EBDS Special Post #5: Radiohead and The Greil Marcus Effect

Author's note: Well, I *was* planning on my next post being about Tour '74, but something I read caught my fancy, and you're getting this instead. Hopefully this is of some (any) interest.

Just like I'm well aware that all of you that read this blog do not solely listen to the music of Bob Dylan, I'm quite certain that you all know that I, as the proprietor of this humble little blog, also do not solely listen to the music of Bob Dylan. Dylan bows to no one in terms of being my all-time favorite solo artist, but there remains a slot to be filled in the "favorite band" category, and I must confess that it's a two-horse race in that regard, and two boring horses to boot. One of those horses is The Beatles, a favorite band choice so predictable and boring that I'm almost bored just TYPING it, but a choice that I firmly believe stands up to scrutiny simply due to the fact that those guys wrote a hell of a lot of amazing songs. The other would be Radiohead, who I consider the current best band in the world, whose In Rainbows and OK Computer are serious candidates for my favorite album of all time, and whose newest album, The King of Limbs, was released to record stores on this very day (although it was available for about a month prior via digital download, which means that I've listened to the album plenty of times and digested it to the point where I think I can write with some semblance of lucidity about it). And it is them, in part, who I will be writing about in this post.

Now, The King of Limbs is hardly what I would call a bad album. I would say that the first half is definitely not as good as the second half, that there are many quietly beautiful moments but nothing approaching the harmonies of "Paranoid Android" or the end of "Reckoner" when the strings really kick in something fierce, that the Burial/Flying Lotus homages lend the album a strange atmosphere, like we're listening to a totally different band with Thom Yorke at the helm (the cut-up and edited drum patterns, IMO very unlike the normal measured rhythmic genius of Phil Selway, hammer this home), and that "Lotus Flower" and "Codex" both hold rightful places in the Radiohead Pantheon. I would also say that the album represents, at best, something of a lateral move, in that we'd EXPECT them to really be into Four Tet and that the skittering house beats that show up at times don't have the same resonance as the electronic flourishes of Kid A a decade earlier. Again, hardly a bad album, possibly even a very good one, but that's about as far I'd go; more Desire than Blonde on Blonde.

An article I read, oh, about an hour or so ago on the very good music website Stereogum posits that this might be the album which finally puts a dent in the heretofore unshakable critical reputation of Radiohead (which I'd argue has been shaken a few times previous, but whatever). After all, In Rainbows had both the fantastic "pay what you want" story AND gorgeous, guitar-driven (very important, that) music, whereas this album has a weird newspaper being released concurrently with music that, well, is not quite as good as In Rainbows, or at least as immediate in an emotional sense. Judging by reviews on Metacritic, comments on message boards and music sites, and even plain old word of mouth, this might very well be the most divisive album the group's released. And the article above posits that an album like this, one that could be seen as a lateral move at best from a group that's always been considered as forward-thinking as any that's ever existed (which is funny, since their music is so often steeped in what's going on at that time in the music worlds they inhabit and listen to), might be the one where critics finally stop their "well, ain't this great" attitude towards Radiohead, where fans stop blindly accepting their every move as works of genius, and where, just maybe, the emperor might have no clothes.

Does any of this sound a little bit familiar?

If I have any particular issue with the article I've linked to, it would be this - "there's a problem?" And it was with that particular thought, the consideration of what it is that make people stress out so much about what a band chooses to put out (short of a pure gouging of the audience like, I dunno, the artist breathing heavily, any album of new music should generally be considered due diligence on the part of said artist - their fulfilling of both social and record company contracts, as it were) and how it relates to All of Us, that I remembered this. Yes, I am shameless enough to think about articles I've written in the past. But I feel that, in this particular instance, the callback to my own work is warranted. As you may yourself remember, or at least read if you click on the link, I gave Marcus et. al. some stick about what I considered their own selfishness in suggesting that, in any way/shape/form, Dylan belonged to them. That's not to suggest that Dylan's music, in some ways, don't belong to us - after all, he released them into the world, and our collective web of memories and experiences relating to his music gives us at least some license to claim his songs as part of ourselves (what, after all, is this blog if not my version of that?). But the idea that Dylan OWES us anything, or that he needs to keep recording music at all, or (most importantly) that Dylan must continue to define the zeitgeist the way he once had (totally by accident, of course) is painfully naive and absurd - even somebody as admittedly naive as myself knows that.

This, to me, is ultimately the most troubling notion behind the relationship a band has with its fans - the idea that the band, really, owes us anything. Sure, we pay them our hard-earned money, but we always receive something in return - a CD of their music, a ticket to see them perform, a t-shirt, whatever (and, of course, sometimes, we get the music without paying them - although I DID pay $3.00 for In Rainbows on its initial release, so ha!), so we can't really say that we as fans have been done dirt. And as for the music the band chooses to record and release - well, that, of course, is also totally their right and their own prerogative. If they want to record a prog rock opera, or a hyphy album, or their own version of The Basement Tapes, then what exactly is the reason that they should not? Because they recorded The Bends? Please. If you want to call out critics for any perceived complacency in reviewing a band that has delivered for over a decade, you are also within your right. But goodwill is a very powerful thing, and anybody that doubts that need only look at the diminishing returns of Robert De Niro's acting career. We are a forgiving people, so long as the people we're forgiving have already done good by us.

And, inevitably, I find myself thinking of Dylan again, and the position he has occupied for nearly his entire career. Much like Radiohead, who are not so much a band as many separate bands (the one that recorded "High and Dry", the one that recorded "Bloom", the one that recorded "No Surprises", etc., etc.), Bob Dylan is a man that has worn many faces, some of them the faces of incredible music, some of them the faces of horrid music. But we must remember, at the end of the day, that whatever face Radiohead or Bob Dylan chooses to wear is totally at the discretion of Radiohead or Bob Dylan. And if that's not the face you want them to wear...well, it's not a choice you get to make, nor should it be. I'll be there for Radiohead's next album, as expectant as I was for the last, and I will be there for Dylan's next album as well. And if Dylan chooses to release a hyphy album, I imagine we'll all love him just the same. I hope.

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EBDS Special Post #6: Tour '74

The amusing thing about Bob Dylan's Tour '74 is that, because of the simply sprawling range of Dylan's entire career, a small offshoot of said career (if you can call something of Tour '74's magnitude "small" - after all, the tour grossed over $90 million, nearly twelve million people applied for the half million seats available, and it was widely considered the biggest tour in rock's nascent history up to that point) is pretty much forgotten by the public at large while still debated and argued over in the Dylan community to this day. And with good reason - the sound that Dylan and his gang of hoodlums cooked up over the two-month jaunt across America is the kind that makes you feel like you have to choose sides, both in its gutbucket rock electric form and the strum-and-snarl acoustic form Dylan adopted for the tour. And from that sound, and its evolution on stage, comes any number of arguments: "Is Before the Flood any good?" "Did Dylan do his fans a disservice with his shouty acoustic style?" "Did The Band do Dylan's fans a disservice with their shouty rock style?" "Why are the first shows on the tour so much better?" "Does the lack of variety kill the shows?" And so on, and so forth.

As any of you that have read my blog all the way through may or may not know, I have a very special place in my heart for Tour '74, as my interest in the tour dovetailed rather neatly with my exponentially increasing interest with Dylan himself, during my college years when I had enough disposable income and free time on my hands to dive as deep into Bob's extensive unofficial catalog as I cared to. And during that time, having familiarized myself with his more well-known albums and Live 1966 and all the truly essential stuff, I found myself falling more and more in love with Before the Flood and with the bootlegs I was amassing of that 1974 tour. What really grabbed me was what Dylan later complained about when asked about the tour - that raw power they were injecting into the music, any trace of nuance being washed away in a sea of synthesizers, ferocious guitars, and Bob & Co. blaring through every song at full throat (IMO, 74-76 Bob was in his best voice; too bad he overextended himself in 1978 and basically ruined it forever). I even put the more maligned acoustic tunes on repeat, not bothered by how they didn't sound like they did 8 years previous (let alone 10 years previous) and not concerned by the idea that Bob was rushing through them, because the speeding up of tracks usually taken at a measured (and in 1966, soporific) pace gave them a brand new style of their own.

