Number Five Modern Times

#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 One "Love and Theft"

#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 #24 Thru #21

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

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.

Dylan Albums Ranked

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.

Blood On My Tracks Disc 1 Song 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Blood On My Tracks Disc 2 Song 2

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

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

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

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