New Bob Dylan song: Huck's Theme

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.

Thank you! Please do!

It's also weird writing about "John Lennon" as figure when he's been dead longer than he knew him; Lennon can't help but be a statue in the park.

Wasn't "Roll On, John" written in the '80s?

I remembered hearing that, too — but when I went looking for verification the other day, I found this discussion of an even earlier precedent: https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/4595

this song reminds me that dylan once had a (really good!) radio show. dude knows how to tell a story through a playlist.

I put up a post on Facebook, including some of Lily Dale's comments (and repeating stuff I've said here--I do repeat myself).

http://www.facebook.com/phil.dellio/posts/10156574950051534

I prefer concision:

https://youtu.be/o6YWpujfqIg

That's good, I like that. Didn't like Lou Reed's Kennedy song at all (haven't heard it since it came out).

I love the Lou Reed song. How about this one?:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ggtyT1TwL8

I love Negativland's "Richard Nixon Died Today." Which is a whole other thing.

So many evocative posts---these
t'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) just now (right after waking up) made me think of this----from bobdylan.com:

I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine
WRITTEN BY: BOB DYLAN

I dreamed I saw St. Augustine

Alive as you or me

Tearing through these quarters

In the utmost misery

With a blanket underneath his arm

And a coat of solid gold

Searching for the very souls

Whom already have been sold

“Arise, arise,” he cried so loud

In a voice without restraint

“Come out, ye gifted kings and queens

And hear my sad complaint

No martyr is among ye now

Whom you can call your own

So go on your way accordingly

But know you’re not alone”

I dreamed I saw St. Augustine

Alive with fiery breath

And I dreamed I was amongst the ones

That put him out to death

Oh, I awoke in anger

So alone and terrified

I put my fingers against the glass

And bowed my head and cried
Copyright © 1968 by Dwarf Music; renewed 1996 by Dwarf Music

Believe it or not, the first Dylan song I fell in love with, in 1995, aged 25.

What a great song. Bob had sort of sat out the 2010s, with only one album of original material. But this beats anything on Tempest, in my opinion.

To me the key line is "if you want to remember better write down the names" which he then commences in doing. It's a goodbye to the 20th century, as it fades from view. It reminds me of the last 30 minutes of The Irishman, which touches on the same ideas.

What a strange development. In the midst of a global pandemic, Bob Dylan once again assumes his role at the center of the culture, if only for a day or two.

For what it's worth, Love & Theft was released on 9/11/01, as noted here by monitor Greg Tate:
https://www.villagevoice.com/2001/09/25/intelligence-data/

this is masterful. feels like an entire album's worth of material somehow crammed into one long track. almost too much to take in at once. especially love the violin, which reminds me of astral weeks.

also, i saw someone point out that

Slide down the banister, go get your coat
Ferry 'cross the Mersey and go for the throat

may contain buried references to guy banister and david ferrie, and now i can't unhear it

That's great, missed that.

That's how I appreciate it -- a half-hearted concordance of JFK.

Well...like it or not, I don't hear anything half-hearted there.

Even better, no Kevin Costner.

The only thing half-hearted about it would be a lack of willpower to edit it into something more powerful.

I don't know--I think its length is where so much of its power resides. It's like that 13-hour Rivette film, Out 1. You could edit it down drastically (even he did) and it's not like you'd lose any story, but then it wouldn't be Out 1 anymore.

or editing Akerman

prevailing sense from nerd detectives at expectingrain.com is that while this might have been written around Tempest it is more likely a recent recording, even possibly in the last year

That’s interesting...

exciting if true! maybe still an album of originals left in the tank

that feels like the best explanation. the more I've listened and also listened to Tempest, I'm myself convinced it wasn't recorded during those sessions

i love this song

the litany of references at the end that somehow doesn't seem monotonous. sounsd like nothing i can think of except desolation row.

Also cf. All the friends I ever had are gone.

("Delia")

I wonder what dickie betts he has in mind , the Elizabeth Reed stuff or Jessica etc

I think he says Blue Sky?

https://youtu.be/lZg9MWLQ5_c

throw the gun in the gutter/and walk on by

the litany of references at the end that somehow doesn't seem monotonous. sounds like nothing i can think of except desolation row.

Reminds me a bit of "Chimes of Freedom," and I guess "Ring Them Bells" as well - but where those songs have big sweeping categories - "flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight," "Ring them bells sweet Martha for the poor man's son," this has a seemingly endless list of specific people.

Wait, I think we can go somewhere with this! Chimes of Freedom is his early period, when he was thinking in big sweeping hippie abstractions about freedom and justice. Ring Them Bells is roughly the same idea but in religious terms; the chimes of freedom have turned into bells calling us to worship and be saved. But this is a song that's partly about being at the end of your lifetime, when all those big abstract spaces have been filled in with the real things and people and works of art that you've engaged with in some way over the course of your life. So instead of the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale, we get Lindsey and Stevie Nicks. And in the place of the chimes of freedom, we have every song Bob Dylan has ever heard.

I keep hearing "play it for Dead C and Stevie Nicks"

probably not but

Number one on Billboard's Rock Digital Song Sales list!

The Guardian has dares to do this:

Bob Dylan's 50 greatest songs – ranked!

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/apr/09/bob-dylans-50-greatest-songs-ranked

I didn't get beyond #46: Make You Feel My Love is one of his five worst songs ever.

Yep, lots to disagree with. But that's the nature of lists like that

Sitting though “make you feel” by Adele is pure torture

Number one on Billboard's Rock Digital Song Sales list!

Apparently it’s Dylan’s first song to ever hit #1 on any Billboard chart (“under his own name”)

The Guardian has dares to do this:

Bob Dylan's 50 greatest songs – ranked!

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/apr/09/bob-dylans-50-greatest-songs-ranked

― Duke, Thursday, April 9, 2020 4:17 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

without looking i'm guessing "what can i do for you" didn't make the list which makes it invalid to me

interesting that "slow train" and "groom" did though

#today and #tomorrow,#skeletons and #nudes,#sparkle and #flash,#AnneFrank and #IndianaJones,#fastcars and #fastfood, #bluejeans and #queens,#Beethoven and #Chopin,#life and #death.https://t.co/o5VQKJ0NHx

— bobdylan.com (@bobdylan) April 17, 2020

wtf!

God bless this weird motherfucker

fuck this is a great one

Lol, Bob is the best.

I assume this means a new album is coming.