The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 6 of 15)

p>A great songwriter I know once told me that for a song to be a hit, it has to achieve one of four goals. It has to make you laugh, cry, think, or get up and dance. With all due respect to Mr. Dylan, rock music was born of the beat. The '50s and '60s kids on "American Bandstand" preferred the songs that had "a good beat and you could dance to it." The editors of Rolling Stone should be reminded that the Rolling Stones' Keith Richards nailed it when he said "Rock'n'Roll is from the waist down -- not the neck up." br> -- Crampton Helms br> Tennessee /p> p> Dylan had at least one #1 album. In the mid-'70s he briefly left CBS for Geffen's label and his first release went #1, but soon fell. It's rare for a critic to site sales figures to downsize Dylan's importance, but conflating Dylan's artistic importance is directly tied to the critic profession's own sense of self-importance. How can popular appeal be a barometer of quality if the self-appointed experts with self-invented expertise exercising self announced authority insist that their opinion is the one true barometer? br> -- Richard Henderson /p> p> When the statue is finished the sculptor stops. it seems very difficult, for poems, songs and even novels to end well. Jerry Garcia, lead guitarist for the finest band in the land, the Grateful Dead, said of Dylan that he didn't know how to end a song! Mr. Tucker notes several Dylan tunes that don't end well. Speaking of practically perfect songs, the thought police at Rolling Stone completely skipped over the body of work that was the Grateful Dead. Off the top of my head I can think of four Dead tunes that end perfectly, to wit: "St. Stephen," "Scarlet Begonias," "Terrapin Station," and "Jack Straw." Returning back to the 500 list the most pretentious item was "Imagine" by Lennon, who was so much better when he waxed melancholy and pessimistic! What a practically perfect song has is bud, blossom and fruit. I agree with Mr. Tucker that Elvis was the king of rock 'n' roll, but he was not a first-class musician at any level, and many of the songs the magazine chose by Elvis were written by a true master, Roy Orbison. And, "in the end there's still that song, comes crying like the wind, down every lonely street that's ever been..." "Stella Blue" words by Robert Hunter; music by Jerry Garcia! br> --

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