Five and Dimers

Top Ten Albums of the 2000's

2009-11-29T13:50:00.001-05:00

I am going to be closing out the decade on this recently neglected blog with my Top Ten Albums of the Oughts List. Please note that the order of the posts will read from ten to one so I will have to adjust the date posted (blogger arranges posts by date posted). Ten through one will follow this post below in reverse order. I will make a new post each Friday and Monday. I am sending this email / notice out to challenge you to put together your list so I can find out about some great stuff I haven’t heard. I still stand by my 90’s list even though there would likely be a change or two, but I have much more trepidation about this one. I have been going backwards time wise thanks to a case my brother made (hand made packed with 2,500 plus cd's / no big whoop) me so my palate has been limited but I still feel good enough to put this list out there.

If you put together a list (awesome!) just reply to my post on the blog with your corresponding album for that ranking. If you just want to post a list of some favorites of the 2000's hell do that too.

Number Ten The Crane Wife

2009-11-28T14:12:00.000-05:00

#10 The Crane Wife – The Decemberists 2006

1. "The Crane Wife 3"
2. "The Island"
- "Come and See"
- "The Landlord's Daughter"
- "You'll Not Feel the Drowning"
3. "Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)" (duet with Laura Veirs)
4. "O Valencia!"
5. "The Perfect Crime #2"
6. "When the War Came"
7. "Shankill Butchers"
8. "Summersong"
9. "The Crane Wife 1 & 2"
10. "Sons & Daughters"

“And all the stars were crashing ‘round as I laid eyes on what I found.”

The Crane Wife is not a usual record, and my appreciation for it didn’t grow in the usual way; from repeated listening. Its impact was instant and this ranking is most certainly a reverberation from how far it went the first time I listened to it.

I approached the Crane Wife and the Decemberists naked. Had no inkling who they were or what their sound was like. If I had, perhaps the impact wouldn’t have been so penetrating, who knows. I was researching a lot of the top albums of the year sites and this kept coming up and actually what drew me in was the cover artwork. A pale brownish-mustard colored frame with a time frozen drawing of an arm locked couple with but a drip of blood on the female’s dress.

In the blurbs on these top ten lists I discovered it was a concept record and that it was based loosely on a Japanese folk tale. That was it for my preview, no youtube, or website hunts. I just bought the record on a whim and gave it a shot.

The Crane Wife is bold, a hard to do thing, its vistas are wide and peppered with strange old time references and vibes. The lyrics read like literature. The idea of laying down a bass line to Shakespeare or Faulkner is far from appealing, but nonetheless here are these songs like Yankee Bayonet, Shankhill Butchers, and The Perfect Crime falling on top of each other, held together by some wonderfully unfamiliar glue.

Coupling these songs with lines like…

“By land, by sea, by dirigible”

“But oh, did you see all the dead of Manassas
All the bellies and the bones and the bile?”

…Is the voice of Colin Meloy, overtly austere and folkishly formal. So how do all of these seemingly unappealing traits mesh together into an intense, moving work?

Part of the reason the Crane Wife is so appealing to me is that I can’t answer that very question. I shouldn’t like it, but I do, even more so I love it, number 10 favorite of the “oughts” love it.

From the opening strums of Crane Wife 3 to the closing repeated chorus of “hear all the bombs fade away” from Sons and Daughters I get lost in the odd, beautiful world of The Crane Wife. This album would be a hard sell to a lot of people I know. I would have never tried it if I had cheated and listened to a part of it before hand. That’s a lesson I try to remember.

Number Nine Hold Time

2009-11-27T12:10:00.003-05:00

#9 Hold Time – M. Ward 2009

1. "For Beginners"
2. "Never Had Nobody Like You"
3. "Jailbird"
4. "Hold Time"
5. "Rave On" (Norman Petty/Bill Tilghman/Sonny West)
6. "To Save Me"
7. "One Hundred Million Years"
8. "Stars of Leo"
9. "Fisher of Men"
10. "Oh Lonesome Me" (Don Gibson)
11. "Epistemology"
12. "Blake's View"
13. "Shangri-La"
14. "Outro (I'm a Fool to Want You)" (Joel Herron/Frank Sinatra/Jack Wolf) – 3:47

“We come and we go a weepin’ and a wailin' our heads in the hands of the nurse.”

M. Ward is the man. Equal parts songwriter, guitar player, singer (I think so anyway), and studio whiz. By the release of Hold Time, his 6th studio album proper, he had elevated his status to being a poster child for “indie” music (what is "indie" music anyway?). He is perfectly just behind the scenes and from what I’ve read I think that’s the way he prefers it.

Hold Time just sounds great, an absolute pleasure to listen to. The first few spins I was caught up in the sound of the thing, the production, and the way all of it comes together in such a good way. Slowly the impact of the songwriting came and I realized I was listening to a pretty cohesive spiritual statement.

From One Hundred Million Years:

“This love between you and I is older than that burning ball of fire up in the sky and the gale that fills our sail”

From Fisher of Men:

“He’s a fisher of men and he’s as wise as a prizefighter. He’s like a soul barter buying souls on down the great divide.”

From Absolute Beginners:

“When you’re absolute beginners, it’s a panoramic view from her majesty Mount Zion and the kingdom is for you.”

From Shangri-La:

“And I cannot wait to see the expression on the face of my sweet Lord.”

From Blake’s View:

“I say death is just a door we’ll be reunited on the other side.”

So in a way Hold Time is a really listenable my-kind-of-gospel record. Something I can reflect on and lean against and find comfort in. The message isn’t overt, far from it with songs off the radar from this “spiritual” vibe like a great cover of Buddy Holly’s Rave On and an almost radio friendly Never Had Nobody Like You this spirituality flows underground but having listened to it enough (once again because it is just so enjoyable to listen to) the beautiful underlying vision that is there is revealed to me.

The songs on Hold Time are only 2 to 3 minutes except for a slow drawn out version of Don Gibson’s Oh Lonesome Me, it is amazing how much Ward can get into these songs and how much I get out of them.

The one downer for me is actually this cover of Oh Lonesome Me, a duet with Lucinda Williams. I like it fine enough, but the energy and feel is out of place on Hold Time. Would have made for a fantastic extra promo track somewhere, but when Lucinda Williams helps out I kind of understand the song finding its way onto the record.

Hold Time is a terrific recording, and a stealthily moving one too. M Ward is the man.

Numer Eight Gold

2009-11-26T11:16:00.000-05:00

#8 Gold – Ryan Adams 2001

1. "New York, New York"
2. "Firecracker"
3. "Answering Bell"
4. "La Cienega Just Smiled"
5. "The Rescue Blues"
6. "Somehow Someday"
7. "When The Stars Go Blue"
8. "Nobody Girl"
9. "Sylvia Plath"
10. "Enemy Fire"
11. "Gonna Make You Love Me"
12. "Wild Flowers"
13. "Harder Now That It’s Over"
14. "Touch Feel Lose"
15. "Tina Toledo’s Street Walking Blues"
16. "Goodnight Hollywood Blvd."

“Everybody wants to go forever, I just want to burn up hard and bright.”

Gold goes against the grain, most reviewers look at Adam’s debut solo record Heartbreaker as his best (a real real good one), but I think Gold is where it’s at. Gold is ambitious, Adams as he’s stated “trying to make a modern classic.” A young super talented guy trying to make a classic rock record, in the vein of The Rolling Stone's Exile on Main Street or Springsteen's The River.

Actually I need to state for the record and for this record that I am not including the original intended “bonus” five tracks. Lost Highway released Gold as a single disc and (for the first pressing) included five songs originally intended to be on Gold as a “bonus disc”. The Gold I know and have ranked ends at Goodnight Hollywood Blvd.

In many ways this ambitious, sprawling, swinging for the fences feel to Gold is what turned many fans / reviewers off. But what if Gold were a homerun which I argue it is? A little cocky to say you’re trying to make a modern classic, but if you do then kudos to you, #8 of the 2000’s kudos.

I haven’t listened to an album from the 2000’s more than I’ve listened to Gold. When I go through that sound Rolodex in my mind and I hear that opening guitar on New York, New York then usually in the old player the CD goes. Gold is jammed full of energy and intimacy – you know - rock and roll. I remember the first time I listened all the way through I was just intimidated by how damn good Ryan Adams was. I still feel that way, that if this were the times of great records equalling radio play, Gold would have dominated the charts.

I remember listening to Gold with my wife on the way to the beach for our wedding. Windows down, young, turned on, radio turned up way up so you know it's got soul, RADIO..RADIO, in love, vulnerable…ALIVE

Singing out:

“I’m just saying Hi Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, to your answering bell.”

Gold, you big old cannon blast of "It's harder now that it's over now that the cuffs are off" or "I remember Christmas in the blistering cold in a church on the upper west side." or "Hard on her knees money in the bank". Gold, you are a friend of mine.

Number Seven Essence

2009-11-25T12:38:00.001-05:00

#7 Essence – Lucinda Williams 2001

1. "Lonely Girls"
2. "Steal Your Love"
3. "I Envy the Wind"
4. "Blue"
5. "Out of Touch"
6. "Are You Down"
7. "Essence"
8. "Reason to Cry"

9. "Get Right With God"
10. "Bus to Baton Rouge"
11. "Broken Butterflies"

“All the front rooms were kept closed off I never liked to go in there much. Sometimes the doors they'd be locked 'cause there were precious things I couldn't touch.”

To use a sports reference Lucinda is a first ballot hall of famer. For many, many years she was the ultimate, “hey there’s this lady you’ve got to hear” for people. If there ever were an “in the know cult artist” she would have been the one. A few of her songs were recorded by other main stream artists who had chart success, most notably Passionate Kisses by Mary Chapin Carpenter and The Night’s Too Long by Patty Loveless. Then everything changed with the release of Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, an instant hear it once masterwork. It was a long time coming and there was a lot of talk and discussion about Williams' meticulous approach to getting everything on Car Wheels just right.

I came in on the Car Wheels bandwagon, head scratching like most at how great the record was and then going backward to the rest of a stand out catalog that preceded it. Heard many times “Oh I could have told you about Lucinda Williams” from people who were in the Lucinda cult, in the know. Car Wheels made my top of the 90’s list and the follow up Essence slips right on in with its predecessor as a top album of the decade.

Essence is a different beast than Car Wheels; the best word I can come up with is luscious. A quiet, slow moving, luscious work, where all things are in service of the lyrics and the voice, that voice, oh man there is something about what happens when she sings.

Soul vs. sorrow is the theme here. The texture of it is blue but a quiet dignity and defiance and the simple act of being aware of oneself weaves in and out of the songs on Essence. My favorite song on the record and my favorite Lucinda Williams song, Bus to Baton Rouge, is a prime example.

The narrator of the story returns to a childhood home, a place that contains “ghosts in the wind that blow through my life and haunt me wherever I go.” But the fact of the matter in Bus to Baton Rouge is that the person has taken that bus ride, is trying to deal with these things that weigh on her. This person isn’t hiding; recalling these things from afar but instead is meeting these ghosts head on. I love this song.

If you’re into Lucinda she can spoil you, her stuff is so consistently good you can forget about work you haven’t heard in a while. It was like that for me when doing this list. I recalled Essence and then first had to make sure it was in the 2000’s, which of course it was. Then I thought maybe it wasn’t going to make the cut so I listened to it over again, and man oh man when I was through I knew it was an automatic.

Number Six Live in Dublin

2009-11-24T12:51:00.003-05:00

#6 Live in Dublin – Bruce Springsteen with the Sessions Band - 2007

“They died together a hundred years ago they’re dying now, the hands that built this country we’re always trying to keep down”

There’s a now famous amongst Boss fans occurrence that supposedly ignited the songwriting that lead to The Rising after the World Trade Center attacks. A fan shouted out to Bruce in Jersey:

“We need you now.”

So Springsteen, as the story goes, wrote many of the songs for and recorded The Rising. For me this is a difinitive representation of where he kind of went off the tracks and lost his voice this decade. Springsteen became too aware of his relationship with his audience and in a way became subservient to it. He joined political campaigns, lent his songs to causes and intead of being his own voice that reflected America’s voice he simply tried to be America’s voice.

Devils and Dust, a really good record evokes this. For me this record would have been a high consideration for this list except for that title track. I like the song Devils and Dust fine but it smells of this need to be that voice and is way away from the other songs on the album. This is kind of how it continued, a lot of great stuff mixed in but overall not so much.

He toured relentlessly with the E Street Band securing his incredible live rep. The shows were grossly expensive however and speaking from a fan’s point of view excluded a lot of the long time fans who had shared his journey with him.

Now all of this poo-pooing is simply to put in context / elevate and lift my pick for number six of the decade, Live in Dublin. In the midst of this kind of lost decade Springsteen absolutely got it right, found his voice, and was exactly what the arc of his career projected him to be.

On a whim, after recording one track for a Seeger tribute album, Springsteen gathered area musicians to his house in New Jersey and recorded a number of folk tracks popularized by Pete Seeger. You read that correct, the man who spent months recording the song Born to Run, freewheeled a session with the results being the 2006 release We Shall Overcome – The Seeger Sessions.

Imagine if you will being a Boss fan coming home and hearing the opening banjo on Old Dan Tucker… Pure energy and joy, unexpected and exhilirating. There wasn’t a hint of sobering purposefullness, just flat out playing to play. As a Springsteen fan it was thrilling as hell.

In the All Music Guide review of We Shall Overcome Stephen Thomas Erlewine writes:

“Springsteen has made plenty of great records, but We Shall Overcome is unique in its sheer kinetic energy; he has never made a record that feels as alive as this.”

In another favorable review Noel Murray with The Onion’s A.V. Club concluded with this statement:

“…and while this record remains absolutely likeable, it still sounds too much like the soundtrack for a concert that hasn't happened yet.”

Prophetic indeed as Springsteen went on the road backing this record with a 478 piece band titled simply enough The Sessions Band. There were singers, horn players, fiddle, pedal steel, piano, penny whistle, banjo etc…

Live in Dublin is We Shall Overcome supercharged, a two CD tour de force of working songs, traditional folk songs, field songs, and originals. It is in my opinion the best live recording Springsteen has released uncannily capturing the energy of a Springsteen show.

What I repeatedly find so remarkable about Live in Dublin is how much it displays the force of Springsteen. Many songs that in their original context (as recorded by Seeger or other folk musicians) come off as shallow and hokey, are given immense depth and power by these performances. I’m talking Eerie Canal, Old Dan Tucker, This Little Light of Mine, no one and man I mean no one else performing now could convince you of the sincerity of these standards like Springsteen does on this.

In these songs lies the voice that has seemed so forced recently. This is the American voice, a tried and true songbook of the American experience.

There was an eerily comparable feeling when I was watching the DVD release of the best of the Johnny Cash show. One of the performances pulled is of Pete Seeger performing Worried Man Blues with his banjo. It starts with Seeger solo and in his way he is getting the audience to sing along, then… THEN the band starts up and Cash comes in from off screen and everything changes… the depth and sincerity of the song explodes. No longer is it a sing-a-long but a sermon, something you’d better shut up and listen to.

Just like Cash, when Springsteen is at his best he brings that type of power and never has this been more on display on record than Live in Dublin.

Number Five Modern Times

2009-11-23T10:59:00.000-05:00

#5 Modern Times – Bob Dylan 2006

"Thunder on the Mountain"
"Spirit on the Water"
"Rollin' and Tumblin'"
"When the Deal Goes Down"
"Someday Baby"
"Workingman's Blues #2"
"Beyond the Horizon"
"Nettie Moore"
"The Levee's Gonna Break"

"Ain't Talkin'"

“The suffering is unending every nook and cranny has it's tears

I'm not playing, I'm not pretending, I'm not nursing any superfluous fears”

How good are you if I feel like you slipped one by me and it still comes in at number five on my best of the decade list? Or maybe the question should be: What kind of precedent have you set if Modern Times feels like an album slipped under my nose while I wasn’t looking?

Modern Times is a tough one to corner, it can get by you, think it’s great but then again you’re really not sure. The last two Dylan releases you bought were Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft, immediate ballistics upside your head and heart. Trust yourself man, Modern Times is on par and is a stalwart closer to this latter day Dylan triumvirate.

“My cruel weapons have been put on the shelf come and sit down on my knee. You are dearer to me than myself as you yourself can see.”

Dylan sings from Working Man Blues #2. In reading through a mountain of decade end reviews time and time again the idea of an album singularly reflecting this often harrowing time in modern history is attributed to various different works. A sense of despair and impending decline, a loss of identity and purpose.

Modern Times is Dylan’s stamp on the days we now find ourselves in. The character in this work exists despite these surroundings, rarely in harmony with them. These are not the reflections of a kid, a young man, but of a weathered soul - heart burning still yearning almost impossibly against the backdrop of this time. I often think of the unnamed father from Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

“In the still of the night, in the world's ancient light

Where wisdom grows up in strife

My bewildering brain, toils in vain

Through the darkness on the pathways of life

Each invisible prayer is like a cloud in the air

Tomorrow keeps turning around

We live and we die, we know not why

But I'll be with you when the deal goes down"

This is the opening verse of When the Deal Goes Down. Heavy stuff indeed, getting to it, time is winding down, no pussyfootin’ around, say it straight and true.

“In the dark I hear the night birds call

I can hear a lover's breath

I sleep in the kitchen with my feet in the hall

Sleep is like a temporary death”

Woah man…. A life lived and still living – rest is the enemy now.

“Oh, I miss you Nettie Moore

And my happiness is o'er

Winter's gone, the river's on the rise

I loved you then and ever shall

But there's no one here that's left to tell

The world has gone black before my eyes”

Longing with no one to tell, a world you thought you knew had the curtain pulled.

“As I walked out in the mystic garden

On a hot summer day, hot summer lawn

Excuse me, ma'am I beg your pardon

There's no one here, the gardener is gone
Ain't talkin', just walkin'

Up the road around the bend

Heart burnin', still yearnin'

In the last outback, at the world's end”

This is how Modern Times ends with a lone figure still walking in a world where the gardener is missing… A backdoor gem, Bob Dylan tip toed in to my house and left a bomb, I can hear the dynamite sizzling.

I have a distinct feeling that this album is going to age beautifully. For me it just gets better and better.

Number Four Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

2009-11-22T13:45:00.000-05:00

#4 Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots – The Flaming Lips - 2002

"Fight Test"

"One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21"

"Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1"

"Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 2"
"In the Morning of the Magicians"
"Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell"
"Are You a Hypnotist??"
"It's Summertime"
"Do You Realize??"

"All We Have Is Now"
"Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia)"

“When you look inside - all you'll see is a self reflected inner sadness”

Allright we’ve got to it here on this little count down. We will call this 1- D as the top 4 were the big boppers for me in the 2,000’s. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is a weird title, The Flaming Lips are a weird band, and this stuff right here is perfectly weird.

Yoshimi, a black belt in Karate that works for the City has to fight evil pink robot machines????? A sort of concept but not really album with song titles like Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell and Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia). A monochromatic male voice starts the record:

“The test begins nownownownownownownownownownownowwwwwwwwwww.”

The best single of the decade that was everywhere for a couple of years (Do You Realize??).

This album much like the band that made it exists in its own atmosphere. Yoshimi is awesome because it is a grand open door into that weirdness. The sound on this is just hypnotic. The drum rhythms are so distinct and identifiable to this record. Wayne Coyne's voice lilts above everything in a real beautiful way. The lyrics are existential meanderings about love and all that kind of stuff that range from surface fluff to way deep inner reflections. A couple of the songs are just fun, a couple are down and out, a couple are meditative, and they are all great.

