I heard that Shelter from the Storm is about a woman who handed Dylan an umbrella.
For a second, I thought that said "John Baez."
I thought, "Sweet! Ogged reads TWFiMP too!"
you wonder what Dylan imagines doing to people who really wrong him
I think it's a matter of record (45rpm, originally).
Right, what was I thinking?
And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead
2 is a supermassive nerd giant at risk of collapsing into a nerdularity.
Or,
One day you'll be in the ditch, flies buzzin' around your eyes,
Blood on your saddle.
Idiot wind, blowing through the flowers on your tomb,
Blowing through the curtains in your room.
I love the way that Dylan can write about hate.
Like Pirate Jenny, but for customer-side, not housekeeping.
at risk of collapsing into a nerdularity
Sucking all of us nerd-groupies into the vast gravity of the collapse. It is OK. That's how I would choose to go.
10: Pirate Jenny was always my favorite song from the Threepenny Opera
11: and indeed, the site he linked to has been captivating me for much of the past hour.
2: I, also, read it as "John Baez" at first. You know they're cousins?
11: you'll want to watch out. There'll be a lot of gadgets in there. Bound to get poked.
Bob Dylan truly is a monumental genius. Seriously.
Has that ever been noted around here before?
but rather the inability to ever forget a slight?
I'd swear this idea is almost word-for-word in BG&E, including "slight", but I ain't looking it up.
"It's only Dedalus, whose bloody mother's died"
"It wasn't the insult to my mother that gave offense."
10, 12: Seerauber is a much better word than pirate.
Some of you probably already know this, but John Baez blogs in a more traditional format too.
The point is made nicely by Patrick Kavanagh, in Epic:
I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided: who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul"
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel -
"Here is the march along these iron stones."
That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was most important ? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said : I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.
There's a hilarious letter that Dylan sent to Joan Baez's mother, which he wrote as Baez and made it sound like he was terribly taking advantage of her, but I can't find a copy of it online.
Partially transcribed in this article.
I think the champion has to be Dante, who integrates his personal gripes (from Florentine political enemies to the wrong kind of bread) seamlessly into a vision of the cosmos complete.
Creativity will decline once we reach pique oil.
On the contrary, does not pique oil cause the machinery of creation to run more smoothly?
Can I pique at the stats and get back to you on that?
Something something pee coil something.
The musical topic of this thread has inspired me to create a mix. I call it "Blues from Wrongshore." It has printable cover art.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/7y6a0f
It features 18 nominal blues songs. At the same time, it features the voices of no black people. (Some instrumentals crept in.)
Randy Newman - The Blues
Soul Coughing - Screenwriter's Blues
Bob Dylan - Talkin' Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues
Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band - Dachau Blues
Patsy Cline - In Care Of The Blues
Nail Young - Revolution Blues
Rahsaan Roland Kirk - The Entertainer (Done In The Style Of The Blues)
Alan Jackson - The Talkin' Song Repair Blues
Branford Marsalis - Mo' Better Blues
Beck - Bottle Of Blues
Django Reinhardt - Limehouse Blues
Syd Barrett - Bob Dylan Blues
Donovan - Bert's Blues
Joni Mitchell - Furry Sings The Blues
Johnny Cash - Cocaine Blues
Randy Newman - Uncle Bob's Midnight Blues
Bill Frisell - Blues for Los Angeles
Paula Morelenbaum, Jaques Morelenbaum & Ryuichi Sakamoto -Chega de Saudade
Even more tellling, I didn't actually intend for it to have the voices of no black people. It just kind of happened that way. (Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday both somehow fell out.) I feel the hot breath of Sascha Frere-Jones on the back of my neck.
Re: the question - The ability to brood manic and deep over slights is what distinguishes artists; it's in what way you forge the trivial emotion into art that matters, not the emotion itself.
I'd never heard Talkin' Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues and now I'm really enjoying it. Thanks wrongshore.
You think it horrible that lust and rage
Should dance attention upon my old age;
They were not such a plague when I was young;
What else have I to spur me into song?
The ability to brood manic and deep over slights is what distinguishes artists
Excuse me while I chortle.
Jim Sligh's going to be deeping over 38 all night.
10: Like Pirate Jenny, but for customer-side, not housekeeping.
One of my earliest memories is of my mother playing an LP of that song while she did housework. She also liked to play Seven Deadly Sins and Rise And Fall of the City of Mahagonny. I wonder if I'm the only person who gets warm fuzzy feelings from hearing the recorded voice of Lotte Lenya. I still sometimes find myself singing quietly to myself "let's all go barmy, and join the army, see the world we never saw". It's things like this that make it difficult to disentangle the genetic and experiential causes of depression.
Sadly, 30+ dicks were not enough:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/more/10/27/bc.rac.breeders.cup.bre.ap/
It's things like this that make it difficult to disentangle the genetic and experiential causes of depression.
Indeed. I grew up on a wonderfully beautiful Judy Collins version of "Pirate Jenny," but even as a kid I recognized the contrast between the beauty of the music and the story it told.
Consequently, it took me a while to realize that "When the Ship Comes In" is a song about Jesus's second coming, and not just another "Pirate Jenny" revenge fantasy. Of course, it's Dylan, so it's also a bitter revenge fantasy. That vindictiveness turned me away from listening to him for a long time.
It's things like this that make it difficult to disentangle the genetic and experiential causes of depression.
