things you have learned from Bob Dylan

It's Christmas time in Hollis Queens
Mom's cooking chicken and collard greens
Rice and stuffing, macaroni and cheese
And Santa put gifts under Christmas trees
Decorate the house with lights at night
Snow's on the ground, snow white so bright
In the fireplace is the yule log
Beneath the mistle toe as we drink egg nog
The rhymes you hear are the rhymes of Darryl's
But each and every year we bust Christmas carols

Rhymes so loud and proud you hear it
It's Christmas time and we got the spirit
Jack Frost chillin, the hawk is out
And that's what Christmas is all about
The time is now, the place is here
And the whole wide world is filled with cheer

My name's D.M.C. with the mic in my hand
And I'm chilling and coolin just like a snowman
So open your eyes, lend us an ear
We want to say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

"I nver gotten used to it
I just learned to turn it off"

and also, and most importanly "when you ain't got nothin, you got nothin to lose"

...from Talkin' Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre...

i think thats probably the last most of you will here from me forever, bye

(NB the 'Patriotism is the last refuge. . .' line that precedes the above is better, but that one didn't originate with Bob.)

been doing a fairly exhaustive listen to long-70s dylan (that is, post-Accident), including the full 900-disc basement tapes and blood on the tracks sessions (the latter possibly the least essential release in dylan history, including dylan (1972) and the bootleg series w the cash sessions). haven't heard more of the rolling thunder era than bootleg vol 5 + hard rain-- don't have the recent big RT box because remain a lil skeptical of the band (not the band)'s ramshackle carousel as compared to the band (the actual band)'s platonic tightness on before the flood or the street legal assembly's deranged project on at budokan (the most beautiful music in the world some days)-- but don't have any actual challops as the rolling thunder shows are great and i'd like to have that box.

planet waves pretty underrated, by me at least, tho the double "forever young" remains difficult to get past. the heylin bio blames a "dumb broad"(!) girlfriend of a childhood friend of dylan's, visiting the studio, for killing Bob's confidence by saying of a playback of the slow version "cmon, bob, are you getting mushy in your old age?", hence the inclusion of the peppy version. but she was right, and dylan's weird solution to the problem-- tho admirably dylanesque; and revealing of an instinctive understanding, lacked by clinton heylin, that a problem existed-- was still the wrong move imo when set against the option of cutting the song from the album and never thinking about it again, like it was blind willie mctell.

interesting tho that this destructive intervention (destructive from the perspective of clinton heylin, his source the engineer, and presumably many fans) comes from a hibbing connection. the same thing happens in 1975, when it's dylan's brother david who says the blood on the tracks recordings from new york don't have a "commercial sound" (like he's f murray abraham as fake albert grossman and his rock star brother is nervous supplicant oscar isaac as fake not-bob-dylan) and arranges the minneapolis re-recordings. this too is not a total success-- the minneapolis arrangement benefits "tangled" imo because extra layers of distance and embroidery are only fuel to that song, and playing "idiot wind" angry adds friction that isn't there when playing the mostly-rueful lyrics straight; but polishing up "you're a big girl now" makes it sleazier, and while i get being nervous about "jack of hearts" as unaccompanied nine-minute ballad that relentless eight-minute ONE-two-ONE-two just wasn't the answer. but what frustrates heylin types as an inexplicable moment of (in-character) insecure self-sabotage while in the very act of painting his masterpiece makes more sense as (in-character) instinctive understanding that some final swerve is necessary to finish it. once again the imperfect solution he goes with comes from someone who grew up with him. this kind of last-minute openness to the awareness that something needs to change even if the change is partly destructive is something i'm trying to learn from bob dylan.

sorry-- dylan (1973).

