I know it's early but I had to let you know. Dylan is coming out with a Christmas album. Sounds crazy, but here is a sneak preview. The arrangements are old-fashioned and the Andrews Sisters are singing backup vocals--it sounds like it, anyway, though that's probably not possible unless this is some kind of Christmas miracle. And maybe it is. It's like tuning in that old magical radio in The Twilight Zone. It sounds like we're picking up radiowaves that have been bouncing around outer space for years.
Bob Dylan, the greatest songwriter of his generation and possibly all time, loves oldtime music. His work has always been influenced by the past, his recent albums have been heavily indebted to traditional music, and every week he unearths gold nuggets of country, blues, folk, and tin pan alley on his radio show. For years, I've collected Christmas music for holiday mixtapes, and Dylan has done the same here. That's the spirit to take this album--not as anything profound or visionary, not as the next "Visions of Johanna" or "Things Have Changed," but as a stocking stuffer from Secret Santa. It may fill you with cheer, or make you laugh your ass off-- maybe a little of both. At times, it sounds like Howlin' Wolf singing with Bing Crosby's band at the Hotel Astor--but that's kind of cool. Just kick your shoes off, pull up an egg nog, and turn on that old, weird, magical radio.
Where will the money go? To help the UK homeless. Bob Dylan commented, “That the problem of hunger is ultimately solvable means we must each do what we can to help feed those who are suffering and support efforts to find long-term solutions. I’m honoured to partner with the World Food Programme and Crisis in their fight against hunger and homelessness.” More on the story here.
"You've Lost That Loving Feeling," by the Righteous Brothers.
Great vocals are all about feeling. Sure, you can get Mariah Carey to hit six octaves or hire the Three Tenors to sing the Manhattan phonebook and it would all be technically perfect--and about as dull as dishwater. Good vocals are about feeling, and the spaces in between, and the surprising harmony that somehow lifts it all off the ground. The sand in the Vaseline is what makes it interesting. The great pop song makes you tap your feet, or stop and listen, or crank up the radio as you drive the great American highway.
"I Get Around" by the Beach Boys
The Beach Boys were an harmonic convergence of California sun, surf, girls, and souped-up hot rods. Their soaring vocals were instantly recognizable as the sound of summer. At the creative helm was Brian Wilson, who directed this juggernaut into teenage symphonies, but you can't beat these early transistor radio tunes. This sounds like summer.
"Cloud Nine" by the Temptations
Out of Motor City, The Temptations were one of the most successful soul acts, a tough little outfit with vocal harmonies that reached a gritty perfection. The Temps were cool. The sound of these soul survivors was tough and real back in the day, and folks may snicker at their outfits and dance steps because all style gets old eventually, but their vocals remain timeless. On top of that, they didn't just sing silly love songs. They could "tell it like it is."
"Get Back" and "Don't Let Me Down" by the Beatles
The Beatles...of course. With two of the greatest rock vocalists ever, Lennon and McCartney, not to mention unrivaled songwriting teams, The Beatles could do it all. They wrote their songs, and could play just about anything, but their vocals were a huge part of their success. Here they are, late in the game, after the screams of Beatlemania had died down playing on the Apple rooftop in London.
"Pancho and Lefty" by Willie Nelson & Bob Dylan
As if to prove my point, here are too technically imperfect voices--Willie's is thin and high and lonesome, and Dylan's is gravelly--that come together in a wonderful duet on an old Townes Van Zandt song. They make it their own, and you believe them. Sure, Mariah could sing this tune and toss in all that glissando but it would be like eating a cake made entirely of frosting. This is a plate of ribs, crispy and burnt on the ends, slathered with picante sauce that leaves you gasping for beer. This performance fits a story of outlaws and bandits beautifully.
In 1969, 14-year-old Beatles fanatic Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced him to do an interview. 38 years later, Levitan, director Josh Raskin and illustrator James Braithwaite created an animated film using the original recording as the soundtrack. "I Met the Walrus" was nominated for the 2008 Academy Award for Animated Short.
This is the second installment of Bob on Bob--the man in his own words. The first post included clips of early Dylan, these later clips are also pretty amazing. (Link to the earlier post here)
People who think Bob Dylan's best work is behind him haven't been paying attention. This artist keeps evolving. Right now he's on a winning streak that should continue with the forthcoming album, Together Through Life, due April 23rd. If the new record is anything like the single, Beyond Here Lies Nothin' (link below),we can expect a smoldering bluesy joint reminiscent of the classic Chess records of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf.
Dylan performs "Love Sick" at the Grammys when an unexpected idiot jumps onstage to bask in the glow. The man barely fazes Dylan, who has seen it all. This segment was edited strongly for official release. This is the full, unedited version, complete with the "Soy Bomb."
