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Amnesty International’s Bob Dylan cover “album”: Why did Amnesty murder Mr Dylan?

If you listen to the album you will understand why I have placed album in quotation marks. Rarely have I felt the need to write an essay or report on anything during the holidays, but I feel that this travesty of justice needs to be addressed, and seeing as Amnesty International (an organisation set up to set straight the injustices of human rights from what I gather) is behind this artistic depravity of animal noises and soul-sucking boredom, I will have to step in. 
         

There are two things I find so very peculiar and equally enraging about this album, and these are not necessarily the music. The music is subjective, the main two problems I have is that this album IS a poorly thought out choice of medium for fund-raising, and this album DOES give the wrong impressions of the original Dylan songs.
In length: 

            1. The choice of album and artist line up is laughable and inappropriate for such a purpose. Not because the artists on the album are laughable (there are many respectable artists on the album), but because the mix of artists on the album will not appeal to any target audience. 
          The point of the album as I see it (and as it has been described to me through Reddit and other such mediums) is to promote Amnesty and raise money for, and awareness of, their cause (which I still don’t completely understand). I guess part of this is that they figured people would hear this great album and associate it with their brand. I assume that there was a meeting about this before it was launched where they decided on such a method of fund-raising and that unfortunately the brains behind Amnesty had to go to his daughter’s ballet recital or something, because, let’s be frank, they fucked it up. And I don’t think that EVERY SINGLE PERSON who runs Amnesty International is retarded. At least I hope not. “We should release an album of Dylan covers!” is quite a good suggestion, as is “We should release an album of various popular artists!” Unfortunately, when some dipshit in the back room called out “We could do both!” Mr. Brains wasn’t there to step in.
          The first suggestion is one which would appeal to an older audience, an audience who actually had some history growing up with Dylan. An audience who has more than just “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Mr. Tambourine Man” on their iTunes playlist. This album would have had to be kept tasteful in order to appeal to this audience: the covers and their covering artists would have to be carefully selected, making sure to match each song with an artist who could convey the same feeling. I suppose something like The Black Keys and Subterranean Homesick Blues (none of this Michael Franti bullshit) or Josh Pyke and It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue. Listen to the I’m Not There soundtrack and you’ll understand how important this is: that soundtrack could be one of the best cover albums ever compiled.
          The second suggestion appeals to an audience my age (or thereabout), and would be suited to artists doing whatever songs they wished. How many 16 year olds want to listen to Bob Dylan? I’d much rather hear K’NAAN do something they are good at rather than having to ruin With God on Our Side (did they REALLY have to write new lyrics? Weren’t the ones written by the bloke with 11 Grammys and the French title of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres along with a list of other incredibly prestigious literary awards good enough?). And who the hell paired Silverstein up with Song to Woody? No Silverstein fan would want to listen to the original, and no Dylan fan would want to listen to a Silverstein cover!
          Now this does not say anything about the music. I’ll get to that in a second. I just can’t believe that an entire organisation could cock up such an important project so god damn badly. This is a point EVERYONE, even those who dislike Dylan can agree with.
         
          TL;DR – In short, no Dylan fan wants to listen to these covers, and no fan of the covering artists wants to listen to Dylan songs. Therefore, although many might be interested, nobody enjoys the music enough to buy the songs. Swing and a miss, Amnesty.

2. This album cheapens the meanings and ideas of many important Dylan songs, as well as separating them from their original context and purpose. Dylan’s sound (and I will only use his 1960’s and early 70’s music as examples, that seems to be the most accessible and relatable to all. Don’t think for a second that any of his Christian music has any less important purpose or historical context) is genuine. It is not necessarily rugged, nor especially soft and comforting. His sound changes throughout different periods. The only part of his sound that is constant is that his music is so very genuine.
          Freewheelin’, Bob Dylan, Another Side of Bob Dylan and The Times They Are A Changin’ are albums composed almost entirely of Dylan’s guitar, harmonica and words. The albums are literally ways of getting across his messages to people. Whether or not he felt himself as a ‘protest singer’ is secondary to the fact that his music represented certain ideas and messages shared by people at that time. There is one thing to listen to, and that is what Dylan is trying to say. Go and listen to Amnesty’s versions of All I Really Want to Do, Bob Dylan’s 115^th Dream, Blowin’ in the Wind and Spanish Boots of Spanish Leather (The Airborne Toxic Event, Sussn Deyhim, Taj Mahal & The Phantom Blues Band and Ziggy Marley respectively). They are all hyped up on stupid sounds while the purpose of each song is entirely overlooked. With God On Our Side and Song to Woody are also good examples of this.
          It happens in the other direction, too. The subtleties in Restless Farewell are missed by Mark Knopfler, as are those in The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carol, performed by Cage the Elephant. Now these covers are definitely part of the few on the album I find enjoyable to some extent, however they too belittle Dylan’s original ideas.
          The original Restless Farewell is, as the title would suggest, restless and lingering. Dylan plays it in an undefined meter and rambles on. It is very hard to tap your feet to this song, which, given that the subject is at the end of some journey (I’d like to think he is on his deathbed), is very apt. It is a very solemn song, and is more so when placed at the end of such a solemn album. When the song is played in Kopfler’s manner, it loses ALL this. He starts out quite well, but loses it to this defined, driven, drum-held gluestick rhythm. I appreciate the Irish take on the song, but it has NONE of the merit that it did when Dylan first recorded it.
          Cage the Elephant’s take on Hattie Carol is also a miss, but for a different reason. Their adaptation is weak, with husky vocals and simple accompaniment. I quite like this sound and I am not criticizing Cage the Elephant for having this sound, but could anything be less appropriate? Cage and Kopfler should have switched songs. Hattie Carol is about a travesty of justice, just like the ones Amnesty fight to fix. Dylan played it in his announcing, wailing, pleading voice for this reason. The guitar drives the song forward in his version; in Cage’s the accompaniment just slows the song down. The song is driven by disgust and hatred for the unjust in Dylan’s version, in Cage’s it is a Sunday morning chore with dampened instruments and tired, bored, whispering vocals. It almost sounds as if Cage is mocking Carol’s story, laughing at her, as if her story was not even worth waking up for. I find it insulting to listen to.
          Pete Singer mocks Dylan’s audiences with a rendition of Forever Young which reduces it to a Christmas carol, Michael Franti (who, according to his Wikipedia page “is an outspoken supporter for a wide spectrum of peace and social justice issues”) turns Subterranean Homesick Blues into a Wiggles’ style sing-a-long, and My Chemical Romance turns Desolation Row into the sort of alternative-rock-neo-punk-denim-three-quarter-pants-blink-182 bullshit that nobody needs to hear. In this way, the album is a mockery of Mr Dylan’s entire life’s work.