Heylin's a classic example of a thorough reporter trapped in the shell of a third-rate thinker.

yeah-- the book is v good-- comprehensive, as interested in noncanonical periods as in blood on the tracks or blanchett-dylan, full of quotes and conflicting POVs and readings (not just in oral-history-style blocks but constantly woven thru the functional and effective narrative prose). then, constantly, at the same time, alongside all that: clinton heylin's opinions

I love that moment during Empire Burlesque where he essentially shrieks at the possibility that Arthur Baker's turning Bobby into New Order.

found myself moved (again educationally) by this description from the a&r exec he (dylan not heylin) was shacked up w on the outs from sara:

He would do his writing early in the morning and then kinda materialize around midday... It was in the notebook, but he would play it, and ask me what I thought, and it was always different, every single time, he would just change it and change it and change it.

"he would just change it and change it and change it" obv a dylan fan's core/heart music, but also funny to think about as a realization in context, while listening to the songs your boyfriend spends all morning every morning writing about his wife.

Tim Riley's book also useful.

have always loved "can you please crawl out your window?" but only just clocked that the boyfriend he wants you to cheat on is your ego

he sits in your room
(his tomb)
with a fistful of tacks,
preoccupied with his vengance,
cursing the dead
that can't answer him back.
you know that he has no intentions
of looking your way,
unless it's to say
that he needs you to test his inventions.

hey.
come crawl out your window.
use your hands and legs. it won't ruin you.
how can you say he will haunt you?
you can go back to him anytime you want to.

he looks so truthful--
is this how he feels?
trying to peel the moon and expose it?
with his businesslike anger,
and his bloodhounds that kneel;
if he needs a third eye he just grows it.
he just needs you to talk,
or to hand him his chalk,
or pick it up after he throws it.

hey.
please crawl out your window.
oh, use your hands and legs. it won't ruin you.
how can you say he will haunt you?
you can go back to him anytime you want to.

he looks so righteous,
while your face is so changed,
as you sit on the box you keep him in;
while his genocide fools
(and his friends) rearrange
their religion of the little tin women,
that backs up their views--
but your face is so bruised.
crawl out.
the dark is just beginning.

hey.
please come out your window.
oh, use your hands and legs.
it won't ruin you.
how can you say he will haunt you
when you can go back to him
anytime that you want to?

you got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend
if you won't come out your window

just come out your window

oh my god

Hurricane was probably the first song I heard that really tackled institutional racism.

don't forget that you are whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiite

Hurricane was probably the first song I heard that really tackled institutional racism.

― ian, Sunday, February 26, 2023 7:55 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Also: it tackled shouting, out-of-tune fiddles, and giving hope to French lyricists.

That son of a bitch is brave and gettin' braver
We want to put his ass in stir
We want to pin this triple murder on him
He ain't no Gentleman Jim

ACAB

xpost

I love the fiddle so that makes a lot of sense.

we want to pin this triple mur-
-der
on him!

yes, that is the correct phrasing.

realized while listening to rolling thunder stuff the other day that he's playing hattie carroll because its combination of frame-by-frame cinema with entire parenthetical verses of exposition about the characters / their society is what he's doing again (for just about the first time since?) in hurricane-- tho on the other side of an extra decade of alienation, so his protag now has to be a wronged "champion", instead of a maid

hurricane's cinema is more ambitious tho, all those scenes, time jumps, dialogue etc

Hurricane shouldn't work as well as it does. It's like how people used to say a bumble bee doesn't make sense on paper and shouldn't fly, but it does.

I'm watching Harley on HBOmax and there's a gag about a movie being made depicting the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents. It's called "A Hard Wayne's Gonna Fall."

"Hurricane" absorbs Godard-indebted ci-ne-mah better than (the clips I've seen of) Renata and Clara, and I'll give it credit for being strident during a soporific era, but it don't do much for me.

