Is Dylan the Bradman of Songwriters?
The question of whether or not Dylan "deserves" the Nobel for literature depends on if songs are "literature", which depends on what you think "literature" is. If we grant the premise, then Dylan should get a Nobel, without a doubt. Should other songwriters get the Nobel or is Dylan in his own category? Candidates include, inter alia,: Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Oscar Hamerstein, Paul Simon, Randy Newman, Leonard Cohen, Tom Paxton, Richard Thompson and Loudon Wainwright III. On balance, despite great respect for these, I conclude that Dylan is the Bradman. His lyrics encompass several genres and styles, showing knowledge and respect for the various forms while unsurpassed as an innovator. In particular there are the, mainly 60s and 70s, songs that bear the imprint of the French Surrealist poets that no-one else has been able match - Visions of Johanna, It's Allright Ma I'm only Bleeding, Mr Tambourine Man, When the Ship Comes In, Highway 61 Revisited, etc..
Thursday, October 20, 2016
Monday, April 25, 2016
Skills vs Achievements
I've riffed on this before, but the untimely death of the great Johan Cruyff got me thinking some more about how to classify sports figures. There are two kinds of discussions that people have about the relative quality of professional sports personalities: those that emphasize achievement and those that emphasize skills. Obviously, some discussions feature both but there is, I submit, a strong tendency for individuals to favour one approach or the other. This tendency seems to me to correlate with the type of sport.
I'm struck by how pundits and fans alike of NFL are fixated on Superbowl wins. This is mainly shown in discussions of quarterbacks but is present in the evaluation of all players. For quarterbacks, these discussions are absurd: it's as if the QB is responsible for some outrageous percentage of outcomes, say 50%. In fact the QB is one of 22 positions, all of whom must contribute to defeat or victory.
In contrast, discussions of the merits of cricketers focus almost entirely on skills and soccer is very similar. Not surprisingly, individual sports are weighted towards achievements. Yet, when the evaluation turns to the very highest levels, relative skills enter the discussion. Take golf, probably the outlier for weighting evaluation towards wins. I've read many turgid articles and threads about Tiger vs Jack with a lot of arcane discussion of the strength of their competing fields. These are unsolvable puzzles. We can never know how many wins Tiger would have had if he were Jack's age and vice versa. What we can do is look at their relative skills. On this basis, it is clear that Tiger was the better golfer. I score them as even tee-to-green and on the mental game but Tiger was decisively better on and around the green. (By saying "was", I'm not writing Tiger off but he's 40 now and we can make a reasonable comparison with Nicklaus up to that age.) In tennis the wins-based analysis narrows the field of all-time greats to Federer, Sampras and Laver - subject to what Djokovic and Nadal do in their remaining years. When we look at skills, Sampras is eliminated immediately - he was the best server, ever, but the rest of his game was not at the same level. I'm actually still ambivalent about Federer-Laver, as much as I admire Federer. The one clear advantage he has over Laver is the serve but I'm not convinced that had Laver the use of modern rackets he would have been almost as good. That wristy motion with large, light rackets would have been a (bigger) nightmare for opponents. On the rest of the game - groundstrokes, volleys, return of serve, court movement - there's nothing to choose. I think Laver was a better volleyer but that may be ascribed to racket technology, too; i.e. return of serve is easier with modern rackets. The female side is interesting: wins say it's Margaret Court-Smith vs Serena Williams but they dominate(d) by having a serve that was/is 30% better than the next best server. I think that Navratilova was likely the best all-round female tennis player yet seen.
This brings me back to Cruyff. Cruyff, as a player, was such a one-off that it's hard to say where he fits in the all-time great ranking. He was also a manager/coach of tremendous influence, which also sets him apart from everyone else. I got a little narked with the emphasis on the "Cruyff turn" - as if his sublime skills as an improviser could be reduced to one technique, albeit one that has been copied to excess. The straight skill-comparison approach that I've sketched before falls down when the relative weights of the skills are omitted. Is heading as important as passing? Tackling as reading the game? So, while I still favour Georgie, I'm tending towards a mealy-mouthed approach that says that there's about six players who were better than anyone else but it's a matter of personal preference as to the ranking. Best.Pele.Cruyff. Beckenbauer. Maradona. Maybe Matthews, maybe Zidane, maybe di Stephano.