The most enjoyable listen of the decade, I just get all giddy when I play this one.

This is going to be my shortest write up for this all decade list. You just have to hear this one. I just wanna go listen. Nownownownownownow…………………………

Number Three Escondida

2009-11-21T12:06:00.000-05:00

#3 Escondida – Jolie Holland 2004

1. "Sascha"
2. "Black Stars"
3. "Old Fashioned Morphine"
4. "Amen"
5. "Mad Tom of Bedlam"
6. "Poor Girl's Blues"
7. "Goodbye California"
8. "Do You?"
9. "Darlin Ukelele"
10. "Damn Shame"
11. "Tiny Idyll/Lil Missy"
12. "Faded Coat of Blue"

“I tried to go to sleep in my haunted little room. The shadows are churning in the passage of the moon”

Trampled paths and repetition
In my mind shot through my ears

Heat some coffee

Stare out into the black night

Big red sun and no new heat
Lucky old sun with nothing to do

Rollin' around heaven all day

I’d misplaced the notion to be hungered or thirsty
Yet and so and hold on

Oh’ Escondida you’ve found my harvest moon

Unlike the others and I keep you close

No closer

I can’t believe my ears when I believe you

That sweet thing you know
My little secret, my darlin’ ukulele

Bigger than this whole wide world which people say is round

Tucked into my pocket

There is something new under the big red sun

A million miles from behind the moon
Oh’ Escondida – rejuvenator, new path finder, companion

It is endless

Hallways and closets and cupboards

The tower of song

You little flashlight

You lovely little flashlight

I’m grateful to have heard your light
Age stiffens your back

N' dull your mind

But Oh’ that little light of yours sure did shine
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine

And spin, and be heard

Number Two Post War

2009-11-20T09:41:00.001-05:00

#2 Post War – M. Ward – 2006

1. "Poison Cup"
2. "To Go Home"
3. "Right in the Head"
4. "Post-War"
5. "Requiem"
6. "Chinese Translation"
7. "Eyes on the Prize"
8. "Magic Trick"
9. "Neptune's Net"
10. "Rollercoaster"
11. "Today's Undertaking"
12. "Afterword/Rag"

“Everything I've learned I have forgotten. Everything I've forgotten looks just like new”

There is a new member of the periodic table of elements. M Wardium was first discovered in 2006 with the release of the album Post War. It’s existence as it’s own separate element was in question until this release, rumor and innuendo surrounded it’s potency and uniqueness. Once scientists heard the opening sound of Poison Cup the imperical evidence was at hand.
-

“We simply have never heard anything like this. This is a whole new elemental musical thing.”

Post War is absolutely as good as it can be. I can’t find a mistake with it, the sequencing is right, the songs are right, the length is right. M Wardium is an addictive thing, especially in it’s purest form on stand outs like Requiem, Chinese Translation, Rollercoaster, and Right in the Head.

The Daniel Johnston cover, To Go Home is a home run, a turbo charged cover of the highest order. Ward’s vocals have a murkified sound reminiscent of Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind. On two tracks, the afore mentioned Poison Cup and Today’s Undertaking, we are given a dose of a Roy Orbison feel in their build up and exhalting triumphant endings.

Magic Trick is pure fun and yet fits snug and comfy right between Eyes on the Prize and Neptune’s Net. When they were done recording, sequencing, and mastering Post War and gave it that first listen they had to know it was right. It must have been gratifying.

When I was checking out the top of the 2000’s lists this was the one that shocked me as far as a lack of inclusion. It was very well reviewed back in 06’ but for some reason these guys forgot about it. I will not be forgetting Post War anytime soon.

Number One "Love and Theft"

2009-11-19T12:09:00.002-05:00

#1 "Love and Theft" – Bob Dylan – 2001

1. "Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum"
2. "Mississippi"
3. "Summer Days"
4. "Bye and Bye"
5. "Lonesome Day Blues"
6. "Floater (Too Much to Ask)"
7. "High Water (For Charley Patton)"
8. "Moonlight"
9. "Honest with Me"
10. "Po' Boy"
11. "Cry a While"
12. "Sugar Baby"

“Yes, I'm leaving in the morning just as soon as the dark clouds lift. Gonna break the roof in - set fire to the place as a parting gift.”

You simply aren’t allowed to be this bad ass and still be alive. You can’t be Robert Johnson or Hank Williams Sr. unless you’re dead. Part of what signifies and ignites their legend is that death hovers over their records when you listen to them. Somewhere in the middle of Summer Days you realize this stuff is just like Crossroad Blues or Lost Highway but the incalculable legend belting out Honest With Me is still alive, and has finally after all this time made the record he always wanted to.

Dylan himself produced "Love and Theft", he liked what Daniel Lanois did with Time Out of Mind but there was a sound, an immediacy of his live shows that he wanted to capture. Well, BAP! ZOOM! POW! He captured it, caged it up, poked sticks at it, made it angry, and then unhinged the cage.

“Jump into my wagon love, throw your panties overboard.”

He sings in High Water (For Charley Patton). When someone else, anyone else, does a song in honor of Charley Patton he is looking up, but not here, no way. Dylan is right beside him nudging him with his elbow. Love and Theft is atomic swagger, it’s as if everything he’d done before was so he could earn the right to make an album like "Love and Theft", to make a record that is full of Robert Johnson’s “the stuff I got will bust your brains out”.

I can completely see this scenario for context:

Some kid, 18 years old has been turned onto Dylan by hearing Time Out of Mind, "Love and Theft", and Modern Times. He goes back to Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 and Blonde on Blonde and says..

“Man that old stuff is great but I don’t know I just think "Love and Theft" is better.”

And what kills me is that you can’t dismiss the idea. "Love and Theft" is right on par, it is.

“Well, there's preachers in the pulpits and babies in the cribs

I'm longin' for that sweet fat that sticks to your ribs

I'm gonna buy me a barrel of whiskey - I'll die before I turn senile

Well, I cried for you - now it's your turn, you can cry awhile”

This crazy old bastard is tap dancing on burning coals in a dapper suit and walking cane!

“Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay

You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way

Only one thing I did wrong

Stayed in Mississippi a day too long”

You simply aren’t allowed to be this bad ass and still be alive. "Love and Theft" is my best album of the decade. The world has simply never seen the likes of a Bob Dylan before. A songwriter with an unequaled catalog making records that haunt and inspire awe on the level with the likes of monumental ghosts like Charley Patton, Hank Williams, and Robert Johnson while still being around to grin in the face of it all.

So how do you wrap your head around all of it? Screw it, jump up on your coffee table – no seriously - turn Summer Days way up and just soak in the atomic swagger.

BAP! ZOOM! POW!

Bob Dylan Album Rankings #10 thru #1

2009-11-05T11:55:00.001-05:00

10. World Gone Wrong
9. Love and Theft
8. New Morning
7. Desire
6. Time Out of Mind
5. Oh Mercy
4. Blood On the Tracks
3. Street Legal
2. The Times They Are A Changin’
1. Highway 61 Revisited

Bob Dylan Album Rankings #20 Thru #11

2009-09-25T10:06:00.001-04:00

Been away from the ol’ blog with the beginning of the NFL football season. Back to my Bob Album rankings:

20. Modern Times
19. Saved
18. Slow Train Coming
17. Infidels
16. John Wesley Harding
15. Shot of Love
14. Blonde on Blonde
13. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
12. Bringing It All Back Home
11. Another Side of Bob Dylan

Are there actually ten Bob Albums I like more than Another Side!?!!

Turn One More Corner

2009-08-31T13:06:00.004-04:00

Another Darren O'Dell original up on Youtube:

Apologize up front for the lighting or lack there of..You can jack up the brightness on your monitor to see better...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKo5iw057SI

Turn One More Corner by Darren O'Dell ©

Once they walked down by the river
She had that ribbon in her hair
She whispered to him forever
He's a long long way from there

But I know just where to find him
It's where he's always been
Turn one more corner, down one more backstreet
Up the road and around the bend

We grew up on the same street
From a town no one knows
His old man would lay it on him hard
He thought he didn't let it show

When it gets quiet I think about him
How his means never met the ends
Turn one more corner, down one more backstreet
Up the road and around the bend

Well he met her over in Vicksburg
That woman's love it set him free
Three seasons passed and they were married
At her old home place near Metairie

Got a call around 2 AM
Big news, I heard him cry
His wife she was expecting
A baby girl come mid July

Sometimes I ride out past the trestles
When the pain comes rolling in
Turn one more corner, down one more backstreet
Up the road and around the bend

Got a call around 2 AM
He was wailing through the telephone
Something bout a southbound semi
His wife and baby girl were gone

I drove ten straight hours
Just to be there by his side
Longest night of my lifetime
He was long gone when I arrived

But I know just where to find him
Hell It's where he's always been
Turn one more corner, down one more backstreet
Up the road and around the bend

Somethings you just can't explain
I gave up trying years ago
I never did hear from him
Don't think I even want to know

Kid Hart at Bob Night II

2009-08-20T12:32:00.003-04:00

Kid Hart at Bob Night II
American Legion Hall, Tallahassee, FL 8-14-09

“Might need a good lawyer. Could be your funeral my trial. Well I cried for you. Now it’s your turn to cry a while.”

- B. Dylan

A franchise has started in Tallahassee that has now become an absolute highlight on my calendar. Area artist (is Sopchoppy an area?) Grant Peeples has started what he plans to be a bi-annual event known as Bob Night. He invites regional musicians to perform their own renditions of Bob Dylan songs. Two are in the books and they were both wildly successful.

The first thing I noticed at these Bob Nights is that the crowd that comes to see a show at the Legion Hall are there for the music. They are tuned in and all about what is happening on stage. The second thing I noticed is that the place fills out. The second show was standing room only in the back. Once again credit goes to Grant Peeples for his dedication and organization. As for both nights the folks knew their Bob too, applauding once they recognized songs, tuned in and turned on.

For Bob Night I I highlighted a band here on my blog that I had never seen before, The New 76ers who really impressed. For Bob Night II I am going to go with the closing act, a Tallahassee band, Kid Hart.

Many of the night’s performances were from well-established members of the Florida Folk music scene, Mimi and the Hern Dogs, Whitey Markle, Scotty Lee, and other popular performers such as Velma Fry and The Sauce Boss. It says a lot for Grant to give a local band, a much younger and louder band a shot, not only a shot but to close the show.

Kid Hart is a two-piece rock band well known and established in the Tallahassee bar circuit. For Bob Night II they recruited a bass player, overheard someone say it was a guy who worked with Eric Hartsfield (lead guitar – singer). The evening was almost entirely acoustic, except for Mimi and the Herndogs – adept at getting asses moving.

Kid Hart plugged in and by this time the crowd was juiced and ready to turn it up a notch (insert beer here). The first notes that came were unfamiliar to many, as a silence followed, but I knew what it was. Maggie’s Farm, not the studio version but instead a dead ringer for the infamous Bob goes electric version played at Newport and documented brilliantly on the recent DVD release The Other Side of The Mirror – Bob Dylan at The Newport Folk Festival.

When the first line was sung falling in on top of the bass and drums the crowd audibly and physically responded. I was up front but turned around and saw a lot of people dancing, shaking it, getting down. The guys in the band were having a blast (well the bass player and the lead, the drummer, Alan Donaldson, brings the stoic and steady drummer thing). Maggie’s Farm was a home run with the crowd, which had to be a relief to the band. You’d have to think they were wondering if they were way out of place at this show.

Can’t stop there though, they turned it up a notch with a well known Bob classic Highway 61. Now glasses are clanking and women are getting turned on. Unlike Bob back at Newport there was no booing to be heard. The song was delivered straight without over cooking the goose. You don’t have to show off on a song like Highway 61, and Kid Hart knew it.

Taking things down a notch they worked in Girl From the North Country. Slow mover that the crowd once again really enjoyed, just like Bob does, Kid Hart showed how this initially quiet folk song can have some kick and drive.

The highlight for me was the closer. All the performances from the night were from the better known first half of Bob’s career. Mimi threw in a fun as hell Mozambique from 75’s Desire but hey that is still 34 years ago. Kid Hart laid it on with Cry a While, a back end barn burner from the 2001 masterpiece Love and Theft. A song Bob himself does from time to time on tour. Hartsfield introduced it by saying:

“We’re gonna’ do one from the church of latter day Dylan.”

Smoking hot performance. Cry a While has this line in it to give you an idea.

“Last night cross the alley there was a pounding on the wall, must have been Don Pasquale making a 2 AM booty call.”

When Kid Hart was done the crowd was clamoring for more, the ladies were clamoring for something else. I think I saw Grant ask the guys if they knew another. Nope. That’s allright boys leave em’ wanting more.

Flint River Pearl

2009-08-11T13:38:00.004-04:00

Put a new song up on Youtube. It's an original and I actually can stand seeing it. It feels good to know I'm progressing toward my goals with this.

Flint River Pearl:

Four long nights I’ve only
Thought about her
Three short years since her soul
Flew this world

Two life terms I’m serving
In Lowndes prison cell
All for the love of the
Flint river pearl

Nothing more than a drunk kid
From Hern Road
An old shotgun the barrel
Hard and cold

The fire that night
Couldn’t be surrendered
Not for money sir
Silver or gold

Her auburn hair was dancing
In the harsh glow
From room fourteen of
The Colquitt County Inn

Smoked a few outside
And thought it over, Lord
The barrel cocked as
I came blasting in.

Four long nights I’ve only
Thought about her
Three short years since her soul
Flew this world

Two life terms I’m serving
In Lowndes prison cell
All for the love of the
Flint river pearl

I could smell the sweat
See all that stranger inside
My thoughts went black
As I heard her scream

The first kickback damn near
Broke my shoulder
But the second was like
Some kind of walking dream

The stranger was dead
Half his face was gone
As she lay trembling
With his blood all in her eyes

Well I climbed on top
And I took what I’d come for my God no
One more blast and it was
Darlin’ goodnight

Four long nights I’ve only
Thought about her
Three short years since her soul
Flew this world

Two life terms I’m serving
In Lowndes prison cell
All for the love of the
Flint river pearl

Lyrics by Darren O'Dell ©

Possible Dylan Christmas Songs

2009-08-07T08:52:00.003-04:00

With the rumors going around that Bob Dylan is going to release a Christmas album I have "discovered" snippets from some possible songs that could make the cut.

"Well I see you got your brand new red velvet Santa haaaaaaaat. I wonder what it would feel like to give out gifts under something like that your brand new red velvet Santa hat!"

"You could be known as the only red nose reindeer ever cut through a snow storm to do the deal. What's a reindeer like you doin’ leading a team like this?"

“There’s a whole lotta people at the mall today with a gift receipt. Whole lotta people in line today with a gift receipt. Three neck ties or a microwave, you didn’t need em so it’s time to save. Maybe get some new shoes for your feet with a gift receipt”

“One more cup of coffee before I go, to the NORRRRRRRRRTH POLLLLLLLLLE!”

“I laid up in bed I waited for you
So darn excited I could barely sleep
So many wishes I hope that come true
If I don’t get that bicycle I think I will weep
Santaaaa oh Santa, whatever made you want to change my list
Santaaaa oh Santa , how did I end up with all the wrong gifts”

“It may be oatmeal or may be chocolate chip but you’re gonna have to serve some cookies”

“Under that pine fur Christmas tree oh yeah! Underneath that pine fur Christmas tree oh yeah. Well underneath that tree are gonna’ be some milk and cookies. Underneath that pine fur Christmas tree oh yeah.”

“The snow is falling and I’ve been here all day
Too excited to sleep and time is running away
Hope I get that cool big wheel
My older brother just told me that Santa isn’t real
As long as I get gifts I don’t really care
It’s not Christmas yet, but it’s getting there.”

“Hey Frosty the Snowman, sing a song for me.
I’m not sleepy and it’s a quarter past two
Hey Frosty the Snowman sing a song for me
If the sun comes out tomorrow I’ll be missing you”

“Can’t you see the sky a snowin?
Reindeer coming into view coming from a country mile or two
So happy just to see a smile and share eggnog with you
On this Christmasssss morning, on this Christmas morning with you”

Roger Ebert Blows My Mind

2009-07-31T12:17:00.003-04:00

I was checking out various reviews of The Last Waltz on line after having thoroughly digested the anniversary DVD. In this searching I came across a review by Roger Ebert and was horrified by the evaluation. I actually considered Ebert a well-informed guy, and I usually check out his review of older movies that I’m interested in to get a general idea of what is coming.

This is an interesting view by an evaluator of movies in regards to a documentary focused on live music. I would have no disgust or inexcusable disbelief if he were evaluating the cinema of the work, the way it’s shot, edited, pieced together etc., but his evaluation focuses almost entirely on the music and his interpretation of the artists mindset during the performance. Here is the review:

"I wonder if the sadness comes across on the CD. The music probably sounds happy. But the performers, seen on screen, seem curiously morose, exhausted, played out. Recently, I was at a memorial concert for the late tenor sax man Spike Robinson, and the musicians--jazz and big band veterans--were cheerful, filled with joy, happy to be there. Most of the musicians in "The Last Waltz" are, on average, 25 years younger than Spike's friends, but they drag themselves onstage like exhausted veterans of wrong wars.

The rock documentary was filmed by Martin Scorsese at a farewell concert given on Thanksgiving Day 1976 by The Band, which had been performing since 1960, in recent years as the backup band for Bob Dylan. Now the film is back in a 25th anniversary restoration. "Sixteen years on the road is long enough," says Robbie Robertson, the group's leader. "Twenty years is unthinkable." There is a weight and gravity in his words that suggests he seriously doubts if he could survive four more years.

Drugs are possibly involved. Memoirs recalling the filming report that cocaine was everywhere backstage. The overall tenor of the documentary suggests survivors at the ends of their ropes. They dress in dark, cheerless clothes, hide behind beards, hats and shades, pound out rote performances of old hits, don't seem to smile much at their music or each other. There is the whole pointless road warrior mystique, of hard-living men whose daily duty it is to play music and get wasted. They look tired of it.

Not all of them. The women (Joni Mitchell, Emmylou Harris) seem immune, although what Mitchell's song is about I have no clue, and Harris is filmed in another time and place. Visitors like the Staple Singers are open-faced and happy. Eric Clapton is in the right place and time. Muddy Waters is on sublime autopilot. Lawrence Ferlinghetti reads a bad poem, badly, but seems pleased to be reading it. Neil Diamond seems puzzled to find himself in this company, grateful to be invited.

But then look at the faces of Neil Young or Van Morrison. Study Robertson, whose face is kind and whose smile comes easily, but who does not project a feeling of celebration for the past or anticipation of the future. These are not musicians at the top of their art, but laborers on the last day of the job. Look in their eyes. Read their body language.

"The Last Waltz" has inexplicably been called the greatest rock documentary of all time. Certainly that would be "Woodstock," which heralds the beginning of the era which The Band gathered to bury. Among 1970s contemporaries of The Band, one senses joy in the various Rolling Stones documentaries, in Chuck Berry's "Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll" and in concert films by the Temptations or Rod Stewart. Not here.

In "The Last Waltz," we have musicians who seem to have bad memories. Who are hanging on. Scorsese's direction is mostly limited to closeups and medium shots of performances; he ignores the audience. The movie was made at the end of a difficult period in his own life, and at a particularly hard time (the filming coincided with his work on "New York, New York"). This is not a record of serene men, filled with nostalgia, happy to be among friends.

At the end, Bob Dylan himself comes on. One senses little connection between Dylan and The Band. One also wonders what he was thinking as he chose that oversized white cowboy hat, a hat so absurd that during his entire performance I could scarcely think of anything else. It is the haberdashery equivalent of an uplifted middle finger.

