New Bob Dylan song: Huck's Theme

That clip is priceless.

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.

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

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)

^see: Scorsese's movie about Dylan

Beatles bit didn't strike me as a putdown. (And their chords WERE outrageous.)

They hadn't even gotten to "A Hard Day's Night" yet.

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.

"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

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.

the whole doc is fantastic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pS8rM_MsIY

new song rules

whoah there's MORE?!?

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 free
Send me some lovin', then tell me no lie
Throw the gun in the gutter and walk on by
Wake up, little Susie, let's go for a drive
Cross the Trinity River, let's keep hope alive
Turn the radio on, don't touch the dials
Parkland hospital, only six more miles
You got me dizzy, Miss Lizzy, you filled me with lead
That magic bullet of yours has gone to my head
I'm just a patsy like Patsy Cline
Never shot anyone from in front or behind
I've blood in my eye, got blood in my ear
I'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.

It could've been "Brownsville Girl."

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.

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.

xpost yeah PKBT I love it, he's so chill and accommodating....also just Bob Dylan talking about Ratt makes my day every time

he's the opposite of chill in the rest of that doc, haha

oh yeah? that's all I've seen but I can imagine

posted upthread — Getting To Dylan. It's mostly an extremely irritated interview with Bob during the filming of Hearts Of Fire.

Dylan is like Pynchon in that he likes people and hates systems.

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

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.

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.

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.

Very comparable to Neil's "Drifin' Back" in that way.

The main reason I originally mistook it for an Oh, Mercy outtake was that his voice sounded so good.

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.

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."

^^quality posts

Yes, though I would say this is how Dylan does American Pie in a way.

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

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

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?"

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

*to* lesser efect

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.

people seem pretty convinced it's a Tempest outtake, I'm not so sure, could be from the Sinatra era

I'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 raspy

also something about this song's production doesn't sound like it's from those sessions

agreed it sounds like there's more space and separation than anything on Tempest

each next thing as sad and as gone as the next, incl. Alicia Keys and the Eagles or whatever

But those things live on, don’t they? He’s imploring you to “play” them, that’s how we get through life...

 “This is an unreleased song we recorded a while back that you might find interesting. Stay safe, stay observant and may God be with you.”

there's been rumors he's been doing new music.... Triplicate came out 3 years ago, he didn't say "outtake" necessarily

His voice does sound better here, I agree. It just sounds to me like it comes from the same creative place as Tempest, like it's a companion volume to Tempest even if it was recorded later.

“A while back” sounds older than the past 3 years, but who knows. Has Rolling Stone talked to Jeff Rosen or somebody about it yet?

(xpost) Agree. And in that way, it feels very different than "Driftin' Back," where Neil cataloged various things he remembered with disdain. "Murder Most Foul"--the part of it where he's rambling on about all these songs and artists--feels like a sweeping embrace.

xxxp morrisp yeah I totally think that's true, but what I also hear sewn into "play" is raise a glass, pour one out

being in time music is always disappearing as you listen to it :(

If you've been playing the official clip, like I have, there's another one up now with lyrics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rkr6TVnGtAM

For the next few minutes, anyway--I think Dylan's organization is one of those with acute copyright radar.

xpost, Triplicate was released March 2017, so probably recorded 2016, I guess I think that could qualify as a "while back"

also could be that they cut original songs during the sessions for the covers records?

xp they are hawks!

this channel always seems somehow to fly under the radar and re-up stuff http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaOZO0lQahdMsROidW4RIZA/videos

I think with Dylan, especially in recent years, there's a real tension between honoring these mythic figures and trying to resist becoming one himself; that's what I was trying to get at with the thing about John Lennon as legend vs. John Lennon as real person who Dylan knew. Like, every artist eventually ends up entombed in the mausoleum of their work, and I think Dylan can see the beauty in that while also being terrified at the sight of those walls rising around him.

But then the sprawl of artists he catalogues at the end of this song, the mix of genres, the high and low culture, suggests something different, a sharing of the burden. Like he's just one of many pallbearers.

You're really insightful when it comes to this song! I've been thinking about posting on Facebook about it--I might quote you, if that's okay.