For three or four years all I listened to were folk standards. I went to sleep singing folk songs. I sang them everywhere, clubs, parties, bars, coffeehouses, fields, festivals. And I met other singers along the way who did the same thing and we just learned songs from each other. I could learn one song and sing it next in an hour if I'd heard it just once.
If you sang "John Henry" as many times as me -- "John Henry was a steel-driving man / Died with a hammer in his hand / John Henry said a man ain't nothin' but a man / Before I let that steam drill drive me down / I'll die with that hammer in my hand."Dylan is so clear about this that you wouldn't think he could be misunderstood. But then you'd be forgetting libertarians! Take it away, Ed Krayewski at Reason:
If you had sung that song as many times as I did, you'd have written "How many roads must a man walk down?" too.
Bob Dylan's Makes the Case Against Today's Copyright ClimateAin't even kidding.
In a 20 minute speech, Bob Dylan explains how copyright is detrimental to cultural heritage without mentioning the word
...Were these different folk standards composed in a legal climate such as today's, they would never be "standards." They'd be copyrighted and would lose their status as musical currency that can be passed around, performed, revised, and rewritten and so forth.And some old black men might have gotten paid. I wonder if Krayewski reached out to Dylan and told him he was on the right track, and should now read some Hayek and oh, yeah, put his catalogue into public domain to stimulate freedom. He might also try that on Kid Rock, Nick Gillespie's latest libertarian rock star -- see how he goes for the idea that copyright is "detrimental to cultural heritage."
These guys have got me believing in life on other planets because they can't possibly be from this one.
