Driftin' From Scene to Scene: Essential Dylan # 19

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2000
Things Have Changed
The Essential Bob Dylan
You won’t find Things Have Changed on any full-length Bob Dylan album, but this tight grooved gem is worth seeking out nonetheless. It’s featured as the closing track on the compilation album The Essential Bob Dylan (along with the hilarious song Silvio for some reason).

Things Have Changed can also be found on YouTube via music video (this tune was cut for the movie Wonder Boys). If you want to see Bob Dylan smoke a big cigar and size up Tobey Maguire in a New Jersey diner, check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9EKqQWPjyo

Indeed, if the song was a movie, Bob would play an elderly, dignified character who is struts through Grand Central Station in New York City with a place to go and not an unclear thought rattling in his head. Well-dressed, too. Bob takes the position of a wise elder, one who's seen it all and is highly skeptical of those around him. A driving, minor key tempo drive the push the song along. It’s short, cutting, and true. If anything, it’s philosophy reminds me of the alternative title to 1983’s Infidels: Survival in a Ruthless World. The band gets locked in a tight groove as Bob wryly surveys the damage.

Why not bring another movie into this discussion? Bob has acted in a few in his career. Most of them are objectively less than great, but this song fits nicely with a quote from Jack Fate, Bob’s character from 2003’s Masked and Anonymous:

“Things fall apart, especially all the neat order of rules and laws. The way we look at the world is the way we really are. See it from a fair garden and everything looks cheerful. Climb to a higher plateau and you'll see plunder and murder. Truth and beauty are in the eye of the beholder. I stopped trying to figure everything out a long time ago”.

Survival in a Ruthless World, indeed.

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