Self-Ordained Professors

“A self-ordained professor’s tongue, Too serious to fool” — that’s me. Here’s a collection of texts I’ve written over the years.

Three Tambourine Men

Submitted by eyolf on

Listening to Dylan never gets better than during the moments when one senses that he and his band are engaging in some kind of exploration on stage – where a small melodic figure is exposed to any kind of treatment imaginable. This is a style that has been used consistently during the Never-Ending Tour years, and it may have to do with the ‘Lonnie Johnson’ method. This chapter may therefore be seen as a more practical application, to concrete music, of the more theoretically oriented points discussed in the previous chapter.

Did Dylan steal Canadee-i-o?

Submitted by eyolf on

I received the following letter:

Dear Sir,

I feel moved to write after coming accross your site about “Canadee’i’o’ ”.

It seems to me that you should at least research your subject matter before inclusion in your website. I have only recently come into contact with Nic Jones’s music and I must disagree with your assumption that his version of Canadee IO is not up to the standard of Bob Dylans borrowed arrangement.

‘A day above ground is a good day'

Submitted by eyolf on

This text was originally written as a review of Love & Theft for the journal Transfiguration: Nordic Journal for Christianity and the Arts, hence the emphasis on connections with Christianity, which in a different publishing context would probably have been less pronounced.

The Uneven Heart: A History of Bob Dylan, the Musician

Submitted by eyolf on

An article that was originally written for the Norwegian philosophy journal Agora. It is the closest I have come to a full discussion of Dylan as a musician, with an emphasis on those particular aspects of his musical life that seem to create the impression that what he does and says is significant; that he addresses the listener directly, with an expression of a life and a pulse; and that this aspect of his work comes to expression through musical means just as much as through the lyrics.

‘Beauty may Only Turn to Rust’

Submitted by eyolf on

This chapter is an analysis of Dylan’s concept of beauty (yes, he has one!), based on his liner notes to Joan Baez’s live album Joan Baez in Concert, vol. 2. It was originally written for the magazine Judas!.

‘What I learned from Lonnie’

Submitted by eyolf on

This and the following text, ‘Three Tambourine Men’, belong together as an exploration of the possible meaning behind Dylan’s description in Chronicles, Volume One of a system of “Mathematical music”. This chapter explores the textual evidence and the possible theoretical ramifications; the next puts the system to a practical test.

The Momentum of Standstill

Submitted by eyolf on

This chapter started out as a reflection upon Dylan’s concept of time on Time out of Mind, triggered, among other things, by some early reviewer who reported his surprise to find that ‘Standing in the Doorway’ lasted as long as it does. The text grew from there, however, and in its final state it is a broader study of Dylan’s experiments with time and the blues.

The propelling harmony of ‘Dear Landlord’

Submitted by eyolf on

Whereas a considerable number of Dylan songs use only a limited number of chords, often the classic three-chord blues pattern, often just one sustained chord throughout a whole song (e.g. Political World), some songs stand out as far more advanced, harmonically speaking. I would like to discuss Dear Landlord from this perspective.

Just Like A Woman Revisited

Submitted by eyolf on

This chapter is probably my first attempt at using the language of functional harmony to interpret the harmonic content of a Dylan song. It may not be my best attempt, and it is probably too much of a torso to merit inclusion, were it not for its status as the first.

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