HEY KIDS—! Today The Appleseed innaugurates a brand new feature: 1966 and All That...the World According to Baba Ray.

Baba Ray's History Lesson #1: Bob Dylan. Does anyone remember how huge he was in the mid-60's? I mean HUGE, overflowing the riverbanks, spilling new culture across border after border! (That is, unless you were, say, the young George Bush, who wouldn't have known new culture if it bit him.) The Pantheon of 1966 contained Dylan, the Beatles, Muhammed Ali--and virtually nobody else.

He forged today's male pop singing style, but that was only the beginning. Princeton gave him an honorary degree. Even the Black Panthers, who famously despised white culture, venerated him as a revolutionary saint, quoted him, played him.

You have to be a certain age to have "been there" on this one. No one from Generation X and beyond experienced it. They will have heard about it from their smart-assed older siblings or their dinosaur parents or read about it in some paunchy boomer rag like Rolling Stone. And if they happen to see Dylan on TV. . . well, as Sissy said, "He looks dead."

If only he WERE dead he might shine with the full force of legend. But he's not. He's totally alive, and not only that but scuttling ceaselessly around the world, constantly on the road, a scrawny dessicated 2,000-year-old dude living in the rock 'n' roll equivalent of "a trailer down by the river." If I were 15, I'd look at him and say, "That mustachioed old bag-of-bones—THAT'S the Dylan who you say was as big as a god? Whatever."

So let me put it in final perspective (very roughly). For Bob Dylan to have phoned me (as he did) in Applestock—from Sweden or wherever he was—wanting to come to our Festival (as he did)—in today's terms that's roughly like Stephen Spielberg calling to ask if he can shoot a video of my wedding. . . or Madonna calling to ask if I'd let her hang out with me over the weekend. . . or—

No, none of these examples are HUGE enough. I can't think of one. I'm not even sure it's possible anymore to be as culturally imposing as Dylan was right in that 5 or 6 year window of time. It was often said, at the time, with convincing plausibility, "Dylan is God." And for a while, like Captain Jim, he was.

Well. . . small g, anyway.

Thus ends Baba Ray's History Lesson #1.