I was beyond skeptical when I saw this link earlier, but this is outstanding.
The commenters on RollingStone and other sites, seem to have wanted some magical rose-colored nostalgia trip to 1965, but the whole point of contemporary Dylan is that you can't have 1965 back (and even if you could, you don't want to).
The lyrics to this song are like the anthem of Holden Caufield... a wry, disillusioned, antisocial, anticonsumption, post-war love song. Anyone who ever thought otherwise, is a turd who only loved this song because it was Top 40 and reminiscent of some lost High School dance, despite the fact that the song itself is completely anti-pop.
There are so many little easter egg mashups you can find as you click through: the CNBC styled wall-street guy ("threw the bums a dime, in your prime, didn't you?"), the QVC home-shopping girl's deadpan delivery ("take your diamond ring, you'd better pawn it babe"), reality TV girls desperate for attention ("how does it feel / how does it feel/ to be without a home/ like a complete unknown").
I think this is really the only video this song could ever have :)
"The lyrics to this song are like the anthem of Holden Caufield... a wry, disillusioned, antisocial, anticonsumption, post-war love song. Anyone who ever thought otherwise, is a turd who only loved this song because it was Top 40 and reminiscent of some lost High School dance, despite the fact that the song itself is completely anti-pop."
I sorta hate to break it to you but we knew all that back then. I don't think any other point of view was even considered.
You're preaching to the choir on that one, but maybe we should tell the commenters on RollingStone.com, HuffPo, etc? They seem confused (I like to read their stupid in an MST3K styled riff off; you can be TomServo, dibs on Crooow though).
"It's just a bunch of commercials. Bah" /
"This is totally lame and does no justice to a great song" /
"I grew up in the 60's and this is not the Dylan I know" /
"I found the word VAGINAS in the video" /
"This is a vapid mess. It's sacrilegious to give such lyrics this treatment!"
>The lyrics to this song are like the anthem of Holden Caufield... a wry, disillusioned, antisocial, anticonsumption, post-war love song. Anyone who ever thought otherwise, is a turd who only loved this song because it was Top 40 and reminiscent of some lost High School dance, despite the fact that the song itself is completely anti-pop.
Thanks for the most cliched and tired interpretation of the song that could be...
FFMPEG should be able to join FLV files but I haven't tried it yet.
Interestingly enough it seems to pre-cache the channel immediately above and below the channel you're on, so if you're on channel 11 it will download the next couple seconds of channel 10 and 12, so you can switch channels without having to re-fill your buffer.
I wonder why they gave audio tracks to all those chunks when they could instead be smaller video-only files. Just stream/buffer/sync the full audio track independently.
What a lovely experience. Took me a moment to get into it and then I smiled the whole way through. I just love the different feelings you get from the different channels.
This looks awesome, and I love Dylan and this song... too bad my internet is way too slow to keep me from enjoying this, it buffers every 5 seconds and it kills the effect.
Is there a blog that explains how this works? I'm assuming they either have a ton of video that is instantly available and use the closest match or some magical CG...
Seriously?? It's just a few fake TV show clips they recorded specifically for this video. And for me, the channel buttons do nothing but bring up a description of the current "channel."
[edit: the channels do change after a delay]
Aside: I'm sure I've heard it all throughout my life, but it was only a few days ago that I looked up the lyrics and backstory behind this song. For a song written just shy of 50 years ago, it blows my mind how good it is.
How long did you stick with it? It cycles through the same few channels at the very beginning and starts you on the same channel (food channel?) each time, but after that I think you're in control.
EDIT: OK, so I messed with this some more. It does appear to change channels on its own from time to time, so it doesn't seem possible to see whether they recorded the entire song for each channel. Also, it didn't start me on the food channel this time. Nevertheless, it's not the same each time you do it. I suspect that each channel only contains portions of the song and there are enforced channel changes as a result
I think once you change the channel once, it let's your stay on a certain channel for the entire song. I was able to watch a single channel for the majority of the song. And the first channel that is chosen for you seems to be random, it's been different the 3 times I watched it.
Ok. I was getting confused by the delay and the initial lack of control. I couldn't tell the difference between a delayed change and an automatic change. Thanks.... point still stands that it's simply a bunch of fake tv clips, probably all the exact length of the song.
No doubt. It seems each "channel" is a complete music video in and of itself, and the channel buttons switch between synchronized streams. And, like my TV, it feels like it takes too long to switch channels. ;)
As pure speculation, I'd expect they recorded each channel singing the full song and then switch stream and sync the times when you change channel.
It would be really interesting to see how they dealt with the buffering on slower connections, since presumably the video can't prefetch too much ahead as the channel is likely to change regularly.
They didn't, changing channels or even leaving it playing is awfully slow, though the site's probably getting hammered by Reddit/HN. Great concept though.
EDIT: Or apparently they did and my connection is still too slow to catch up.
They probably use a HTTP Live Streaming-like approach to test the connection quality before serving you a set of clips. Changing channels is more like changing playlist files starting at whatever index.
- Jagger, Mick; Richards, Keith; Watts, Charlie; Wood, Ronnie (2003). According to the Rolling Stones. San Francisco, California: Chronicle Books. ISBN 9780811840606. p42
- Nelson, Murray N. (2010). The Rolling Stones: A Musical Biography. Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood. ISBN 9780313380341. p3.
I won't disagree, but this is bobdylan.com and not free-videos-online.ru. Risk of a zero-day Flash Player exploit hosted from there is probably acceptable for most people who walk outdoors.
I've been using the YouTube5 Safari extension. I find it a lot nicer than the flash player. Scrubbing actually works, you can expand a video to its native resolution, and fullscreen works better.
The commenters on RollingStone and other sites, seem to have wanted some magical rose-colored nostalgia trip to 1965, but the whole point of contemporary Dylan is that you can't have 1965 back (and even if you could, you don't want to).
The lyrics to this song are like the anthem of Holden Caufield... a wry, disillusioned, antisocial, anticonsumption, post-war love song. Anyone who ever thought otherwise, is a turd who only loved this song because it was Top 40 and reminiscent of some lost High School dance, despite the fact that the song itself is completely anti-pop.
There are so many little easter egg mashups you can find as you click through: the CNBC styled wall-street guy ("threw the bums a dime, in your prime, didn't you?"), the QVC home-shopping girl's deadpan delivery ("take your diamond ring, you'd better pawn it babe"), reality TV girls desperate for attention ("how does it feel / how does it feel/ to be without a home/ like a complete unknown").
I think this is really the only video this song could ever have :)
and Danny Brown shows up