The music probably sounds fine on a CD. Certainly it is well-rehearsed. But the overall sense of the film is of good riddance to a bad time. Even references to groupies inspire creases of pain on the faces of the rememberers: The sex must have been as bad as anything else. Watching this film, the viewer with mercy will be content to allow the musicians to embrace closure, and will not demand an encore. Yet I give it three stars? Yes, because the film is such a revealing document of a time."

What I take the most umbrage with is this:

“…although what Mitchell's song is about I have no clue…”

The song Ebert refers to is Coyote, it follows an interview with the members in which they talk about women on the road. The two together are a glorious coupling.

Here are the lyrics to Coyote, (sung clearly and beautifully by Mitchell I might add)

No regrets, Coyote.
We just come from such different sets of circumstance.
I'm up all night in the studios
And you're up early on your ranch.
You'll be brushing out a brood mare's tail
While the sun is ascending,
And I'll just be getting home with my reel to reel...
There's no comprehending
Just how close to the bone, and the skin, and the eyes, and the lips you can get -
And still feel so alone.
And still feel related
Like stations in some relay.
You're not a, a hit and run driver, no, no,
Racing away.
You just picked up a hitcher,
A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway.

We saw a farmhouse burning down
In the middle of the road,
Where in the middle of the night,
We rolled right past that tragedy
Till we pulled into some road house lights
Where a local band was playing.
Locals were up kicking and shaking on the floor.
The next thing I know
That Coyote's at my door.
He pins me in a corner and he won't take "No!".
He drags me out on the dance floor
And we're dancing close and slow.
Now he's got a woman at home.
He's got another woman down the hall.
He seems to want me anyway:
"Why'd you have to get so drunk and
Lead me on that way?'".
You just picked up a hitcher,
A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway.

I looked a Coyote right in the face
On the road to Baljennie near my old home town.
He went runnin' through the whisker wheat
Chasing some prize down.
And a hawk was playing with him.
Coyote was jumping straight up and making passes.
He had those same eyes just like yours -
Under your dark glasses,
Privately probing the public rooms,
Peeking through keyholes in numbered doors
Where the players lick their wounds,
And take their temporary lovers
And their pills and powders to get them through this passion play.
No regrets, Coyote,
I just get off up away.
You just picked up a hitcher,
A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway.

Coyote's in the coffee shop.
He's staring a hole in his scrambled eggs.
And he picks up my scent on his fingers
While he's watching a waitresses' legs.
He's too far from the Bay of Fundy
From appaloosas and eagles and tides.
The air conditioned cubicles and the carbon ribbon rides
Are spelling it out so clear:
Either he's going to have to stand and fight,
Or take off out of here.
I tried to run away myself,
To run away and wrestle with my ego -
And with this flame you put here in this Eskimo -
In this hitcher -
In this prisoner -
Of the fine white lines -
Of the white lines -
On the free, free way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSZcK48cTiU

A thoughtful man, a writer about art is befuddled and dumbfounded at the prospects of what this song is about, commented in a way that would infer that to him the song is nonsensical and without meaning? This is really astonishing to me, are the veins of music and movie that different, a man who can be enveloped and deeply moved by the script of No Country For Old Men, dismisses this song as if it were an unknown mathematics?

Ebert also comments that Clapton seems in the right place. Of all the performances his seems to me to be the most uninspired. Did Ebert see the same thing I did, Van Morrison belting out Caravan, or he sees a joy in a Rod Stewart film from the same era that he does not see in Levon Helm’s delivering of a historic vocal on The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down?

For me this is a damning death nail to Ebert’s credibility. I can’t imagine taking to heart his reviews again…

Bob Dylan Album Rankings #24 Thru #21

2009-07-29T14:06:00.003-04:00

24. Planet Waves
23. Nashville Skyline
22. The Basement Tapes
21. Bob Dylan

On the edge of the top twenty. I think someday the Basement Tapes will really reveal themselves to me and will climb the mountain. Recently had that happen with The Band, always kind of liked them but now I love 'em.

Bono on Bob Dylan's Singing

2009-07-28T16:17:00.003-04:00

Rolling Stone put together a list of the 100 greatest singers of all time. The following is Bono's comments about Bob Dylan's voice. everyone knows about the "Dylan can't sing" arguement and I have never heard a counterpoint better articulated than this:

"Bob Dylan did what very, very few singers ever do. He changed popular singing. And we have been living in a world shaped by Dylan's singing ever since. Almost no one sings like Elvis Presley anymore. Hundreds try to sing like Dylan. When Sam Cooke played Dylan for the young Bobby Womack, Womack said he didn't understand it. Cooke explained that from now on, it's not going to be about how pretty the voice is. It's going to be about believing that the voice is telling the truth.

To understand Bob Dylan's impact as a singer, you have to imagine a world without Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Kurt Cobain, Lucinda Williams or any other vocalist with a cracked voice, dirt-bowl yelp or bluesy street howl. It is a vast list, but so were the influences on Dylan, from the Talmudic chanting of Allen Ginsberg in "Howl" to the deadpan Woody Guthrie and Lefty Frizzell's murmur. There is certainly iron ore in there, and the bitter cold of Hibbing, Minnesota, blowing through that voice. It's like a knotted fist, and it allows Dylan to sing the most melancholy tunes and not succumb to sentimentality. What's interesting is that later, as he gets older, the fist opens up, to a vulnerability. I have heard him sing versions of "Idiot Wind" where he was definitely the idiot.

I first heard Bob Dylan's voice in the dark, when I was 13 years old, on my friend's record player. It was his greatest-hits album, the first one. The voice was at once modern, in all the things it was railing against, and very ancient. It felt strangely familiar to an Irishman. We thought America was full of superheroes, but it was a much humbler people in these songs — farmers, people who have had great injustices done to them. The really unusual thing about Bob Dylan was that, for a moment in the Sixties, he felt like the future. He was the Voice of a Generation, raised against the generation that came before. Then he became the voice of all the generations, the voices in the ground — these ghosts from the Thirties and the Dust Bowl, the romance of Gershwin and the music hall. For me, the pictures of him in his polka-dot shirt, the Afro and pointy shoes — that was a brief flash of lightning. His voice is usually put to the service of more ancient characters.

Here are some of the adjectives I have found myself using to describe that voice: howling, seducing, raging, indignant, jeering, imploring, begging, hectoring, confessing, keening, wailing, soothing, conversational, crooning. It is a voice like smoke, from cigar to incense, where it's full of wonder and worship. There is a voice for every Dylan you can meet, and the reason I'm never bored of Bob Dylan is because there are so many of them, all centered on the idea of pilgrimage. People forget that Bob Dylan had to warm up for Dr. King before he made his great "I have a dream" speech — the preacher preceded by the pilgrim. Dylan has tried out so many personas in his singing because it is the way he inhabits his subject matter. His closet won't close for all the shoes of the characters that walk through his stories.

I love that album Shot of Love. There's no production. You're in a room hearing him sing. And I like a lot of the songs that he worked on with Daniel Lanois — "Series of Dreams," "Most of the Time," "Dignity." That is the period where he moves me most. The voice becomes the words. There is no performing, just life — as Yeats says, when the dancer becomes the dance.

Dylan did with singing what Brando did with acting. He busted through the artifice to get to the art. Both of them tore down the prissy rules laid down by the schoolmarms of their craft, broke through the fourth wall, got in the audience's face and said, "I dare you to think I'm kidding."

Dead on, just absolutely dead on.

Bob Dylan Album Rankings #28 Thru #25

2009-07-28T11:05:00.003-04:00

28. Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid
27. Empire Burlesque
26. Good As I Been To You
25. Under The Red Sky

28 kind of lumps in with the bottom four for me. There is a significant jump up to 27 with Empire Burlesque. 28 and below are just kind of bad albums. 27 and up are actually good albums to me but are low on the Bob scale.

Springsteen Speech for Pete Seeger

2009-07-28T10:56:00.004-04:00

There was a recent 90th birthday celebration for Pete Seeger at Madison Square Garden. Bruce Springsteen had the following to say about Pete:

"As Pete and I traveled to Washington for President Obama's Inaugural Celebration, he told me the entire story of "We Shall Overcome". How it moved from a labor movement song and with Pete's inspiration had been adapted by the civil rights movement. That day as we sang "This Land Is Your Land" I looked at Pete, the first black president of the United States was seated to his right, and I thought of the incredible journey that Pete had taken. My own growing up in the sixties in towns scarred by race rioting made that moment nearly unbelievable and Pete had thirty extra years of struggle and real activism on his belt. He was ao happy that day, it was like, Pete, you outlasted the bastards, man!...It was so nice. At rehearsals the day before, it was freezing, like fifteen degrees and Pete was there; he had his flannel shirt on. I said, man, you better wear something besides that flannel shirt! He says, yeah, I got my longjohns on under this thing.

And I asked him how he wanted to approach "This Land Is Your Land". It would be near the end of the show and all he said was, "Well, I know I want to sing all the verses, I want to sing all the ones that Woody wrote, especially the two that get left out, about private property and the relief office." I thought, of course, that's what Pete's done his whole life. He sings all the verses all the time, especially the ones that we'd like to leave out of our history as a people. At some point Pete Seeger decided he'd be a walking, singing reminder of all of America's history. He'd be a living archive of America's music and conscience, a testament of the power of song and culture to nudge history along, to push American events towards more humane and justified ends. He would have the audacity and the courage to sing in the voice of the people, and despite Pete's somewhat benign, grandfatherly appearance, he is a creature of a stubborn, defiant, and nasty optimism. Inside him he carries a steely toughness that belies that grandfatherly facade and it won't let him take a step back from the things he believes in. At 90, he remains a stealth dagger through the heart of our country's illusions about itself. Pete Seeger still sings all the verses all the time, and he reminds us of our immense failures as well as shining a light toward our better angels and the horizon where the country we've imagined and hold dear we hope awaits us.

Now on top of it, he never wears it on his sleeve. He has become comfortable and casual in this immense role. He's funny and very eccentric. I'm gonna bring Tommy out, and the song Tommy Morello and I are about to sing I wrote in the mid-nineties and it started as a conversation I was having with myself. It was an attempt to regain my own moorings. Its last verse is the beautiful speech that Tom Joad whispers to his mother at the end of The Grapes of Wrath.
"...Wherever there's a cop beatin' a guy
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries
Where there's a fight 'gainst the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me Mom I'll be there."
Well, Pete has always been there.

For me that speech is always aspirational. For Pete, it's simply been a way of life. The singer in my song is in search of the ghost of Tom Joad. The spirit who has the guts and toughness to carry forth, to fight for and live their ideals.

I'm happy to report that spirit, the very ghost of Tom Joad is with us in the flesh tonight. He'll be on this stage momentarily, he's gonna look an awful lot like your granddad who wears flannel shirts and funny hats. He's gonna look like your granddad if your granddad could kick your ass."

http://media.brucespringsteen.net/non_secure/videos/Seeger90/seeger90.mov

- for Pete it's simply been a way of life. That is one hell of a compliment I think. Seeger can come off as hokey but sometimes I wonder if he has been right the whole time... fuck being cool, be FOR something...

Bob Dylan Album Rankings #32 Thru #29

2009-07-22T11:54:00.003-04:00

32. Down In The Groove
31. Self Portrait
30. Dylan
29. Knocked Out Loaded

Poor Down In The Groove bringing in the rear. One song represented three spaces as Brownsville Girl saved Knocked Out Loaded from the bottom all by it's glorious self. No big surprises here.

Dylan Albums Ranked

2009-07-22T11:46:00.003-04:00

Following will be my Dylan album rankings. As always with my ranked lists these are based on my favorite, not on any thought I may have on importance etc.... This will be from the original studio list excluding Together Through Life which hasn't been around long enough to be fairly considered.

Bullying the Jukebox Volume II Steve Earle – Train A Comin’

2009-07-16T12:30:00.002-04:00

“Under the flag of a greenback dollar or a peso down Mexico way.”

A few weeks back I had the good fortune of catching Steve Earle live. He was backing his Townes Van Zandt cover album titled “Townes”. One of those situations that sort of fell into my lap at the last minute. The show was going to be solo acoustic and I doubted if Steve Earle would be able to carry a show all by himself. I wasn’t a big fan, casual at best, knew of his songs most folks know like Copperhead Road, Guitar Town, and some new stuff I heard like Jerusalem.

My expectations were far surpassed. Steve Earle is a hell of a performer, the show was great and it left me hungry to check out his records. My brother in law who went with suggested I check out Train a Comin’ and thanks to the often mentioned music case / collection my brother Brian made for me I gave it a go and it hasn’t left the player since (except to come inside the house so I could work on the opening part of Mercenary Song on guitar).

Looking back this was the second time Earle surprised me. The first time was on the great (my favorite as a matter of fact) soundtrack for the movie Dead Man Walking. I’m a Springsteen guy all the way and so it was an automatic to purchase a copy. The artists for this soundtrack included:

Springsteen
Johnny Cash
Tom Waits
Lyle Lovett
Suzanne Vega
Michelle Shocked
Eddie Vedder
Patti Smith
Mary Chapin Carpenter

And Steve Earle. I remember listening in complete wonder to the song Ellis Unit One. It was the best song on the soundtrack, a loaded soundtrack with great songs but no question Ellis Unit One was the standout. That seemed like a crazy notion at the time. After getting to know Train a Comin’ it doesn’t seem so surprising.

Train a Comin’ has the great dichotomy working that paralleled what I saw live. It is acoustic and relaxed AND KICK ASS. Now kick ass is an overused term, under the ownership of a different type of listernership you might say. When you hear the term kick ass in regards to music, bands like Skynard or Bon Jovi or Aerosmith come to mind. These bands have never by my definition kicked ass. My kick ass is Waylon Jennings, or Hank III, or Unknown Hinson.

And these are not acoustic affairs like Train a Comin. I think this is that special something that hardcore troubadour Earle fans love. Genuine kick ass; pure, deep, moving kick assification.

A perfect example of this is the song Tom Ames Prayer.

Here is a verse:

“You don’t owe me nothing and as far as I know Lord I don’t owe nothing to you.
I ain’t asking for a miracle, just a little bit a luck will do.
You know I ain’t ever prayed before but it always seemed to me
That praying is the same as begging and I don’t take no charity”

There’s a mouthful right there. Tom Ames Prayer is a classic, a song I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard before.

Train A Comin’ is loaded with great players including Peter Rowan, Norman Blake, and Roy Huskey. Had I known about it, this one would have made a strong run at my Top Ten of the 90’s list.

So now when someone asks me about Steve Earle I’ll say.

“Steve Earle, man he’s great. Have you ever heard Train A Comin? That’s a masterpiece right there.”

As my playing and singing develop (so slowly…) I recorded myself doing a couple of songs off Train A Comin. I keep a video record to reference my progress (hopeful progress) whenever I get pissed and feel like I haven’t got anywhere. I put a couple up on youtube for the hell of it.

You can see that here but please don’t judge the album on it:

http://www.youtube.com/user/ole5anddimer

Blood On My Tracks.

2009-06-09T12:07:00.000-04:00

All right, this list will be for the total Dylanologists.

The following will be a list of an all time per track 20 song Dylan double album. I will take what will be in my opinion to be my two favorite (NOT what are the most important, best, etc..) track ones, twos, threes, etc from Dylan’s catalog (CD’s! – Album track listings are different) up to ten with one caveat, there can’t be more than one song off of any record. This is important because one record might have the all time favorite track one and five in my opinion but I will have to choose one or the other. I will be working from all original studio albums and the Bootleg Series Volume 1,2, and 3 and Tell Tale Signs (excluding alternate versions of previously released songs). I will exclude live recordings, compilations, greatest hits.

I did not include Together Through Life. Not enough time to soak it in yet.

This should end up being (for me) a definitive Bob Mix CD 2-fer.

Blood On My Tracks Disc 1 Song 1

2009-06-09T10:04:00.000-04:00

Track 1. Jokerman

Yeah I know, looks a little crazy to me too, but the “only one song from an album” caveat is a real challenge. This should not, however, under sell how great this lead off track from 1983’s Infidels is. Mark Knopflified, a little bit of a Reggae groove, and a song out there many believe refers to the man himself, but in his ever elusive way we’re just not sure. It also kicked off the third part of the best live show I have ever been to:

Bob Dylan in Biloxi Mississippi on the 95’ Tour.

After my list was assembled I attempted to arrange the songs in a certain way that gives each disc it's own pace etc.. (Reference John Cusack in High Fidelity about mix tapes here). I like kicking it off with Jokerman.

Infidels is now off the board (slow tear falls for License to Kill).

Blood On My Tracks Disc 1 Song 2

2009-06-08T14:58:00.000-04:00

Track 2. Day of the Locusts

In my head there are two different worlds (sort of simplified I know) of Bob Dylan songs there is world (A), the Desolation Row, It’s Allright Ma, Ain’t Talking world and then there is world (B), the When I Paint My Masterpiece, Silvio, Day of the Locusts world. I first got into Bob Dylan via Greatest Hits #1 which is ALL (with the exception of Rainy Day Women) world A.

Day of the Locusts is the first world B song I remember loving. Supposedly this is about the day Dylan received an honorary degree from Princeton. Unwanted formality in the way of the outlying, omni-present muse. There is something in it that just makes me giddy. Disc 1 is starting out pretty funky.

New Morning is now off the board (slow tear falls for Sign on the Window and Winterlude).

Blood On My Tracks Disc 1 Song 3

2009-06-07T15:44:00.000-04:00

Track 3. Visions of Johanna

Is this the part where I am supposed to try to actually attempt to comment on Visions of Johanna? A Dylan pillar, a “this is what I hope they dig up 10,000 years from now and judge our artistic culture on.” song, a masterpiece, a just shake your head in disbelief if you’re a songwriter tour de force.

I remember bringing home Time Out of Mind and just thinking to myself (34 at the time of this entry) that I was able to get a new Dylan record with the same potency of stuff like Visions of Johanna.

What it must have been like to bring home Blonde on Blonde and have this one come at you.

Blonde on Blonde is now off the board (slow tear falls for Obviously 5 Believers, Just Like a Woman, Absolutely Sweet Marie, Most Likely You Go Your Way And I’ll Go Mine, I Want You).

Blood On My Tracks Disc 1 Song 4

2009-06-06T10:35:00.000-04:00

Track 4. Blood In My Eyes

The most influential songwriter living and I am going to put a cover on a super compilation mix-cd. You’re damn right I am and I should.

Myself, my older brother Brian and our friend Rhett put together a best albums of the 90’s top ten list. This was serious shit and we’re gearing up for the aughts. Rhett had World Gone Wrong at #1, what a choice! Having seen the work that followed, all that mining and exploration by Dylan of the original influential stuff it is obvious (NOW) that World Gone Wrong is an extremely pivotal and important record in the pantheon of Dylan’s catalog. Rhett was able to see the future from the power of this record full of songs from the past.

Freewheelin set the tone for folk master hard-rain calling young prodigy stage.

Bringing It All Back Home set the tone for game changer, rock/country/pop music will never sound the same again stage.

John Wesley Harding set the introspective surviving the failed revolution stage.

Slow Train coming set the tone for the “Born Again” stage.

Infidels set the stage for the wandering through the 80’s and looking phase up until it was found with Oh Mercy.

World Gone Wrong set the conduit to a bygone sound and time excavator of that Old Weird America phase.