And that, to me, is what Tour '74 was all about - the idea of the brand new applied to Bob's music, in this case a revved-up style that was all about pure energy and possibly not much else. It wasn't like Dylan and The Band didn't know what they were doing or didn't have a plan with where they were taking their music; the thirteen-plus hour rehearsals cranked out in November 1973 kind of speak against that, unless you assume they were like the Get Back rehearsals with all the faffing about that entailed. And while the performances definitely got tighter, more anodyne, and more reliant on the energy that came from being on stage (as well as from other things, of course), the show Dylan played in Chicago is recognizably performed by the same group as the one that recorded Before the Flood in LA, with perhaps a few more bum notes and some more obscure songs thrown in. Dylan and The Band wanted the songs to sound this way, and whether or not you want the songs to sound that way, you have to respect them for making something new out of something old.

And that, in a sense, is the biggest problem most people (including myself, to a certain degree) have with Tour '74 - in the end, Dylan and The Band only seemed interested in making something new out of something old. Only a cursory glance through the tour setlists shows a group increasingly falling back on Bob's mid-60s repertoire, and even more increasingly falling back on Bob's hits, to the point where the only songs Bob performed that he'd written after the crash were "All Along The Watchtower", "Lay Lady Lay", "Knockin' On Heaven's Door", and "Forever Young". All the Planet Waves songs ("Something There Is About You" was abruptly yanked for "Highway 61 Revisited", which isn't too bad because their version of "Highway 61 Revisited" absolutely smokes, but still), any of the rarer tracks ("Hero Blues", "Girl of the North Country", "I Don't Believe You"), and anything the audience might not be extremely familiar with (which wasn't much, if the appreciative reaction to the one-time-only performance of "As I Went Out One Morning" is any indication) was simply chucked over the wayside, in favor of a Greatest Hits performance that smacks of the cynicism that would preclude any number of tours after this that owed a debt to Tour '74 in so many different ways. And that, in a sense, is Dylan's biggest crime on this tour - unsure of himself and of his audience's capacity to embrace him if he didn't just come out and act as a jukebox wearing sunglasses every night, he forsook the adventurous side that had made him so famous to begin with (and which he'd more or less embrace in his older years, as his NET setlists tend to bear out, one too many performances of "Nettie Moore" nonwithstanding).

And that's what makes the legacy of Tour '74 so muddled - that increasing retreat into the protective cocoon of his first musical peak, even as the second peak was just around the corner. Basically everything good and bad about the whole tour - the massive applause line of "It's Alright Ma", proof positive of Dylan's continued relevance and cheap crowd pop all in one; the revelatory rarities like "Fourth Time Around" and "Mama, You Been On My Mind"; the trench-soldiers-going-over-the-top bravado of BTF's version of "Like A Rolling Stone"; and the weary realization that, nope, we never will get to hear this ensemble doing "Going, Going, Gone" or "Tonight I'm Staying Here With You" or even an unusual one like "Queen Jane Approximately" - springs from that fact, that even with all the money banked and the crowds uniformly adoring, Dylan and The Band voluntarily chained themselves to the past in order to not have to deal with their uncertain futures (The Band were past their commercial and creative peak, Dylan you all know about). But that doesn't mean that they didn't make some magic on stage, or that the '74 rendition of "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" doesn't have some fire and spark to help offset the original's weary emotion, or that their versions of "Most Likely You Go Your Way" and "Ballad of Hollis Brown" aren't essential (in the latter's case, I'd say more so than the original). Tour '74, for all its backward-looking issues, still has importance musically, and ultimately career-wise as well, as the Dylan that emerged from 1974 was vastly different from the one that entered it. As we shall soon find out.

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Bob Dylan Song #318: Mama, You Been On My Mind

Okay, so.

I had a special post all typed out, I really did. I was going to do one of those "author interviewing himself" conceits, where I asked myself these pertinent questions about where I was in my life, why I'd put this blog on its longest hiatus yet, and whether or not I was really prepared to see this through to the bitter end (I mean, look at that post title - I'm not even halfway to reaching THIS song, let alone the last one!). But, to be quite honest, nobody needs to read all that, especially in light of all the emotional gushing that will soon commence in the post proper. So I've instead condensed said special post into three questions and answers:

Q. Where the hell were you?
A. It's like John Lennon said - "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans."

Q. Why this song?
A. Because the time to write about it was right, for me at least. Normal chronological order will resume after this post - I just wanted to get this out of my system. If this somehow seems like a cheat, I apologize. I fully acknowledge that this post is the rare one that's more for me than anybody else.

Q. Will you continue this project?
A. Yes. I don't know how regular I'll keep things, but I will do my level best to maintain at least some sort of schedule. That anybody reads this at all is amazing, and it's at the point now that I want people to keep reading and to look forward to what I do. It means more than you could ever know, believe me.

And so back I go into the maelstrom. Just a heads up - this gets into some REALLY emo shit. If you're not prepared or that sort of thing doesn't suit you, I suggest you come back later in the week. Trust me.

Second heads up: this baby is LONG. Again, don't say I didn't warn you.

A FEW SELECTIONS FROM A LONGER ESSAY ABOUT BOB DYLAN'S "MAMA, YOU BEEN ON MY MIND"

I once had a girl

Or should I say

She once had me...

- John Lennon

(1)

When people (up to and including myself) talk about how Bob Dylan's lyrics are "poetic", I feel like the vast majority of those people are referring to Dylan's more out-there lyrics, stuff like "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Gates of Eden" that push the envelope of what was previously considered to be acceptable things to sing while simultaneously strumming a guitar and/or being backed by a band of musicians. Which makes sense - it's not so much that Dylan was doing things like messing with time signatures or fiddling with the verse/chorus/verse dynamic (his deeply ingrained musical instincts probably would not let him do this), as much as he was pushing the boundaries of what you can do with words, how you can arrange them in ways that impact others emotionally without directly attempting to ENGAGE them emotionally, and of the subject matter that people can sing about. And I think that many of us engage poetry in that same way; we've grown accustomed enough to the works of Eliot and Plath and Ginsburg and Sexton and so on that we think of poetry not as something straightforward, but as a way to push the boundaries of both the spoken and written English language, something that takes us to the further edges of what we can do with that language, for better or for worse.

I bring all this up not because I believe I'm telling you all something you don't already know, but because it's elucidating for me in general to think about things in other ways. After all, not all poetry bothers to push the envelope, or to do something entirely different from tradition, and yet that poetry can still hit on an emotional level. Think of something like "Dulce et Decorum Est", or "To His Coy Mistress", neither of which go crazy with the metaphors or fuck with accepted rhyme schemes or anything, but both hit on an emotional level while bending words into something beautiful (even in the ugliness of World War I, in the former's case). And I'm sure it doesn't REALLY bear stating, but you can apply that to Dylan's less wildly imaginative lyrics, songs from his acoustic era or from something like Planet Waves, where Dylan can keep himself firmly grounded in the language that you and I speak every day (or, sometimes, wish we could) and still make us go "wow, that was something else".

And, to me, the quintessential example of Dylan's genius in this regard is the first verse of "Mama, You Been On My Mind", one of the greatest songs he wrote and never released on an album. I'm reprinting it here simply because I cannot help myself:

Perhaps it's the color of the sun cut flat

And covering these crossroads I'm standing at,

Or maybe it's the weather, or something like that,

But mama, you been on my mind.