The Interview
Dylan recently spoke with rock critic Bob Flanagan and provided a glimpse into the creative process, the music industry, and his favorite songwriters. Here are a couple excerpts. (Links to the full interview below)
Bill Flanagan: A lot of the acts from your generation seem to be trading on nostalgia. They play the same songs the same way for the last 30 years. Why haven't you ever done that?
Bob Dylan: I couldn't if I tried. Those guys you are talking about all had conspicuous hits. They started out anti-establishment and now they are in charge of the world. Celebratory songs. Music for the grand dinner party. Mainstream stuff that played into the culture on a pervasive level. My stuff is different from those guys. It's more desperate. Daltrey, Townshend, McCartney, the Beach Boys, Elton, Billy Joel. They made perfect records, so they have to play them perfectly ... exactly the way people remember them. My records were never perfect. So there is no point in trying to duplicate them. Anyway, I'm no mainstream artist.
BF: Then what kind of artist are you?
BD: I'm not sure, Byronesque maybe. Look, when I started out, mainstream culture was Sinatra, Perry Como, Andy Williams, Sound of Music. There was no fitting into it then and of course, there's no fitting into it now. Some of my songs have crossed over but they were all done by other singers.
"Cold Irons Bound" on the set of Masked and Anonymous with his loyal band from The Neverending Tour.(full lyrics here)
BF: Who are some of your favorite songwriters?
BD: Buffett I guess. Lightfoot. Warren Zevon. Randy. John Prine. Guy Clark. Those kinds of writers.
BF: What songs do you like of Buffett's?
BD: "Death of an Unpopular Poet." There's another one called "He Went to Paris."
BF: You and Lightfoot go way back.
BD: Oh yeah. Gordo's been around as long as me.
BF: What are your favorite songs of his?
BD: "Shadows," "Sundown," "If You Could Read My Mind." I can't think of any I don't like.
BF: Did you know Zevon?
BD: Not very well.
BF: What did you like about him?
BD: "Lawyers, Guns and Money." "Boom Boom Mancini." Down hard stuff. "Join me in L.A." sort of straddles the line between heartfelt and primeval. His musical patterns are all over the place, probably because he's classically trained. There might be three separate songs within a Zevon song, but they're all effortlessly connected. Zevon was a musician's musician, a tortured one. "Desperado Under the Eaves." It's all in there.
BF: Randy Newman?
BD: Yeah, Randy. What can you say? I like his early songs, "Sail Away," "Burn Down the Cornfield," "Louisiana," where he kept it simple. Bordello songs. I think of him as the Crown Prince, the heir apparent to Jelly Roll Morton. His style is deceiving. He's so laid back that you kind of forget he's saying important things. Randy's sort of tied to a different era like I am.
BF: How about John Prine?
BD: Prine's stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs. I remember when Kris Kristofferson first brought him on the scene. All that stuff about "Sam Stone" the soldier junky daddy and "Donald and Lydia," where people make love from ten miles away. Nobody but Prine could write like that. If I had to pick one song of his, it might be "Lake Marie." I don't remember what album that's on.
(from Flanagan interview, Part 5)
"One Too Many Mornings," live from the Rolling Thunder Tour, 1976. The last day of the tour, playing in the rain, Dylan sings his heart out."I gaze back to the street, the sidewalk and the sign..."
The rest of the Dylan interview by Bill Flanagan can be read in its entirety here: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part4 Part 5 Now, the final installment, Part 6
"Beyond Here Lies Nothin'" from the forthcoming Dylan album:
When I arrived, it was dead-on winter. The cold was brutal and every artery of the city was snowpacked, but I'd started out from the frostbitten North Country, a little corner of the earth where the dark frozen woods and icy roads didn't faze me. I could transcend the limitations. It wasn't money or love that I was looking for. I had a heightened sense of awareness, was set in my ways, impractical and a visionary to boot. My mind was strong like a trap and I didn't need any guarantee of validity. I didn't know a single soul in this dark freezing metropolis but that was all about to change -- and quick.
The Café Wha? was a club on MacDougal Street in the heart of Greenwich Village. The place was a subterranean cavern, liquorless, ill lit, low ceiling, like a wide dining hall with chairs and tables -- opened at noon, closed at four in the morning. Somebody had told me to go there and ask for a singer named Freddy Neil who ran the daytime show at the Wha?
New York City, midwinter, 1961. Whatever I was doing was working out okay and I intended to stay with it, felt like I was closing in on something. I was playing on the regular bill at the Village Gaslight, the premier club on the carnivalesque MacDougal Street. When I began working there, the Gaslight was owned by John Mitchell, a renegade and raconteur, a Brooklynite. I only saw him a few times. He was ornery and combatant, had an exotic looking girlfriend who Jack Kerouac had based a novel on. Mitchell was already legendary. The Village was heavily Italian, and Mitchell hadn’t taken even one step back from the local mafiosos. It was a known fact that he didn’t make payoffs out of principle. The fire marshals, the police and the health inspectors were routinely invading the place. Mitchell, though, had lawyers and he took his battles to city hall and somehow the place stayed open. Mitchell carried a pistol and a knife.