Here is what Bob had to say about Blood In My Eyes in the liner notes for World Gone Wrong:

"BLOOD IN MY EYES is one of two songs done by the Mississippi Sheiks, a little known de facto group whom in their former glory must've been something to behold. rebellion against routine seems to be their strong theme. all their songs are raw to the bone & are faultlessly made for these modern times (the New Dark Ages) nothing effete about the Mississippi Sheiks."

World Gone Wrong is off the board (slow tear falls for Delia, Two Soldiers, and Lone Pilgrim)

Blood On My Tracks Disc 1 Song 5

2009-06-05T08:09:00.000-04:00

Track 5. Red River Shore

Red River Shore is now the front-runner for best Dylan song that did not make the initial cut. See my earlier blog entry The Red River Shaman, that about sums it up. This was a first listen masterpiece, dwarfing my expectations of Tell Tale Signs (which were pretty darn high).

Further hyperbole:

http://www.rightwingbob.com/weblog/archives/1719

Tell Tale Signs is off the board (slow tear falls for Red River Shore, wait nevermind).

Blood On My Tracks Disc 1 Song 6

2009-06-04T09:04:00.000-04:00

Track 6. A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall

When you hear this song you can understand why the hardliners in the folk community wanted so desperately to keep Bob Dylan. As Hard Rain poured out it seemed as if he were some answer to a promise, an exponential Woody Guthrie. If you came from a place where you believed that folk songs could change the world outside the individual, the political landscape, and social hierarchy, then this song and this Bob Dylan would certainly have been exhibit “A” proof.

That infamous tag he has spent a lifetime dodging, “The Voice of a Generation” is understandable when you listen to A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall. In an interview with 60 minutes Bob seemed at a loss himself as to where songs like Hard Rain came from. He was asked if he could write songs like it anymore. “No” was his answer, that comes once and you’re lucky if you receive it at all.

This is the Wiki entry:

Dylan was only 21 years old when he wrote one of his most complex songs, "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall", often referred to as "Hard Rain". Dylan is said to have premiered "Hard Rain" at the Gaslight Cafe, where Village performer Peter Blankfield was in attendance. "He put out these pieces of loose-leaf paper ripped out of a spiral notebook. And he starts singing ['Hard Rain']...He finished singing it, and no one could say anything. The length of it, the episodic sense of it. Every line kept building and bursting".

Dylan performed "Hard Rain" days later at Carnegie Hall on September 22, 1962, as part of a concert organized by Pete Seeger. Seeger was so impressed by "Hard Rain", he covered it himself in his own set.

Many critics interpreted the lyric 'hard rain' as a reference to nuclear fallout, but Dylan resisted the specificity of this interpretation. In a radio interview with Studs Terkel in 1963, Dylan said,

"No, it's not atomic rain, it's just a hard rain. It isn't the fallout rain. I mean some sort of end that's just gotta happen... In the last verse, when I say, 'the pellets of poison are flooding the waters', that means all the lies that people get told on their radios and in their newspapers."

The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan is off the board (slow tear falls for Girl From the North Country, Bob Dylan’s Dream, Masters of War, Talkin’ World War III Blues, Blowing in the Wind).

Blood On My Tracks Disc 1 Song 7

2009-06-03T10:05:00.000-04:00

Track 7. True Love Tends To Forget

I have an unabashed fetish for Street Legal. If you check my all time top ten albums list from an earlier blog you will see Street Legal sitting pretty at number 6. This track embodies that whole record. It is funky, the soul singing back up is there. Bob’s vocal is really forceful and yanks your arm. It is wrapped up in a curious mysticism that underpins Street Legal:

“I was lyin' down in the reeds without any oxygen
I saw you in the wilderness among the men.
Saw you drift into infinity and come back again
All you got to do is wait and I'll tell you when.”

For me you couldn’t create a larger hole in Dylan’s catalog then if you removed Street Legal. I just have never heard anything like it. I love that through the process of elimination this song made the cut. It fits perfectly.

Street Legal is off the board (slow tear falls for all of the above).

Blood On My Tracks Disc 1 Song 8

2009-06-02T11:05:00.000-04:00

Track 8. Mr. Tambourine Man

In reviewing Bob’s discography I notice that this is the side two for the vinyl Bringing It All Back Home:

Side two
1. "Mr. Tambourine Man" – 5:30
2. "Gates of Eden" – 5:40
3. "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" – 7:29
4. "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" – 4:12

I am of the era of Compact Discs so this is the first time I had that fact register in my brain. My God, is this the greatest side in vinyl history? For you vinyl folks out there give me some competition.

That is a stunning thing to look at really. So heavy the ship starts sinking and the rats start climbing the mastheads.

If my memory serves me well, this is the first Dylan song I loved. It falls right in line with the imaginations of a young man and is determinedly some of the most beautiful lyrics Bob Dylan ever pinned. It’s a difficult song to come back to after you have taken the time to let the breadthof it sink in. I listened to it a thousand times, probably in a row in an obsessed fashion as a kid. I go back but rarely, it kind of haunts me in a way – weird.

Bringing It All Back Home is off the board (slow tear falls for Gates of Eden, It’s Allright Ma, It’s All Over Now Baby Blue, Love Minus Zero No Limit, She Belongs To Me).

Blood On My Tracks Disc 1 Song 9

2009-06-01T15:19:00.000-04:00

Track 9. Desolation Row

Track ten on disc one better be ridiculous if it actually follows Desolation Row. I had a real real hard time with what song to use off of Highway 61 Revisited. From my earlier favorite ten albums of all time blog you will find Highway 61 at numero uno. This album is the big cheese, the trifecta of where the sound met the songwriting met the meteoric Dylan. It came down to Like A Rolling Stone, Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues and Desolation Row. In the mixing and matching with the one per album rule Desolation Row came out of the wash.

I have over the last year been waste deep in learning the ins and outs of playing guitar. So being a Dylan fan it lead me (of course) to the incredible dylanchords site run by Eyolf Østrem. To my surprise this most epic song is only three simple chords, so I started strumming and singing the song entertaining myself and then, abruptly, I stopped.

I laughed all by myself, who the hell did I think I was to play Desolation Row? This has always been for me the most mind-boggling song of them all. In the song I Walk the Line Revisited, Rodney Crowell sings about hearing, for the first time, I Walk the Line and he says:

“Sounded like the whole thing came right down from outer space.”

I know exactly how he feels. I mean seriously, some guy mixed the final of Desolation Row and then a group of guys listened to the final cut before releasing it for the record.

Record Producer: “I think that’s a keeper Bob.”

Bob: “I’m happy with it.”

Record Producer: “Let’s go get some Chinese take out.”

Bob: “I’m gonna head back to the hotel for a swim.”

Me: “Pbbbbbbbbbbbbffffffffffffttttttttttttttttttttttttttt!!!!!!!”

The accenting guitar that Charlie McCoy plays throughout absolutely sets Desolation Row. Desolation Row, arguably Bob Dylan’s greatest song on what is my all time favorite album. Yikes!!! Should I just stop here?

Blood On My Tracks Disc 1 Song 10

2009-05-30T15:37:00.000-04:00

Track 10. Dark Eyes

We knew you had it in you Empire Burlesque. So disc one begins with Jokerman and ends with Dark Eyes. Take that Bob in the 80’s critics! I have to admit that Empire Burlesque would be way down low on my Bob Dylan Album rankings (this could be my next list no one reads). That’s the thing about Dark Eyes though, it is separate from the rest of the record in sound, depth, and tone. This is also the quality that allowed it to follow Desolation Row. If Bob can stick this bad rascal on the end of Empire Burlesque, then I can do the same for disc 1 of Blood On My Tracks.

I would say Dark Eyes is the best (maybe one or two other songs) unheard song off an original Dylan album by sort of hip into Dylan, quasi casual yet appreciative of his Bobness, folks out there. It is my go to when many times I’ve been asked (sort of):

“Hey man, Time Out of Mind blew my brains out and I love all those albums from the 60’s and Blood on the Tracks, what song that I haven’t heard yet would kick my ass like that?”

“Have you ever heard Dark Eyes?”

“Dark what?”

“There you go, Dark Eyes all the way.”

Here is what Disc One looks like:

Disc 1

1. Jokerman - Infidels
2. Day of the Locusts – New Morning
3. Visions of Johanna – Blonde on Blonde
4. Blood In My Eyes – World Gone Wrong
5. Red River Shore – Tell Tale Signs
6. A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall – The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
7. True Love Tends To Forget – Street Legal
8. Mr. Tambourine Man – Bringing It All Back Home
9. Desolation Row – Highway 61 Revisited
10. Dark Eyes – Empire Burlesque

Hot damn that looks fine to me.

Pretty wild that I have the “big three” all on disc one – Bringing It All, Highway 61, and Blonde on Blonde. What could possibly be in store for Disc two, which could only pale in comparison (or maybe not).

Empire Burlesque is off the board (no tears to be found).

Blood On My Tracks Disc 2 Song 1

2009-05-29T16:06:00.000-04:00

Track 1. Tangled Up In Blue

We all knew this was coming right? Right. My brother Brian and I have discussed on many separate occasions the importance of an opening track for an album. Sometimes I think I hide like a scared little baby from this album. It did not make my top ten list, and it could very well be better than all of them. The previously mentioned Eyolf Østrem who runs the dylanchords (click on Self Ordained Tab on the left and scroll down to Blood on the Tracks) site certainly thinks so.

I caught Springsteen a couple of times on the solo Ghost of Tom Joad tour. One show was in Birmingham and he started out with a preposterous version of The River. Bossman set the bar wayyyyy up there for that show like a challenge to himself and the intensity never waned from there. That’s exactly what Tangled Up In Blue does for Blood on the Tracks. It stands alone as probably my favorite first track (yet another future list…) and opens the doors to this classic album.

If I go with someone to see Bob Dylan live and they have never seen him this is the one I hope he plays. It never fails to ignite an audience and there has been many different lyrical incarnations of the song live. It’s a line of demarcation song for me, a black and white, which side are you on song. If you don’t like, hell if you don’t really like Tangled Up In Blue I simply will be unable to communicate with you about music nor would I want to. Right or wrong Tangled Up In Blue means that much to me.

Blood on the Tracks is off the board (slow tear falls as I go out of my mind with a pain that stops and starts like a corkscrew to my heart for If You See Her Say Hello, Idiot Wind, Simple Twist of Fate, Lily –Rosemary - and the Jack of Hearts, Shelter From the Storm, You’re a Big Girl Now).

Man I am so scared of Blood on the Tracks, I need a pacifier.

Bullying the Jukebox Volume 1 The Mayhaws - Lonely Places

2009-05-28T16:47:00.000-04:00

Bullying the Jukebox Volume 1 The Mayhaws Lonely Places

I decided to take a little break from my by the numbers Dylan mix to start a new series entitled Bullying the Jukebox. This term comes from a song of the same name by The Bouncing Souls off of their CD Hopeless Romantic. I am beginning to see that I am becoming a prisoner of my time. I am hopelessly tied to the Compact Disc. I-Pods etc. be damned.

From time to time a bully comes around in the old CD case I carry in my car and is downright hateful towards its well respected brethren. When this fortunate for me, unfortunate to the other abandoned discs event happens I’m going to try to chronicle it here. For the last two weeks Mr. Bully has been in the surprising form of Lonely Places by Tallahassee locals The Mayhaws (bumping the former tough guy Together Through Life by Bob Dylan).

As chronicled I am knee deep in learning acoustic guitar, lots of calluses on fingers and blank stares from my Daughter Ireland and Hound Dog Cooper. As part of this I made up my mind to go out of the way to see if there were folks around Tallahassee playing the kind of stuff I eventually wanted to learn. In the newspaper (yeah newspaper – CD’s…old…) I saw a listing for an open bluegrass / folk session held at a local Irish themed joint called Finnegan’s Wake on the first Sunday of the month.

I went and I liked what I heard. Actually I really liked what I heard. There was a good mix of players; some near beginner, some midland, some hot. They all seemed to know each other pretty well and there was an open friendly vibe with the whole thing. Sitting and watching I wasn’t made to feel like an intruder or eavesdropper, which was nice.

Flexing my Google skills and simply asking folks “Hey who is that person?” I discovered The Mayhaws. A couple of the members had been there – Carrie Hamby and Dave Leporati. I liked the way Carrie sang and I liked the way Dave played mandolin. But mostly I dug their energy, it was all over them that they really loved the music.

I made it to a couple of Mayhaws shows (too infrequent!) the most recent being the CD release party for Lonely Places at Bird’s Aphrodisiac Oyster Shack. Don’t worry ma’ it’s a pretty friendly place. The show was real good and the place was stuffed. There was even an accordion fest during the break.

Despite another real good show I wasn’t too inclined to pick up a CD. Then I heard that distant whispering voice of my bride Tracy.

“Bet it’s good you cheap bastard.”

I’ve learned to listen to the inner wife voice (sometimes) so I picked up a copy for a fair price of ten dollars. My inner wife voice knew what it was talking about.

I do my fair share to support local music but on the same front if I don’t like it, I don’t like it. There is something in me incapable of tolerating music I don’t care for. It’s a character flaw and one I fear will show it’s ugly face as my daughter grows into her Hanna Montana years. When I’ve gone out locally most of the stuff is uninspiring, a rare surprise here and there but most of the time not so much when it comes to local bands, especially the records. The older I’ve got in my musification the more I appreciate the importance of record production. May be a good band or singer or whatever but the low budget record just doesn’t have the sound.

Then we have Lonely Places a big old 14-song collection of really enjoyable tunes. Of the 14 songs only 4 are covers leaving us ten possible insights into the collective spirit of the Mayhaws.

Some initial thoughts: Cheer up you guys. On second thought cheer down the title track really is a whopper, on third thought stop all medication, increase all drinking quotas and listen only to Townes Van Zandt or Johnny Paycheck records, Ride the Pine is great. The songs on the album written by Dave Leporati rejoice in the wonderful mystery that is head hung low honky tonk that makes one ask that eternal question: “Why do I love listening to songs that are so damn depressing? And are they depressing if they bring joy to my ears?”

A few highlights –

Track 1. Bite the Bitter – The info out there on Sharla June, who wrote and sings on this one, mention phrases like weird, quirky, strange but infectious. Well shit, I hear what they’re saying. First time around on Bite the Bitter I thought “that’s cute” second time around “this ain’t so cute.” third time around and after “that’s just a real good song.”

Track 2. Lonely Places – Yes! Unashamed to deliver a shameful, lonely, pathetic, Haggardy like song about drinking and misery. Carrie Hamby sings her you know what off on this.

“To make the only lonely face in this place fade awaaaaayheyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.”

Pop, fizz, gulp, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Track 3. Drivin’ on 9 - I just love the way Sharla June sings this, holding on to some words just long enough to keep them alive. Cool cover of a song I’ve never heard before.

Track 10. Ride the Pine – I played basketball in High School, well I didn’t play much I sat the bench which they called riding the pine. This song has nothing to do with High School Basketball folks. Iris Dement wrote “I live just the way I want to and that’s the way I should.” This is a eulogy for someone who lives that creed. Unapologetic and raw and really well played by the band here.

Track 11. Hard Times – No not that Hard Times, the ones lingering around this cabin door are of the self inflicted variety. This song is a good lesson for the kiddies and a truckload of fun. I played it for my Dad over in Lynn Haven and he busted out the infamous Jerry shuffle. When the old man breaks into “the most embarrassing aspect of being me” you have the official O’Dell stamp of approval.

Yeah, I know you’re probably a little wishy washy but go ahead and buy Lonely Places and you can thank me later, just buy me a couple of beers at the next Tallahassee Mayhaws show (whenever that is – hint hint). Make sure you apologize to your other CD’s, they will probably get a little bit jealous.

Blood On My Tracks Disc 2 Song 2

2009-05-28T10:59:00.000-04:00

Track 2. Mississippi

The home of Jimmie Rodgers and Robert Johnson on that Highway 61 that leads right up to Hibbing Minnesota. I've got to say that Bob Dylan has written a grand statement for anyone in love with American Roots music.

“Only one thing I did wrong. I stayed in Mississippi a day too long.”

There is so much in that line, it really does say it all if you too are in love with those old songs. Like a Rolling Stone had the fire of someone on the way. Mississippi is just as alive with the fire of someone who has been there.

“My clothes are wet, tight on my skin
Not as tight as the corner that I painted myself in
I know that fortune is waitin' to be kind
So give me your hand and say you'll be mine”

The melody is one of his best, Mississippi is just a great song.

Love and Theft is off the board. Slow tear falls for High Water, Summer Days, Cry a While, Po Boy, Moonlight.

Blood On My Tracks Disc 2 Song 3

2009-05-27T11:17:00.000-04:00

Track 3. I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine

Oh man do I love this one. It is my favorite song to sing along to. From the first time I heard this off of John Wesley Harding it was pure magic. I’ve been to a number of Dylan shows (somewhere in the neighborhood of 25-30) and I always do a list of five songs I would like to hear. I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine has been on each one. This was last played on 11/26/05 in Dublin (per the great last time Bob played a song blog).

Never did get a chance to see it live, but there’s always next show.

John Wesley Harding is off the board. Slow tear falls for I Pity the Poor Immigrant and The Wicked Messenger.

Blood On My Tracks Disc 2 Song 4

2009-05-25T12:04:00.000-04:00

Track 4. Chimes of Freedom

Recently Murray Lerner released a time capsule bombshell documentary film entitled The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival. It chronicles the performances by Bob Dylan from 1963-64-65 at the festival. It is hard to fathom the change from the first performance, a sit down version of North Country Blues (where he looks like what he was, a very young kid engrossed in the folk idiom) to the final performance including the infamous going electric set with Maggie’s Farm, Like a Rolling Stone rattling the cages.

Bob jokes on the Scorcese Documentary No Direction Home that he went to the crossroads. That old Robert Johnson blues legend of selling your soul to the devil to be able to play “it”. When you watch this documentary the concept doesn’t seem so ridiculous.

The apex for me was not the electric set but instead the earth moving, hollering version of Chimes of Freedom that closes out the 1964 session.

After seeing this on film in that setting I now believe that Chimes of Freedom is the best song he has ever recorded which would mean it is possibly the greatest song in recorded history. How is that for over the top hyperbole!

Here it is…

Chimes Of Freedom

Far between sundown's finish an' midnight's broken toll
We ducked inside the doorway, thunder crashing
As majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sounds
Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing
Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight
Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight
An' for each an' ev'ry underdog soldier in the night
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

In the city's melted furnace, unexpectedly we watched
With faces hidden while the walls were tightening
As the echo of the wedding bells before the blowin' rain
Dissolved into the bells of the lightning
Tolling for the rebel, tolling for the rake
Tolling for the luckless, the abandoned an' forsaked
Tolling for the outcast, burnin' constantly at stake
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail
The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder
That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze
Leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder
Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind
Striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind
An' the unpawned painter behind beyond his rightful time
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Through the wild cathedral evening the rain unraveled tales
For the disrobed faceless forms of no position
Tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts
All down in taken-for-granted situations
Tolling for the deaf an' blind, tolling for the mute
Tolling for the mistreated, mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute
For the misdemeanor outlaw, chased an' cheated by pursuit
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Even though a cloud's white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An' the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An' for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Starry-eyed an' laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an' we watched with one last look
Spellbound an' swallowed 'til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an' worse
An' for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

If you haven’t seen the documentary the performance actually DOES THIS SONG JUSTICE.