To me, at least, I cannot think of any better way to try and explain what it is about love that cannot be explained, and to put something tangible on a feeling that, so very often, eludes our grasp. We all know that often something as innocuous as a song on the radio or seeing an ad for a restaurant can bring back memories both good and bad (I had one such moment last night, as a matter of fact - damn you, Van Morrison!), but we can find ourselves forgetting that sometimes it doesn't even take THAT much to trigger our memory banks, and sometimes we find ourselves drifting back to past beloved entirely of our own accord, almost like an acid flashback or something. Dylan manages to capture both sides in four truly amazing lines, reaching both to the specificity of an image that reminded him of somebody, and to the generality of a mood that hits you when you don't expect it. It's really something that I cannot fathom.

I had a conversation once with one of my friends, in which I was attempting to describe why exactly it was I felt a certain way about somebody else. I said that I could make a list of all the reasons why I was enamored, from the more obvious physical aspects to the way that she engaged me on an intellectual level to the fact that she had a fondness for things that I, too, had a fondness for. But, ultimately, the reason I felt that certain way about that somebody was because I simply did. I mean, that sort of thing is more animal than human to begin with (which I'll get to in greater detail), and on a gut level it really just comes down to synapses firing in your brain in ways you could not possibly imagine. But, us being who we are, we find ways to justify those firings of our synapses, and we turn what would be simple nature into something deeper and more meaningful. As I'd written in a previous post, the feeling tends to come before the rational; first comes love, then you sort of have to fill in the blanks. But filling in the blanks makes us who we are.

What I love about that first verse of "Mama, You Been On My Mind" is that Bob never bothers to delve into that conundrum at all. Of course, given the constraints of songwriting and such there just wasn't enough room anyway, but it's still impressive to see Bob condense such a markedly difficult emotional issue into a short gut punch of a verse and then immediately move on, secure in the knowledge that we all know what he's talking about. And we all do, of course - much like that feeling you can only express in French where you could've sworn something happening to you has already happened, we all know what it means to remember something from our past with both a meaningful prompt and with no prompt at all. We all just can't sum that feeling up the same way Bob can.

(2)

If I were to be brutally honest with myself, one of my great failings as a human being is that I have the potential to be an utterly selfish prick on an emotional level; you know, the old "look out for number 1" thing. I can be totally willing to sever a personal relationship (friend or otherwise) with a female at the drop of a hat if I think that relationship is causing me hurt, and I'm pretty sure I could do it without too much effort. And, in the same honest vein, one of the things that is pretty good about me as a human being is that I am aware of that selfishness potential, and that I deal with it in much the same way that people deal with quarantined viruses. After all, once you've connected with somebody on any meaningful level, even if it is just plain ol' friendship, you have a responsibility for that connection, to maintain it and even try to make it grow, and to cut it in half just because of your own base feelings is a pretty boorish thing to do. It's sad that I need to remember that, but I thank my lucky stars that I can, and that I can put aside my own bullshit to have actual meaningful friendships with the opposite sex. It would be a real black mark on me as a person if I couldn't.

One of the hardest things to deal with is when somebody you have feelings for harbors those same feelings for somebody else. This, again, is not something I think you all don't know. What is even harder is to feel, if not happiness for that person, at least a sort of Zen acceptance, a security that you can dispense with the hurt that that knowledge brings. It, like so much of human personality, is an acquired skill; still, having that skill is almost astonishingly important, if only for our own peace of mind. To be able to wish somebody well is nice; to wish somebody well and actually mean it is some next level shit. I will fully admit that I struggle with that skill on a daily basis (and it's much harder these days), but I'm well aware that the person I'm struggling with would appreciate that I'm even making the effort. If I couldn't, I might as well give up and go live in a cabin in the woods.

When Dylan sings "I don't even mind who you'll be waking with tomorrow", it is hard not to marvel at that moment. It is both the most devastating moment in the song, and somehow the most uplifting at the exact same time. I don't need to really tell you what's devastating about it on one level; I still remember being told by the woman I love that she was moving in with her boyfriend, and what a horrible crushing blow that was for me. And on another level, the one where you've reached that kind of acceptance (or resignation, as the case may be), the line takes on an even more devastating effect. But uplifting? Yes, I truly do believe that. That line, and the sentiment behind that, is a statement from a man that truly believes what he's saying, that does not care that his beloved will be waking up in the bed of somebody else, because she's still part of who he is, no matter what. And that's uplifting in the sense that so often we tend to try to cut the hurt out of us, rather than attempting to understand that hurt and make it work for us. When you lose somebody in that way, a piece of you gets torn out, and it's all too easy to let that piece disappear without ever trying to replace it. It really is better to keep that piece where it is, if only for the memory.

Not to immediately bring things back down, but I've often thought about the things that separate us human beings from the rest of the animal kingdom, usually because there's far more crossover than we would like to admit. Even love, our greatest attribute as a human race in so many ways, can be explained on a molecular level, where the general idea of "attraction" has a lot more to do with our hormones than with rational thought. I mean, it makes sense, of course; even if you discount all the scientific crap, just think about how often relationships tend to fail. We all can understand the idea behind wanting to knock it out with somebody else - it's when you get to shit like meeting parents and thinking about looking for an apartment together that things become murky and complicated. Fill in the blanks, remember. We don't always do the best job of that. And that's why love isn't always the greatest thing (as Damon Albarn once sang); the actual emotion itself can be found amongst jungle cats or what have you, and they don't have to worry about how two sets of friends would interact at a bar on Friday night.

So, to me at least (and perhaps this is just my own slightly jaundiced view at work), what really does separate us from animals and makes us something special is that we can be hurt by love. After all, you never hear of an orangutan crying and listening to Morrissey records, or of a house cat trying to win another house cat back by playing "In Your Eyes" on a boom box, and so on. I know how silly that sounds, and I even kinda did that on purpose, but the general idea is that we are the only race for whom the romantic-based rejection of another member of our species hurts us on an emotional level, one that we have to intellectualize in order to properly deal with it. We can intellectualize love, of course, but on a gut level we know why it exists and how it really works. I don't think we have that same gut level with rejection; trying to make sense of it the best way that we can, whether through hurt, rage, acceptance, and so on, is an entirely different being altogether. In a way, it's even a beautiful thing - the fact that we cannot simply dismiss a mate walking away, that we have to put things together in our mind and compartmentalize it in order to function at all, says a lot about just how important that really is to us. It's an idea that always strikes me as sad, and as profound. Funny how those two words so often mean the same thing.

(3)

Why don't we ever hear more about who Bob's singing about in this song? So much about Dylanology (of which I grudgingly include this humble little blog) centers around the various women that have populated Bob's life and how he has worked his relationships (both the good and the bad times - more bad than good, rather unfortunately) into his songs. Joan Baez, Suze Rotolo, Sara Lowndes - we always find ourselves reading the tea leaves, looking for those faces, almost to the point where you need to stop and just ask yourself, well, why? Why do we bother? Is there really a point? And, as a corollary, how has a song THIS nakedly emotional and full of heartache slipped through the cracks?

Creativity, like so much of our human experience, is an ethereal concept. I mean, that's pretty obvious (nobody's selling "creativity juice" at the local supermarket), but it's also something that we feel like we need to deal with, even though we don't know how. William Goldman, as great a screenwriter that has ever lived, stated that he has no idea where his creativity comes from, but he lived in a never-ending fear of simply waking up one day to find that his spark has deserted him forever, never to return. And that's somebody who legitimately has/had that spark, who has written some of the most enduring motion pictures ever made. For the rest of us average punters, the idea of creativity on that level is even harder to fathom, like attempting to wrap our minds around Foucault's Pendulum without the requisite Ph.D. in astrophysics. Creativity, in that sense, is almost certainly something legitimately scary, a mutant power that taunts us even while astonishing us when others harness that power to create amazing works of art. Like a lot of the Big Concepts, it is something that totally eludes us.

