tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6134016392596286372024-03-05T16:36:35.453-08:00Ramblings of A Ragged Clownraggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.comBlogger50125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-73857172272060824772010-01-01T16:48:00.000-08:002010-01-01T16:55:54.312-08:00The Best Bob Dylan Songs of the Noughties<span class="postbody">Sorry about the lack of blog entries in recent months. Having been ill throughout the first half of the year, I've had to work hard to catch up with my contract. I do intend to return to the second part of my <a href="http://ramblingsofaraggedclown.blogspot.com/2009/11/freewheelin-revisited-which-albums.html">albums Dylan should perform in their entirety theme</a>, but, being as it's not only a new year, but a new decade, here's my contribution to the list mountain.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Best Dylan Songs of the 00's</span><br /><br />What a great decade this has been for new Dylan songs! Here is my list of the best 10 of them.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1. Cross the Green Mountain</span><br /><br />The movie 'Gods and Generals,' a civil war epic, was mostly panned by the critics, but Dylan lavished on it one of his greatest songs. It opens with a dream-vision -- or is it a nightmare?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">I cross the green mountain, I sit by the stream</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Heaven blazing in my head, I dreamt a monstrous dream</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Something came up out of the sea</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">And swept through the land of the rich and the free</span></blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /><br />That third line is terrific -- one thinks of the monsters of classical mythology that come out of the sea to devour their prey, such as the Zeus-sent creature who destroyed Hippolytus or the serpents that emerge from the sea to strangle Laocoon and his sons after the priest of Poseidon strikes the Trojan horse.<br /><br />But also, as the Canadian poet and writer on Dylan Stephen Scobie suggested to me in an email, post-9/11 "something came up out of the sea" is bound to suggest the death that dropped out of the air on that dark day. It would be typical of Dylan to transfer the threat from the sky to the sea.<br /><br />The song, appropriately for a civil war epic, incorporates memories of Whitman as well as the "poet laureate of the Confederacy," Henry Timrod, to whom Dylan later nods more than once on <span style="font-style: italic;">Modern Times. </span><br /><br />On and on the song rolls, stately, magnificent, and epic (that word again), and you don't want it ever to end.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2. Highwater (for Charley Patton)</span><br /><br />The most striking track of an album released on 9/11, it seems horrible prophetic of the events of that day, and the science-hating, religious primitivism that dominated in both America and the Muslim world in the first decade of the 21st century. Even the fate of New Orleans seems, in retrospect, to have been foreshadowed in this dark masterpiece (which nevertheless finds time for a flash of humour: "I got a cravin' love for blazing speed/Got a hopped up Mustang Ford/Jump into the wagon, love, throw your panties overboard."<br /><br />Apart from anything else, it's a great blues-based rocker, one of the highlights of stage performances of this decade, especially with the first Charlie Sexton band.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3. Summer Days</span><br /><br />A lot of Dylan fans moaned when this exciting jump blues began the inevitable closer of every Dylan show for the best part of the decade. Well, I for one can't get enough of this joyful song that rages against the dying of the light. "Summer days and summer nights are gone/I know somewhere where something's still going on," Bob sings, determined to still have a ball even though he acknowledges his best days might be behind him.<br /><br /><blockquote style="font-style: italic;">Everybody get ready - lift up your glasses and sing<br />Everybody get ready to lift up your glasses and sing<br />Well, I'm standin' on the table, I'm proposing a toast to the King<br /><br />Well I'm drivin' in the flats in a Cadillac car<br />The girls all say, "You're a worn out star"<br />My pockets are loaded and I'm spending every dime<br />How can you say you love someone else when you know it's me all the time?</blockquote><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">4. Forgetful Heart</span><br /><br />This, by contrast, is one of the most haunting and bleak songs Bob has ever written. It's live debut in Milwaukee on the first of July 2009 was Bob's best performance of the year. Like several of the songs on <span style="font-style: italic;">Together Through Life</span>, it seems slight at first, but leaves a deep impression:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">All night long</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I lay awake and listen to the sound of pain</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The door has closed forever more</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">If, indeed, there ever was a door </span></blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /><br />A delicate, haunting gem of a song that Bob performed several times over the summer and fall, alone, center stage, with just mouth harp.