Another Side of Bob Dylan is off the board. Slow tear falls for Ramona, Bob Dylan’s Dream, My Back Pages, I Don’t Believe You

Blood On My Tracks Disc 2 Song 5

2009-05-22T09:49:00.000-04:00

Track 5. Oh Sister

This is consistently an outstanding live song. In the Rolling Thunder Review “Bootleg Series” release version Dylan really belts it out. He even lays it on heavier on the release Hard Rain. That Scarlet Rivera violin that is peppered throughout Desire really is the focal point musically. Along with the vocals of Emmylou Harris it drives home the desperate longing of the lyric.

Oh Sister is a beautiful song.

Desire is off the board. Slow tear falls for Hurricane, One More Cup of Coffee, Romance in Durango, Black Diamond Bay, Joey

Blood On My Tracks Disc 2 Song 6

2009-05-21T10:26:00.000-04:00

Track 6. Most of the Time

Oh Mercy man, Oh Mercy is one hell of an album. It set the Dylan parameter for me when I was in the initial phases of getting hooked. Bob Dylan was the 60’s icon, world changer, but he was also the guy who did Man in the Long Black Coat, Ring Them Bells and Most of the Time. Same guy, different universes. One of my favorite writers / bloggers is a guy named James Howard Kunstler, his main thing is architectural aesthetics and peak oil. His book The Geography of Nowhere is an insightful read about the development of American Suburbia focusing on the power plays of the automobile industry. He can be a grump ass about things (his weekly update is called Clusterfuck Nation) but I buy what he is selling usually.

On his website he reviews Chronicles Volume I (Bob’s self penned sort of autobiography) and in it he states the following:

“And by that, I include the possibility that he saw the danger of becoming a fraud, of slipping across a frontier into self-parody and baroque pretentiousness, which was almost the case with his 1966 magnum opus Blonde on Blonde. And after that Bob Dylan kind of flamed out.

It was one of the longest swan songs in the history of any art. He continued to produce an impressive stream of recordings for nearly forty years after that. The first of these, John Wesley Harding, was in its own right a perfect statement of Dylan's predicament and an appropriate announcement of his resignation from the post of generational bard. "Dear Landlord, please don't put a price on my soul. . . ." It contained one great song ("All Along theWatchtower"), and some pretty good songs ("I Dreamed I Saw Saint Augustine"), but the mystical language now seemed forced (e.g. "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest"). The kernal of Dylan's genius, his supernatural conviction in his own doings, had cracked for good. Perhaps that conviction had been part of the act, too, but if it was, he had pulled it off masterfully for a decade. The many albums that followed were not devoid of interesting and sometimes even moving songs. Here and there the ghost of the old spark flashed. But after 1970, something essential was missing.”

It is this type of perspective that really makes me glad that I was born and got into Dylan long after that 60’s explosion. This is a common viewpoint, a pigeonhole, that you can understand if you lived when this stuff was hitting the shelves. It is that “back in my day (insert anything) was better”. I came from a place where in the same six months I took in Just Like a Woman, I Believe In You, Song to Woody, and Most of the Time all together. My evaluation of Dylan was on the whole, not based on my opinion of the previous. And for this review Kunstler is just wrong. Oh Mercy, not just a song but the whole record, should never on any planet be lumped into the category of a swan song. It is different, for sure, BUT JUST AS HEAVY, VITAL and MIND BLOWING.

When Springsteen inducted Dylan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame he mentions that Dylan was unjustly placed in his own shadow and that if anyone out there was writing Every Grain of Sand or Sweetheart Like You they would be calling him the next Dylan. I nod my head in agreement Springsteen.

Kunstler concludes his review by stating with certainty that history will judge Dylan as the most important artist of his generation. What I have issue with is that “my generation” ownership label. I believe that Dylan is America’s Shakespeare and that history will prove him to be the most important artist since the formation of our country and this is due in large part to the entirety of his work. To go back to a previous thought he is the same guy who wrote Visions of Johanna AND Most of the Time (Not to mention the ridiculous roll he has been on since World Gone Wrong).

Oh Mercy is off the board. Slow tear falls for Ring Them Bells, Political World, Disease of Conceit, Man in the Long Black Coat, Shooting Star, What Good Am I?, Where Teardrops Fall.

Blood On My Tracks Disc 2 Song 7

2009-05-20T09:51:00.000-04:00

Track 7. Not Dark Yet

This lighthearted little ditty is the centerpiece of the atmospheric and hypnotic album Time Out of Mind. At the execution houses in the U.S.A. there is the publicized shout of “dead man walking” when a member of death row is being escorted. You could take out the shout and insert “Not Dark Yet.” A lot of speculation about Time Out of Mind in general focused on a near fatal condition Dylan had but as the timeline played out these songs were recorded before that; but nonetheless Not Dark Yet emphasizes the impending, unavoidable ending of something.

Personally I see Not Dark Yet as a testament to the idea of holding on to something you should let go but simply can’t. The tune has an anthemic military march feel. The vocals are perfect here, a great rebuttal to the ever-present “Dylan can’t sing” argument.

“I was born here and I'll die here against my will
I know it looks like I'm moving, but I'm standing still
Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb
I can't even remember what it was I came here to get away from
Don't even hear a murmur of a prayer
It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.”

Gulp. Talk about growing and evolving in your art. Dylan has stated that he couldn’t write songs like the ones on Highway 61 Revisited or Bringing it All Back Home again. Well, just as true is that the prodigy Dylan who wrote It’s All Over Now Baby Blue couldn’t have written Not Dark Yet. He could sound like he had been there but he couldn’t write it, no way.

Time Out of Mind is off the board. Slow tear falls for Love Sick, Standing in the Doorway, Cold Irons Bound, Highlands, Trying To Get To Heaven.

Blood On My Tracks Disc 2 Song 8

2009-05-10T10:28:00.000-04:00

Track 8. Nettie Moore

Dylan has received a torrent of criticism for Modern Times in the arena of plagiarism for the musical and lyrical content. Give me a break. I too have my discovery and analysis, in the song Nettie Moore he uses what sounds like an E chord. Thief! I will nudge a little and say Bob could have put some basic acknowledgements on the liner notes but the fervent angry ones out there simply were looking for vulnerabilities in the armor. Many of the arguments are well based and argued with intelligence and foresight but in the end it all adds up to a big so what.

Nettie Moore takes its title, and some of its chorus, from an 1857 composition "Gentle Nettie Moore" by Marshall Pike and James Lord Pierpont. (I stole that line from Wikipedia). This is a gorgeous song and a testament to Dylan’s own production and understanding of how he wants his stuff to sound. On the first few listens Nettie Moore kind of slipped by my ears, being pinned between Working Man’s Blues # 2 and Ain’t Talkin’, but soon it grew a life of its own and is currently my favorite song on Modern Times.

Modern Times is off the board. Slow tear falls for Working Man’s Blues # 2 and Ain’t Talkin’.

Blood On My Tracks Disc 2 Song 9

2009-05-03T09:48:00.000-04:00

Track 9. The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll

In my previous top ten albums of all time I have The Times They Are A Changin’ at number 4. As part of the write up I stated

The Times They Are A-Changin' is a fierce piece of American history and for my taste is the best representation of the power of one person with a guitar and a song.

On no track is this power more evident than The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll. The kind of stuff in it that changes hearts instead of minds. The topical song of all topical songs, a bellringer, a knuckle sandwich, a venomous stab at haves and have nots and the systems that perpetuate their positions. Bob’s best closing verse. He shines a light on Bourgeois William Zanzinger and we sit and shake our head with self assurance at his self importance and abuse of poor Hattie Carroll then with a blinding shift Dylan puts on the high beam and turns the light on all of us, himself included.

"In the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gavel
To show that all's equal and that the courts are on the level
And that the strings in the books ain't pulled and persuaded
And that even the nobles get properly handled
Once that the cops have chased after and caught 'em
And that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom,
Stared at the person who killed for no reason
Who just happened to be feelin' that way without warnin'.
And he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished,
And handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance,
William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence."

"Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears,
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears."

That word bury explodes through speakers. Leaving in it’s path pure American enlightenment.

The Times They Are A Changin’ is off the board. Slow tear falls for Restless Farewell, One Too Many Mornings, With God On Our Side, Only a Pawn In Their Game, When the Ship Comes In.

Blood On My Tracks Disc 2 Song 10

2009-05-02T10:33:00.000-04:00

Track 10. Every Grain of Sand

This song was going to anchor Blood On My Tracks and I knew it from the beginning of the concept. Every Grain of Sand is such a dear sweet friend to me, a relentless comforter. It stays with me on my journey - together through life. It touches my heart, the best parts of me and recalibrates my perspective. The harmonica solo within is the paradigm of beauty for me, it was the music I heard when I first held my daughter.

Like it always has been it was right there with me, just like it is in “my hour of deepest need.” Every Grain of Sand opened up a world of spiritual birth and beauty for me. Through it, this song, I came to an appreciation of awe in something more that what I can simply see or touch and it wasn’t under anyone else’s definition or terms but my own as I reflected on Every Grain of Sand.

Every Grain of Sand connected me with something I believed all along, deep down in there, that there is more to life than meets the eye. It was my initiator for a sense of wonder and I will always be indebted to it for that. I can say with conviction that this song fundamentally changed me, and the way the world looks through my eyes.

I believe a song can do that because Every Grain of Sand did it for me.

Shot of Love is off the board. Slow tear falls for In the Summertime, Property of Jesus, The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar.

Blood On My Tracks Summary

2009-05-01T11:32:00.000-04:00

Well here it is if you dare to mix this:

Blood On My Tracks

Disc 1

1. Jokerman - Infidels
2. Day of the Locusts – New Morning
3. Visions of Johanna – Blonde on Blonde
4. Blood In My Eyes – World Gone Wrong
5. Red River Shore – Tell Tale Signs
6. A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall – The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
7. True Love Tends To Forget – Street Legal
8. Mr. Tambourine Man – Bringing It All Back Home
9. Desolation Row – Highway 61 Revisited
10. Dark Eyes – Empire Burlesque

Disc 2

1. Tangled Up in Blue – Blood On The Tracks
2. Mississippi – Love and Theft
3. I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine – John Wesley Harding
4. Chimes of Freedom – Another Side of Bob Dylan
5. Oh Sister - Desire
6. Most of the Time – Oh Mercy
7. Not Dark Yet – Time Out of Mind
8. Nettie Moore – Modern Times
9. The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll – The Times They Are a Changin’
10. Every Grain of Sand – Shot of Love

Available albums not used:

Bob Dylan, Nashville Skyline, Self Portrait, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Dylan, Planet Waves, The Basement Tapes, Slow Train Coming, Saved, Knocked Out Loaded, Down in the Groove, Under the Red Sky, The Bootleg Series Vol 1,2,3, Good As I Been to You.

Thoughts:

I was surprised that nothing from the Bootleg series Vol 1,2, and 3 nudged in. This was due to many of my favorite tracks from this collection being above # 10. In that lies the big flaw of this mix, which is that all the songs with track listings 11 and higher are left out. I actually am pretty excited about putting this together to see how it sounds.

Bob’s power 60’s period did flex muscle with Freewheelin, The Times, Another Side, Bringing It All, Highway 61, Blonde on B, and JW Harding making a stretch of 7 straight eligible releases to have a song in the mix. The latter day revival had a four-fer with WG Wrong, Time Out, Love and T, and Modern Times included – remember I did not include Together Through Life as it hasn’t aged enough for fair consideration.

The longest eligible stretch with no songs was only three – Pat Garrett, Dylan, Planet Waves.

So what would your mix look like? I’d love to see it.

The New 76ers

2009-04-27T13:17:00.000-04:00

I Wasn’t Goin’ Nowhere

A Concert Review of The New 76ers at Bob Night

American Legion Hall – Tallahassee, FL 4.24.09

It was an evening I had looked forward to for a few weeks. Some local Tallahassee performers were going to put on a “Night of Bob Dylan” to coincide, sort of, with the release of Dylan’s latest record Together Through Life (Release date 4.28.09). I had managed to procure, get, bamboozle, an early copy so a plan emerged. Go with a few friends to my favorite place to eat – Decent Pizza – head over to the Legion Hall and catch the show – then head back to my place with a few friends and give the new record a listen.

What I had not anticipated was how fine the show was going to be, in particular The New 76ers.

Drew Tillman had finished a good set mostly peppered with songs from Blood on the Tracks, Drew mentioned how the songs had stayed with him through the years, I knew exactly what he meant. The organizer of the night, Mr. Grant Peeples (thank you Grant) then introduced The New 76ers, emphasizing the fact that they were going to play without amplification.

So walking right down in front of my table were two young men and a young lady that looked kind of like the people I end up behind at the Kentucky Fried Chicken Buffet, regular folks so to speak.

Kelly Goddard (young lady) stood center, flanked by Danny Goddard and Brian Durham (info found at their MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/thenew76ers )

They said they were gonna do their covers in sort of a chronological order, my inner Dylan nerd already liked them.

First up was Oxford Town a closet favorite of mine off of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963). Good, clean version, went by fast and I really liked it. So did the crowd.

Boots of Spanish Leather (The Times They Are A Changing – 1964) came next, a real gutsy choice and Kelly Goddard provided the song a soft and building vocal that reminded me a lot of Nanci Griffith’s version on her fantastic record Other Voice’s Other Rooms (and I love that version).

Now I’m thinking to myself boy this is really good. My wife leaned over and said, “This is really good.” It was settled, at least in my marriage, The New 76ers were really good.

A couple of songs later and the crowd was sold. Brian Durham switched off of the stand up bass took hold of the six string and belted out a rollickin’ rollin’ version of The Man in Me.”

Heard quite a few off keyers like myself singing along to this New Morning (1970) track.

“That’s just because he doesn’t wanna turn into some machine!”

There was a real connection shared between the performers and the audience, can’t ask for anything more with live music.

I had immediately, or close to immediately recognized all the songs performed up until that point of Bob Night. Two lines into The New 76ers closing number I was doing an internal search on my brain’s WikiBob page and then it hit me or I mean The New 76ers hit me.

“My God, that’s Lord Protect My Child off the Bootleg Series Volume 3 (1993 – song circa 1983)!”

I was lost in the performance, and man did they really nail it. It sort of says it all about Bob Dylan’s catalog that this song is an outtake. If you were like me and have never heard The New 76ers get yourself over to their MySpace page, find a show date, and enjoy. I can’t wait to hear their originals live.

The Edge of Yesterday

2009-02-23T11:44:00.000-05:00

Another song, I am working on a theme "Songs from Hern Road"....

The Edge of Yesterday © Darren O'Dell 2009

VERSE 1

Just off of Hern Road
I used to pass by
This old retaining wall
In a field on the side
It was all on its own
Abandoned and grey
Living on the edge of yesterday

VERSE 2

That old retaining wall
In a field on the side
Of a bend in Hern Road
From the world it would hide
Made of concrete and steel
Against the forces at play
Living on the edge of yesterday

CHORUS

Living on the edge of yesterday
One step behind of what’s in the way
On a cold concrete wall
I’m just sitting alone
A few hundred yards
From my old childhood home

Verse 3

How did it get here?
This old retaining wall
All alone in a field
Doing nothing at all
The same could be asked
Of a young fool I’d say
Living on the edge of yesterday

Verse 4

It was about 3 miles
Just a stroll down Ol’ Hern
From my place to hers
Where we took out turn
Rollin’ up and down
And around in the hay
Living on the edge of yesterday

CHORUS (Repeat)

Verse 5

She got sent off
To fight her a war
Gone way over seas
And never heard from no more
On this old retaining wall
Is where I intend to stay
Living on the edge of yesterday

Just off of Hern Road
I used to pass by
This old retaining wall
In a field on the side

In my head I hear a bluegrass 3/4 time harmony thing..

Not Today (PLOP!)

2009-02-11T15:36:00.000-05:00

Brief poem about this guy I don't like....

Not Today (PLOP!)

Monkey see, monkey do
Monkey pee, monkey poo
What the fuck is wrong with you

Donkey see, donkey do
Donkey pee, donkey poo
From a dreary womb you somehow grew

Honky see, honky do
Honky pee, honky poo
There’s nothing else that we can do

Flunkey see, flunkey do
Flunkey pee, flunky poo
You’re a humanized version of the Polynesian flu

Baby see, baby do
Baby pee, baby poo
Stay the hell away from my family

Horsey see, horsey do
Horsey pee, horseshit

County Line Wall (For Ben, Matt, and Derek)

2009-02-11T12:27:00.000-05:00

I have been working on a few song lyrics while my guitar playing advances (slowly). I wrote this for my good friends Ben, Matt, and Derek.

County Line Wall © Darren O'Dell 2009

“Nothing like Hern Road at a quarter to two”
A full on confession of a half gotten truth
Headlights, bottles,wipers, and cans
Friday nights with Scotty were like life livin’ on the lam

The county line was like some old castle wall
Keepin’ out something from saving us all
Scotty would say “Man, this whole town is dead”
As I laid in the backseat just nodding my head.

He’d put on some Springsteen and howl at the moon
As I laid in the backseat humming the tune
When the Bossman sang Darkness on the Edge of Town
Just a soundtrack for two kids on the outskirts of town

He worked at the Kroger in my old neighborhood
We’d get together any time that we could
Scotty would say “Let’s get outta’ here”
And we’d swing into Tuckers for a 12 pack of beer

He’d put on Willie Nelson and howl at the moon
As I laid in the backseat humming the tune
When Willie sang ”Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground”
It was the soundtrack for two kids on the outskirts of town.

There’s a handful of people I’ll love right up until I die
I keep em’ beside me when I lay my head down at night
Sometimes Scotty’d say “It’s so sweet just bein’ alive”
As I laid in the backseat with tears in my eyes

He’d put on Bob Dylan and howl at the moon
As I laid in the backseat humming them tunes
Highway 61 would get us lost in the sound
The sound track for two kids on the outskirts of town

Yeah, the sound track for two kids on the outskirts of town

The county line was like some old castle wall
Keepin’ out something from saving us all

The Red River Shaman

2009-02-03T11:17:00.000-05:00

The shamed man required a shaman. It was 3 past four, the darkest hour four, the darkest hour right before the hour that is right before the dawn four. The bottles were done, he killed each one and he could no longer stay. The shamed man headed back out on to Hern Street ready for his bed. The lights were dim and all that could be heard were the drones of air conditioners air conditioning the bungalows down along Ol’ Hern.

The woman there was nice enough, a trustworthy smile and birthing hips. The shamed man and her made small talk by the upright nobody played. She was from Mechanicsville, had a good paying job and no loose ends. It was all right place, right time but the shamed man required a shaman.

Hern went on forever, already passed a couple of shortcuts, but shortcuts were not his way. A hooded figure approached from the west on a cross street.

Hooded figure stopped in his tracks

“Are you the shaman?” the shamed man asked.

“Tonight’s the night.” The hooded figure said before continuing on. The shamed man followed, redemption seemed nigh.

Hern disappeared over the shamed man’s shoulders as the crossway narrowed. The hooded figure stopped at the base of a flight of stairs leading to a second story loft. Mr. Tambourine Man was there; jingle jangle with his back arched against the century old brick.

How could everything about someone say “follow me?” The shamed man wondered in awe of the shaman. They ascended the stairs to the loft where the door was flung open. Emptiness, white washed walls, nothing but two old 40’s era dining room chairs, a vice grip with a percolator on top and a birth naked 40 watt bulb overhead. The shaman sat across the room. From his sweatshirt he slipped out a compact disc, a compact disc of all things.

“This is the shaman.” The shamed man thought.

Beneath the shaman’s feet in the grayness of the shadow of the chair was an old hand held stereo, the kind those damn kids carried down the street powered by 47 D cell batteries.

