For anyone who's never read it...
Then, when we were driving through Colorado we had the radio on and eight of the ten top songs were Beatles songs. In Colorado! ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand,’ all those early ones.
They were doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous, just outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid. You could only do that with other musicians. Even if you’re playing your own chords you had to have other people playing with you. That was obvious. And it started me thinking about other people.
But I just kept it to myself that I really dug them. Everybody else thought they were for the teenyboppers, that they were gonna pass right away. But it was obvious to me that they had staying power. I knew they were pointing the direction of where music had to go. I was not about to put up with other musicians, but in my head the Beatles were it. In Colorado, I started thinking it was so far out that I couldn’t deal with it — eight in the Top Ten. It seemed to me a definite line was being drawn. This was something that never happened before. It was outrageous, and I kept it in my mind. You see, there was a lot of hypocrisy all around, people saying it had to be either folk or rock. But I knew it didn’t have to be like that. I dug what the Beatles were doing, and I always kept it in mind from back then.
Greatest use of the word "outrageous" ever.
― clemenza, Friday, 27 March 2020 19:41 (four years ago) link
that is cool, thx for posting clemenza
― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, 27 March 2020 19:50 (four years ago) link
"In Colorado!" That kills me every time.
― clemenza, Friday, 27 March 2020 19:55 (four years ago) link
Bob was friends with Kurtis Blow
they used to throw horses off of cliffs together iirc
― Οὖτις, Friday, 27 March 2020 19:56 (four years ago) link
I also dig the reference to Paula Abdul while in New Orleans recording Oh Mercy.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 27 March 2020 19:57 (four years ago) link
re:Chronicles and others---fits current discussion, and I've always found it disturbing. Keeps coming back into my head uninvited (as does "Desolation Row," but don't mind that one): https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2005/03/10/i-is-someone-else/
― dow, Friday, 27 March 2020 20:01 (four years ago) link
My computer has probs posting YouTubes here, but check for his track w Kurtis Blow.
― dow, Friday, 27 March 2020 20:02 (four years ago) link
Dickie Betts?
― calstars, Friday, 27 March 2020 20:19 (four years ago) link
"oh you like Ozzy? What about Ratt? You like Ratt?"https://youtu.be/cntGcbU3nM8
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 27 March 2020 20:42 (four years ago) link
Probably super uncool and unhelpfully obvious but this makes me think of "Rave on John Donne"
― an incoherent crustacean (MatthewK), Friday, 27 March 2020 20:45 (four years ago) link
that 80s street interview is one of my favorite Bob artifacts
― Οὖτις, Friday, 27 March 2020 20:49 (four years ago) link
That clip is priceless.
― clemenza, Friday, 27 March 2020 20:52 (four years ago) link
I experienced that once in an autograph lineup for Bobby Hull: famous old males are very receptive to getting their picture taken with younger females.
― clemenza, Friday, 27 March 2020 20:54 (four years ago) link
Dylan's entire studio protest output is basically about 13 songs off his first four albums
this is unfair to "George Jackson" and "Hurricane" imo, but point taken
― sleeve, Friday, 27 March 2020 20:59 (four years ago) link
I love in one of those AJ Weberman calls when Bob turns his nose up at just abt every living songwriter except Gordon Lightfoot. "Yeah...he's alright" (or something to that effect)
― Yanni Xenakis (Hadrian VIII), Friday, 27 March 2020 21:00 (four years ago) link
^see: Scorsese's movie about Dylan
― morrisp, Friday, 27 March 2020 21:14 (four years ago) link
Beatles bit didn't strike me as a putdown. (And their chords WERE outrageous.)
― timellison, Friday, 27 March 2020 21:14 (four years ago) link
They hadn't even gotten to "A Hard Day's Night" yet.
― timellison, Friday, 27 March 2020 21:15 (four years ago) link
But in some sense some of those early Beatlemania smashes like "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "She Loves You" were the most outrageous.
― timellison, Friday, 27 March 2020 21:17 (four years ago) link
"oh you like Ozzy? What about Ratt? You like Ratt?"https://youtu.be/cntGcbU3nM8― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, March 27, 2020 4:42 PM (thirty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
https://youtu.be/cntGcbU3nM8
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, March 27, 2020 4:42 PM (thirty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
OMG, I have seen just about every clip of Dylan known to man, but never seen this. Thanks for posting it. That might be the most generous I've ever seen Bob with anyone.
― Why, I would make a fantastic Nero! (PBKR), Friday, 27 March 2020 21:24 (four years ago) link
the whole doc is fantastic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pS8rM_MsIY
new song rules
― tylerw, Friday, 27 March 2020 21:43 (four years ago) link
whoah there's MORE?!?
