J'ai trouvé ça dans un petit bouquin,
The Rough Guide To Bob Dylan. C'est bien sympathique ma foi
ps. admirez la patience que j'ai eu de taper tout ça...
Ten Comic Dylan Songs
1. Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blue
Available on The Bootleg Series Vols I-III (1991)
The John Birch Society was a right-wing organization, born in the MacCarthyite area, obsessed with imagined communist infiltration. In Dylan's sharp satire, a member of the society looks under his bed fot a Red, up his chimney, in the glove compartment of his car and down his toilet. Less amusing, Dyaln was banned from singing the song on the Ed Sullivan show in May 1963. To his credit, he walked off the set and refused to appear on the programme.
2. I Shall Be Free
Available on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963)
Given the intensity of the protest and the poignancy of the love songs on Freewheelin', Dylan decided he'd better leave 'em laughing. The hilarious "I Shall Be Free" namechecks Yul Brynner, Charles de Gaulle and President Kennedy, who calls up Dylan and asks him what will make the country grow. "Brigitte Bardot, Anita Ekberg, Sophia Loren... country'll grow" comes the answer. OK, it loses something on the page. But on the record his timing is masterful and, on such form, an alternative career in stand-up could have awaited.
3. I Shall Be Free No. 10
Available on Another Side Of Bob Dylan (1964)
Sadly, Dylan never released "I Shall Be Free" numbers two to nine, if they ever existed. But when he found himself getting over-serious on Another Side Of Bob Dylan, as he picked at the scabs of his break-up with Suze Rotolo, he lightened proceedings with a comic talking blues that sounds as if it was more or less delivered on the hoof, and which contains the self-mocking, "I'm a poet, and I know it, hope I don't blow it...".
4. Motorpsycho Nightmare
Available on Another Side Of Bob Dylan (1964)
The other lighter moment on Another Side, "Motorpsycho Nightmare" can "be read as a broad satire on the antagonism between bohemian urban cool and reactionary rural conservatism", as Andy Gill writes. "Bur why bother?" Much better simply to enjoy the joke, as Dylan yells "I like Fidel Castro and I like his beard" at a reactionary farmer responds by throwing a copy of the Reader's Digest at his head.
5. Bob Dylan's 115th Dream
Available on Bringing It All Back Home (1965)
In which Dylan's comic wit turns epic. His "115th Dream" is a satirical vision of the great American dream, in which the Mayflower is skippered by Captain Ahab from Melville's Moby Dick. Re-named "Arab" for the occasion, he waves good luck to Christopher Columbus on a surreal voyage to disinvent the New World.
6. Please Mrs Henry
Available on the Basement Tapes (1975)
Typical of the bonhomie of the Basement Tapes, "Please Mrs Henry" is a drinking song in which a penniless Dylan begs the barmaid for another drink, makes a clumsy pass at her and ends up practically pissing himself ("if I walk too much farther my crane's gonna leak") before collapsing in laughter in the final chorus.
7. You Ain't Goin' Nowhere
Available on Greatest Hits Volume 2 (1971) and The Essential Bob Dylan (2002)
After Dylan had recorded the amiable "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" with The Band in Woodstock in 1967, Roger McGuinn and The Byrds covered the song on their groundbreaking country rock album Sweetheart Of The Rodeo the following year. In response, Dylan re-recorded the song in 1971 with new lyrics that took a gentle dig at the Byrds' leader. "Pack up your money, pull up your tent, McGuinn 'cos you ain't a-goin' nowhere".
8. Clothes Line Saga
Available on the Basement Tapes (1975)
"Clothes Line Saga" is Dylan's parody of "Ode To Billie Joe", a 1967 hit for Bobbie Gentry about a suicide. Nobody dies in Dylan's song. But imitating Gentry's narrative style, it is off-handedly reported that the previous night downtown, the vice-president has gone mad. "Hmm, say that's too bad", Dylan sings before folk go back to the far more important business of seeing whether the clothes are dry on the line.
9. Wiggle Wiggle
Available on Under The Red Sky (1990)
At least, you hope Dylan meant it as a joke. "Wiggle to the front, wiggle to the rear, wiggle til you wiggle right out of here" he sings, before bizarrely exhorting us to "wiggle like a bowl of soup". It's all most perplexing. But when he concludes by hissing "Wiggle like a big fat snake", the erotic-comic effect produces such a broad smile that you forgive the song's utter banality.
10. Cry A While
Available on Love And Theft (2001)
Love And Theft must be the funniest album of Dylan's entire career. The humour is there in almost every song with throwaway lines such as "jump into the wagon love, throw your panties overboard", "I'm sitting on my watch, so I can be on time", "I'm no pig without a pig", "Freddie or not, here I come"and, best of all, in "Cry A While": "last night across the alley there was a pounding on the wall, it must have been Don Pasquale making at 2am booty call".
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Sujet: Ten Comic Dylan Songs 
Dim 11 Sep - 1:24