And that, I think, plays into why people so often look for Dylan's paramours in his music. The concept of the muse, as old as it is, is one that a lot of us can wrap our minds around. Hell, the whole concept was almost certainly conceived so that the ancient Greeks and Romans COULD wrap their minds around something as astounding as creativity, an otherworldly explanation for why people could write poems or music or whatever that fit in quite well with the whole "multitude of gods" thing they had going on. But even today the idea still has its place, mainly because its base concept is something we can get behind. Surely it was the love/hate of another woman that drove Dylan to write those masterpieces, and nothing else, right? I mean, it's kind of a reductive concept, no matter how true it is (if "Ballad in Plain D" is NOT about Suze Rotolo, then Bob has some serious explaining to do), but it's still one that's easy for us to grasp. It's annoying as hell, but I can understand it.

Which, I suppose, brings us back to this song, and why nobody has made an effort (or maybe they have, and I've willfully ignored it) to tie "Mama, You Been On My Mind" to any number of women that have been in Bob's life. I mean, it's not like you couldn't make a very easy case, given the time frame the song was written in and so forth. But I kind of like the fact that the song has sort of been left untouched in that sense, that it's not scrutinized in the same way that some of Dylan's more famous songs have been, and that it's mainly been left to stand on its own considerable artistic and lyrical merits. It lends the song a little additional weight that occasionally gets denied from the Webermans of the world trying to read between the lines. For a song this good, that's incredibly appreciated.

(4)

I've said that "Like A Rolling Stone" is my favorite Bob Dylan song, maybe my favorite song by anybody ever, and that's not going to change. But if I had to choose the song that meant the most to me on an emotional level, the song that's nearest and dearest to my heart without bringing in any intellectual considerations, it would surely be "Mama, You Been On My Mind". I mean, I love the song on an intellectual level, of course - it's as perfect an example as you could ask for of purely economical songwriting, of communicating an astounding amount of deep feelings and ideas on a personal scale, performed in Bob's straightforward manner that manages to suggest the well of emotions the song carries without needing to dip into it just to score a few extra points. A lot of Young Bob's genius is summed up in this song, and that's something I can truly appreciate.

But, as you might expect, it's what Bob is actually singing about that gives the song such heft in my eyes. Speaking as somebody that was in love with somebody for a VERY long time, I can't help but identify with every word Bob sings in this song; memories being brought forth just by the weather or something, asking her not to be upset by my frame of mind, not minding who she wakes up with, and that final stinging verse where Bob asks the mystery woman of the song if she could ever see herself as clearly and as vividly as he, himself, carrying her memory deep inside of his cerebral cortex. It's such a powerful moment, and one so evocative of what it means to not just love somebody, but to care about them as well - this notion that we can see them better than they can see themselves. There is great truth to that; why else would we talk about our problems with our friends than because we need a voice that's not our own to help us puzzle out what's going on with us? And it's moments like that where I find myself utterly swept away, hearing somebody explain the pain and emotion I'm feeling better than I ever could. Everything about what art is, and why art matters, crystallizes for me when I hear this song.

I don't presume to suggest that I know why art matters, for the record; I'm simply not that smart. I will say, though, that I have an idea. The concept of the muse, that I briefly touched on before, can seem quite silly on its face, but it does serve an important purpose - it helps us make tangible something that is rather clearly not. And for people in general, just the idea that we can make SOMETHING that we have trouble understanding a little more easy to wrap our minds around is truly important indeed. I mean, just take a second and think about the nature of the cosmos, and infinity, and what that actually means. Thinking about that without a shit ton of postgraduate work, a massively high IQ, or a pharmacy's worth of illegal drugs is nigh impossible. But we've all been to a planetarium, we've all seen the stars in the sky and heard about white dwarfs and black holes and sound bouncing out millions of miles away and so on, and that sort of helps us understand a little better and come a little closer to touching what seems so very far away. We need that in our lives.

And I think we can agree that the whole idea of art, at least on a level beyond "I want to watch guns go boom and cars explode" or "I'm going to read this romantic novel about forbidden love with the guy with a six-pack of abs on the cover", is to help us understand what we cannot, or what we find hard to deal with. Why do you think there are so many damn songs about us getting our hearts broken? Because we all know what it's like to get our hearts broken, and we so very rarely know how to deal with an emotion so powerful and gut-wrenching. And it's that knowledge that allows us to identify with music, or books, or movies; the knowledge that, even if they don't specifically know why we're hurting or why we're happy or angry or whatever emotion it is we're feeling, the artists we love can channel THEIR own hurt or anger or happiness into what they create, and that gets filtered to us on our own levels. It's probably a stretch to say that artists understand us, but there is enough universality in who we are as humans that artists, in attempting to understand themselves and what they're feeling, tend to land on our issues as well. It's rather convenient how that works.

We all have moments in our lives where we feel that we're all alone, and that nobody understands us and what we're going through. That's often nonsense (there's only so much we as humans can go through, really), and yet it's such a strong feeling, simply because nobody ever has the same experience in the same way. To have something in my life that helps sort out that feeling, whether it's a good friend or a great book, is impossible to overstate in terms of importance. And, at the most basic level, I'm happy that I can cue up this song, hear a much younger Bob Dylan (a man younger than I am now when he recorded the track) singing about a mindset I know all too well, and say to myself "you know...Bob Dylan understands".

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EBDS Special Post #4: The Isle of Wight Festival, 1969

Special note: this post also encompasses Bob Dylan Songs #136, #141, #145, and #146. Four songs knocked off the massive mountain that is Self Portrait. Hooray!

PS: This sucker is LONG. Just a heads up.

And there we were, all in one place...a generation, lost in space...

...and freakin' Bob Dylan passed up our massive festival of peace and love to perform on a tiny ass island in freakin' GREAT BRITAIN two weeks later!

We've heard about why Bob Dylan chose to perform his first live show in three years, his first appearance in front of a concert audience since his self-imposed hiatus, and yet the very fact that Dylan stepped on that stage in Wootton with The Band is something of a mystery. Wikipedia tells us that Dylan was swayed by playing in the area of England where Lord Alfred Tennyson penned his immortal prose, and as a man of artistic and pretentious leanings, that seems easy to believe. Dylan's also made no secret of his disdain of the hippie community and his reticence to perform at a show basically in his backyard (in fact, it's been intimated that the site was chosen with Dylan in mind), and that almost certainly played a part in the proceedings as well. But that still only begins to tell the tale of Dylan's Isle of Wight '69 concert, a part of his mighty career that has been almost pushed into the shadows, a massive bit of history rendered practically obscure today.

About 150,000 people were there on that night in August when Dylan stepped back on the stage, performed a rather perfunctory set (the bootleg length comes out to less than one hour - remember, he was headlining this baby), and immediately retreated once again for five more years. That retreat might seem obvious in retrospect, given how the performance was received and is regarded these days (along with Dylan, perhaps, still in "family first" mode and only doing this performance with the strict agreement that it'd be a one-off), but anecdotal evidence suggests that Dylan was pleased with his performance after the show. Not everybody in that audience shared his opinion - there was booing when Dylan ended his set so early, and as I've stated, reviews of the show even immediately after were mixed at best. Still, there had been plans of an official live release (which is why Self Portrait has a few tracks from the show - might as well flesh that baby out with some stuff from the vaults), and it's hard to imagine The Band would've said no to a full-scale tour afterwards, even in the Nashville Skyline style of that particular show. It certainly would've been interesting to see how Dylan would've handled the rest of his catalog in that format.

Instead, no tour ever materialized, Dylan moved away from the country format for good, and we have only a fascinating one-off to make us wonder what might have been. So, forty years after the fact, I think it's worth popping on the show, giving it a thorough listening, and finding out for certain just what the 1969 Isle of Wight show was all about. Who knows, maybe a few of those myths and legends might be proven false...or absolutely true. All comments are made more or less in real time - I haven't heard this concert in years, and am listening more or less blind for a fuller experience. Here goes nothing...

TRACK 1: SHE BELONGS TO ME (BOB DYLAN SONG #146)

0:00 - Applause. You can't really tell how big the crowd is.