          TL;DR – This album mocks the seriousness with which Dylan wrote his songs.

I will say something else about the whole thing and that is I find it particularly odd that the way I came across this was through Kesha’s version of Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright. The front page post entitled “Kesha to cover Bob Dylan, holy shit…” or something along those lines. I couldn’t really tell what the person who posted it thought about the whole thing, but judging by the comments on the link it seems people have mixed feelings. There were two comments that caught my eye;

Breakdown95: “…She added her own twist to it and that’s what people have been doing to Bob Dylan songs for years ever since he started making albums. It’s strange how quickly people will jump at something like this just because it’s an artist that has done unenjoyable work in the past.

I love Bob Dylan and I have all his albums from the 60’s/70’s and honestly this is just another interpretation of his work. Move along.”

AND:

tekdemon: “It always drives me crazy how “music snobs” who only listen to their particular “elite” brand of music don’t even realize that they’re not real music lovers, and limiting yourself to that one type of sound really just suggests how musically illiterate you are. People who really appreciate music, people who are actually musically literate almost always know how to appreciate all sorts of music. I’ve honestly never met a musician who didn’t like music totally unlike what they make themselves.

That said, even if you like pop the character of an alcoholic clubgirl isn’t particularly endearing lol”

          I like these comments. Not so much the first one, but it is interesting.

          I’ll start by saying that I didn’t hate Kesha’s version of the song, I just wish that it hadn’t been THAT song. The link said that she had tried to turn the song into a suicide note, which is what I don’t like about the song. It is not that Kesha, a supposed “alcoholic clubgirl” covers Dylan, it’s that she turns such a beautiful song around and puts this damp, teenage suicide gloom over the top of it. And to anyone who is going to say “there is something beautiful about the gripping insanity that leads to suicide, you can’t just see it” or some rubbish like that, I can assure you, there isn’t. There is nothing beautiful or noble about teenage depression and suicide, and it would be wrong to endorse such behaviour in any way. I really do like the idea of the song, it is just a little bit inappropriate.

          Anyway, Breakdown95 says “It’s strange how quickly people will jump at something like this just because it’s an artist that has done unenjoyable work in the past.” I think to directly criticize someone’s music by declaring it so frankly “unenjoyable” without proper reason is vulgar. But my main problem with Breakdown is that he says “I love Bob Dylan and I have all his albums from the 60’s/70’s and honestly this is just another interpretation of his work.” If he loves Dylan so much and is so open-minded, how come he only owns Dylan’s 60’s/70’s work? I hope it is not because the Christian part of Dylan puts him off. That was, after all, just “another interpretation of his work”. I could be looking into that a bit too much, but it does seem peculiar.

          tekdemon brings up a good point without contradicting himself. There are people who will listen to this album and dismiss it IMMEDIATELY as rubbish. These people are entitled to their opinion, but as someone who has listened to every single song on the album and has a great love for Dylan’s works, I have to say that in MY opinion almost all the songs on this album are crap. If you REALLY want to hear good Bob Dylan covers, you are limited really to anything on the I’m Not There soundtrack, Jimmi Hendrix’s All Along The Watchtower, and Rage Against the Machine’s version of Maggie’s Farm. All these covers are interesting and still manage to keep the original dignity of each of their respective works.

TL;DR – DO NOT BUY THIS ALBUM. 

review of amnesty international’s bob dylan cover album