Finally, some notable musical deaths set this discussion into relief. In music, only skill matters but the evaluation of skill varies according to taste, upbringing and musical knowledge. Does anyone care how many platinum records George Martin produced? Or Bowie or Prince? All we remember is the music they made and we're grateful for all of them.
I've riffed on this before, but the untimely death of the great Johan Cruyff got me thinking some more about how to classify sports figures. There are two kinds of discussions that people have about the relative quality of professional sports personalities: those that emphasize achievement and those that emphasize skills. Obviously, some discussions feature both but there is, I submit, a strong tendency for individuals to favour one approach or the other. This tendency seems to me to correlate with the type of sport.
I'm struck by how pundits and fans alike of NFL are fixated on Superbowl wins. This is mainly shown in discussions of quarterbacks but is present in the evaluation of all players. For quarterbacks, these discussions are absurd: it's as if the QB is responsible for some outrageous percentage of outcomes, say 50%. In fact the QB is one of 22 positions, all of whom must contribute to defeat or victory.
In contrast, discussions of the merits of cricketers focus almost entirely on skills and soccer is very similar. Not surprisingly, individual sports are weighted towards achievements. Yet, when the evaluation turns to the very highest levels, relative skills enter the discussion. Take golf, probably the outlier for weighting evaluation towards wins. I've read many turgid articles and threads about Tiger vs Jack with a lot of arcane discussion of the strength of their competing fields. These are unsolvable puzzles. We can never know how many wins Tiger would have had if he were Jack's age and vice versa. What we can do is look at their relative skills. On this basis, it is clear that Tiger was the better golfer. I score them as even tee-to-green and on the mental game but Tiger was decisively better on and around the green. (By saying "was", I'm not writing Tiger off but he's 40 now and we can make a reasonable comparison with Nicklaus up to that age.) In tennis the wins-based analysis narrows the field of all-time greats to Federer, Sampras and Laver - subject to what Djokovic and Nadal do in their remaining years. When we look at skills, Sampras is eliminated immediately - he was the best server, ever, but the rest of his game was not at the same level. I'm actually still ambivalent about Federer-Laver, as much as I admire Federer. The one clear advantage he has over Laver is the serve but I'm not convinced that had Laver the use of modern rackets he would have been almost as good. That wristy motion with large, light rackets would have been a (bigger) nightmare for opponents. On the rest of the game - groundstrokes, volleys, return of serve, court movement - there's nothing to choose. I think Laver was a better volleyer but that may be ascribed to racket technology, too; i.e. return of serve is easier with modern rackets. The female side is interesting: wins say it's Margaret Court-Smith vs Serena Williams but they dominate(d) by having a serve that was/is 30% better than the next best server. I think that Navratilova was likely the best all-round female tennis player yet seen.
This brings me back to Cruyff. Cruyff, as a player, was such a one-off that it's hard to say where he fits in the all-time great ranking. He was also a manager/coach of tremendous influence, which also sets him apart from everyone else. I got a little narked with the emphasis on the "Cruyff turn" - as if his sublime skills as an improviser could be reduced to one technique, albeit one that has been copied to excess. The straight skill-comparison approach that I've sketched before falls down when the relative weights of the skills are omitted. Is heading as important as passing? Tackling as reading the game? So, while I still favour Georgie, I'm tending towards a mealy-mouthed approach that says that there's about six players who were better than anyone else but it's a matter of personal preference as to the ranking. Best.Pele.Cruyff. Beckenbauer. Maradona. Maybe Matthews, maybe Zidane, maybe di Stephano.
Finally, some notable musical deaths set this discussion into relief. In music, only skill matters but the evaluation of skill varies according to taste, upbringing and musical knowledge. Does anyone care how many platinum records George Martin produced? Or Bowie or Prince? All we remember is the music they made and we're grateful for all of them.
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