0:22 - The song immediately kicks off, much more up-tempo than usual. Dylan's country voice is right there, even more jarring than on Nashville Skyline, by dint of Dylan singing a non-country song. For whatever reason, the song starts with the 2nd verse - either that's just how Bob wanted it, or the tape had a cut there. Either way, a weird beginning to the show.

0:53 - Not that I'm some sort of voice coach, but Dylan's pitch is just all over the place. That's not surprising, given that it's hard to unlearn years of singing songs in a particular way, but worth noting.

1:29 - An off-mic shout leads into a Robertson solo. The Band have acquitted themselves nicely to this style (no big surprise), with Helm's drumming and the Manuel/Hudson combo standing out in particular. All the same, does anybody really think of "She Belongs To Me" as the type of song suitable for a good ol' down home jamboree?

2:15 - Levon Helm's shouting always puts a smile on my face.

2:18 - An indicator of the kind of mood the gang's in tonight - somebody yells "one more time!" and Dylan/Helm repeat the "for Halloween buy her a trumpet" refrain. A very showmanlike move, wouldn't you say?

2:37 - Amidst audience applause, various Band members say "nice to be here", then Dylan steps up with his only bit of interaction with the crowd - "Thank you very much. Nice to be here. Sure is." It's no "I'm wearing my Bob Dylan mask" or "this song's dedicated to the Taj Mahal", I can tell you that much.

TRACK 2: I THREW IT ALL AWAY

0:09 - A smattering of appreciative applause as Dylan sings the first lines. What are you people doing? This is a collection of trite cliches! Stop applauding!

0:37 - Interesting - Dylan repeats "I threw it all away" at the end of the chorus and the band plays a quick little extra bar of music. The tapers give an odd little chuckle at this.

1:28 - No repeat of the above moment after the 2nd chorus. Even more interesting.

1:50 - Dylan's being really experimental with his vocal patterns in the middle eight, messing around with the tempo of his singing and sort of playing around with what key he's in.

2:16 - It should be mentioned that this song is being played at a slower tempo than on the album, allowing for a more dramatic performance all around. Robertson's guitar is being deployed all over the place, most notably in the final ending sequence, where the more gentle acoustic (or mandolin?) being played is replaced by some choice soloing. It sounds pretty darn good, all in all.

TRACK 3: MAGGIE'S FARM

0:13 - After a quiet acoustic strumming from Bob (who, I think, had an acoustic all performance long, which is another noteworthy fact in and of itself), the song kicks to life in skronky bar-band fashion. For those of you that ever heard the Woody Guthrie tribute performance, that's basically how this song sounds - it would have fit in perfectly next to "Grand Coulee Dam".

0:41 - A nice little touch - after Dylan sings an iteration of the "I ain't gonna work with Maggie's (x) no more" line, Helm and Danko join in with "no more, no more" refrains. It would've sounded terrible in any other arrangement, but here it works really great. One wishes this had shown up on Self Portrait instead of...well, we'll get to that later.

2:08 - Dylan forgets a line in the "Maggie's ma" verse. Unfortunately, we'll get to THAT later as well.

2:27 - Here's where the song really roars to life - Hudson's organ plays with circus-like intensity, and Robertson matches him step for step. I have to say, The Band can really bring it when they want to.

3:16 - This is one of my favorite performances of the whole show, and one reason to me why this iteration of Dylan would've made for a great tour. We all loved those Woody Guthrie tribute performances, right? How much different are those than what Dylan's doing here? If the '68 Dylan/Band duo would've been great out on tour, wouldn't this version have done just as well?

4:00 - Dylan tunes up the acoustic for a short solo set.

TRACK 4: WILD MOUNTAIN THYME

0:00 - Eric Clapton had some very nice things to say about this show, saying that it was fantastic and "you'd have to be a musician to understand it"; I'm not sure if that's true, but Clapton was a noted fan of this era, so who knows. One thing's for sure - this performance gives a lot of truth to that statement.

0:20 - I just adore the way Dylan sings "wild mountain thyme" here. This is by far Dylan's best vocal performance of the show; hell, I'd say it's one of his best vocal performances of the 60s. He does this song absolute justice.

1:20 - This performance is proof positive, if you ever needed it, that Dylan has great respect for his predecessors. We all know how much Dylan revered ancient folk music, but never really got to hear it before (unless you count him ripping off all those melodies, of course). Well, here he is, performing an old English folk tune, singing it as respectfully as he can, turning in a gorgeous rendition.

2:33 - Very appreciative applause. Dylan threw them a bone, and they loved it.

TRACK 5: IT AIN'T ME, BABE

0:52 - Dylan plays around with the arrangement here - holding a note or two longer than usual, throwing in a few odd chords after the "you say you're looking for someone" part. Maybe it's just me, but it doesn't quite sound right. Sometimes experimentation doesn't always work for the best.

2:06 - One of the main criticisms of this show is that Dylan's just mailing it in, that he sounds sleepy at times and downright lazy and preoccupied at others. While I think that's more a by-product of Dylan's country style and something that a) isn't really that bad and b) would've been worked out with more performances in this vein, I suppose it's this performance that could lend that criticism credence; it's a little disappointing to hear Dylan flatten out his delivery after the last track. He's not singing badly, by any means - but there's no real spark here.

2:13 - Dylan, almost like he forgot the chords, plays some weird bit of business on the acoustic. What was that about?

3:05 - A funny ending, as Dylan sings "it ain't me you're looking...for" and stretches that last word out. Maybe I'm wrong, but it kinda sounds like a vaudeville moment, something you might hear at the end of a barbershop quartet performance. I'm thinking of Bugs Bunny singing "good evening, friends" by way of reference.

TRACK 6: TO RAMONA

0:05 - More applause for this song - but how strange is it that this song made the setlist? Don't get me wrong, I like the song just fine, but it's sort of like when "Spanish Harlem Incident" showed up at the Philharmonic Hall show. An idiosyncratic choice, to say the least; then again, would you expect anything less?

1:10 - It's kind of gratifying to hear Dylan bringing a manner of vocal tics to this performance, as though he's trying to make this version of the song truly his. If you get my meaning.

2:19 - And as this song ends, without any hesitation Bob leads right into...

TRACK 7: MR. TAMBOURINE MAN

0:00 - ...which gets the most recognition applause so far.

1:10 - Dylan more or less plays this song the same way he would when he'd air it out on Tour '74, playing the song up-tempo and letting the words cascade so quickly that they almost trip over each other. Whether you like that is entirely up to you; I'm still marveling over Country Dylan having these words coming out of his mouth.

2:05 - A quick word about Dylan's sartorial splendor - for this show he came out wearing a cream suit (not unlike the Armani beauties the '96 Liverpool side sported before the FA Cup, for those readers across the pond), with a thin beard and short hair. A pretty cool ensemble, to be sure, but probably not what anybody was expecting or hoping for. No wonder so many think of this show as a letdown - from the moment he walked out, he was setting everybody up for that.

3:03 - The song ends here. I'll repeat - "Mr. Tambourine Man" ends here. The Band now comes back out for the rest of the set.

TRACK 8: I DREAMED I SAW ST. AUGUSTINE

0:21 - Dylan plays this song slowed down, giving Robertson another venue to spin off some laid-back guitar work. We get several feedback squalls - I wonder if the, um, unique microphone setup had anything to do with that?

2:10 - In lieu of talking about a fine, but otherwise unmemorable performance, I'd like to point out just how remarkably eclectic Dylan's setlist was this night. Sure, we got a smattering of the big hits, but take a look - five songs from his last two albums (compared to six from the Electric Trilogy - and one of those was "Mr. Tambourine Man"!), nothing from before 1964, a Basement Tapes song nobody's heard yet, a folk cover, "Minstrel Boy" (!), more songs from Another Side than Blonde on Blonde, and so on. For a one-off show, Dylan was not afraid to dig into his catalog and play what he wanted to, rather than what he felt should be played. Contrast that with just about every other tour since (including Tour '74, which basically took the opposite tack of this show). Perhaps knowing it was just the one show gave Dylan the sense of freedom to experiment this way.