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">5. Floater (Too Much To Ask)</span><br /><br />An extraordinary portrait of a stuck-in-his-ways misanthrope, a rum old boy living in isolation somewhere in a beautifully evoked deep south. The element of alienation and disenchantment with the present is offset by memories of a deeply cherished childhood:<br /><blockquote style="font-style: italic;"><br />My grandfather was a duck trapper<br />He could do it with just dragnets and ropes<br />My grandmother could sew new dresses out of old cloth<br />I don't know if they had any dreams or hopes<br /><br />I had 'em once though, I suppose, to go along<br />With all the ring dancin' Christmas carols on all of the Christmas Eves<br />I left all my dreams and hopes<br />Buried under tobacco leaves</blockquote><br /><br />As well as its element of old-geezerish misanthropy, however, the song has its element of reconcilation between the generations:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">The old men 'round here, sometimes they get</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">On bad terms with the younger men</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">But old, young, age don't carry weight</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">It doesn't matter in the end</span></blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /><br />And there is the marvellous touch of humour in evoking the awkwardness of modern adolescent lovers and contrasting them with Shakespeare's classic doomed lovers:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">Romeo, he said to Juliet, "You got a poor complexion.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">It doesn't give your appearance a very youthful touch!"</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Juliet said back to Romeo, "Why don't you just shove off</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">If it bothers you so much."</span></blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /><br />This is one of the most extraordinary and original Dylan songs, an extraordinary mixture of highly evocative lyricism and colloquial language, mixed with a smidgen of schoolboy humour. It offers something new on each listen.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">6. Po' Boy</span><br /><br />An extraordinary song, like so many of those on 'Love and Theft', evocative of the deep south. Here Dylan seems to be singing in the person of a black man ("Boy" is of course racially derogative rather than an indication of age) in the pre-war south, "dodgin' them Georgia laws" evoking the whole world of Jim Crow and its petty obstructions. This song more than any other makes us think of the book by Eric Lott from which Bob took the title of his album: <span style="font-style: italic;">Love & Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class</span>, an examination of the whole of blackface minstrelsy in American cultural life. The blackface minstrel, in Lott's interpretation, represents not just cultural appropriation ("theft"), but also homage to "what is stolen ("love"). Rock 'n' roll is itself a manifestation of both these aspects of blackface minstrelsy.<br /><br />But Dylan's song is even more suffused with schoolboy humour than Floater, with nonsequiturs (I say, "How much you want for that?" I go into the store/Man says, "Three dollars." "All right," I say, "Will you take four?"), an outrageous pun ("Call down to room service, says "Send up a room"), and a knock-knock joke. (Knockin' on the door, I said, "Who's it, where you from?"/Man said, "Freddie." I said, "Freddie who?"/He said, "Freddie or not, here I come!"). And there is another humorous reference to Shakespearean characters.<br /><br />This "po' boy" has the police on his back, he's washing dishes and feeding swine, he's branded by the claws of time and love, he's "ridin' first class trains" (not legally, one assumes), "tryin' hard not to fall between the cars." The amount of detail in this song, as it is in "Floater," is extraordinary. The cultural vitality, but also the social inequality and racism of the south is evoked. The song is scored for banjo and acoustic guitar, with lounge-style jazz chords, and sung with a soft-shoe charm.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">7. Workingman Blues #2 </span><br /><br />Another extraordinary hotchpotch, this song more than any other on <span style="font-style: italic;">Modern Times</span> evokes the world of Charlie Chaplin's last silent picture.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">8. Nettie Mooore </span><br /><br />An extraordinary song, with a beautiful, wistful melody and very unusual, off-kilter drumbeat.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9. This Dream of You </span><br /><br />For some years now, Bob has been trying to write a classic Tin Pan Alley-type song, and here he finally succeeds. Like several of the songs on Together Through Life, this has an agreeable Tex-Mex flavour.