The shamed man bit down hard on the inside of his cheek for alertness, this could not be missed.

The disc spun, the shaman kept his head angled to the floor, the shamed man glared off into the rolling shadows cast around the room from the 40-watt.

Some of us turn off the lights and we live
In the moonlight shooting by
Some of us scare ourselves to death in the dark
To be where the angels fly
Pretty maids all in a row lined up
Outside my cabin door
I’ve never wanted any of them wanting me
‘Cept the girl from the Red River shore

The shaman’s medicine was for the healing game. The song coming from the compact disc wrapped its arms around the shamed man and he trembled in fear. The voice singing was from before the flood and after the hard rain. It wasn’t from on high, but close enough to know of those things.

Well, I sat by her side and for a while I tried
To make that girl my wife
She gave me her best advice and she said
“Go home and lead a quiet life.”
Well, I’ve been to the east and I’ve been to the west
And I’ve been out where the black winds roar
Somehow, though, I never did get that far
With the girl from the Red River shore

The shaman produced an aluminum can from his sweatshirt; he rolled it over slowly across the uneven concrete floor. An unrecognized label spun, exposing itself upon each rotation. The shamed man scooped it up, popped the top, and took a drink.

Well, I knew when I first laid eyes on her
I could never be free
One look at her and I knew right away
She should always be with me
Well, the dream dried up a long time ago
Don’t know where it is anymore
True to life, true to me
Was the girl from the Red River shore

Something powerful was happening; the 40-watt’s illumination unexpectedly brightened nearly exposing the face of the shaman then went out completely. The door to the loft remained open but no breeze or outside sound entered.

Now I’m wearing the cloak of misery
And I’ve tasted jilted love
And the frozen smile upon my face
Fits me like a glove
But I can’t escape from the memory
Of the one that I’ll always adore
All those nights when I lay in the arms
Of the girl from the Red River shore

A cloak of misery, nights layed in the arms. The shamed man’s life came to him, scenes from the past and the future like a strobe. How had he never heard this? How had everyone not heard this?

Well, we’re living in the shadows of a fading past
Trapped in the fires of time
I’ve tried not to ever hurt anybody
And to stay out of a life of crime
And when it’s all been said and done
I never did know the score
One more day is another day away
From the girl from the Red River shore.

Well, I’m a stranger here in a strange land
But I know this is where I belong
I’ll ramble and gamble for the one I love
And the hills will give me a song
Though nothing looks familiar to me
I know I’ve stayed here before
Once, a thousand nights ago
With the girl from the Red River shore

The shaman rose from his chair and left the room, left the shamed man to his own devices. The shamed man did not notice for time had slipped out of mind as the things of this world faded.

Well, I went back to see about it once
Went back to straighten it out
Everybody that I talked to had seen us there
Said they didn’t know who I was talking about
Well, the sun went down on me a long time ago
I’ve had to fall back from the door
I wish I could have spent every hour of my life
With the girl from the Red River shore

The shamed man openly wept, this composer had felt too much, had stayed in Mississippi a day too long, had been at the bottom of a world full of lies, was 40 miles out of town and cold irons bound, was left standing in the doorway crying, was trying to get to heaven before they close the door, was strolling the lonely grave yard of his mind.

Now, I’ve heard of a guy who lived a long time ago
A man full of sorrow and strife
Whenever someone around him died and was dead
He knew how to bring ‘em on back to life
Well, I don’t know what kind of language he used
Or if they do that kind of thing anymore
Sometimes I think nobody ever saw me here at all
‘Cept the girl from the Red River shore.

The disc stopped spinning. The shamed man was the shamed man no more, call him the lone pilgrim and the lone pilgrim had heard enough to have the kindred and relative laid at his feet a thousand times over. The shitty boom box had a repeat button. Repeat – press – play. Lone pilgrim finished his beer and remained seated until he peacefully slept there alone.

A brief version of Bob Dylan's Cocaine Blues by... ME!

2009-01-26T10:55:00.000-05:00

The birth of my baby girl Ireland O'Dell inspired me to quit writing about music so much and learn to play. Rough stuff but I'm getting there. It's been impossibly rewarding.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb3pPFAb3Fk&feature=channel_page

The Desperate Confession of Springsteen’s Nebraska

2008-12-17T13:35:00.000-05:00

I’ve always been interested in the phrasing Bruce Springsteen used during his writing explosion that produced his critical masterpiece Nebraska and the majority of his stratospherically popular Born in the U.S.A. record. The former will garner the attention of this blog.

The opening lines of the opening song (Title Track, Nebraska) lay the foundation for the underpinning confessional tone:

I saw her standin' on her front lawn just twirlin' her baton
Me and her went for a ride sir and ten innocent people died.

The title track is a narrative on the Charlie Starkweather / Caril Ann Fugate spree killing that took place during the late 50’s. Much of the imagery for the song is from the Terrance Malick film, Badlands, which is a fictional story inspired by the events.

What I find interesting and what perpetuates the unique confessional identity of this album is hidden right there in this opening stanza. It is the use of the word sir. By placing a singular person, a confessor, in the line it is not simply a story being told but a narrative of confession. A simple and powerful tool used with great purpose and effect by Springsteen.

As a listener the change is evident, the narrator of the story isn’t talking to the listener but instead the listener is given a third party pass to a personal confession changing the effect of the song entirely. The listener is now an eavesdropper on something sacred, freeing the listener from the need to respond, he/she only needs to tune in unfiltered.

This confessional device shows up time and time again. For this opening song the confessor is identified as a sheriff, maybe the one responsible for bringing Starkweather in, or the one set to preside over his execution. In this case the confessor is one of social authority, not spiritual.

The song ends in this same manner.

They declared me unfit to live said into that great void my soul'd be hurled
They wanted to know why I did what I did
Well sir I guess there's just a meanness in this world.

The last line is taken from Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and there is that word sir slipped in again, infecting the narrative with the direct personal experience of the confessed. Stark and beautiful.

On the heels of Starkweather’s rampage Springsteen sets us on a course for the casino driven underside of Atlantic City. A story of a man who has struggled to do things the “right way” who has “got a job and put his money away” but who has “debts no honest man can pay.” This man’s confessor is a common one, a woman or more to the point the woman in his life. His confession blurs the line between right and wrong, Atlantic City is an absolute pillar of the Springsteen catalog.

The opening two stanzas set the tone of the environment this man and woman find themselves in.

Well they blew up the chicken man in Philly last night now they blew up his house too.

Gonna be a rumble out on the promenade and the gamblin' commission's hangin' on by the skin of its teeth.

The chorus of the song jumps in and propels this opening setting head long to the core of the confessional belief.

Well now everything dies baby that's a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back
Put your makeup on fix your hair up pretty
And meet me tonight in Atlantic City

Desperation is often the motivation of confession, this man is backed up to the wall and then some, he had a hard decision to make, he wants his confessor, this woman to understand.

“Now I been lookin' for a job but it's hard to find
Down here it's just winners and losers and don't get caught on the wrong side of that line
Well I'm tired of comin' out on the losin' end
So honey last night I met this guy and I'm gonna do a little favor for him”

The listener doesn’t know the fate of the man and his favor or if the woman will follow. This scenario seems to have no good ending only varying degrees of tragedy.

As the curtain is closed on the Jersey Shore Casino we are taken to a hillside on the edge of town for Mansion on the Hill. Once again the confessor device asserts itself in the opening line.

There's a place out on the edge of town sir

Here there is a sin to be confessed, the wanting for what another possesses, envy. A have not reminiscing about his memories of a symbol of have. Also there is an assertion that this was fate; that his place was meant to be on the other side of the iron gates.

At night my daddy'd take me and we'd ride through the streets of a town so silent and still
Park on a back road along the highway side
Look up at that mansion on the hill

I’ve always tried to interpret who the sir is in Mansion on the Hill. I like to think of this character being interviewed about his retirement from the mill mentioned in the song by a young reporter from the small town newspaper. He is asked the standard questions but veers off to talk about evenings spent in the presence of the mansion on the hill.

In the summer all the lights would shine there'd be music playin' people laughin' all the time
Me and my sister we'd hide out in the tall corn fields
Sit and listen to the mansion on the hill

If your confessor is your judge then one better be ready to plead their case. And so it is for the man from track #4 Johnny 99.

Johnny lost his job to no fault of his own, couldn’t find work. Hits the bottle, gets crazy, kills a night clerk. Guilty before proven innocent. We find his confessor to be the Judge Mean John Brown. He’s gonna give Johnny prison for 98 and a year he has one question for poor Johnny:

Well son you got a statement you'd like to make
Before the bailiff comes to forever take you away

Confession time:

Now judge judge I had debts no honest man could pay
The bank was holdin' my mortgage and they was takin' my house away
Now I ain't sayin' that makes me an innocent man
But it was more 'n all this that put that gun in my hand

Well your honor I do believe I'd be better off dead
And if you can take a man's life for the thoughts that's in his head
Then won't you sit back in that chair and think it over judge one more time
And let 'em shave off my hair and put me on that execution line

“And if you can take a man's life for the thoughts that's in his head” this type of confession can rattle the rafters and demolish the foundation. As the eavesdropper the listener is left longing to have not been in on this exchange. The implications are just too foreboding. Johnny 99 was guilty but that isn’t what’s important it’s the reasons behind his guilt that are resonant, that tell the story. The live version of this song from “Bruce Springsteen Live 1975-1985” is devastating, imbued with the intensity that this confession demands.

The next song Highway Patrolman removes this confessor and speaks directly to the listener, while this very well could be the best single on the album I will move on to the song following Highway Patrolman, State Trooper.

Hey, we know this confessor! “Liscense, registration please.” “Well you see officer, I was on my way to my parents and..” “Have you been drinking tonight mam?” Simple enough right? Not totally, we are in a desperate landscape and our driver being followed here perhaps says too much, has to let his situation be known.

License, registration, I ain't got none but I got a clear conscience
'Bout the things that I done

Maybe you got a kid, maybe you got a pretty wife the only thing that I got's been both'rin' me my whole life
Mister state trooper, please don't stop me
Please don't stop me, please don't stop me

The song Used Cars comes next, no longer is the confessor a sir but a mister, reflecting a less respectful if not more defiant tone of desperate confession.

We find ourselves on the corner lot on automobile way. The salesman with hungry eyes, making judgments on his prey. The whole family is there for this is an American notion of family. The car as another living breathing member of the progeny. Little sister with an ice cream cone, ma in the back seat all alone.

Now, mister, the day the lottery I win I ain't ever gonna ride in no used car again

The lottery as savior, the confessor as the enemy, a grim story indeed. Our character here has found his life to be worse than dead end. It is a grid of streets that just lead you back and forth, to work and home in that old used car. He is poisoned with the knowledge of what this means, whoever this mister is he wants to ring his neck.

Open All Night follows with a man rushing to get to his woman, in the lunar landscape of the late night Jersey Turnpike. Propped up and propelled Open all Night sends us blasting into a seminal song for Nebraska, My Father’s House.

Father and Son confessional, God and man confessional, reality stripped to where it may only exist in dreams.

Last night I dreamed that I was a child out where the pines grow wild and tall
I was trying to make it home through the forest before the darkness falls

I heard the wind rustling through the trees and ghostly voices rose from the fields
I ran with my heart pounding down that broken path
With the devil snappin' at my heels

I broke through the trees, and there in the night
My father's house stood shining hard and bright the branches and brambles tore my clothes and scratched my arms
But I ran till I fell, shaking in his arms

There are some regrets, some mistakes that endanger the soul, that shake it with fear and trembling. Here is one of those stories, one in which the listener treads lightly with face turned fearful of the end.

I awoke and I imagined the hard things that pulled us apart
Will never again, sir, tear us from each other's hearts
I got dressed, and to that house I did ride from out on the road, I could see its windows shining in light

Once again our confessor comes in, that inevitable sir. Even he too is now unstable and wobbling from the weight of this displaced son confession.

I walked up the steps and stood on the porch a woman I didn't recognize came and spoke to me through a chained door
I told her my story, and who I'd come for
She said "I'm sorry, son, but no one by that name lives here anymore"

My father's house shines hard and bright it stands like a beacon calling me in the night
Calling and calling, so cold and alone
Shining 'cross this dark highway where our sins lie unatoned

Heart breaking, unpardonable conclusion. A son lost in the world unable to atone to his father. Could the confession of this save him?

And so what of all this here confessin’ brothers and sisters. Does it do any good, does it sway the mansion on the hill or change the face of the used car salesman? Does it leave us with hope for our man on a back street in Atlantic City? Will the State Trooper show mercy? I suppose Springsteen was wondering the same thing and we find in this our closing song Reason to Believe. Somehow in the faith of this confession people find some reason to believe.

Take a baby to the river Kyle William they called him
Wash the baby in the water take away little Kyle's sin
In a whitewash shotgun shack an old man passes away take his body to the graveyard and over him they pray Lord won't you tell us
tell us what does it mean
Still at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe

Nebraska is a masterpiece of desperate confession.

Reverence for the Hillbilly Dust

2008-12-05T14:02:00.000-05:00

Thoughts on the live recording “At the Ryman” by Emmylou Harris and the Nash Ramblers

Emmylou Harris is a keeper of the key, a true believer in the songs that she loves. It is at the center of her highly influential career. Her music when at it’s best tells you, convinces you that the songs mean everything; it is her faith and religion. “At the Ryman” is her greatest confession of this belief and just so happens to be my all time favorite live record.

All 16 tracks are written by other artist, mostly giants, prophets in her old and new testament of song. Bill Monroe, Bruce Springsteen, Stephen Foster, Steve Earle, Jack Clement, Nanci Griffith, and John Fogerty among others are given their turn at the wheel, all given their propers somehow with the grace and integrity they damn well deserve. It takes a lot of guts and belief to deliver that kind of set.

Venue is integral, you can’t deliver a sermon on the mount not on a mount. Between songs Emmylou says of the Ryman that she has played in a ton of places from multi million dollar arenas that sound terrible to one place in Lake Charles, Louisiana where the only way you can get on stage is through a window and that the Ryman is the best. The mother church of country music, the Ryman was the long time home of the Grand Ole Opry the single most important and influential disseminator of American music that ever was. This record at the time of its release was a major instigator in the refurbishment of the Ryman Auditorium; there goes Emmylou key keeping again.

The title is actually: Emmylou Harris and the Nash Ramblers Live at the Ryman. Members of the Ramblers are stars in their own right with players such as Sam Bush on mandolin and Roy Huskey, Jr. on bass that accompany a little, stand out a little, and are smoke ass on fire just about the whole time. Particularly stunning are the vocal arrangements.

Track 1: Guitar Town –

“Hey sweet daddy are you ready for me it’s your good rockin’ momma down from Tennessee.”

Hell of an opening line for one hell of an opening song. Earle writes hard edged songs earned the hard way and this cover of an early hit of Earle’s is a calling card. The music here is acoustic, with soft drums, and gorgeous vocals while managing to drive and throttle at the same time. The resonator guitar fills between verses emphasizes the “here I am, take it or leave it” phrases in the song. The title itself is an ode to Nashville.

“Everybody told me you can’t get far on 37 dollars and a Jap guitar. Now I’m smoking into Texas with the hammer down and a rockin’ little combo from the guitar town.”

“Well I gotta keep rocking while I still can got a two pack habit and a motel tan.”

When someone as lovely as Emmylou, with a voice even lovelier delivers lines like these it can do things to a man, most importantly make him listen.

Track 2: Half as Much –

Written by Curley Williams but everyone knows this as a Hank Williams song. It was obligatory for there to be a Hank Williams song for this set. This fact should not be downplayed. Hank is the omni-spirit that floats over the music Emmylou believes in. His performances haunt the very stage this recording was made on and his spirit drifts like Luke in the stain glass that illuminates the Auditorium.

The performance is a good one, really part of a one two punch with the opening Guitar Town. The harmonies introduce themselves and you start to get the feeling you are listening to something pretty darn special. It warms you up and gets you ready.

Track 3: Cattle Call –

A definitive cowboy song written by Tex Owens and popularized by Eddy Arnold. Emmylou has fun with this and the vocals are up front and center, it is her way of showing how a place should sound, you can hear the Ryman acoustics in the harmonies.

Track 4: Guess Things Happen That Way –

This is one of a number of hits penned by Cowboy Jack Clement. The Man in Black had a hit with this, and in the hands of the Ramblers really transforms into a toe tapper. Lines that you just don’t see anymore:

“God gave me that man (woman in original) to lean on then he put me on my own.”

This song closes out what I like to think of as the warm up. The tone so far has been light and playful and has your attention, now the focus and depth comes in.

Track 5: Hard Times –

“Many days you have lingered all around my cabin door, Oh’ hard times come again no more”

Stephen Foster’s Hard Times is an American masterpiece from the pen of “The Father of American Music”. Covered an insurmountable amount of times it is a crying for the poor and down trodden, a reminder to those who have of the connection with those who do not.

All voices, with but the faintest of a strum, a moving and devastating version given here. A lethal dose of humanity, a callous heart softener, a calling sung with enough conviction to change the listener that is tuned in.

Track 6: Mansion on the Hill –

From Foster to Springsteen we travel through the landscape of American voices. Emmylou being a key keeper again. This is my favorite cover of a Springsteen song. Shown time and time again covering Springsteen is a difficult task, his music being so much about him and his devotion and belief in what is being transmitted. One off tracks of his like Pink Cadillac can work but rarely do songs from the Book of Bruce work in another’s hands, I mean who would dare to do Darkness on the Edge of Town?

The connection between Emmylou’s belief and faith in the song allows her to convincingly deliver a Springsteen song that is all about belief in its own statement. She somehow manages to voice that belief in her singing, her love is so deep for the song that the reverence shines through. When I listen to this I know she loves the song as much as I do. That is an astounding accomplishment.

Track 7: Scotland –

An instrumental piece by the Father of Bluegrass Mr. Bill Monroe. Lovely, lovely, lovely. At the end Emmylou says while short of breath, “The things I have to do to get a date with Bill Monroe. I had to promise him I would dance to his song and I did.”

Damn! She was dancing, I should have gotten off my ass and danced too.

Track 8: Montana Cowgirl –

Continuing on the heels of Scotland The Ramblers keep driving with this song reflecting the western theme of Cattle Call. A lot of fun to listen to, a song about going home.

Track 9: Like Strangers –

Emmylou gives credit to the Everly Brothers recording of this song written by Boudleaux Bryant part of the songwriting team with his wife Felice Bryant. These two wrote Rocky Top, All I Have to do is Dream, and Bye Bye Love among many others.

Another stunning vocal arrangement, a call for peace and forgiveness among lovers. This record has really sunk in now and attention is undivided as the whole of it is coming into focus.

Track 10: Lodi –

What may seem like an out of place selection actually is a highlight. John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival fame is underrated in his place in songwriting history. Take his best 12 songs and stack em’ up against anybody and you will be doing O.K. I mean the man wrote Proud Mary.

This calls back to the spirit of Guitar Town, finds that same person later on driven down and beaten by the road and the performing. Resonator guitar driving this feeling home with mandolin in accord.

“If I only had a dollar for very song I sung. Every time I had to play while people sat there drunk. You know I’d catch the next train back to where I live. Oh Lord stuck in Lodi again.”

Heads are shaking now, we need a drink.

Track 11: Calling My Children Home –

The high point emotionally for the record, singing so fine you are hoping that drink is a stiff one. A song of a parent’s love and sacrifice. The tears are coming now, you almost need the record to stop. I have to post the lyrics:

Those lives were mine to love and cherish.
To guard and guide along life's way.
Oh God forbid that one should perish.
That one alas should go astray.