Lou Levy, top man of Leeds Music Publishing company, took me up in a taxi to the Pythian Temple on West 70th Street to show me the pocket sized recording studio where Bill Haley and His Comets had recorded "Rock Around the Clock" -- then down to Jack Dempsey's restaurant on 58th and Broadway, where we sat down in a red leather upholstered booth facing the front window.
Lou introduced me to Jack Dempsey, the great boxer. Jack shook his fist at me.
"You look too light for a heavyweight kid, you'll have to put on a few pounds. You're gonna have to dress a little finer, look a little sharper -- not that you'll need much in the way of clothes when you're in the ring -- don't be afraid of hitting somebody too hard."
"He's not a boxer, Jack, he's a songwriter and we'll be publishing his songs."
"Oh, yeah, well I hope to hear 'em some of these days. Good luck to you, kid."
Outside the wind was blowing, straggling cloud wisps, snow whirling in the red lanterned streets, city types scuffling around, bundled up -- salesmen in rabbit fur earmuffs hawking gimmicks, chestnut vendors, steam rising out of manholes.
My perspective on all that was about to change. The air would soon shoot up in intensity and become more potent. My little shack in the universe was about to expand into some glorious cathedral, at least in songwriting terms. Suze had been working behind the scenes in a musical production at the Theatre de Lys on Christopher Street. It was a presentation of songs written by Bertolt Brecht, the antifascist Marxist German poet-playwright whose works were banned in Germany, and Kurt Weill, whose melodies were like a combination of both opera and jazz. Previously they had had a big hit with a ballad called “Mack the Knife” that Bobby Darin had made popular. You couldn’t call this a play, it was more like a stream of songs by actors who sang. I went there to wait for Suze and was aroused straight away by the raw intensity of the songs . . . “Morning Anthem,” “Wedding Song,” “The World Is Mean,” “Polly’s Song,” “Tango Ballad,” “Ballad of the Easy Life.” Songs with tough language. They were erratic, unrhythmical and herky-jerky-weird visions. The singers were thieves, scavengers or scallywags and they all roared and snarled. The entire world was narrowly confined between four streets. On the small stage, objects were barely discernible-lampposts, tables, stoops, windows, corners of buildings, moon shining through roofed-in courtyards-grim surroundings, creepy sensations. Every song seemed to come from some obscure tradition, seemed to have a pistol in its hip pocket, a club or a brickbat and they came at you in crutches, braces and wheelchairs. They were like folk songs in nature, but unlike folk songs, too, because they were sophisticated.
This is a wild song. Big medicine in the lyrics. Heavy action spread out. Each phrase comes at you from a ten-foot drop, scuttles across the road and then another one comes like a punch on the chin. And then there’s always that ghost chorus about the black ship that steps in, fences it all off and locks it up tighter than a drum.
(excerpts from Chronicles,Vol. 1, by Bob Dylan) to be continued...
ONE MORE THING:
The new Dylan album, Together Through Life, will be released April 28th.Beyond Here Lies Nothin' is the first single, a bluesy track with an old Chess Records feel. In case you missed the free download at bobdylan.com (it was up for one day only. That's right, 24 hours) here is a sneak preview:
It's still raining. I've never seen rain like this--and I've lived in the Pacific Northwest all my life. Rivers are rising. 68 roads are closed for flooding. There are plenty of great rain songs. Here are some rain songs.
The clip above is REM in their golden days, performing "So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)." The song was released in May 1984 as the first single from the group's second studio album Reckoning.
The clip below is Dylan performing "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" from the infamous 1966 tour with the Hawks (later called The Band). Rain figures prominently in Dylan's music from Hard Rain to Buckets of Rain, and people are expecting rain or back in the rain. High water is rising, there's a crash on the levee, and we wait for the flood. This song captures that rain-soaked feeling when your gravity fails and negativity won't pull you through.
Cross your fingers, but I think we've survived the great snowstorm of 2008. After a couple weeks in the deep freeze, things are starting to thaw. Slowly. Everyone is sick of being snowbound, but we've been lucky to be safe and warm. I don't know what happened at Nickelsville, the tent city for the homeless down the road.
The clip is from 1976. Some people complain that they don't recognize Dylan's songs anymore; he changes them in concert. They've been saying this since he first pulled out of Hibbing one stormy winter. The man changes like the weather. He's never been an obedient jukebox. Listen to this outtake of "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts," and compare it to the more familiar version from "Blood on the Tracks."