TRACK 9: LAY LADY LAY

0:12 - One of the big disappointments of the concert; the gentle, light-hearted version on the album is replaced with something more leaden and ham-handed. I can't really put my finger on why - Helm does a good job replicating the quick-step drum arrangement, and the organ's out in fine force. But for whatever reason, what sounded joyous on record sounds thudding here. Maybe it's the chorus that hurts it; everyone opts for too much noise, instead of a lighter touch, and the song suffers for it.

2:10 - Case in point - the middle eight. Dylan almost howls his way through the lines, and the Band, all banged-out bar chords and lumbering rhythm, gives the song no sympathy at all. It's kinda hard to hear. The burst of feedback at 2:19 is no help, either.

3:21 - The song finally staggers to a close. Not a good outing; the '74 versions, while nothing like the single, are polished enough to actually sound better.

TRACK 10: HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED

0:05 - Already a surprise - Robertson cranks out wicked solos to replace the police whistle from the original version. The Band's coming out swinging here, that's for sure.

1:12 - This is where the "bar band" style fits in best; Dylan somehow manages to adopt his croon into something more vicious, Helm & Co. roar out the last line of every verse with gusto, and the group cranks out a particular acidic brand of rock here. This is about as much fun as this concert got.

2:31 - Hudson's organ really gets a chance to shine here. A few more hip-swingers like this, and we'd have a lot less complaints about this show.

TRACK 11: ONE TOO MANY MORNINGS

0:05 - About as mellow an arrangement as we ever got for this song; none of the slow-boiling energy of the 1966 version, none of the quiet longing of the album version. Dylan draws out the "thousand miles behind" line in a way he never would again. Not much to say about this version - it's not bad, but not great.

2:00 - While we're here, I'd like to mention that 3 of the 4 Beatles were actually in the audience; Paul, who was definitely persona non grata after the Get Back debacle, was not there. Harrison waxed rhapsodic about the performance; John's more measured quote has entered legend - "he gave a reasonable, if slightly flat performance; still, people were acting like they were expecting Jesus, or Godot, to appear". I think that's still the prevalent view regarding this show - the expectations were way too high to ever be met, and Dylan going the country route wasn't going to help matters. Again, it's worth wondering if a full tour of this type of show would have helped matters, or if Dylan hadn't chosen such a massive venue to try this style of music. Alas, we'll never know.

TRACK 12: I PITY THE POOR IMMIGRANT

0:00 - If you're still reading this, congrats.

0:01 - The song starts mid-line, which is probably just a terrible edit. It sounds like somebody might be playing an accordian; perhaps it's actually an organ with a different tone. Either way, it sounds really good in the context of the song.

0:58 - Robertson plays a type of solo here that sounds like the rippling notes he'd use for the Tour '74 "LARS" solo, and will do the same later. Kind of interesting.

1:35 - Just a note from the video - look at how Dylan's playing his guitar. Is he even making contact with the strings?

2:00 - Aside from the group stirring to life during the choruses, this is a rather lugubrious reading of this song. Considering how late it was when Dylan stepped on stage (it went from August 31st to September 1st as the show progressed), couldn't he have whipped out a few quicker numbers? It's not like The Band wouldn't have been suitable for it...

TRACK 13: LIKE A ROLLING STONE (BOB DYLAN SONG #136)

0:01 - Yes, the peak moment of the show, when Bob busts out his big hit (and why it didn't close, I'll never understand). So how does this version stack up to what everybody had to have been thinking about - either the 1966 version or the original? Read on?

0:34 - Bob blows the "you used to laugh about" line. Not a good sign.

0:48 - The backup vocals sound out of place; strange, since they sounded fine in '74, but they definitely do here. The arrangement sounds close to the single version, although the mid-tempo trot is definitely different, and The Band sound like they've only had perfunctory rehearsal (which they may very well have had). The "bar band" thing works for fun rockers, not for majestic pieces of work like this one.

2:04 - Another blown line. Jesus, Bob, it's "LIKE A ROLLING STONE", for Pete's sake!

3:05 - And now we skip the "you never turn around to see the frowns" verse. I mean, is he TRYING to annoy the crowd at this point? At least he doesn't blow any more lines here.

3:47 - Here's an odd moment - Dylan sings the word "refuse" and sounds almost exactly like Van Morrison. Hmm.

4:53 - And that's it. Not a total travesty, but certainly not worthy of inclusion on any album, even one like Self Portrait. You'd have thought rehearsals would've made the performance less ramshackle and allowed Bob to remember all the lines, but apparently not. I feel vaguely dirty.

4:56 - This was the end of the first set, right? That, at least, would make some sense.

TRACK 14: I'LL BE YOUR BABY TONIGHT

0:14 - Well, if Bob & Co. wanted to wash the bad taste out of everyone's mouth, they do a darn good job with this version. The backup versions now sound more fun than misplaced, the mid-tempo arrangement suits the song perfectly, and Dylan's country vocal is maybe what the song should have had all along. The perfect song for all the hippies in the audience to discreetly light up a doob.

1:25 - Dylan and Helm sound like they've having way too much fun with the "bring that bottle over here" line. That put a smile on my face.

2:46 - As the song wraps up, it's worth wondering how more Nashville Skyline songs would've been received. Would the reputation of this show have dipped further? Or would more people have appreciated hearing the songs in a live context that would've allowed them to stand out? It's interesting to ponder.

TRACK 15: QUINN THE ESKIMO (THE MIGHTY QUINN) (BOB DYLAN SONG #141)

0:01 - Everybody comes charging out, guns blazing. I've gone on record saying this version is my favorite "Mighty Quinn" out there, and I stand by it. The low-key original has a lot to go for it, but what it has is nothing compared to the high-octane performance here.

1:27 - Dylan's "whoa, guitar!" shout before another pointed Robertson solo might be the most emotion he summons throughout the whole show, other than the whole of "Wild Mountain Thyme". By the way, if you never hear this show, I urge you to at least seek that track out. It is a beauty.

2:26 - It really is great that a spot of prime real estate was given to a Basement Tapes track, of all things. Not only is the version fun as heck, but it's a sly wink to the more in-tune cognoscenti in the audience. You have to love that. Of the four songs from this show on Self Portrait, this might be the one I'm most glad made the cut.

TRACK 16: MINSTREL BOY (BOB DYLAN SONG #145)

0:01 - Some really great harmonies on the choruses, I should point out.

0:35 - You wonder who the "Lucky" is that Bob's singing about here; not only is the song called "Minstrel Boy" (like a singer, you know?), but he mentions a "Mighty Mockingbird" and even goes into first person at the end ("...but I'm still on that road"). Was this song written to deliberately tease us poor souls?

2:44 - This is a pretty good song, make no mistake. It has a sweet chord progression, a fantastically sung chorus, and some really interesting lyrics about loneliness and burdens. And somehow, it makes sense that it's on the grab bag that is Self Portrait - the song really wouldn't have fit anywhere else. Too bad it had to be a jewel in a dung heap.

TRACK 17: RAINY DAY WOMEN #12 & 35

0:01 - A definite crowd-pleasing way to end the show; the song cuts off at 1:01 on every version, so I can't really say much more than that. Everybody has a grand ol' time singing the lyrics, the Band rides shotgun behind that now-famous riff, and that's pretty much that.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Talk about a work in progress. You could see that Dylan and The Band hadn't quite figured out what would work and what wouldn't; there was too much emphasis on slow songs, not enough thought into what older songs would work in the country vein, and moments that were outright painful. On the other hand, when things clicked, they really clicked - Dylan proved he could adopt that croon in a different environment, the raucous rockers were energetic and fun, and some of the arrangements were quite inspired. This could have been the start of a very special chapter in Bob's career. Instead, we just have the first chapter of a book never written. Such is life.