Back in the years with all together,
Around the place we'd romp and play.
So lonely now and oft' times wonder,
Oh will they come back home some day.

I'm lonesome for my precious children,
They live so far away.
Oh may they hear my calling...calling..
and come back home some day.

I gave my all for my dear children,
Their problems still with love I share,
I'd brave life's storm, defy the tempest
To bring them home from anywhere.

I lived my life my love I gave them,
to guide them through this world of strife,
I hope and pray we'll live together,
In that great glad here after life.

I'm lonesome for my precious children,
They live so far away.
Oh may they hear my calling...calling.. and come back home some day.

Track 12: If I Could Be There –

This one lets you breathe, another beautiful song about longing.

Track 13: Walls of Time –

Now they are ready to drive you home. Emmylou takes the restraints off of the Ramblers and lets them have at it. We didn’t dance earlier now we have to. They take this second Bill Monroe song and set it on fire, burn baby burn. A common theme in old bluegrass of a lover waiting to be buried beside their love and to see them in the great afterlife bye and bye.

Track 14: Get Up John (Or How Sam Bush Kicked my Ass) –

This is simply one of the greatest live bluegrass recordings ever. The groove lick that Bush plays drives and drives as your volume knob turns up and up. You instantly wish you could play like that, while Emmylou’s voice matches the intensity. Explosive and propulsive twang.

Track 15: It’s a Hard Life Wherever You Go/ Abraham, Martin, and John

Back in your seat/sofa/chair/ floor for a two fer with a 60’s era peace movement theme. The first song is a great one from Nanci Griffith a contemporary of Emmylou. All about being a hypocrite and knowing better. No punches pulled.

“Cafeteria line in Chicago, a fat man in front of me. He’s calling black people trash to his children but he’s the only trash here I see. I am thinking this man wears a white hood in the night when his children should sleep but they will slip to their window and see him and think that white hood is all they need.”

“It’s a hard life wherever you go. And if we poison our children with hatred then the hard life is all that they’ll know.”

The second part of this is a song written in memorial of John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. calling back to Abraham Lincoln as icons of social change cut down in their prime.

Track 16: Smoke Along the Track –

A train song about hitting the trail. A perfect bookend to Guitar Town and an excellent choice to close out the record. The rhythm stays with you and keeps cycling in your head long after the disc has stopped spinning.

“I’m gonna leave you crying in the smoke along the tracks.”

The key keeper, Emmylou Harris, loves these songs. When you listen to this performance that fact is undeniable, and there is a real good chance you are going to love them too.

V.O.M.I.T.

2008-11-17T12:41:00.000-05:00

I made the following for my wife. She works for the State of Florida as a grant manager. Pretty basic married humor......I made it look all official unlike this blog format but you can get the picture..

Victims Of Marriage’s Inevitable Trauma
________________________________________________________________________

V.O.M.I.T. Grunt Application Form (GAF 1-2143.4235)

Applicant Name: _______________________

Years of Wedded Bliss / Suffering B___ S____

Qualifications for funding from V.O.M.I.T. (Husbands – be specific, unlike explaining how your day has went. Wifes – be brief, unlike explaining how your day has went)

1.

2.

3.

*Wives - Please include all forgotten important dates such as birthdays etc. Per subarticle 17-17456.23C, your sister’s dog’s birthday does not count.

HUSBAND SECTION:

· One to ten please rate “Nag Factor”. One being minimal, ten being we thought so.

_______

*Please note that if this total is below 6 you will not qualify for V.O.M.I.T. assistance. In fact, we would presume this indicates that you are not married and are guilty of document falsification.

· Number of “Honey Do Lists” accumulated per quarter.

_______

*Please provide documented proof of lists. As a husband you are unable to defend self in a he said she said format.

· Uninteresting parties, baby showers, wedding attended in fiscal year.

_______

· Approximate number of mystery dinners you have claimed falsely to enjoy in fiscal year.

________

· Do those jeans make her butt look big?

________

*Please answer truthfully as your wife will not see this application, unless you leave it up accidentally on your screen which you probably will.

WIFE SECTION:

· Number of occurrences quarterly that you are forced to falsify his “prowess” at certain acts.

________

· One to ten rank general bodily funkiness in relation to odor and upkeep. One being Rose Garden /Adonis , Ten being we thought so.

________

· Quarterly hours spent wondering how much money your high school sweetheart / CEO makes in comparison to the ol’ blue collar ball and chain.

________

· Number of children.

________

*If more than two, you automatically qualify for V.O.M.I.T. assistance under the 1997 You Poor Poor Woman Act.

· Daily hours spent vastly underappreciated by just about everyone all the time.

_________

For Husbands: Please have wife sign below allowing you to participate in this program.
As with all endeavors wife permission is necessary.

Wife Signature__________________ Printed Name _______________________

Thoughts on Election 08'

2008-11-05T12:49:00.000-05:00

Thoughts on November 5th, 2008

Something happened on the way to the altar. I was fed up with George W. Bush, in the heart of Bush country I was ready, good and ready to cast my vote for whoever had that D by their name on the ticket. Hillary was actually my girl, I thought it would be a grand up yours to eight years of W, it would burn in the guts of the other side, the enemy.

I doubted, hell flat out denied the possibility of Barack Obama, a man of mixed race and little national prowess to win. I thought that in fact he was about the only Democrat in the primary who could possibly lose after America’s dark ages. Then something started to happen.

I decided to remove head from backside and actually listen, and when that happened I, like apparently so many of us found myself pulling for the man from Illinois. There was talk of hope, “yes we can” was a refrain, and he never approved of the war I had so staunchly been against. He stood calm in the face of so much accusation first in the primary and then in the national campaign.

His message changed my mind and moved my heart. No longer was my position one of being against what had been but for what could be and the change was startling and immensely gratifying. If I met him I would tell him thank you for that simple change, a real change on an individual level, my own personal bubble of political angst and ire turned to one of hope and possibility.

His opponent seemingly against his own wishes dusted off some old scare words that seemed to ignite the worst of our politic a strategy that had been devastatingly effective in each of George W Bush’s campaigns. Who could blame him, it is how the game is played or should I say was played.

Terrorist, Socialist, Communist, Marxist, telling Americans what to fear but the actual things of substance (jobs, health care, a crumbling economy, a severely damaged position in the world, a misguided war) trumped that old go to and left the McCain - Palin ticket scurrying for something that would stick, that would garner momentum. They never found it.

What an amazing night, the first president my daughter will know is a man of hope, integrity, and a symbol of America's unique ability to heal itself.

McCain was gracious in defeat while the dwindling sign of America's darkness in the crowd booed at the thought of honor and service that their candidate was and is the embodiment of.

The Limbaughs of the world are gearing up, they will have to wait a while as to not show their cards but it will be another golden age of conservative talk radio, audio klan, verbal huntin' fer reds but their crowds are thinning, the only demographic Obama didn't own were 65+ and we know their time is winding down.

But so too will be the far lefters, with a HA HA in your face! What they will miss is that America has left that station, if at least for now. It choogled on out of there with a resounding proclamation of a politic centered on we the people.

I pray for Barack Obama's ability to carry the weight of what he represents, what he campaigned for at 20 to 200 dollars a shot.

I carry an overwhelming sense of possibility not for myself but for my baby little Ireland Grace O’Dell, hope for the things that have guided me. Kindness before fear, hope before doubt, a sense of community.

They taught me this song in Elementary School, a Socialist manifesto? No an American declaration found in that open possibility that is my Country. An ideal once again ignited in my soul.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.
I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
While all around me a voice was sounding
Saying this land was made for you and me.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
A voice was chanting, As the fog was lifting,
This land was made for you and me.
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

TOP TEN ALBUMS OF ALL TIME

2008-05-02T13:20:00.001-04:00

Following this post is my own top ten albums of all time list. It took quite a while to arrive at my final ten let me tell you. The list in the end reflects more of an "essential" personal list for me as opposed to any idea of where I may think these fall in the pantheon of recorded pop music. I ain't that smart anyway. It was wonderful going through the process and writing up a piece for each record, sifting through all those memories new and old. I hope you enjoy it!

Number 10 Sleeps With Angels

2008-05-02T13:16:00.000-04:00

#10 Sleeps With Angels
Artist: Neil Young
Released : August 16th, 1994

Track Listing

My Heart
Prime of Life
Driveby
Sleeps With Angels
Western Hero
Change Your Mind
Blue Eden
Safeway Cart
Train of Love
Trans Am.
Piece of Crap
A Dream that Can Last

Seth said "Go get the plow out Merle this place looks just right".

Monsters can come in all shapes and sizes. Big terrifying archetypes that live at the bottom of a British Loch, little parasitic demons that infiltrate the most minute of weaknesses, and sometimes a monster can even be in the form of a CD that you never gave a listen to. Let me explain myself.

I got a promotional copy of Sleeps With Angels as a gift and for whatever reason at the time I unceremoniously heaped it in with the rest of my music collection. Soon it was forgotten and years went by before I gave it a listen. Before I finally listened to it many, many times I would see it in the used or "value" bin at the store. This regrettably affected my desire to listen to it. Couldn't be too good if it's been discounted or discarded right? I forgot about it entirely until I had to move and went through an inventory of the only real thing of value I had (My CD's). After listening to Sleeps With Angels it is scary to think of it waiting in the shadows, knowing what it knew, knowing it would consume me for a long time. Sleeps With Angels is a monster.

A number of articles and blogs have been written about this album that Neil Young himself has rarely if ever commented on. Much rumor has centered on the work's primary themes of loss and pain relating to the suicide of Kurt Cobain, that happened during the recording. Cobain quoted Young's line "It's better to burn out than to fade away" in a goodbye letter. It has thematically been linked to Tonight's The Night, which also followed or at least coincided with a heroin death as well (Danny Whitten of Crazy Horse). Sleeps With Angels is a monumental statement, so full of it's own atmosphere that once it seeps in it demands repeat listening. It simply will not allow any other music to be heard. This atmosphere is haunting and foreboding which creates an intensity of emotion that frankly makes the album hard to just pick up and play. You can't casually listen to Sleeps With Angels or at least I can't.

The album to me is the ultimate eulogy. It is like being at a funeral and the Preacher asks, "Does anyone have anything they would like to say about so and so?" Then Neil Young with his long time cohorts Crazy Horse step up and perform this song cycle. Let me just say no one else would need to speak after that! There are a handful of songs that I can't listen to without getting teary eyed. Gulf Coast Highway by Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson, He Never Got Enough Love by Lucinda Williams, are two that immediately come to mind. Right along side these is Train of Love from this album, which in one line encapsulates the essence (to me) of Sleeps With Angels.

When that lonesome whistle blows, no one knows, no one knows.

But what is unique is that this line is given its depth from the songs before it and what you know will follow.

When I listen to Sleeps With Angels I think of the people I've lost either through death or time or circumstance and what they mean to me. It is not all tragedy and an exacting amount of comfort comes after A Dream That Can Last and it's that comfort that Sleeps With Angels provides that brings me (when I am brave enough to dare) back to it's fold.

So let this be a warning to you, there may be a monster in your music collection. There sure as hell was one in mine.

Number 9 My Life

2008-05-02T13:13:00.000-04:00

# 9 My Life
Artist: Iris Dement
Released: 1993

Track Listing

Sweet Is The Melody
You've Done Nothing Wrong
Calling For You
Childhood memories
No Time To Cry
Troublesome Waters
Mom and Dad's Waltz
Easy's Gettin' Harder Every Day
The Shores of Jordan
My Life

Standing barefoot on a cold wood floor. Staring out the window of my back door. If it keeps on raining I think the whole damn house is gonna' blow away.

So there I was sitting in my chair, channel surfing when on CMT of all places I was introduced to Iris Dement. This just had to be some level of fate; I can only guess that the video was aired at the most half a dozen times. The song was Our Town from her debut album Infamous Angel. It's hard to catch a song in one listen but there was something about her voice that I couldn't get away from. I went that very day and purchased the only copy that the local record store had. Infamous Angel was fantastic but it was her follow up My Life that moved my mountains.

Of all the albums on my list this one is the most obscure. It was well received by critics but for the most part flew far under the radar. So what is it about My Life that has elevated it to such a lofty place in my mind and spirit? A short answer would be its honesty both lyrically and vocally. Most of my favorite music, or any art for that matter comes from that far away planet called straight shooting honesty. But this work stretches that idea to its breaking point and comes across so damn frank and sincere that it can sometimes seem too personal somehow. When I hear No Time To Cry (an all time great song) I feel a damn near sense of guilt as if I were eavesdropping on this person named Iris Dement. Staggering work, like Townes Van Zandt's live recordings and the best of Johnny Cash's American Recordings swim in this water but there is something so full of integrity about My Life that to me lifts it even higher or at least takes this "honest approach" even further. It's like this is an Alan Lomax field recording in the form of a well-produced record. I have never been so thankful after hearing an album. As corny as I am sounding to myself, after I heard My Life, my thoughts were.

"Well damn, thank you Iris Dement for sharing this very fragile, beautiful, and thoughtful music with me."

I wanted to thank her personally when she told me about memories of her Dad

"I remember every night what we would say and do. If you've forgiven me, then I've forgiven you".

And about her own life

"I gave joy to my mother and I made my lover smile.
I can give comfort to my friends when they're hurting.
And I can make it seem better for a while."

"I'm gonna' let my feet go dancing to my very favorite songs, for I know my time for leaving is bound to come before too long."

And on and on………………..

I like the fact that this album is out there and peacefully sitting on shelves in hip record stores. Somebody will see it and think, "So and so mentioned Iris Dement to me maybe I'll check this out." And they'll go home and have Iris share the same personal stories with them that she did with me. They will sway when Sweet is the Melody begins and walk the floor like Hank himself did when Calling For You plays and will fall through the floor when they hear her take on Lefty Frizzell's Mom and Dad's Waltz. Some of them may even say to themselves

"Thank you Iris Dement for this album My Life."

Number 8 Honky Tonk Heroes

2008-05-02T13:10:00.000-04:00

Number 8 Honky Tonk Heroes
Artist: Waylon Jennings
Released: July 1973

Track Listing

Honky Tonk Heroes
Old Five and Dimers Like Me
Willy the Wandering Gypsy and Me
Low Down Freedom
Omaha
You Asked Me To
Ride Me Down Easy
Ain't No God In Mexico
Black Rose
We Had It All
Slow Rollin' Low*
You Asked Me Too*

Cadillac buyers and ole five and dimers like me

So here's how it happened, sort of.

Scene – quiet city street – night time.

"Put your damn hands in the air!"

A stranger had slipped up behind me and now had me at gunpoint.

"Look I don't have any money." I said.

"Shut up you dumb ass. Shut your stupid mouth. I don't want your money. Or your wife, even if she is smokin', I got a question for you and you better not fuck up boy."

I was trembling I thought it was the end for me.

"Who is Waylon Jennings?"

"Are you serious?" I asked.

"Serious as I need to be with this gun against your stupid skull."

"Well um he's that that guy who does the Dukes of Hazzard song and sometimes Willie Nelson throws him a bone and lets him perform with him."

"Wrong answer."

Click, KABLEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

I was blown to ignorant hell from the most explosive musical weapon ever made, Honky Tonk Heroes performed by Waylon Jennings – written by Billy Joe Shaver.

For those of you who know a lot more than I did at the time I first heard Honky Tonk Heroes Waylon Jennings is THE outlaw. He was the original one that took the big stand against The Nashville establishment, refusing to record with studio musicians and insisting on doing things his own way. I'll leave it at that, this isn't a biography this is about my # 8 album Honky Tonk Heroes.

You hear it all the time and I think for good reason. People with a pretty sensible and wide palate for music will say "I listen to everything but country". There is nothing worse in my opinion than popular country radio. Give me that station that plays Zeppelin at five o'clock everyday, or even the dreaded dance beat club station any day over manufactured hot country sappiness. If country were on trial, exhibit A and it would be the only exhibit necessary, for me would be Honky Tonk Heroes by Waylon Jennings.

The way this sounds (thumping bass lines), the way the songs are written (Billy Joe Shaver is the shit.), the way Waylon SINGS (impossible), all of it together equals an all time great recording. It is the sound of the defiant one. More punk than you can stand. These songs are about lives harder than yours, more rebellious than yours, call it better tales through rougher living. No album in country music history stands beside this album when it comes to song writing, you may feel differently but you're wrong. This is to the credit of the previously mentioned Billy Joe Shaver. Shaver crafted songs that were honest and mythically defiant at the same time. There ain't no bullshit in these songs, bullshit free music for the defiant ones! How about some opening lines for the people.

"Long yellow haired girl here beside me fit my body warmed my mind.Sleeping quiet never knowing that tomorrow she'll be one more thing I'm gonna leave behind"

"I've spent a lifetime making up my mind to be more than the measure of what I thought others could see."

"Omaha you've been weighing heavy on my mind I guess I never really left at all.
I'm turning all those roads I walked around the other way, coming back to you Omaha."

I just pooped my pants writing that stuff! Get the picture? Good. But it just isn't the way it's written, far from it folks, it's the way Waylon performs them. The way he rumbles through these stories and puts you in those shoes if only for a moment.

"He's dead set on riding in the big rodeo. My woman is tight with an overdue baby and Willy keeps yelling hey gypsy let's go."

Wait a minute..is he going to leave his woman that is overdue!? WHY?? Well he'll tell you why..

"Low down freedom you've done cost me everything I'll ever lose. You're as empty as my pockets from the top of where you start down to the bottom of my shoes."

What a ride. It's a sonic portal to Bad Assville.

"The Devil made me do it the first time, the second time I done it on my own."

You can't stay and live there. Why? Because you ain't them that's why! But you can visit; take a look in at these Honky Tonk Heroes in all their flawed glory.

I've said enough. Cinch up your belt, grab hold of something, and detonate Honky Tonk Heroes, the fallout is sublime.

Number 7 Blue

2008-05-02T13:06:00.000-04:00

Number 7 Blue

Artist: Joni Mitchell
Released: June 1971
Track Listing

All I Want
My Old Man
Little Green
Carey
Blue
California
This Flight Tonight
River
A Case of You
The Last Time I Saw Richard

"The night is a starry dome, and they're playin' that scratchy rock and roll beneath the Matala Moon"

I must begin with an apology to Joni Mitchell and her fans. This is the only album by Joni Mitchell I have ever listened to. I am pretty darn sure that fact proves I'm a fool. This has been the case for so long that it has become a psychological barrier that I am not sure I can overcome. For every other artist in this list I own his or her catalog or a least a large part of it. I have this mythical ideal of Joni Mitchell and unfairly to her I have pigeon holed her into a corner, but hey IT IS one hell of a corner. It is no reflection on anything I've heard or read about the rest of her work which I am sure is great but it is what it is and I am what I am, a fool. Now on with my # 7 album, Blue.

Bob Dylan released Blood on the Tracks in 1975 and for posterity put out what many feel will stand as the all time great "break up" album. Since this is a ranked list it forced my hand to make this bold statement, a realization I had to accept (some friends may never speak to me again), I believe Blue is greater than Blood on the Tracks and is the benchmark album for the man/woman emotional statement. There I wrote it, and it's right, I think.

A constant theme to me when producing this list was the idea of sonic atmosphere. This is to say that an album as a whole has a sound unto it's own. Not all of my top ten has this as a defining strength but Blue certainly does. Not only does it have that "sound" but the sound is all Joni Mitchell, no tricks here, no great production choices or technology twists. Her playing, her words, and most importantly her voice together inter weave all the songs to create a brilliantly unified style.

