Bob Dylan: TV Talkin' Song (1990)

You can -- and people do -- fill page after page banging on about the genius of Bob Dylan. But the man has also been responsible for some real stinkers, especially in the Eighties.

Perhaps his nadir was the album Under The Red Sky which featured Slash, David Lindley, George Harrison and many other luminaries. None of whom could salvage material as weak as Wiggle Wiggle, which Dylan obsessives tend to try to sell as evidence of the man's humour. Maybe, maybe not.

And Handy Dandy was about geo-politics, right? 

But on this piece of tuneless tripe from the same album Dylan -- with Robben Ford and Bruce Hornsby on autopilot -- sounds like he may have actually put a little thought into a song about walking in London's Hyde Park.

Perhaps if something interesting had happened on his ramble other than hearing a man banging on about the evils of television the song might have been better.

But . . .

And really, is it Bob saying television is a bad thing or is he just reporting what the other guy said?

And is the punchline not just a little obvious?

Truly awful . . . which made his subsequent resurrection all the more remarkable. 

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