No Direction Home is good. But bet that those who lived thru

[Seansky]

those years and experience can relate to many comments that are a bit more foreign to me as a genxer.

The line "Torch passed to the next/other generation" keeps coming up. How come I don't feel that such torch has been passed from the BB to the GenXers? Am I missing something?


It is a very good documentary.

[yellowdoggess]

1. BBs aren't finished with it yet

I guess - We'd like to think we can still make a difference. Do not go gentle...

[GetTheRightVote]

2. because schrub is in the WH right now maybe ???

:kick:

[joemurphy]

3. Yeah, you are sorta missing something. It's one of those you

had to be there sort of things.

[Der Blaue Engel]

4. See, that's why you're supposed to pass the torch

Don't bogart that movement, man.

[crispini]

5. LOL!

Good one!

[joemurphy]

9. The "torch being passed" thing was Alan Ginsberg talking

He was a Beat poet of the 50s immortalized in Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" (a book Dylan mentioned in the documentary). Ginsberg was saying, I think, that what the Beats were to the '50s Dylan became for the '60s -- sort of a troubador of the times.

As to why the torch wasn't passed to the GenXers? Dunno. I think Ronald Reagan and his consie friends had something to do with it. They ushered in an age of greed -- a youth culture filled with people chasing MBAs instead of liberal arts degrees. Young Republicans in my era were jokes. They aren't any more.

Another reason maybe is that Liberalism won most of its battles in the '60s and '70s and it sort of ran out of steam. It would have been hard to sustain the intensity of those years.

Liberalism is about to make a grand comeback though. It's like you can sense it. Like something's going to happen. At least that's what I think.

[Der Blaue Engel]

11. Thank you, I know who Ginsberg is

Despite my useless GenX upbringing. :)

[joemurphy]

12. Sorry. Didn't mean to sound patronizing

[DrZeeLit]

6. Quote from JFK inauguaration. He's alluding to his youth. He was

at the time considered very young for the job.

He was calling forth a new generation to take the torch from the WWII/Depression generation to the New Frontier generation....
It's a great speech.

I agree -- who would pass you the torch right now?
We don't have a legacy or a legitimate leader who can or will do that.
He's a buffoon.

Hopefully, we find a leader who is also an orator who can rally the people.
We really need a leader.
Oi, do we.

[catnhatnh]

7. It was a baseline for the Kennedy White House...

...to take responsibility...they were not always right but if I read correctly Kennedy was the first president born in the 20th century...one of the popular tribute books in the wake of his assasination was titled "The Torch Is Passed"....

[graywarrior]

8. Dylan's passion was getting his message out by writing and

performing. I think fame meant being a successful musician and artist more than the money to him. Whether he agrees or not, he was the voice of a generation. First time I heard him at age 14, I knew he was telling it like it is.

Today, it's all about image, contracts and staying safe. Yes we have Steve Earle, but he's not a kid. Green Day gets lost in the Jessica Simpson thing. Music is all corporate now. There's been an extreme makeover in the arts today. It's unrecognizable.

Maybe with the anti-Bush stuff going on, someone of the new generation will take the torch...hope so. It's the new generation that needs to get the ball rolling. Although, Dylan is still there along with Neil Young...but we need some young kid ready to kick ass.

[Zen Democrat]

10. You gotta pick up the torch - or TAKE it.

You don't get tapped on the shoulder and presented with it.

[Seansky]

13. That's exactly the slap therapy I got from my 54 year old friend

He went and turned on a match and held it in front of me. I laughed and smack it out of his hand and his response was:

You see, your generation questions everything and don't even want to pick up the torch. I was handing it to you. Anyway, point well taken.

[LisaM]

14. There's no message. One thing that struck me in the documentary

was that Dylan's SONGS were what made him famous, as much as his performing them. Once they started marketing his material and other singers picked it up, that's when he broke through. I don't know many musicians now who write songs other musicians are singing and getting hits from. Now it's the messenger, back then, it seems that it was more the message. Dylan got the message from Woody Guthrie (along with a few others of his times, such as Phil Ochs, who has yet to be mentioned), but I don't think anyone has picked the message up since. I don't expect to see Jessica Simpson singing "American Idiot" any time soon.