Murder Most Foul

Bob Dylan reaches for the epic note, making a last ditch stand to haul himself over to the Elysian Fields. He makes it by a mile, effortlessly, in his well worn timeless style, and the timing of his release plays with our national conscience in a way that befits our most senior man of letters.

This is what great poets can do. It is limited in its immediate impact. Nobody's life will be saved, but a million souls listen in together and are united. In this way it is a medicine most useful.

I'm talking of course about Murder Most Foul, released on Friday by the American icon, his first original song in eight years.

"With its message of turning to music for comfort in troubled times, Bob Dylan's 'Murder Most Foul' arrives right on time," said Rolling Stone Magazine.

"Imma be honest, I thought Bob Dylan was dead," said one tweeter. Which only proves Dylan right.

The song is about a lost nation, unmoored from its past, its greatness stolen away in an evil plot in which we are all enmeshed. What could be better proof of the correctness of Dylan's vision, paired with the foulness of the moment we are living in, and have been living in since 1963, that people don't know that our poet laureate, 78 year old Robert Allan Zimmerman, is alive and well.

Well, he proved it with this song. Clocking in at 17 minutes long, it was never intended to be a top forty hit. Dylan takes it up a notch, aiming his shot at those who doubted the appropriateness of his Nobel Prize win in 2017. Here's an excerpt of his acceptance speech that lays the groundwork for Murder Most Foul, his latest ballad about his final and enduring theme: the rise and fall of America.

"By listening to all the early folk artists and singing the songs yourself, you pick up the vernacular. You internalize it. You sing it in the ragtime blues, work songs, Georgia sea shanties, Appalachian ballads and cowboy songs. You hear all the finer points, and you learn the details.

You know what it’s all about. Takin’ the pistol out and puttin’ it back in your pocket. Whippin’ your way through traffic, talkin’ in the dark. You know that Stagger Lee was a bad man and that Frankie was a good girl. You know that Washington is a bourgeois town and you’ve heard the deep-pitched voice of John the Revelator and you saw the Titanic sink in a boggy creek. And you’re pals with the wild Irish rover and the wild colonial boy. You heard the muffled drums and the fifes that played lowly. You’ve seen the lusty Lord Donald stick a knife in his wife, and a lot of your comrades have been wrapped in white linen."

Have a listen and if you're like me, you'll revel in the references to everyone from Lady Macbeth to Stevie Nicks. Dylan's raspy wisdom is comforting and inspiring if you have a pulse. JFK's murder marks the moment America's story took a wrong turn, and we're still living in the shadow of it.

"Wake up little Suzie, let's go for a drive,

cross the Trinity River, 

let's keep hope alive.

Turn the radio on,

don't touch the dials,

Parkland Hospital only six more miles."