Tambourine: useless or annoying too?

This one made me laugh:

Usually songs about people singing songs are pretty annoying. It's like the songwriter was trying to come up with a song idea and that was as far as he got. But the one that probably bugs me the most is Nobel laureate Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man."

I'm not picking on Bob in particular. I've admired several of his songs during his excruciatingly long career. And as I noted before, I don't blame him for getting a Nobel Prize, since he seemed to find it silly too. What I am complaining about is the concept of "Mr. Tambourine Man." 

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

I'm not sleepy, and there is no place I'm going to

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

In the jingle jangle mornin' I'll come followin' you

Because there is no more useless instrument for playing a song than the tambourine. It can't play notes. It just rattles. You can hit it; you can shake it. You can bounce it off your butt like Betty. 

That's it. You can't play a song on it. You absolutely cannot get a melody out of it if you torture it all day. Tubas and kettle drums are better instruments for carrying a tune. "Mr. Slide Whistle Man" would have made more sense. "Mr. Triangle Man" could have made more sense. 

I believe there's a backstory about the song that involves a tambourine player, but unless the guy could make the tambourine leap up and play "Yankee Doodle," I'm not buying it. I just get the picture of an insomniac bum wanting to hear some other guy bang around on a rattle, because that's just what I want to hear when I have trouble sleeping (?). 

Well, it was a tambourine era, I guess. The only reason I don't hate the Lemon Pipers' song "Green Tambourine" more than Dylan's song is that it has the benefit of being less popular and never being covered by the Byrds. Even the Archies never did a song specifically about tambourines, and I could have excused that as a gift to Betty.