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Saturday, August 10, 2024

Saturday Music Post - Subterranean Homesick Blues

Released in 1965, "Subterranean Homesick Blues" was Bob Dylan's first top-40 hit. It was also the lead cut on his fifth album, "Bringing It All Back Home," which featured electric tracks on one side and folk-acoustic cuts on the other side. I was a 16-year old high school senior at the time, writing my honors English term paper on Dylan's lyrics -- for which I had to get the teacher's special permission because such a thing had never been done -- and the fifth album really caused me a problem. Not only was it half-electric, it had no political protest songs, other than the implicit rebellion against the bourgeois world. I cannot remember if I recognized the similarity to Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business," which Dylan acknowledged decades later, but nobody thought anything about borrowing tunes back then.  I am pretty sure that I mentioned the obvious Kerouac influence.

Don't miss Allen Ginsberg in a tallit and the Ginsberg-inflected clips at the bottom of the post.

Dylan also pioneered the music video with the first clip on today's post at The Faculty Lounge.

Posted by Steve Lubet on August 10, 2024 at 05:26 AM | Permalink

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