"Tangled Up in Blue" as Möbius strip where Joan Baez, Rimbaud, fishing villages, and the laaaaces of his shooooes turns into Ford-era anomie also convincing.

the movie is called renaldo and clara, jacques levy was a guy from new york named jacques, new orleans is a large city, and ci-ne-mah is just how it's pronounced

second half of hurricane kind of wobbles and blurs into pomposity for me-- "the palm of some fool's hand", "rubin sits like buddha", the interlude where bob describes rubin carter's personal private idyll and it's being in the mountains by a stream riding a horse and you're like surely that's you, bob, you are thinking of you, again-- but man the action+dialogue in the first half.

(the best dylan movies are all from the late 80s for some reason: "brownsville girl", "tweeter and the monkey man", "dignity". i think he was watching a lot of tv.)

Renata and Clara is about a would-be second-tier experimental novelist and her ungrateful daughter; Allen Ginsberg co-stars as the lover they share.

i really learned a lot
i really learned a lot

I know you're sorry, I'm sorry too

you'll find out when you reach the top
you're on the bottom

remember some concert where van morrison speaks these lines in awe

have always loved "can you please crawl out your window?" but only just clocked that the boyfriend he wants you to cheat on is your ego

― difficult listening hour, Sunday, February 26, 2023 7:48 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Still kind of blown away by this, thanks.

Also one of many examples of Dylan's three-way shifting perspective songs (Tangled up in Blue, She's Your Love Now, Like a Rolling Stone) where he's ostensibly talking to a woman/former lover and/or her new love but one of people is really Dylan himself.

making love to his ego

So, Dylan is "Napoleon in rags" with the language...

I saw what you did there, Alfred.

Still kind of blown away by this, thanks.

had always taken this anecdote as being about nothing more than amphetamines and a specific already well-displayed brand of personal assholism: but now it actually makes a lot of sense to me that this is the song phil ochs got thrown out of the car and called a "journalist" for failing to sufficiently appreciate lol

xp Zimmy played guitar

how are you? he said to me
so I said back to him

^BARS

I always follow his advice not to put on any airs when I'm down on Rue Morgue Avenue

a good tip about the cops in that one too

how are you? he said to me
so I said back to him

this is a real textbook made-by-delivery (+ placement in the melody) one-- the gypsy speaks in a grandiose howl and bob w rapid self-effacement: HOW AAAAARE YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUU HEEEEEEEEEEE SAID TO MEEEE III saiditbacktohim

You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you.

A rare post-folk-era, pre-Christian-era instance of Dylan putting something like a moral code into explicit words.

I don’t know who the “he” is in “…Window”; but I’d probably also throw someone out of my car if I had written it, and they didn’t appreciate it. I think it has a few of Dylan’s most remarkable lines (even by the standards of this period).

A rare post-folk-era, pre-Christian-era instance of Dylan putting something like a moral code into explicit words.

another classic along these lines is "to live outside the law you must be honest"-- appreciate that almost alone amongst his bartlettsisms this is not from a counterculture anthem (whether early-60s-earnest or mid-60s-hip) but from a country-rock crooner about blueballs

"Can you cook and sew, make flowers grow/Do you understand my pain?" reminded me that the heterosexual brain is pretty fucked up.

spent the last month listening to the whole 18-disc cutting edge for the second time. incredible how much the vibe changes the instant they move the blonde on blonde sessions to nashville. a lot of it seems down to (or at least reflected in) bob johnston, who in NYC is just rolling tape and saying take numbers but on his home turf is shouting out arrangement advice all the time. dylan too goes from miserable and bitchy to ooh let's-try-this let's-try-that; it's nice. of course it makes sense that music row ultrapros would be helpful for a guy who needs to wander around in the studio making up lyrics and distending his structures on a dime (the only time he ever gets pissy in nashville is at the very end, his expectations raised, calling off a take of "obviously 5 believers": "what the fuck. this is very easy, man. it's very easy to do") but it's still surprising it's his soulmates the hawks he can't gel with in NYC! and then he'll come back from nashville and do the 66 tour and the basement tapes w them back-to-back. weird. gotta stay flexible is the lesson here.