What I like most about Blue is that I want to be the person many of these songs are written for. To have her wading through it to get to a song like My Old Man with thoughts of me in her soul. I want to be Carey, head down to the Mermaid Café with my walking cane and smash my empty glasses down and see her shining silver jewelry underneath the Matala Moon. Yes! Yes! The Last Time I saw Darren, now that's a closing song. I want to be shampooed and renewed! I digress.

Because of Blue I am sure the 60's had to be a good thing. Would you like to talk about an independent woman? Many of the songs involve a man but at the heart of the matter is herself. So many self-enlightening lines I can't imagine how cathartic it was to get this stuff out. Songs like Californian, and Carey, and All I Want, and This Flight Tonight are resounding proclamations of The New World Woman. Independence with heart and soul right? Right. This is an incredible bunch of tunes and it is no coincidence that this is one of the most quoted albums of all time. I really should listen to all her other work…..what an idiot.

Number 6 Street Legal

2008-05-02T12:54:00.000-04:00

Number 6 Street Legal
Artist: Bob Dylan
Released: June 15th 1978

Track Listing

Changing of the Guards
New Pony
No Time To Think
Baby Stop Crying
Is Your Love in Vain?
Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)
True Love Tends To Forget
We Better Talk This Over
Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat)

You've been down to the bottom with a bad man babe
But you're back where you belong

I am a Dylan guy. I own his entire catalog, yes even the self-titled Dylan and Down in the Groove. I have seen him live many, many times from Thibodaux to Delaware. Be assured this is not my attempt to pick an "obscure" Dylan album to enhance my (Twelfth) street (and Vine) cred. This album is number 6, with a bullet.

A unique criterion made Street Legal an automatic for my top ten list. When I'm two beers too gone this is always, ALWAYS what I want to listen to. This may seem inconsequential but let me tell you it isn't. When the chorus for True Love Tends To Forget ignites stand back because I'm YELLING along with it!

"Saw you drift into infinity and come back again.
All you have to do is wait and I'll tell you when."

Divine inebriation.

A lot has been said about the poor production value of the album at the time of the recording. It was recorded in only four days; this is probably what gives it the energetic immediacy that makes it burn. The album was remastered in 1999 and while I was extremely skeptical (I couldn't believe anyone was fuc**ing with Street Legal) I am now on board and would suggest the remastered version over the original. Saxophone and female backing singers, is this R & B? Yes it is but it's Bob Dylan R & B. There is just something in the sound I love; I don't think I'm technical enough to explain it.

There is a mythos all to it's own that underpins the whole album. Scenes from a feudal land in Changing of the Guards, Biblical south of the border end
times in Senor, spiritual stops at all points in between from Mexico to Tibet. Every time I listen to Street Legal this other time other place feel lifts me and moves me from where I am. Street Legal is a transportation device. Dr. Who had a phone booth; I've got Bob Dylan's Street Legal.

For most of Bob Dylan's work I have analyzed what he's written to try and understand where he is coming from. This is a natural thing to want to do, thousands of dissertations, blogs, etc. have been written to explain "what Dylan is trying to say". I have somehow managed to never do this with Street Legal. Like Iris Dement said I choose to let the mystery be. The mythical writing, the hot wax, the singers, the sax, and his voice both desperate and forceful wash over me and there I go, away from where I am for a little while.

I am not sure if this is a Mount Rushmore work like other albums in Bob Dylan's catalog but it is a wondrous thing to me personally. So many late nights turned early morning I've sat alone or with family and friends and put Street Legal on. Different times, different rooms, different situations, different revelations, same wonder filled moments as I ride The Street Legal Transportation Device.

As a post note I would like to add that this is my all time favorite album cover. Bob Dylan is at the foot of a staircase. Is it a pathway that leads up to the stars? He has his head turned with a coat under his arm. Someone's coming to give him a ride, to transport him to another place, with the things of the past above and behind him. Damn right. He looks ready for the ride, he looks dare I say…..STREET LEGAL

Number 5 Mule Variations

2008-05-02T12:48:00.000-04:00

Number 5 Mule Variations
Artist: Tom Waits (Kathleen Brennan)
Released: April 20th, 1999

Track Listing

Big in Japan
Low Side of the Road
Hold On
Get Behind The Mule
House Where Nobody Lives
Cold Water
Pony
What's He Building
Black Market Baby
Eyeball Kid
Picture In a Frame
Chocolate Jesus
Georgia Lee
Filipino Box Spring Hog
Take It With Me
Come On Up To The House

I have all of life's treasures and they're fine and they're good
But they remind me houses are just made of wood
What makes a house grand it ain't the roof or the doors
If there is love in a house it's a palace for sure
Without love it ain't nothing but a house where nobody lives

In all my music nerdery I am in the "living room" of the tiny Dolphin trailer my Fiancée and I were living in rent-free. We're in the middle of preparing for our wedding, which means I am saying yes a lot and Tracy is taking care of a million things a minute. My most important decision, as I figured it, was what song to play for our first dance. I made a decision and nervously played it for her. As it played and we danced she began crying, she loved it, of course she did. The song was Picture in a Frame from Mule Variations. Thank you Tom Waits.

Mule Variations is BIG, 16 songs large, the most songs on an album in my list. In the reviews I've read on line about this album they argue that it lacks in cohesiveness, that it is "a collection of moments" and that it is only rehashing work from Swordfish Trombones, Black Rider, and Bone Machine. The following is the conclusion of The Rolling Stone Review.

"Through his film roles in the Eighties and Nineties and the simultaneous rise of an alternative culture that lionizes him, Waits has become the apotheosis of the American eccentric. We don't demand much from these figures, other than that they spill out their visions in chunks of an ongoing discourse; Mule Variations is just the latest installment of that discourse, and one wonders when Waits, who's not lacking for bold, dislocating ideas, might treat himself to a new start."

Wimps, wimps that missed it. They weren't tough enough to deal with the scope, Tom Waits took the sound that he had developed and laid out a work so massive that it is hard to believe it works together, hard to accept landscapes as wide open as Hold On, Cold Water, Georgia Lee, Pony, and Come On Up To The House all on the same album but there they are and work they do. Chunk of discourse my ass, this is an album to live by, a philosophy text, a world view, an essential BIG thing. Mule Variations is the culmination of the sound he had developed, perfected and delivered on a humongous scale.

Mule Variations, what a title.

"You've got to get behind the mule in the morning and plow"

Yeah Mr. Waits that's about right, we wake up and we get behind it and we do what we do. These songs are variations on gettin' behind that mule. Sometimes it is so damn hopeful and inspiring it will shake your being.

By a 99 cent store she closed her eyes and started swaying.
But it's so hard to dance that way when it's cold and there's no music.

Sometimes it is so painful it will bring you to your knees.

And lonesome was the place where Georgia was foundShe's too young to be out on the street

Sometimes it is so mysterious you start to obsess.

I heard he has an ex-wife in some place called Mayors Income, TennesseeAnd he used to have a consulting business in Indonesia

Sometimes it can seem so lonely you need help.

There's no light in the tunnel, no irons in the fireCome on up to the houseAnd you're singin' lead soprano in a junkman's choirYou gotta' come on up to the house

Sometimes it is so funny you bust your gut.

When the weather gets roughAnd it's whiskey in the shadeIt's best to wrap your savior up in cellophaneHe flows like the big muddy but that's okPour him over ice cream for a nice parfait

Sometimes it is so strange all you can do is observe.

Well he was born with out a body, not even a browI made the kid a promise, I made the kid a vowHe's not conventionally handsome, he'll never be tallHe said "all you got to do is book me into Carnegie Hall"

You got to get behind the mule in the morning and plow. You got to get behind the mule in the morning and plow. You got to get behind the mule in the morning and plow. This album is the kit and the caboodle, the mule, the plow, the earth and the sky. I'm married now and my wife is a Tom Waits nut.

Sometimes it is so sweet.

Sun come up it was blue and gold. Ever since I put your picture in a frame

My oldest brother Eric has been banging out some serious artwork over the last three years. Primarily they are from the landscapes that surround his life. They're big and they seem to me to have the perspective of being behind that plow. He also was the first one to mention Tom Waits to me. When I recently viewed his paintings together in a show it was that same BIG feeling. Keep it up Eric, keep it up all of you.

Number 4 The Times They Are A-Changin'

2008-05-02T12:43:00.000-04:00

Number 4 The Times They Are A-Changin'
Artist: Bob Dylan
Released: Feb. 10th 1964

Track Listing

The Times They Are A-Changin'
Hollis Brown
With God On Our Side
One Too Many Mornings
North Country Blues
Only a Pawn In Their Game
Boots of Spanish Leather
When The Ship Comes In
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
Restless Farewell

Oh, ev'ry thought that's strung a knot in my mind,I might go insane if it couldn't be sprung.But it's not to stand naked under unknowin' eyes,It's for myself and my friends my stories are sung.

At the time of this write up this album has been on the shelves for over 43 years. An incalculable career has followed for Bob Dylan since then. It is hard to put in to context the scope of his influence. Before his twenty third birthday with just his third release he separated himself from the rest with an album of such social magnitude that it literally DID change the world. The Times They Are A-Changin' is a fierce piece of American history and for my taste is the best representation of the power of one person with a guitar and a song.

While The Times certainly has political overtones it reaches out to much further horizons. While the tunes themselves are often simple in their format, folk based rhythms and high end harmonica solos, they are but a framework for a gathering of ten lyrical masterpieces. The sound seemed, like Bob Dylan, much older than it actually was. From the opening anthemic Times to the closing Restless Farewell the story of those times are told. Told with depth, sincerity, a grander sense of foreboding, a warning shot. I can't imagine a more intimidating album for anyone with the courage to sit down with an instrument to try and write a song.

In the excellent documentary No Direction Home there are a number of people who were in one way or the other associated with Bob Dylan at the time and to a person they are all at a loss to explain where songs of that magnitude came from (this included the song writer himself). Joan Baez in particular reflected this feeling. Romantically linked with Bob Dylan her reason as to her attraction even in a relationship that didn't work seemed to go like this..

"Well you know….ummm…I mean he wrote With God On Our Side, Only A Pawn In Their Game, The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll."

The explanation was good enough for me.

What elevates this work past Another Side and Freewheelin', albums from that same period, is the consistency. Every song is epic, there are no breathers, one song builds on the other until the end a listener is only left to think, "What the fuck just happened." The aftermath of this record effected America in much the same way. In the big scheme of things my personal feelings about music and this list don't seem that important except for this particular work. This album is important musically, politically, socially, and historically. The Times stands alongside great historical American writings like The Federalist Papers and Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream Speech. Forty plus years and it still leaves us shaking our heads………………………….

"Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears, Bury the rag deep in your face. For now's the time for your tears."

Not even twenty-three years old. Hard to imagine.

Number 3 Red Headed Stranger

2008-05-02T12:27:00.000-04:00

Number 3 Red Headed Stranger
Artist: Willie Nelson
Released: 1975

Track Listing

Time of the Preacher
I Couldn't Believe It Was True
Time of the Preacher (Theme)
Medley: Blue Rock Montana/Red Headed Stranger
Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain
Red Headed Stranger
Time of the Preacher (Theme)
Just as I Am
Denver
O'er The Waves
Down Yonder
Can I Sleep In Your Arms?
Remember Me
Hands On The Wheel
Bandera

"It was a time of the preacher
In the year of 01'
Just when you think it's all over
It's only begun"

My earliest recollection of recorded music is this album. It was/is my Dad's favorite, hell my Mom too for that matter. If I had a dollar for every time Red Headed Stranger was played on a Friday or Saturday night in the O'Dell house growing up I'd be a rich man. About 3,000 Albums later my world has come full circle and finds Red Headed Stranger as my #3 all time album.

Red Headed Stranger is the concept album to end all concept albums. It's Americana, it's a damn good western, its revenge and redemption, it's the frailty of man, its 100% Willie Nelson. Emmylou Harris said that if America had one voice it would be Willie Nelson. Damn right! After 9/11 there was this fund raiser where major performers (Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Alicia Keys etc..) played to raise money for the families of the victims. At the end Willie Nelson led everyone in America The Beautiful and it was perfectly appropriate. No one else could have done it, it wouldn't have been right

Red Headed Stranger is my favorite album to hear sung. Willie's vocals come through so clearly the sound is audible tonic. Words such as sparse, and quiet have been used to describe the accompanying music, truth be told any other arrangement would have gotten in the way of THAT VOICE. There are a lot of albums I know every word to; with Red Headed Stranger I know every note. I can listen to it without even putting it on! This album has an unfair advantage in that it is really like two.

Part one is the narrative of the Red Headed Stranger, a preacher that discovers his woman has chosen the love of another man, a distinct story line.

Love is like a dying ember
And only memories remain

They smiled at each other as he walked through the door
And they died with a smile on their faces

Part two is a broader stroke that symbolizes hope and redemption.

My hands on the wheel of something that's real
And I feel like I'm going home

They work together and separately, really cool thing.

Red Headed Stranger is classic in every since of the word, it feels antique, it should be discovered in your granddaddy's attic in that old walnut chest, dusted off reverentially and put on the old turntable covered in cobwebs beside it. Some albums are right for the time, this album is right for all time. Makes me want to have a son so I can have a workweek kick my ass open a cold beer lay back in my chair and put on Willie. My son will be coming home from a night out with that girl Tracy doesn't like and he'll hear the music coming from the den.

Don't cross him, don't boss him, he's wild in his sorrow
He's riding and hiding his pain
Don't fight him, don't spite him just wait till tomorrow
And maybe he'll ride on again.

My son will smile and slip back to his room knowing that in our little family universe everything is how it should be. Amen

Post note There is a classic performance from Austin City Limits where Willie performs Red Headed Stranger in its entirety. I have given a pretty damn good effort in hunting a copy of it down but have had no luck. If anyone wants to earn a permanent place in my heart find a copy and get it for me.

Number 2 Darkness on the Edge of Town

2008-05-02T12:21:00.000-04:00

Number 2 Darkness on the Edge of Town
Artist: Bruce Springsteen
Released: June 2nd, 1978

Track Listing
Badlands
Adam Raised A Cain
Something In The Night
Candy's Room
Racing In The Streets
Promised Land
Factory
Streets of Fire
Prove It All Night
Darkness on the Edge of Town

Tonight tonight the highway's bright out of our way mister you best keep. 'Cause summer's here and the time is right for goin' racin' in the street.

I believe in this record. Right down to the bone I believe in this record. You want to know about me, listen closely and you'll get a good idea. You are what you eat and when I was just a kid I ate this up. I would listen to my older brother's cassette tape of Racing in the Street live from the 75' to 85' set over and over again which led me eventually to the album.

Pulling into Mosley High School at 7:15 AM in a 78' Camaro with The Promised Land on full blast.

Writing a paper in my Junior year English class comparing Darkness on the Edge of Town to Macbeth and having the instructor insist on me reading it to the class, she thought the other kids gave a damn about Bruce Springsteen.

Driving across Hathaway Bridge in Spring Break traffic to go to work with Badlands distortedly loud from a Firebird's rear speakers.

Opening a package from Europe of a bootleg I spent 75 dollars on called Live In The Promised Land from The Darkness on The Edge of Town Tour with an 878 minute guitar intro for Prove It All Night.

Three guys in need of a shave in a rented car traveling through Tennessee, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, to find Newsies. Huddled up outside the Arena in Columbus Ohio and hearing Bruce tune up with Take Em As They Come with The E Street Band. That night I saw Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band do Darkness on the Edge of Town, there it was all right in front of me, I still haven't got over it….

Driving up to Macon Georgia 5,000 times to see my Brothers and Nieces with Candy's Room forcing the wimpiest driver alive (me) to speed.

The title track says it all

They're still racing out at the Trestles

But that blood it never burned in her veins

Now I hear she's got a house up in Fairview

And a style she's trying to maintain

Well if she wants to see me

You can tell her that I'm easily found

Tell her there's a spot out 'neath Abram's Bridge

And tell her there's a darkness on the edge of town

Everybody's got a secret Sonny

Something that they just can't face

Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it

They carry it with them every step that they take

Till some day they just cut it loose

Cut it loose or let it drag 'em down

Where no one asks any questions

Or looks too long in your face

In the darkness on the edge of town

Some folks are born into a good life

Other folks get it anyway anyhow

I lost my money and I lost my wife

Them things don't seem to matter much to me now

Tonight I'll be on that hill 'cause I can't stop

I'll be on that hill with everything I got

Lives on the line where dreams are found and lost

I'll be there on time and I'll pay the cost

For wanting things that can only be found

In the darkness on the edge of town

I have nothing else to add. Bruce Springsteen is my poet Hero, he is a force of nature.

Number 1 Highway 61 Revisited

2008-05-02T12:16:00.000-04:00

Number 1 Highway 61 Revisited
Artist: Bob Dylan
Released: Aug. 30th, 1965

Track Listing
Like A Rolling Stone
Tombstone Blues
It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry
From A Buick 6
Ballad of a Thin Man
Queen Jane Approximately
Highway 61 Revisited
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues
Desolation Row

"Here comes the blind commissioner, they've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tightrope walker; the other is in his pants"

The sum is greater than its parts. What if the sum is from another universe? Six plus six equals macaroni cheese, fuzzy math, dream world calculations, algebra from a planet unknown? You listen and it just doesn't make any sense while making all the sense in the world. WHERE DID THIS COME FROM!!!????? I don't get it but it gets me got it? Area 51 in the desert, not quite Alien hunters, Highway 61 in Mississippi, we've had visitors and they left vinyl proof.

I put my list together and I wanted to fight this, I wanted a dark horse to come galloping up the back stretch and take out Bob Dylan by a nose. The race wasn't rigged; it's just that all the other thoroughbreds were on a different track, in a different town, in the vicinity of Comprehendibleville. Highway 61 Revisited don't race there, it never did.

A couple of parameters for #1….

Opening track is the greatest (and the most unlikely) single of all time.
You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clownsWhen they all come down and did tricks for youYou never understood that it ain't no goodYou shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you

"The first time I heard Bob Dylan, I was in the car with my mother listening to WMCA, and on came that snare shot that sounded like somebody'd kicked open the door to your mind." – Bruce Springsteen commenting on Like A Rolling Stone

The fulcrum point of the most influential artist in recorded music history
Infusion of the folk poet with the rock and roll master. The cornerstone of the way he used to sound with the way he was going to sound.

The essence of "hip"

That album cover, with the Triumph Motorcycle shirt, the way the name of the album sounds when you say it, "Highway 61 Revisited". Song titles like "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" and "Queen Jane Approximately" lines like….

She walks like Bo Diddley and she don't need no crutch

Now if you see Saint Annie please tell her thanks a lotI cannot move my fingers are all in a knot

And dropping a bar bell he points to the skySaying, "The sun's not yellow it's chicken"

My favorite Bob Dylan song, Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues
Dooon Doon dah doodala doon Dooon Doon dah dooodala doon doon doon wah weenk wahn a wahnn wahnnnn……….

It's not really a sense of wonder as much as it is a sense of awe. When I first heard Highway 61 Revisited it blew my mind, the 247th time I heard Highway 61 Revisited it blew my mind. Head scratching, awe inspiring, other worldliness, mind blowing essential Bob Dylan. My # 1 album of all time, it wasn't ever in doubt. I have officially given up on trying to figure this album and this Bob Dylan out. Until someone puts my ass on a spaceship and flies me to the place this album came from and dishes out enlightenment on the whole thing, even DESOLATION ROW!!!!!!!!, number one is set in sonic cosmic stone.