When Has Bob Dylan Not Been a Harbinger of Doom?

This entry was posted by owl and bear staff on Friday, March 20th, 2009 at 7:00 am.

Wonkette worries:

Bob Dylan’s got a new record coming out next month, and you should be terrified…his past two studio albums were also Harbingers of Doom. Love and Theft was about America in flames, and then under water, and it was…released on September 11, 2001.

His next record, Modern Times, was released in the autumn of 2006–it was named after a Depression-era Charlie Chaplin movie, as the stock market hit new heights and the housing bubble was just beginning to pop, and it was filled with grim songs of working people losing ground…[A] commenter asks below, “When has Bob Dylan NOT been a harbinger of doom?” … On September 22, Dylan appeared for the first time at Carnegie Hall, part of an all-star hootenanny. This show was his first public performance of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, a complex and powerful song built upon the question and answer refrain pattern of the traditional British ballad “Lord Randall,” published by Francis Child…One month later, on October 22…John F. Kennedy appeared on national television to announce the discovery of Soviet missiles on the island of Cuba, initiating the Cuban Missile Crisis.

[Wonkette]