Bob Dylan turns 63 today.

A recent link out of ::: wood s lot ::: led me to the online outlet of maisonneuve, a self-proclaimed "a high-end general-interest magazine " ("the new New Yorker of the younger generation") publishing in English out of Montreal. [This serves to continue that Canadian theme I promised below.] Appropriate to the occasion, music columnist Paul Winner -- who has "never known a world without Bob Dylan" -- offers up an appreciation of the Mighty Bob, including this:

Dave Eggers said this not long ago, that Dylan’s music, especially the early music, which everybody can rally behind, can ward off evil. Listen to his acoustic work and its strange deadpan honesty reveals--there is no other word--its goodness. His is an original text, pure because we sometimes believe it to be pure, the sound of old virtue and probity and righteous anger and Blake’s notion of beauty and music--folk-level music, a guy making some fingering mistakes on a crap guitar and singing even though he can’t sing (Barry Hannah said that Dylan has the desperation of not being able to sing, which is always better than Glenn Campbell, who can sing)--and it’s all an embodiment of what is good about popular music. Just the song titles: 'It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),' 'It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.' Dylan is on stage intoning these words, this ancient text. The words can ward off evil. Like I said, if you believe they can, then they do.