Thanks for reading, if you made it to the end. Coming up next - the weird, wild, and not particularly wonderful world of Self Portrait. We'll soon see what stern stuff I'm made of, won't we?

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EBDS Special Post #3: Last Thoughts on Michael Jackson

Author's note: For the purposes of this mini-essay, let's take it as read that the author has a)listened to his fair share of Michael Jackson, just like everyone else, and b)has any number of MJ-related life anecdotes he could share if pressed upon. Those types of articles have been done. This, I hope, is something a little different.

I, like many of you, have read more than his fair share of tributes to Michael Jackson in the two weeks since his untimely passing, and I don't think it's an overstatement to say that you can sort of see the music - his reason for his all-encompassing fame, let us not forget - being shunted aside by discussions both of that head-spinning global fame and the subsequent descent into tragic human cartoon leading up to his death. That's not to say that there haven't been celebrations of his music; we are talking, after all, about a musician who boasts a catalog of chart-topping hits and utterly classic pop songs that place him on the highest echelon of all-time artists. But, in the end, there is really only so much to talk about when it comes to those great songs, whereas any speculation about his sordid private life or the circumstances of his sudden passing generate far more ink with far less effort. There's only so much you can say about how awesome "I Want You Back" is, but when it comes to those molestation accusations, there isn't enough paper in the world - just read all those (admittedly excellent) Vanity Fair articles about him, which could be the foundation for a book all on its own.

In fairness, the flipside of that coin is that there's so much speculation about Jackson's private life because what we know about it (or think we know) is astounding enough to warrant attention. When it comes to writing about his music, though, what is there to say? You can just cue up "I'll Be There" or "Rock With You" and everything that needs to be said is right there in the track, in Jackson's splendid voice (a constant all throughout his career) and in the ebullient production he made sure to surround himself with. The man's discography defies belief - how many bands can boast even ONE #1 single, let alone the slew that Jackson has to his credit? And it isn't the kind of chart-topping success that we'll all be embarrassed of in twenty years, like the inexplicable success of MIMS or something. Not only did Jackson record a staggering array of great songs, but he also has two unimpeachable classics in his repertoire - Off The Wall and Thriller, albums that basically stand as the pinnacle of what pop music can be. And Thriller, in particular, completely redefined what it meant to have a hit album; you could easily argue that Thriller changed the record industry, plain and simple.

And therein lies a huge problem. Much the same way that Jaws and Star Wars changed Hollywood forever by introducing the summer blockbuster (the ramifications of which we're still dealing with today, and not in a good way), Thriller changed the game in terms of how albums were presented to the public, in terms of marketing and consumption, and basically introduced the idea of album as full-blown media event. That the music on the album is top-notch almost seems secondary; let's not forget, though that the music IS top-notch, and all those records didn't move on hype and fancy-schmancy videos alone. Still, the public would forever brand Jackson as the ageless goose laying golden 45-shaped eggs (well, until they branded him as something entirely different), and that would be the image that would pursue and (to some degree) haunt Jackson for the rest of his life.

There's a tragedy, and some irony, to this - Jackson, by virtue of recording the most successful album any person has ever recorded, was trapped by that success, encased much the same way that Han Solo would be encased in carbonite in the second Star Wars movie. Now, I'm not going to suggest that Jackson ever had a plan to branch out in different directions, that he would ever (ahem) record a country album, or that his brand of synthetic R&B/pop/disco/ballads/etc. was ever going to change before Thriller rendered that option moot. What I am saying is that Thriller DID render that option moot, and Jackson knew it. Every album, from there on out, started to resemble what happens when you Xerox a Xerox - it may be close to the original, but it's not the original. Take a look at the tracklisting to The Essential Michael Jackson, which very cleanly splits his career to pre- and post-Thriller, and try to tell me the second disc is in any way superior to the first. Sure, it's got its share of good to great songs, but unless you're a big fan of treacly Messiah-complex ballads, you're better off with the first disc.

And that brings me to where I can only assume you suspected I was going; with our man, the one and only Bob Dylan. Let's think of Bob Dylan at the crossroads in 1966, after Blonde on Blonde basically coalesced what we all consider the "Dylan sound" and his career had been derailed by the locked-up brakes of a Triumph motorcycle. At this point in history the music industry hadn't become the major-label beast of Jackson's career and the media hadn't become quite as pervasive as it would in the 1980s (to say nothing of today), so Dylan could basically go away and take a year off in peace. He wasn't beholden to a litany of commercials, music videos, tour appearances, and any number of public forays. And, most importantly, he didn't have a slavering public demanding more Billboard smashes (well, he did, but surely not to the same degree as Jackson did) and a blind rehash of BOB. It was this environment that allowed Bob to stretch out mentally and reconsider his current path, to have a couple doobs and roll some tape with The Band, and to shift his career in a new and completely unexpected direction. In other words, Dylan had an environment ripe for creative growth and change, one Jackson would never get the chance to experience, and he leapt at that chance.

Pop music, at the risk of being painfully obvious, is a completely different animal from what Dylan was cranking out in those halcyon days. We're not talking about much in the way of spreading your wings creatively - so much more comes in the craft of the music and the production than in the lyrics (Dylan's everlasting forte). I mean, have a look at some of Jackson's lyrics - he wrote his share of clunkers, that's for sure. Then again, so did Bob. We have hints of the depths that Jackson could plumb on occasion; considering how many of his songs dealt with fame and obsession and darkness, perhaps "hints" is selling things short. And it could have been something truly exceptional to see Jackson really dig deep, maybe with the help of an outside writer, to find some really interesting and thought-provoking things to say about his fame and the way his life was being scrutinized non-stop. Instead, we get "Leave Me Alone", a song so immaculately produced that it really takes the truly strange music video and a perusing of the lyrics to fully comprehend how goddamn dark that song is. Jackson had a whole second career, one where he could have been the foremost commentator on our celebrity culture and on the gasp-inducing pressures of fame, and it slipped right through his fingers. That, to me, is a great shame.

Perhaps it's pointless for me to suggest that the greatest pop artist of this or any other generation should have eschewed doing what he knew how to do just so he might have the "experimental album" tucked away in the recesses of his discography. And it might be unfair to say that just because arguably our greatest musician ever could take a different tack in his music, so could Jackson. This may very well be true. And yet it's hard not to listen to something like "Smooth Criminal" or "You Rock My World" and not wonder if maybe these songs didn't have the same immediacy as, say, "Wanna Be Startin' Something", that the flag had already been planted and there was no real need to just stick another flagpole on land already claimed. Now, those late-career songs have given many people great joy, and I can't possibly argue with that. But he has plenty tunes that gave people joy, recorded years before, and with far more artistic merit. When a man passes away, it's all too easy to wonder what might have been, or how the story could have been different. And we've had plenty of thought given to the side of his life that does the man disservice. I think it's worth thinking differently about the part of him that stands as the reason he entered our consciousness in the first place. Read more!

EBDS Special Post: Bob Dylan Live 1964

Author's note: I originally wanted to call this a "Special Event", but seriously - calling it a "Special Post" seems pompous enough. As promised, the first of a series of non-song posts to the blog.

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If there is one well-worn Musical Critic Cliche out there, it's this one: "Why do artists bother releasing live albums?" You get the feeling that the typical rock critic, upon receiving a package with yet another live album in it, fetches a massive sigh, adjusts his massive horn-rim glasses (*cough*), tugs on his sweater vest, and stares down at his fashionably holey skinny-leg jeans in aggravation and disgust. And let's be frank - they've got a point. What do most live albums amount to? A bunch of songs you've already heard, played anywhere from competently to sloppily to without the slightest trace of emotion, in front of crowds that scream obnoxiously through most of the performance. You could go ahead and toss most of them in the garbage, unless you're a rabid fan of the band in question and never did get to see them at the Spectrum that night in 1976.

