song is in the same vein though.

A couple of these responses crack me up. Now, I am not trying to be nasty, just anecdotal. My father was visitng me this weekend. He is 83 and not too quick any more. He looked at my hifi (about a kazillion $ at this point) and asked me to put on "something nice". I put on an Eric Clapton cd which received the response: "he has such a bad voice, why do you like him?" Oh well.

Oops ... I forgot to mention: I think Dylan is wonderful. He is one of the great singer/songwriters of the last 30 years. Even when is not singing about something important to me I still love to listen to how he sings his songs. There is a special passion in his crappy voice.

MG: Did you find something that your father liked? My parents visited us for a week this past New Years (they are pushing eighty) and other than Ella, Sarah, Nat and the like they really got into the Cowboy Junkies.

Sd et al, I just remembered many years back a young woman(and contemporary) was arguing with her twin sister about the technical problems with Joni Mitchell's(!) singing, saying that she 'glided' wrong or something. I was amused and horrified to hear one of my favorites criticised, but it just goes to show you that there is 'standard' technique in singing, and then there is what works emotionally and musically. If it works for you, I would not knock any music or musician. Any more than I would knock an involving component just because it strayed from accepted specs or design. Anyone else see the analogy?