― Οὖτις, Friday, 27 March 2020 21:44 (four years ago) link
Anyway, Murder Most Foul is something else. The overall feel is excellent; it's funny and sad at the same time. The music really sets the mood. There are a bunch of great individual lines and a few magical moments where he leans into a phrase.
This section is great:
I hate to tell you, mister, but only dead men are freeSend me some lovin', then tell me no lieThrow the gun in the gutter and walk on byWake up, little Susie, let's go for a driveCross the Trinity River, let's keep hope aliveTurn the radio on, don't touch the dialsParkland hospital, only six more milesYou got me dizzy, Miss Lizzy, you filled me with leadThat magic bullet of yours has gone to my headI'm just a patsy like Patsy ClineNever shot anyone from in front or behindI've blood in my eye, got blood in my earI'm never gonna make it to the new frontier
This song belongs in the long tradition of Dylan songs, like Tangled Up in Blue, with a radically shifting narrative viewpoint. In the case of Murder Most Foul, it shifts among a third person almost historical viewpoint, a 1963 viewpoint, the perpetrators' viewpoint, and Kennedy's own viewpoint. I love this shit.
It strikes me as something in his younger days he might have been able to wrestle into a more formidable, devastating form. Like there is an A+ 10 minute song lurking in this monstrosity.
― Why, I would make a fantastic Nero! (PBKR), Friday, 27 March 2020 21:44 (four years ago) link
It could've been "Brownsville Girl."
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 27 March 2020 21:46 (four years ago) link
Beatles bit didn't strike me as a putdown.― timellison
I'm listening again and you might be right. I may have been influenced by a review I skimmed.
― clemenza, Friday, 27 March 2020 21:56 (four years ago) link
Hope someone makes an epic video for it. Something other than Kennedy footage...I don't know what. I thought the "Like a Rolling Stone" video with all the TV stations was incredible--something out of left field like that.
― clemenza, Friday, 27 March 2020 21:58 (four years ago) link
xpost yeah PKBT I love it, he's so chill and accommodating....also just Bob Dylan talking about Ratt makes my day every time
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 27 March 2020 21:59 (four years ago) link
he's the opposite of chill in the rest of that doc, haha
― tylerw, Friday, 27 March 2020 22:01 (four years ago) link
oh yeah? that's all I've seen but I can imagine
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 27 March 2020 22:08 (four years ago) link
posted upthread — Getting To Dylan. It's mostly an extremely irritated interview with Bob during the filming of Hearts Of Fire.
― tylerw, Friday, 27 March 2020 22:09 (four years ago) link
Dylan is like Pynchon in that he likes people and hates systems.
― Why, I would make a fantastic Nero! (PBKR), Friday, 27 March 2020 22:11 (four years ago) link
New song is great and his voice hasn’t sounded this good in, what, 40 years ? I really wonder from which session this was culled
― licorice oratorio (baaderonixx), Friday, 27 March 2020 22:49 (four years ago) link
people seem pretty convinced it's a Tempest outtake, I'm not so sure, could be from the Sinatra era ... For a couple tours now, he's been doing spare, piano-led versions of "Girl From North Country" and "Boots of Spanish Leather" that this kind of recalls.
The "for the last 50 years" line would place it in 2013 if you're being strict, but uhhh I think that's a mistake when we're talking about Bob Dylan.
― tylerw, Friday, 27 March 2020 23:00 (four years ago) link
Altho I'm not a fan of Great American Songbook moves (World Gone Wrong and Good As I Been To You notwithstanding) his voice on the recent records has been markedly better. Post quitting smoking, I'm told.
― an incoherent crustacean (MatthewK), Friday, 27 March 2020 23:06 (four years ago) link
I get a sense of Olympian timelessness from this new song - spectral Bob sifting through the wreckage of the past five decades, picking up a thread here, a fragment there, ruminating.
― an incoherent crustacean (MatthewK), Friday, 27 March 2020 23:07 (four years ago) link
Very comparable to Neil's "Drifin' Back" in that way.
― clemenza, Friday, 27 March 2020 23:19 (four years ago) link
The main reason I originally mistook it for an Oh, Mercy outtake was that his voice sounded so good.
― morrisp, Friday, 27 March 2020 23:25 (four years ago) link
This is super inarticulate but:
My first thought about this is that it fits so well, thematically, with Tempest. Tempest already has the historical focus, the 50-year intervals, the collective traumas, the whole elegiac vibe, and this sort of slots in next to all that and makes it even stronger.
