Christgau Phones-In Dylan “Murder" Billboard Hitman Joey 'Redhook' Levy Popup Patsy Foul
Robert Christgau
Apr 26
When “Murder Most Foul” surfaced, I never got around to playing it. ... But then my old friend Greil inspired me to give it a shot, and whaddaya know—
I had trouble getting to the end much less working up any interest in what it “meant.”But, honestly,would you ever play this?Emma Swift I Contain Multitudes
But he’s been saying everything is going to hell for decades.In a world where everything is broken, your clock is right twice a day — more if you’ve got a lot of busted clocks, which dude does.
I was appalled again by all the hoohah. So I wrote Joe Levy, an on-again-off-again Dylan obsessive who is now my editor, de facto manager, as well as the man without whom And It Don’t Stop wouldn’t exist, just to find out what he thought—we talk all the time but it had never come up.
And soon he emailed me a briefer version of the essay below.
Like Joe, I’ve found that both “Murder Most Foul” and “I Contain Multitudes” have grown on me a little.
But this somewhat expanded version of that email says far more than I could have far better than I could have.
I’ve been telling Joe what a great critic he is for 25 years. Here’s proof positive no one who’s ever read him needs:
My Twitter feed was full of chatter about “Murder Most Foul” for days. Thought “Real Life Rock Top 10” captured that, with what felt to me like an appropriate sense of both excitement and suspicion: “The hundreds of instant and definitive Captain Midnight Decoder Ring analyses of every word. . . . in an instant it can feel as if the whole world is listening, talking back, figuring it out, and playing with it as if it’s a cross between the Bible and Where’s Waldo.” The feeling of that item is like the song itself, the way it apes Dylan’s Homeric list of song requests with a recitation of the birth and death years of the artists.
The news that there’s a serious publisher out there looking for a book on a song Greil says works like “a cross between the Bible and Where’s Waldo” — that’s pretty funny.
But first few times through I thought “Murder Most Foul” was fucking awful, and can’t understand: does no one else hear it this way?
I mean, he used to have music in his music, so if he’s going to do spoken word, the words better be really good.
By his own standards — not mine, not the Nobel Committee’s, not those of my high school English teacher who taught us “The Waste Land” (Mrs. Dewey, I salute you!) — these aren’t.
[c'mon, Bard! That's shoddy, for you -- ed.]
But they’re interesting! Maybe.
Though I find it hard to forgive the invocation of conspiracy theory in a moment when conspiracy theory runs the game, and I don’t care if that’s the point.
['Kitchen Sink'-exclusion / inclusion lazy for Christgau]
(Tip your hat to Revelations on your own time, not when the guys pulling the strings actually believe that shit and are practically building a helipad for the Antichrist so we — sorry, I mean they, because I’m not going — can rapture up sooner.)
It’s all going to hell, just like that dark day in November when a man put his hand over the sun (that took me a couple of seconds, unintentional Christ imagery and all, and seems about as good as anything in “Murder Most Foul”).
critic tell competition
as easily slobbered as the dullards who (enough to remember their 100s) would come into my art gallery and say, about the self-taught / outsider art on display -- first, quoting its price,
i could do that!
And I could kick them out.
But he’s been saying everything is going to hell for decades. In a world where everything is broken, your clock is right twice a day — more if you’ve got a lot of busted clocks, which dude does.
The second song, “I Contain Multitudes,” sounded better — funnier — but . . . the first song mentions the Beatles, the second song mentions the Stones.
Why? It has the sickly sweet smell of nostalgia to it, which the Lennon song on Tempest did as well.
Both songs about men named John who were shot down.
Yet if you take out the one verse about the Liverpool docks from “Roll On John,” it’s a real song. Mawkish.
(“Shine your light / Moving on / You burned so bright / Roll on, John” — yeesch.
He steals so much. Can’t he lift something sharper than that?) But real. (Oh, America, we love you. Get up.)
You can’t do the same with “Murder Most Foul.”
Do I like it more the more I listen to it? Yeah, though I wonder if reads better, less slack, than it sounds.
I can’t get over how nonexistent the track itself is, the way its sleepiness makes his Titanic song seem as alive as Eminem or Otis Redding by comparison.
It’s a fever dream says one friend. It’s like The Irishman says another. It’s about the collapse of America, at a time when American is collapsing all over again!
Poem [Lana Turner has collapsed!]Frank O'Hara - 1926-1966
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up
But I hear a guy who so often insisted on existing outside of history now wanting to own it by reciting it.
This is Dylan’s general strategy in what I’d call his post-original phase — the five (or is it six?) discs from the songbook, the autobiography, the documentary, the second documentary, the repackaging of his most despised work into totems.
This is all a retelling. His story, his way. Or a story told so many ways you can’t tell up from down, good from bad, now from then. He exists past any sense of originality or creation.
Has he written a song since Tempest? His website describes “Murder Most Foul” as “an unreleased song we recorded a while back,” and even Dylan nuts can’t tell when or where these tracks are from.
His voice sounds suspiciously good, especially compared to the stones-in-his-throatway croak on his cover of “Things We Said Today” that came out in 2014.
One friend wonders if these tracks were recorded with the current touring band, because the drums don’t sound like . . . whoever the fuck is playing drums with him now.
I mean, I’m hung up on this guy — I’ve looped “Highlands” so it goes for an hour, then looped it again because my long walk or my book weren’t done — and I don’t have the patience for this stuff.
“music can comfort us in times of national trauma.”
So: play “The Stumble” by Freddie King. Play “P*$$Y Fairy” by Jhené Aiko.
Play the whole Dua Lipa album and then play it louder.
Play Harry Styles and Harry Partch at the same time and drink a coffee for Hal Willner. Play “Good Bad Times” by Hinds. Play whatever Joni Mitchell song was playing when Dylan fell asleep listening to Court and Spark at David Geffen’s house. Did you play “The Stumble” yet, because I’m telling you, you underestimate Freddie King, he’s a muthafuhya, could make a dead man dance.
Play whatever you want, whatever brings you joy. But, honestly, would you ever play this?