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10. Things Have Changed</span><br /><br />The song Bob contributed to the movie "Wonder Boys" and which won him an Academy Award for best movie song. In retrospect, it is the bridge between Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft. It shares the formers disillusion and cynicism, but looks forward to the latter's lighter tone. "I used to care, but things have changed," the refrain goes. But thankfully Bob has shown many times this decade, not least on <span style="font-style: italic;">"Love and Theft,"</span> which ranks with his great masterpieces, <span style="font-style: italic;">Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding, Blood on the Tracks, </span> and and <span style="font-style: italic;">Desire</span>.<br /><br />Honorary mentions; any one of the following could have made the list: Mississippi (but I decided it was really a <span style="font-style: italic;">Time Out of Mind</span>, i.e. nineties song), Lonesome Day Blues, Cry A While, Ain't Talkin', Moonlight, Life Is Hard (just pipped by This Dream of You), Tell Ol' Bill.</span>raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-9708750264880066592009-11-07T00:10:00.000-08:002009-11-07T02:07:12.270-08:00Freewheelin' Revisited! Which albums should Bob perform live in their entirety?<a href="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=ramofaragclo-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B001S2Q2XS&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="width: 120px; height: 240px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"> <iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=ramofaragclo-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B001S2Q2XS&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px; float: left;" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" frameborder="0"></iframe></a> In recent years several artists have been giving shows that consist mostly of a single album, played in its entirety. Van Morrison not so long ago played <span style="font-weight: bold;">Astral Weeks</span> live to critical acclaim, even releasing the result as a cd <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001O0EHXG?ie=UTF8&tag=ramofaragclo-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B001O0EHXG">Astral Weeks Live At the Hollywood Bowl</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=ramofaragclo-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B001O0EHXG" alt="" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important;" border="0" height="1" width="1" /> and a DVD (exclusive to Amazon: see inset).<br /><br /><br />A few years ago Elvis Costello gave a performance of his first and most widely loved album, <span style="font-weight: bold;">My Aim Is True</span>, even reuniting with the original musicians.<br /><br />And in 2002 David Bowie played the whole of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Low </span>in one set and then came back to perform his then latest album <span style="font-weight: bold;">Heathen </span>in a second set.<br /><br />Rufus Wainwright even performed the whole of Judy Garland's<span style="font-weight: bold;"> Judy at Carnegie Hall.</span><br /><br />Anyway, you get the idea.I started off by thinking that Bob would never do something like this, then I suddenly realized, he already has -- exactly 30 years ago this month he started the first of two tours on which he performed the whole of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Slow Train Coming</span> and the then-unreleased <span style="font-weight: bold;">Saved </span>in their entirety (barring 'Satisfied Mind' off the latter, which can be regarded as a sort of 'bonus track.' Also, 'Are You Ready?' only emerged as very a late addition to the second tour, and was then played throughout the third gospel tour, when Bob dropped some songs and added others, some of which remain unreleased to this day).<br /><br />So once again, Bob was way ahead of the pack. Except of course, the context was different. One album was Bob's latest release and the other would be his next album, and both were informed by his religious belief, giving him a burning desire to perform them to audiences. I cannot see Bob doing a show in which he rattled off the whole of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Highway 61 Revisited </span>and then came out and did all of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Blood on the Tracks</span>. And even if he did, of course, the songs would be unrecognizable from the versions on the original albums, and the musicians would be different (even if all the original ones were still alive, I can't see him choosing to play with the same people again). And of course, whereas someone like Van Morrison sounds much the same as he did in 1970, Bob's voice has gone through umpteen changes.<br /><br />So this blog is purely for fun. Tell me which two albums you would pick to be played in their entirety for your fantasy, one-off Dylan live show. Also, who would you like to play with him for these revisited versions (stick to living musicians, please, just to make it a little more plausible)?<br /><br />I'll go first. These aren't necessarily my favourite albums, I just think that they would make for a fantastic show.<br /><br />First off, Bob should do the whole of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Freewheelin</span>'. Firstly, that will give us a few live debuts -- I don't believe that he's ever performed "Bob Dylan's Blues", "Down the Highway", or "I Shall Be Free" live at all, while there is just one circulating live performance of "Oxford Town" and "Corrina, Corrina" and two of "Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance" (ignoring home recordings). "Bob Dylan's Dream" hasn't been heard since 1991, and "Talkin' World War III Blues" since 1965.