The Times They Are a Changing

In my line of work you run, fairly often, into the brick wall of what people like and what they absolutely do not want to change.  Sometimes it's morals (you know traditional values), sometimes it's aesthetic preferences (music style, decorations), but it really can be anything that's changing.  On Sunday, I was talking to some folks at church about Bob Dylan and the backlash about his introduction of electric instruments.  As you can see here some people were really upset about this in 1966, just about 50 years ago.  Now, even among non-Dylan fans, Highway 61 revisited pretty much has to rank up there as one of the most influential albums of all time.
If you take the time to watch the video above you will notice that there is disgust and genuine outrage about Dylan's new sound.  It wasn't as if he was the first person to pick up an electric guitar, it was just that those folks all wanted Blowin' in the Wind and they got Like a Rolling Stone, which you have to admit are two pretty different sounding tunes.
Dylan didn't owe anyone anything.  He's an artist, and as such he reserves the right to make art, regardless of whether or not people like it.  I give Dylan credit for being willing to take a risk on something new, with successful innovations like Highway 61 and not so successful innovations like Self Portrait  and Knocked Out Loaded.  Recently (yes he is kicking the crap out of 75 and is still releasing new albums) he released an album of Sinatra-esque tunes called Shadows in the Night, which received some critical acclaim, but you really have to be into Dylan to dig his 70 plus year old vocal chords croaking through that sort of thing.  Dylan has been able to release a highly inaccessible failure like Planet Waves (1974) and then when all the criticism that he has finally lost the touch has died down, he blasts us with Blood on the Tracks (1975), which is another of the all time great albums.  In 1997, after nearly 20 years of shuffling along with albums that only die hard fans really liked (Oh, Mercy, in 1989 was a little bit of an exception) Dylan came at us with Time Out of Mind, which once again got all the music critic types all riled up about his genius and his place in music history.  You really just never know with Bob.  I wouldn't be too amazed if he decided to try Rap (after all, Subterranean Homesick Blues).
The point is, he will always take a risk, and he always seems to be willing to tick off the fan base.  I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that if you're not offending someone, you're probably not innovating in any way that really matters.  Think about how some people still react to social media, as if it's the worst thing that ever happened to the human race, or how the same crowd is usually pretty wound up about people using cell phones all the time and ignoring people around them, because this:

Is apparently different.  Because of the hats maybe?

Actually, as I looked for that picture, I found extensive and grumpy articles claiming that the comparison of people ignoring each other with newspapers was patently different from people ignoring each other with cell phones.  Not buying it.  It's the same thing, because people are people, we're stubborn, self-involved and easily habituated.  All of which means we are sort of hard-wired to resist change, even good change, even electric guitars, even this:

God said to Abraham, "Kill me your son."

Abe said, "Man you must be puttin' me on."

God said, "No."

Abe said, "What?"

God said, "You can do what you wanna but, the next time you see me coming you'd better run."

Abe said, "Where you want this killing done?"

God said, "Out on old highway 61."