Critical Condition

By Sean Elder

Well you better bring some Darvon kids, ‘cause you’re in for a bumpy trip. Ever since Garbologist A.J. Weberman began digging in Dylan’s trash back in the 1960’s. rock fans have been going to strange extremes in the pursuit of the truth. The truth is, as they say, out there. And so are some of the fans, especially those who have built shrines in HTML to their heros...

Lest you doubt that garbage can be recycled, the Web is now the place to look for for none other than, yes, AJ Weberman; Dylanology is "brought to you by the dude who went through Dylan’s garbage." (Amongst the wisdom gleaned from that undertaking were the "facts" that Dylan was doing heroin and giving money to Israel --- presumably at the same time.) Weberman considers Dylan’s lyrics a code, one which he has successfully broken. "Rain" for instance, means "war"—at least most of the time. (Though presumably when Dylan sings "There’s beauty in that rainbow in the sky" he doesn’t mean war bow.) And though we learn that "Angel" really means "addict" (in AJW’s Dylan to English Dictionary) there is no mention of New Morning’s "Three Angels" in which a statue of three angels (or so I always thought) look impassively on life’s follies. Maybe they were just stoned. Or could it be when Dylan sings "She’s a junkyard angel and she always gives me bread" he means a real angel and that he just finds them in places most of us don’t look. Like junkyards. And I don’t mean the World Wide Web. (end)