<br /><br />And this half of the show should at least predominantly solo, because we haven't seen that for a while. Maybe he could be joined by some backing musicians on a couple of songs -- maybe we could even finally get to hear what the rocked up "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" might have sounded like (backing musicians are said to be on this track on the Freewheelin' liner notes! No such version has ever surfaced. There is even a rumored "Dixieland" take!) And while they were out there, they could perhaps play on the live debut of Mixed-Up Confusion... The only other "outtake" from the Freewheelin' album I would include in the show would be the all-time great love song Tomorrow Is A Long Time (strictly speaking, it was not recorded in the Freewheelin' sessions at all, but was demoed in between sessions). But hey, if he wants to debut Rocks and Gravel while he's out there, who am I to argue with Bob?<br /><br />I even have my running order for this one-off live show (to be performed at a suitable small venue within a 20 mile radius of my house), which departs from the original sequence.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">I Shall Be Free</span> (starting where he left off in 1963) -- Bob on guitar. Gets Bob and us relaxed and warmed up. New lyrics with updated references, including to Alicia Keyes and Scarlett Johannson)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Masters of War </span>(Bob on guitar).<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Oxford Town</span> (Bob on guitar) -- end of first 'protest' sectoin<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Down the Highway</span> (Bob on guitar & harmonica)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Bob Dylan's Blues</span> (Bob on guitar & harmonica<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance</span> (Bob on guitar) -- concludes blues section.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Talkin' World War III Blues</span> (Bob on guitar) -- Bob brings house down with new final line: "Barack Obama said that! At least I think that's what he said!)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Girl of the North Country </span>(Bob on guitar and harmonica)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tomorrow Is A Long Time</span> (Bob on guitar, Donnie Heron on violin) [End of the Echo-Suze section]<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Bobtalk:</span><br />"Ladies and gentlemen! I want to introduce my current band! That was Donnie Herron you just heard on violin. On lead guitar, Charlie Sexton! On bass, Tony Garnier! On the drums, the best drummer we could find tonight, George Recile! And the other guy who you can never actually hear but who follows me around, Stu Kimball!)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Don't Think Twice, It's All Right</span> (Bob on keyboards, the rest as above, except Donnie on pedal steel rather than violin).<br /><br />Bobtalk: "This next song was my first single. Hands up if you were the guy who bought it."<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mixed-Up Confusion</span> (musicians as above)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span>Rocks and Gravel (musicians as above) -- OPTIONAL<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Corrina, Corrina</span> (musicians as above except Charlie and Bob on acoustic guitars, no drums)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall</span> (Bob on guitar).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Bobtalk:</span> "Thank you, ladies and gentlemen! That song was called "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall", and it certainly is. Goodnight!"<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Long, sustained applause.</span><br /><br />Encore:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Blowin' in the Wind </span>(Bob on guitar and harmonica, Joan Baez on backing vocals -- just kiddin'!)<br /><br />Curtain falls on first part of show, leaving the audience stunned and amazed, especially a certain raggedclown...<br /><br />Which album will Bob play when he comes back for the second half of the show? Will it be <span style="font-weight: bold;">Christmas From the Heart</span>? Stay tuned!<br /><br />Meanwhile, do let me have your own suggestions for albums* Bob should play in their entirety live, with as much detail as possible. Let your fantasies run wild!<br /><br />*I was thinking of his own studio albums, but if you think he should sing the whole of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Sinatra in the Sands</span> or Kate Bush's <span style="font-weight: bold;">A Kick Inside</span>, who am I to stop you? It's your fantasy.raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-16141815078013137142009-10-13T08:36:00.001-07:002009-11-07T01:58:39.284-08:00Merry Christmas in the Heart, Everybody!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYlLzMiLa6zJRNxfihD9Ty4285iyQ0tcWuW_jRkL71jcda2rcpL8V0-uB4Nrr6SLHeAJ3FO_m_5t4DnFvRnjVrsRZdwXbwPWuGUUN1mi1V4TOtZk-6CdYifOOs2MGesaUgLjCKBw85bvM/s1600-h/news_0809_bobdylanxmascd.