Indeed. I grew up on a wonderfully beautiful Judy Collins version of "Pirate Jenny," but even as a kid I recognized the contrast between the beauty of the music and the story it told.
Consequently, it took me a while to realize that "When the Ship Comes In" is a song about Jesus's second coming, and not just another "Pirate Jenny" revenge fantasy. Of course, it's Dylan, so it's also a bitter revenge fantasy. That vindictiveness turned me away from listening to him for a long time.
Sorry. I know that kind of thing doesn't happen around here. I won't let it happen again. Sorry. I know that kind of thing doesn't happen around here. I won't let it happen again.
40: I have extremely fuzzy feelings about those two operas in particular. I have both of the recordings with Lenya in them. Love her.
43: It doesn't seem to me that the Second Coming and "bitter revenge fantasy" are mutually exclusive.
As the Left Behind series surely indicates.
I was asking my class on Wednesday why Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights is so likable, despite being such an evil, violent, petty, greedy person. Their answer? "Well, he's really into revenge, and that's very appealing." Since when does an appetite for revenge automatically put you into the "likable" column? I blame movies. These kids today!
AWB, does your class find Wuthering Heights confusing, plot-wise? The only time I saw it taught, I was surprised by the conniptions the professor went into, trying to chalk out the names and connections of characters.
He seemed to presume that his class was going to have a devilishly hard time understanding it all. And he was 25 or so, so I don't think he had years of prior teaching experience to back this up.
I have both of the recordings with Lenya in them. Love her.
I don't get this at all. I find her vibrato like nails on the chalkboard.
Some people are into that kind of thing, Blume.
I immediately recognized Dylan and Jagger as a couple of very mean guys, but this didn't cause me to like them less, I just reinterpreted my liking for them.
re: 51
The singing and the music in the original cast recordings are both pretty harsh to modern ears. Especially when compared to modern recordings using the original instrumentation.
I played in the pit band for a production of the Threepenny Opera last year. The music is certainly idiosyncratic.
Pique oil? Nonsense. John Lydon and Leftfield sang that "Anger is an energy!"
And that fucker's renewable.
DS at 47 -- of course they aren't. I just didn't see one side of the song for a while. It always made me think of "Pirate Jenny," and then both songs used to play in my head when I read the pirate-comic sequences in _Watchmen_.
I love teaching _Wuthering Heights_. I get to do that so seldom.
Why is Dylan unusually mean? He's had two long marriages, was nice to his wife in his divorce album, and he has good relationships with his kids. That's not easy for a big pop star.
He was kind of harsh on Donovan in that documentary, but give him a break. Dylan was like 25 then and a world-shaking genius. Think how much of a prick you would have been if you were a titanic genius at 25.
I dunno if he's mean, but a great number of his most famous songs have a streak of vindictiveness. Was "Idiot Wind" nice? The vitriol eventually turns back on the singer, but still. I'll admit I've managed to be a jerk without any accomplishments at all to serve as excuses.
50: At first they're confused, but it's meant to be confusing at the beginning. We have a long conversation about why an author would do that, etc. But once you get halfway in, the characters become clear, I think. It's a good test of whether they're keeping up with the reading; anyone who can't figure out the characters must have given up a quarter of the way through. There really isn't much to keep straight beyond the family trees.
Actually, you probably don't want to know what Bob would do to someone he thinks really wronged him. Ballad in Plain D is awful.
On the other hand, 4th Time Around is ace:
When she said,
"Don't waste your words, they're just lies,"
I cried she was deaf.
And she worked on my face until breaking my eyes,
Then said, "What else you got left?"
It was then that I got up to leave
But she said, "Don't forget,
Everybody must give something back
For something they get."
-
I stood there and hummed,
I tapped on her drum and asked her how come.
And she buttoned her boot,
And straightened her suit,
Then she said, "Don't get cute."
So I forced my hands in my pockets
And felt with my thumbs,
And gallantly handed her
My very last piece of gum.
-
She threw me outside,
I stood in the dirt where ev'ryone walked.
And after finding I'd
Forgotten my shirt,
I went back and knocked.
I waited in the hallway, she went to get it,
And I tried to make sense
Out of that picture of you in your wheelchair
That leaned up against . . .
-
Her Jamaican rum
And when she did come, I asked her for some.
She said, "No, dear."
I said, "Your words aren't clear,
You'd better spit out your gum."
She screamed till her face got so red
Then she fell on the floor,
And I covered her up and then
Thought I'd go look through her drawer.
-
And, when I was through
I filled up my shoe
And brought it to you.
And you, you took me in,
You loved me then
You didn't waste time.
And I, I never took much,
I never asked for your crutch.
Now don't ask for mine.
Consequently, it took me a while to realize that "When the Ship Comes In" is a song about Jesus's second coming, and not just another "Pirate Jenny" revenge fantasy.
In its original context, "Pirate Jenny" is eschatological after its own fashion, at least in my interpretation. The way I have always heard it, Jenny stands in for the proletariat, and Brecht is presaging how the proletarian revolution unleashes rageful vengeance against the erstwhile oppressors.
"A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery. The strong-armer isn't out merely to turn a fast buck any more than the poet is out solely to see his name on the cover of a book, whatever satisfaction that event may afford him. What both need most deeply is to get even."
-- Nelson Algren, Nonconformity
Emerson's butthead chakra theory is still one of the best explanations of the artistic spirit going. The ideal artist is an observant, sly, somewhat fey metrosexual type with a strong connection to their butthead chakra.