Weird Al Yankovic exists somewhere on that thin line between being a complete doofus and a genius. His spoof of Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (YouTube | Wikipedia) is firmly ensconced on the side of genius. In Weird Al’s version, all the lyrics are palindromes and as a method for generating Bob Dylan-like lyrics, palindromes seem to work surprisingly well.

For the original Dylan film — what we now call a music video — the person who helped Dylan make the cue cards: Allan Ginsberg.

I sometimes feel at a disadvantage in defending the nonsensical, sort of Da-Da poetry lyrics of Nirvana. Or at least merely in the vicinity of sense, insofar as one gets the sense that there is some meaning or narrative to a Nirvana song, it’s just not a sense that stands up once one begins to look closer or try to impose any sense. In this regard Nirvana seems to be well within the tradition of Dylan.