The Times They Are A-Changin'

I really liked Rambo. Not at first, but it grew on me. I also like Modern Times, again not at first, but after a while... You see, First Blood was an excellent movie, none in the series will ever compare to it. Rambo: First Blood part II was still good though, and Rambo III as well. They followed a definite progression, and Rambo was simply the logical conclusion of that. It worked too, looking back it was a great movie, and it fit into the pantheon well. The same is true of Modern Times. Back when I bought it I hadn't listened to too much Bob Dylan and I had a passing fascination with it, enough to convince me to buy some of his older stuff, until I plunged headfirst in and reveled in the stuff. I worked my way forward through his albums (not all of them, I mean seriously the guy has something like 60 studio albums) until I got to such offerings as Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft. It was then that I began to see the progression. He was going somewhere, and that somewhere was Modern Times. It wasn't so much a somewhere as with Rambo's conclusion, but it was definitely another step in his musical evolution. Our favorite artists never stay the same. If the Beatles had continued penning pop anthems, we would never have gotten such gems as Sgt. Peppers or the white album. If Neil Young wasn't so musically inviscid, grunge would never have had the run it did. Sometimes it's hard to accept change, but it is better far than grasping at what we once had. When Indiana Jones 4 presents nothing of its former charm by trying to capture just that, when Metallica, GnR and Black Sabbath all put out their long awaited comeback albums, trying to recapture the bombastic rock of their youth, only to present soulless shells, when we see Hollywood pump out sequels to all our favorite movies, making them exactly like the original, and failing to make them either original or even possessing of any cinematic strength. We've got to take a step back and realize that change is what makes us so fascinating, we've got to learn to take chances, to keep from getting stuck in the same rut. We'll find something good and wear it out till it's just a shadow of its former self, but real staying power is the ability to move on. If you've ever asked me, that's why I like Jack White.

Pipe Smoking Prof