Like, we've already got "Roll on John," which I always think of as Odysseus visiting Achilles in the underworld - the guy who always survives, who always pays in somebody else's blood, visiting an old acquaintance who wasn't so lucky. It's less a tribute than an acknowledgment of what you lose when you die young in a cloud of glory - you cease to be yourself and become other people's mythic vision of you. I love "Roll on John," it's such a gorgeous stylized lament, and yet it's obviously about an idea rather than a person, and I think that's meant to be the saddest thing about it.
And here we have another elegy, for a death that happened at the very beginning of Dylan's career. And there's something about that flood of musical and cultural references at the end that suggests a long, slow mourning procession. But this isn't Dylan doing American Pie - he's not claiming that JFK's death is when Everything Changed, because this sits alongside the song about the Titanic and the song about John Lennon's death - other moments of collective grief that are just as meaningful. It's like he's showing us that you can put your finger anywhere on the timeline and find a defining trauma, and all the art we make is a way for us to mourn.
― The fillyjonk who believed in pandemics (Lily Dale), Friday, 27 March 2020 23:46 (four years ago) link
Ugh, I now realize that came across super pretentious.
But leaving aside when it's from and what it all means, I'm really charmed and touched that Bob Dylan took the time to think, "Hey, everybody's locked down and scared, what can I do to cheer them?" and I find it super endearing that what he landed on was "release a 17-minute song about the death of JFK."
― The fillyjonk who believed in pandemics (Lily Dale), Saturday, 28 March 2020 00:22 (four years ago) link
^^quality posts
― morrisp, Saturday, 28 March 2020 00:29 (four years ago) link
Yes, though I would say this is how Dylan does American Pie in a way.
― Why, I would make a fantastic Nero! (PBKR), Saturday, 28 March 2020 02:18 (four years ago) link
It's like he's showing us that you can put your finger anywhere on the timeline and find a defining trauma, and all the art we make is a way for us to mourn.
this is well said and closer to what I was trying to get at upthread about "meaning"...that increasingly on later records the function of these references seems less denotative and more toward the end of flattening (?) everything—experiences, memories, histories—onto a single plane, in a single category, allowing him the necessary separation from it, the distance from which to eulogize
― Yanni Xenakis (Hadrian VIII), Saturday, 28 March 2020 14:26 (four years ago) link
and to that extent this song isn't really about JFK, its just the lowest common denominator for "loss" and an easy 20th c anchor for the rest, each next thing as sad and as gone as the next, incl. Alicia Keys and the Eagles or whatever
― Yanni Xenakis (Hadrian VIII), Saturday, 28 March 2020 14:39 (four years ago) link
each next thing as sad and as gone as the next
as sad and gone but also as enshrined in myth - which I guess is the "single plane?"
― The fillyjonk who believed in pandemics (Lily Dale), Saturday, 28 March 2020 14:52 (four years ago) link
maybe yeah but I think the references are cultural because that makes them common/relatable...like he could write this same song as earnestly but lesser efect w/ private references to friendships, family etc
ten again he has long clearly seen himself in the lineage of e.g. Guitar Slim or Jelly Roll Moton and I guess in that regard those are very personal references too
― Yanni Xenakis (Hadrian VIII), Saturday, 28 March 2020 15:01 (four years ago) link
*to* lesser efect
― Yanni Xenakis (Hadrian VIII), Saturday, 28 March 2020 15:02 (four years ago) link
I've still only listened twice. I'd like to make a list, I'll call it the Gorgeous George List in honor of Memoirs, of the references ordered by how unlikely/bizarre they are. So Lady Macbeth is down near the bottom, Nightmare on Elm Street up near the top.
― clemenza, Saturday, 28 March 2020 16:02 (four years ago) link
people seem pretty convinced it's a Tempest outtake, I'm not so sure, could be from the Sinatra eraI'm more and and more convinced it's not from the Tempest sessions, that album was definitely the nadir of his voice, listen to the ballads in that and even in the gentlest moments he's pretty raspyalso something about this song's production doesn't sound like it's from those sessions
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Saturday, 28 March 2020 16:19 (four years ago) link
agreed it sounds like there's more space and separation than anything on Tempest
― Yanni Xenakis (Hadrian VIII), Saturday, 28 March 2020 16:23 (four years ago) link
each next thing as sad and as gone as the next, incl. Alicia Keys and the Eagles or whateverBut those things live on, don’t they? He’s imploring you to “play” them, that’s how we get through life...
― morrisp, Saturday, 28 March 2020 16:37 (four years ago) link