Thread by @Billy_Ontheroad

1/23 When people in search for a brighter kind of truth will start to discover #BobDylan for themselves in 100 years, they may begin their listening journey with #RoughAndRowdyWays. This masterpiece is unbeliavable beautiful, rigorous, funny, wise, frightening and consoling...

https://twitter.com/barberville/status/1271800553169920000

2/23 at the same time. #RoughAndRowdyWays is a colourful mosaic about decay and coming home in sharp contrasted black and white, that makes the listener happy with its amazing liveliness. The contradictions on this album have been staged so skilfully stringent, that one might...

3/23 doubt whether #BobDylan has written and produced this precise portrait of life and death on earth anywhere on this planet. Obviously the greatest songwriter of all times has done thorough research in morgues and orphanages, under gallows and on burning pyres, because this...

4/23 album describes a world falling apart, with grim accurancy but without despair. But one might wonder if it was recorded high in the sky or in heaven with a clear view into hell. #RoughAndRowdyWays sounds like a relentless romantic painting of the moment after and before...

5/23 the thunderstorm.

Nine minutes past midnight, New York time, on March 27th, when the world began to realize what the pandemic really means for one's personal life and also globally, #BobDylan did an unusual thing: He dropped an unreleased song on social media for the...

6/23 first time, and it was also the longest (17 minutes) in a career spanning six decades. For this rather sensational incident, #BobDylan offered a humble non-explenation on twitter: "This is an unreleased song we recorded a while back that you might find interesting."...

7/23 This song, #MurderMostFoul, was indeed about death, but not caused by a virus but by a bullet. At first glance the ballad covers the murder of President JF Kennedy in 1963. On the second look it says how bad even the good old times really were and that it was music...

8/23 that made the growling narrator survive. There was no hint though, that this song was the forerunner of #BobDylan's first album with self written songs after eight years.

"I think it’s a forerunner of something else to come", #BobDylan said 11 weeks later, asked about...

9/23 the pandemic in one of his rare interviews orchestrating the release of #RoughAndRowdyWays. By now America was in turmoil because many people stood up against racism, and meanwhile #BobDylan has dropped two more lighthouse lights: #IContainMultitudes,...

10/23 a weathered self portrait that wrapped dying flowers in unforseen beauty, and #FalseProphet, a powerful blues that stated that #BobDylan is not willing to play along: "Hello stranger /A long goodbye / You ruled the land /But so do I / You lost your mule /...

11/23 You got a poison brain /
I'll marry you to a ball and chain."
This single release came with the picture of a sceleton holding a full syringe and with a release date for the 39th album of 79 years old #BobDylan.

Now that the world somehow really made it through...

12/23 June 19th, I'm sitting on a sofa and still can't believe that the wonder I just listened to really exists. I can't believe that this lovable urge exists with witch #BobDylan describes even a Frankenstein inspired search for body parts in #MyOwnVersionOfYou. ...

13/23 I thought that the pure love which enlightens #IveMadeUpMyMindToGiveMyselfToYou has left this planet long ago. And I truly believed that the kind of dedication that drives #BlackRider only existed in my dreams.

14/23 But what leaves me really stunned is the promising prospect of #RoughAndRowdyWays becoming an indispensable companion for the time left on this planet. Not only is this great collection of songs an inspiring vaccine against the unlived life. It also works as a painkiller...

15/23 by illuminating pain so mercyless.

Of course there's a good amount of misantropy on #RoughAndRowdyWays (remember this is the work of a genious) when anger and bitterness fill the days as much as fast cars and fast food do. But #BobDylan's beloved grandpa voice is...

16/23 turning a dark last journey into a ride on the roller coaster of mortality. And then there are these great guys around Tony Garnier on a comforting bass who seem to immensely enjoy shining spotlights on that voice while it's dancing across the cemetery.

#BobDylan is...

17/23 using this voice (or rather: these voices) braver than ever before: There is pure beauty, struggeling beauty, demolished beauty and of course the well known growling. There is, in other words, one of the most powerful instruments of rock history at its very best.

This...

18/23 bravery makes #RoughAndRowdyWays unique in many astonishing ways: In #KeyWest #BobDylan mixes cheesy postcard images of southern Florida with the absurd marriage of a 12 years old boy to a prostitute. In #MotherOfMuses he paints himself a sweet voice.
"I've already...

19/23 outlived my life by far", #BobDylan sings in this timeless anthem in which he also explains the absence of despair (that he experienced, of course he did: "I've traveled a long road of despair / I've met no other traveler there."): There's still hope for mercy from above..

20/23 The closer #BobDylan is traveling towards the end, the more dedicated he becomes. Obviously he's in a stage now where it's logical to proclaim unofficial public holidays with joyfully played Blues guitars (#GoodbyeJimmyReed). And he makes it very clear that there's no...

21/23 way back (#CrossingTheRubicon). In this amazing song #BobDylan sings "I feel the holy spirit inside /
See the light that freedom gives", while when the curtain of #RoughAndRowdyWays is finally closing, the narrator states in #MurderMostFoul: "Freedom, oh freedom...

22/23 freedom over me / Hate to tell you, Mister, but only dead men are free."

#BobDylan obviously feels pretty close to freedom on #RoughAndRowdyWays. But when he sings with that touching deathbed voice (like in #BlackRider), he does so by choice...

23/23 So there is hope he's allowed to maintain that status for some more decades. Even if #BobDylan may not need (but obviously still knows how to enjoy) this world anymore, this world needs him more than ever.

And he fully seems to know this.