"to live outside the law you must be honest"

Memorably used by DC Comics in a 1980s print ad for Batman and the Outsiders

xp I listening to the 18-disc Cutting Edge from end to end during lockdown and it was indeed revelatory. And I always wondered why he didn't use the Hawks for all of Blonde on Blonde because they were so great on the 1966 tour and on the few cuts that he did put out with them...there was no question that he made the right decision after hearing those sessions, and I felt sorry but Richard Manuel because he seemed to get the brunt of Dylan's complaints. "Like THIS! Play it like THIS Richard!!"

lol yes

tbh i gasped when (and despite my lovvvvvvvvving take 8 of visions of johanna-- it's still "wrong" but the rave-up sound is so good) he stops a take to be like "no, it's softer, there's nothing hard in it, the only thing that's hard is robbie": they can't give him what he wants but he can already hear the nashville version in his head

btw per yr earlier recc:

Re: the RTR shows, if you get the box or simply want to try one show, December 4, 1975 is the one to listen to.

i did end up getting the box lol and it is just pure ecstasy, i went to a diff rolling thunder show every night for a week-- but yes you were otm, "just listen to 12/4" is what i'd say to all but the most hopeless sickos.

a lot of copy in the box+advertising like wow it's incredible to hear these songs evolve night-to-night-- but it isn't rly lol; they don't, much. (the rehearsals are kinda interesting.) as i said tho no complaints whatever.

Yeah, not that I can remember either - at least for those shows, they just have the one arrangement for any given song, so really the only thing different is how they execute it. Dylan's phrasing will change, there may be different guitar solos, tempos can vary, but I wouldn't say the music was evolving. They do get better as they spend more time together - the first show in the set sounds a bit tentative compared to the later shows.

appreciated the varying setlist in the baez duet + small-band sections tho (another reason the swollen 12/4 show is ideal). "i dreamed i saw st. augustine"!!

feeling myself sliding towards the 66 box sigh.

It's actually a good time to buy the 66 box set. Every once in a while I'll see a listing for a used copy in excellent shape for $50. I think it retailed for well over $100.

Yeah looking at Discogs (avoid the counterfeits - the ones from China are probably pirated copies) you can get mint copies in the U.S. shipped for $70. If you're patient and don't need a mint copy, I'm sure you can find them for much less.

gonna save my money and rip it up

dlh, I love you always and forever, but 15 hours of Dylan is not Sátántangó

xp LOL, even better. The electric set from Liverpool is my favorite FWIW, even better than the famous "Judas" show (though it's mono only since it was recorded on D A Pennebaker's Nagra reels - no multi-track recording was done for that show).

Alfred's right though. (Sátántangó is a favorite - even saw it at Lincoln Center in 35mm! They were nice enough to program a one-hour dinner break.)

oh yeah the cutting edge is impossible to recommend tbh: it's only the full sweep of it that's really interesting and anyone interested in the full sweep of it doesn't need you to tell them about it. back to the thread remit tho one of the few moments i'd recommend to civilians is:

"okay i'll do the bridge here." "you know, i can't-- i'm not getting the bridge." "okay, the bridge is this." "i-- what's the second verse in?" "G." "are you playing in G?" "i'm playing this here chord here. i dunno what it is. no. it's not that. it's a minor chord. you can play it! ah, forget it. forget it until you hear it. you can play in F until-- that's it! what was that! that's it!!"

I'll be honest with you, I never thought I'd get through the 18 CD set. The most I had heard was maybe a few hours in the background while I was on a train (alone in a night train car). It wasn't until lockdown when I had a LOT of time to fill that I played it all straight and it surprisingly went down easy. It's an eye opener and it tells you everything you'd want to know about how these albums came together. I hope to do it again someday, but the one time may have been enough.

Yeah, same here...

But, I did have form having obtained the "Fun House Sessions" Stooges box, played it through at least three times!