Bob Dylan Can Be Really Funny

Since we have been rocking the Destroyer tip of late, here is an interview at Junkmedia from last year with Dan Bejar that is really good.

"I would never write something down just to confess it. Usually it's a pretty conscious effort to create something of aesthetic value. You know what I mean? I mean, my approach to language is not super conscious in that I sit down and have some over-arching idea that the language has to fit into. It's actually really instinctual. But the aesthetic is one of using language that just works. You write it down, and somehow it's just working for you. It's not what the words mean, but what they do, I guess. How the phrasing interacts with melody, and how meaning can change once you throw that in there. That being said, you could probably comb through my lyrics and find a handful of threads that would piece it all together."

This man is good, tell you. How about an other example (aside from the Bejar-o-matic):

THE SUBLIMATION HOUR

So you had the best legs in a business built for kicks,
but was this changing of the guards really supposed to make you sick…
It’s alright - The Sublimation Hour!

Medium Rotation, the Shock of the New,
and a memo from Feldman saying - “everything is true.
It’s alright - The Sublimation Hour!

Don’t spend your life conceiving that the widows won’t get sick of their grieving
till everyone walks out. Hey, isn’t that what rock ‘n’ roll is all about?
Princess, express your bloated self, willful and indignant in the face of
somebody’s lord.

You try to summon up the spirits live on Face the Nation,
but the Port Authority just taxed incantations.
It’s alright - The Sublimate Hour!

Auction off the temple. It’s money well-spent.
Hey, are those tears in your eyes as the wind cries enlargement?
It’s alright - The Sublimate Hour.

Don’t spend your life conceiving that the widows won’t get sick of their grieving
till everyone walks out. Hey, isn’t that what rock ‘n’ roll is all about, princess?
Confess your bloated self, willful and indignant,
in the face of somebody’s lord.

So put your hands together. I hear it’s a ‘must’,
until this phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust.
It’s alright - The Sublimation Hour.

I guess the streets will suffice till everybody makes nice,
but there’s a rumor going round even Destroyer has a price…
Don’t spend your life conceiving…

And what I know is one of Clint's favorites:

VIRGIN WITH A MEMORY

Was it the movie or the making of Fitzcarraldo
where someone learned to love again?
‘I can’t remember’ is not the same as ‘I don’t know,’
virgin with a memory.

Was it the movie or the making of Fitzcarraldo
where your mother decided to fashion herself
after the sad deity we left on the shelf.

She wanted blood, all she got was sacrifice.
She wanted blood, all she got was sacrifice.
She wanted blood, all she got was sacrifice.

Virgin without a memory, now is your chance to be free
of all those favorite bands you ditched for one that’s grander:
No Use For A Name to the Make-up -- it’s all the same.

The singer not the song, no!
The singer not the song, no!
The singer not the song, no!

Formative years - wasted. In love with our peers -
we tasted life with the stars. Anticlimactic as Mars was, still…

A red earth with no way of knowing this silver colossus exists
just to be growing.
A red earth with no way of knowing this silver colossus exists
just to be growing…

Was it the movie or the making of Fitzcarraldo
where someone learned to love again?
Where someone learned to love again…
Where someone learned to love again…

I often try and explain Destroyer to people in terms of Bob Dylan (which I know does not resonate with one popular reader of this internet news source), but I think the comparison holds: both are brilliant and frustrating, willing (actually, eager is a better word) to confound, confuse and destroy expectations and assumptions. Shaggy, inexplicable minds. I am really working myself up for Destroyer's Rubies.