The really interesting live albums, the one that justify their existence, usually have a few certain things going for them. They might be a performance of such massive historical importance that their musical merits are almost completely unimportant; Hendrix's Woodstock performance is beset by bad miking, nerves, and a shitload of jamming, but I'd never suggest that the show isn't worth hearing simply because it was Hendrix at Woodstock, for Christ's sake. They might be a performance so incredibly good that to leave them unheard would be a crime against music lovers; Jerry Lee Lewis' Star Club set is amazing for the way Lewis and his band tears through the set like a scythe cutting down stalks of wheat, the kind of show you pray to God you'll see every time you buy a ticket. Or it might be a performance where the songs so differ from the well-known album versions that they change the way you think about them; the second set of The Name Of This Band is Talking Heads recasts Remain in Light (and some of their older back catalog) as an even looser, funkier, and vicious collection of art-funk songs, with Adrian Belew coaxing alien squeaks and futuristic noises from his guitar. There are precious few live albums (At Folsom Prison/At San Quentin, Live at Santa Monica 1972, How The West Was Won) that reaches those heights, but the ones that do aren't just exceptional adjuncts to an artist's career, but every bit as important as any of their studio albums.

And then we have Bob Dylan, whose very career could very well be defined more by his live performances than his studio albums, who managed to remake himself as an artist on stage with virtually ever new tour that he undertook. And many of his live albums bear the mark of his genius, standing as worthy companions to the Electric Trilogy or Blood on the Tracks. Live 1975 recasts some of his greatest songs under the milieu of the Rolling Thunder Revue, possibly his finest moment as a performing artist. Before the Flood (arguably) catches Dylan at his most incendiary, firing off words like bullets as The Band snarls and roars behind him. Of course, Live 1966 manages to capture all three of the previously noted live album merits in one package; historical ("Judas!" ring a bell?), song reimagining (even the acoustic songs are markedly different in ways from the originals), and performance-wise (no further explanation necessary). Columbia, for their more despicable marketing practices, have done well by Dylan fans to put out more of his live stuff, exposing more people to the part of his career least represented by his official canon. To be able to hear this stuff now is nothing short of a blessing.

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One of the more recent releases, and still one of the best and most importance, is the famous and beloved Philharmonic Hall 1964 show, where Dylan captivated a packed house at the height of his fame as an acoustic artist and leader of the folk movement. I'd heard the show before its official release on bootleg (I'd bet most of you had as well), but to have it in an official capacity means that much more, because now such an incredible performance is available to more than just the privileged few and those that can work Soulseek or have $50 to burn on bootlegs. But what I'm most grateful for in this show's release is that such a performance of incredible historical merit can be heard and digested by the general public. Live 1964, on top of being an astounding performance, catches Bob at a crossroads in his career, pulling away from the folk movement, immersing himself in drugs, and starting to leap into the unknown that his electric career really was (after all, it was no given that he would be successful in that arena). He may have looked like the Bob Dylan that sang "The Times They Are A-Changin'", but his mind was a million miles away from where it was when he wrote that song.

You listen to Dylan on that Halloween night in 1964, alone with only an acoustic guitar and his voice, and it's difficult not to marvel at how big and well-respected Dylan had to have been at that point in his career. As I've mentioned here, I've performed at my share of open mics, usually just with a guitar and my voice, and there is nothing harder than captivating an audience when that's all you've got at your disposal. It doesn't help that even after 10 years my guitar playing skills would best be described as "acceptable", but even if I was David Rawlings or Tim Reynolds with an acoustic, there's only so many ways you can hold attention when you're just by yourself. That, to me, is that what makes Dylan keeping an entire audience at rapt attention so extraordinary. I mean, yes, he's got some of the greatest songs anyone's ever written at his disposal, but you've still got to go out there and perform them sans accoutrement and hope the audience doesn't get bored and start talking to each other and falling asleep and whatever. And yes, the audience expected him to go out there by himself and wanted him to perform solo, but you'd expect even his most hardcore fans to get a little squirrelly 90 minutes into a two-hour solo performance (with a 15 minute break), right? That never happens, mainly because Dylan's lyrics are so incredible, and also because he could make the audience laugh as well (especially in "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues"). That ability to keep an audience in so firm a grip is something that will always amaze me.

Then there's Dylan's setlist, which has two different aspects that contribute to making this such a damn cool show to listen to. The first thing is that Dylan is absolutely unafraid to play songs that hadn't been released yet, even if some people in the audience (or most - "John Birch"'s notoriety was such that a lot of people cheered for it) hadn't heard the songs. This is nothing new amongst artists - hell, Ryan Adams would play sets chock full of new songs, written anywhere from months before the show to some time during sound check. Of course, none of those songs are a "Mr. Tambourine Man", so a little perspective needs to be used here. Dylan hadn't released "Gates of Eden" or "It's Alright, Ma" by the time of the show, but he performed them all the same, and the audience was just as amazed then as the people that bought Bringing It All Back Home would be the following year. It takes gumption to perform songs that intricate, hard to comprehend, and head-spinningly dazzling as those without prior knowledge, and it says a lot about Dylan that he had that kind of gumption.

The other part of the setlist that appeals to me is that there's a legitimate dearth of protest songs, the supposed reason for Dylan to be on that stage in the first place. I mean, you've got the big ones like "The Times", "Hard Rain" (a protest song in name only, really), "Hattie Carroll", and "With God On Our Side" (as well as "Who Killed Davey Moore?", which is a protest song but not what you'd call a big one), but it's really surprising how little Freewheelin' and especially The Times are represented in the show. Another Side, as the newest current album, gets a lot of attention, which is noteworthy enough - you think the folk crowd was a little puzzled that "I Don't Believe You" got play but "Only A Pawn In Their Game" didn't? But you also have the new songs, none of which have anything overt to do with politics, and "Mama, You Been On My Mind", and "If You Gotta Go, Go Now", and many other songs that are all about Dylan's view of the world and not about, well, the world. Even the inevitable Joan Baez cameo is restricted to four songs, only one of which is a protest song, and one of which is a traditional. To me, the key to the whole set is "Spanish Harlem Incident", both because it's in the setlist at all (no "Blowin' In The Wind"???), and because Dylan approaches the song with full focus and delivers a strong performance. To him, nailing that song was as important as nailing any of the others, and it's a very interesting thing to hear indeed.

And all of this would mean absolutely nothing if it wasn't for the performance. Dylan is loose, playful, goofy, charming, and as funny as you would expect the guy who wrote "All I Really Want To Do" (a perfect closer for this type of show) should be. The fact that he was almost certainly as stoned as your typical Phish concertgoer probably helped; one listen to the "I Don't Believe You" intro (the guitar strums to buy time while he thinks of the first verse) or Bob fucking with Joan's rhythm during "Mama, You Been On My Mind" shows his frame of mind, and is hard not to outright laugh at. Perhaps, then, it's for the best that he didn't play some of his more somber songs - imagine "When The Ship Comes In" being introduced by that infamous "I'm wearing my Bob Dylan mask" rejoinder? And it's probable that Dylan, in his frame of mind, had no desire to play those songs anyway. Dylan, on that night in 1964, wasn't thinking about his responsibilities as a Leading Lamp of the Folk Movement or about the painful shit that concerned him the year before. He was out to have himself one damn good time. And that's exactly what he did.

It is worth considering that, when you get right down to it, this show was an aberration in a career littered with aberrations. There's none of the attention paid to the protest songs from 1963 (take, for example, his earlier Carnegie Hall show, exactly the sort of set you'd expect Folkie Bob to perform), or the backwards-thinking Don't Look Back shows catering to an audience still a year behind, or (obviously) the electric blasts of 1965 and 1966. In this regard, most especially of all, we see a Bob Dylan in transition, not sure what his next move should be, but still making a move nonetheless. Live 1964 takes a snapshot of a night where Dylan, one foot in his past and another in his future, managed to hold an audience enraptured by his guitar, his voice, and his songs. We'd never get another show quite like it, and that makes me all the happier to have this one. Read more!