By now, you've probably heard the new Bob Dylan song.
It's actually an outtake from the not so distant past (to be released on the upcoming official "bootleg" series, vol. 8, on October 7th). Still, we like it. The song is good, and the music video is also pretty cool, with indie character actor Harry Dean Stanton roaming the countryside as a purveyor of Dylan bootlegs.
Imagine that.
Anyway, dig this tiny movie--and have a great weekend!
Bob Dylan is still writing brilliant songs, and this is one of them. Dylan fans love to hearken back to days of yore, convinced his best work is well in the past. Geezers mumble about the folk stuff, or Highway 61, or Blonde on Blonde, or Blood on the Tracks. Those were great albums, but things have changed.
Some people hate him for those very songs. The hits. They're too cool, and for them music is about bragging rights--what obscure, rare, impossibly indie act have I discovered that you know nothing about?
The irony is that often the folks who hate Dylan love musicians who have been highly influenced by him. Countless bands cop his style, water him down, steal his lyrics, secretly "discover" him and mine his ore with pick and shovel. People make an entire career out of imitating just one phase of his creative output. Americana, rock, indie, freak-folk, hip hop, and pop all owe him a debt. Toss out the Juno soundtrack and do your homework.
"Things Have Changed" is as good as anything the man has written. Listen to the words.
I couldn't help posting another Jimi Hendrix performance after showing him playing back-up to Buddy and Stacey in 1965. Here is Hendrix just two years later, when he burst on the scene at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. That's the Summer of Love, right? Jimi was always a big Dylan fan (you remember his version of Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower," right?) and here he's giving the treatment to "Like a Rolling Stone." A classic moment from an historic concert. Can you dig it?
I shall be (un)released; some wonderful Dylan rarities from Uncle Bob's Vault:
John Brown from the unreleased Town Hall Concert, in 1963. This was supposed to be issued on the "Bob Dylan in Concert" record that was scrapped by the label. Too bad. A young folk Dylan mesmerizes the crowd with an acoustic guitar and his timeless storytelling.
Like a Rolling Stone, take 6, from the unreleased Highway 61 sessions, 1965. This is just a couple takes away from the finished product, one of the greatest songs ever. Like the man said, this is "thin, wild mercury music." Electric Dylan. Shakespeare in the alley with pointed shoes and bells.
Simple Twist of Fate. Rarely performed, this unreleased gem is from the Rolling Thunder Review, a gypsy caravan that traveled the northeastern states in the autumn of 1975. He'd written this song not long before, but he's already rewritten it by now. As even casual fans know, you don't go to a Dylan show expecting it to sound like the records. Or even the same as the previous tour. He moves fast, like a thief.
"People have long wondered what goes on in Bob Dylan’s mind. But if you pay attention to what the recent Pulitzer Prize-winner says and plays on his XM satellite-radio program, Theme Time Radio Hour, you can actually get a pretty good idea. Here, by cataloging the themes has chosen for the episodes, the artists he has favored, and Dylan’s other preferences and quirks, Vanity Fair has constructed a revealing portrait of America’s most enigmatic musician."
Read the Vanity Fair article and find out by clicking HERE.
"Dylan, the most acclaimed and influential songwriter of the past half century, who more than anyone brought rock from the streets to the lecture hall, received an honorary Pulitzer Prize on Monday, cited for his 'profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.'
"It was the first time Pulitzer judges, who have long favored classical music, and, more recently, jazz, awarded an art form once dismissed as barbaric, even subversive."
--From the AP story by Hillel Italie.
For this post, I picked "Forever Young" from 1977 and "Love Sick" from 1998. You could pick plenty of other songs that would showcase his talents -- he wrote so many. I could probably come up with a dozen from each different Dylan period. Let see, there's folk Dylan, finger-pointing Dylan, electric Dylan, Nashville Dylan, Rolling Thunder Dylan...not to mention Kate Blanchett. Nobody else comes close. Thanks for writing 'em, Bob. And congratulations!
Jack White and Bob Dylan have been hanging around a lot lately. Jack sat in last week at a Dylan show at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Jack went blues-crazy and took center stage, while Dylan hung back, sly old fox, and let the young man do most of the work.
Here they perform a blistering, bluesy "Meet Me in the Morning."
I know it's early but I had to let you know. Dylan is coming out with a Christmas album. Sounds crazy, but here is a sneak preview. The arrangements are old-fashioned and the Andrews Sisters are singing backup vocals--it sounds like it, anyway, though that's probably not possible unless this is some kind of Christmas miracle. And maybe it is. It's like tuning in that old magical radio in The Twilight Zone. It sounds like we're picking up radiowaves that have been bouncing around outer space for years.