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 20px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYlLzMiLa6zJRNxfihD9Ty4285iyQ0tcWuW_jRkL71jcda2rcpL8V0-uB4Nrr6SLHeAJ3FO_m_5t4DnFvRnjVrsRZdwXbwPWuGUUN1mi1V4TOtZk-6CdYifOOs2MGesaUgLjCKBw85bvM/s320/news_0809_bobdylanxmascd.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392110759961787810" border="0" /></a><br />Right, here we go!<br /><br />Two boxes of deep-filled mince pies -- check!<br />Frozen turkey dinner -- check!<br />Bottle of 'champagne' -- i.e. cheap sparkling plonk -- check!<br />Figgy pudding -- check!<br />One cracker to pull with oneself (yes, I am sad) -- check!<br />One copy of Bob Dylan's new hot waxing <i class="bbcode">Christmas in the Heart</i> -- check!<br /><br />I'm all set for my best Christmas ever -- i.e. one without relatives.<br /><br />Yes, just when you thought there was no other major cultural impact for His Bobness to have, having turned rock music from teenage pap into an art form, having made country cool, having brought poetry to the juke box, having messed with religion and women's knickers, having sung a knock-knock joke, and having <s class="bbcode">written a song with Michael Bolton</s> done lots of other cool things, the Mighty Bob has decreed <strong class="bbcode">that Christmas shall henceforth be celebrated in October!<br /><br /></strong>The younger generation were quick to heed the call -- behold this similarly entitled offering, released the same day (today):<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh641Ap1rxpGN41ruPXlz8Xz8NGwXm_516dFhpJzBXKgjsQTc91zNZ4JhOjgLvMEBOUPgamHVIyhYojP0UWxJHNpp071FbqDOeZcDnRF0OctU1ox-EjuqZLUXAXXN6yB_T4v01ida2QEVs/s1600-h/david-archuleta-christmas-cover-art.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh641Ap1rxpGN41ruPXlz8Xz8NGwXm_516dFhpJzBXKgjsQTc91zNZ4JhOjgLvMEBOUPgamHVIyhYojP0UWxJHNpp071FbqDOeZcDnRF0OctU1ox-EjuqZLUXAXXN6yB_T4v01ida2QEVs/s320/david-archuleta-christmas-cover-art.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392111131678118898" border="0" /></a><br /><br />am reliably informed that this wee leprechaun is the most recent winner of American Idol, cunningly disguised as a diminutive fawn. I know whose voice <i class="bbcode">I </i>prefer...<br /><br /><br /><br />I think this that <span style="font-style: italic;">Christmas in the Heart</span> is the greatest album ever released on October 13th 2009 (sorry, David Achoochoo fans). And just what the world needs in the middle of a depression -- turning the clock back to good times and partying like it's 1955! It's cheesy, it's cheery, it's addictive and probably very bad for you -- just like Christmas itself in fact!<br /><br /><br /><br /><strong class="bbcode"><br /><br /><br /></strong>raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-64470383541304131242009-06-28T11:26:00.001-07:002009-06-28T12:19:29.937-07:00Michael Jackson: Suffer the ChildrenMichael Jackson's two outstanding talents were his voice and his dance moves. He wasn't a great songwriter like Smokey Robinson or a great song arranger like Quincey Jones (the latter responsible for much of the success of Jackson's <span style="font-style: italic;">Off the Wall-Thriller-Bad</span> trilogy). But boy, could he sing and dance.<br /><br />Here's a sentimental favourite of mine:<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/NO1v8t1FLOI&hl=en&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/NO1v8t1FLOI&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br />Here he still looks "normal", but looks are deceptive. If you'd been whipped with a belt from the age of 11 when you didn't learn your dance moves fast enough; if your older brothers had sex with groupies while you, a 12 year old, were in the same room; <a href="http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-709.html">if those same brothers wondered aloud, when you reached puberty, if you were gay</a>, and your father regularly expressed his contempt and hatred for homosexuals; well, I wonder if you'd be "normal." A psychiatrist who examined both Jackson and his accuser during the Gavin Arvizo trial found that Michael did not fit the pattern of a paedophile, but had himself regressed to the mental age of about 10. No wonder.<br /><br />Now apparently Katherine Jackson (79), the ghastly matriarch who failed to protect Michael and her other sons from Joe's belt and verbal abuse, wants to adopt MJ's children so she can bring them up as good Jehovah's Witnesses.<br /><br />Wonderful. Although that is possibly no worse than being brought up in the Nation of Islam (t<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_of_Islam#Teachings_on_race">he psychopathic black separatist religion that teaches that whites are, literally, alien demons</a>), to which Jacko was apparently a convert.<br /><br />Another possibility is that the birth mother of the two oldest children, Debbie Rowe, who gave them away for $5 million, will sue for custody. <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/celebs/news/2009/06/28/michael-jackson-s-heartbroken-kids-say-we-miss-daddy-115875-21476862/">According to some reports</a>, she is threatening a "tell-all" book about Jackson if she doesn't get custody. The implication must be that she has information that could have incriminated Jackson (during the Arvizo trial, in which she was called as a witness, she broke down and refused to testify, saying that Michael was a better parent than she was).<br /><br /><a href="http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article6591265.ece">Other reports</a> suggest that she just wants greater access to the children she gave away for money.<br /><br />Meanwhile, we're being treated to the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_WKtMxrCjs">nauseating spectacle of Jacko's elder brother Jermaine feigning tears </a>about the little brother he'd spent years trying to shaft in return for money. In 2006 Jermaine (whose own career foundered after the flop of his 1991 record, <span style="font-style: italic;">You Said</span>, which included a song attacking Michael) failed to get his book <span style="font-style: italic;">Legacy: Surviving the Best and the Worst</span> published. <a href="http://www.thumperscorner.com/discus/messages/2152/10463.html">In the book proposal</a>, he said that he "feared" (i.e. 'I have no evidence but I'm willing to allege by innuendo') that Michael may have been guilty of child molestation. Naturally, now the hypocritical Jermaine is calling for the family's privacy to be respected...<br /><br />The idea that this dysfunctional and abusive bunch of chancers and money-grabbers is going to be able to pass their brand of physical, religious, emotional abuse and commercial exploration onto a new generation is the most tragic thing about this whole affair. Michael Jackson is gone, but they can continue their legacy of abuse with his children.<br /><br />Oh, and by the way, if anyone cares, this is my all-time favourite song:<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/aSqo17o2a1w&hl=en&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/aSqo17o2a1w&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object>raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-63355921763735006532009-04-21T17:16:00.000-07:002009-04-21T18:14:12.971-07:00War, the End of the World, and Women on Bob Dylan's Mind in Strasbourg...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWY16ZCrTLQF8RyLApOubN3DdGlGUWsZm5t2VqJtEz_8yYuz66EwPZeFwwxU8UNdUrwkYoCsy0buVHh2T9c_HX0Hpw-eXK0gmyBmW466JhOPVJhDnkMLvFPQoWYBI4Q8JNk7gjvZ_510w/s1600-h/Strasbourg_Synagogue.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 290px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWY16ZCrTLQF8RyLApOubN3DdGlGUWsZm5t2VqJtEz_8yYuz66EwPZeFwwxU8UNdUrwkYoCsy0buVHh2T9c_HX0Hpw-eXK0gmyBmW466JhOPVJhDnkMLvFPQoWYBI4Q8JNk7gjvZ_510w/s320/Strasbourg_Synagogue.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327309075654923810" border="0" /></a><br /><br />War and apocalypse (and, er, women!) were very much on Bob's mind in Strasbourg tonight, it seems... Maybe he knows it was Hitler's birthday yesterday. Or perhaps he was inspired by being in a city that has been fought over by France and Germany more than once. One of the Nazis' first acts on taking the city in 1940 was to raze to the ground Strasbourg's synagogue (pictured), one of the largest in Europe, the Jewish community in Alsace being one of the oldest on that continent. The city was heavily bombed by the allies in 1944.<br /><br />Let's go through the setlist...<br /><br /><br />1. Cat's In The Well<br />2. Masters Of War<br />3. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue<br />4. Lonesome Day Blues<br />5. Under The Red Sky<br />6. Rollin' And Tumblin'<br />7. Beyond The Horizon<br />8. John Brown<br />9. Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum<br />10. This Wheel's On Fire<br />11. Highway 61 Revisited<br /><br />12. Just Like A Woman<br />13. Thunder On The Mountain<br />14. Like A Rolling Stone<br /><br />(encore)<br /><br />15. All Along The Watchtower<br />16. Spirit On The Water<br />17. Blowin' In The Wind<br /><br />1. Cat's in the Well -- dogs are going to <strong class="bbcode">war</strong>.<br />2. Masters of <strong class="bbcode">War</strong>.<br />3. [No direct mention of war, but reindeer armies and seasick sailors, an orphan with a gun, and "the dead" feature]<br />4. Well, my pa he died and left me, my brother got killed in the <strong class="bbcode">war</strong><br />5.[Again, no direct mention of war, but this sinister nursery rhyme is every bit as much about the betrayal of innocence as John Brown; note also that after Baby Blue and a Blues, we now have a <i class="bbcode">red</i> sky!]<br />6. [No direct mention of war, but "sooner or later you too shall burn "and "early doom" and "long dead souls" hardly lift the mood!]<br />7. [Some light relief at last, though the song is a tad ambiguous]<br />8. When John Brown went off to <strong class="bbcode">war</strong><br />9. Are this nasty pair supposed to be Bob's comment on gay marriage?<br />10. Another sinister song...<br />11. ...tryin' to create a next world <span style="font-weight: bold;">war</span><br />12. Just Like A <i class="bbcode">Woman</i> -- No war connection, but as Horace says, <i class="bbcode">cunnus taeterrima belli causa</i>, which I won't translate in deference to any ladies who might be visiting my blog, but you can google it...<br />13. I need a real good <i class="bbcode">woman</i> to do just what I say...<br />14. How does it feel? The third "woman" song ends with her downfall. Bob's not only in a belligerent, doom-mongering mood, he's feeling pretty misogynistic too.<br />15. The end of the world, portents of which were seen in 1 and maybe 10.<br />16. Quite placid, apart from the "I killed a man" line<br />17. Too many people have died... This might be the audience's feeling after this setlist!<br /><br />All in all, one of the most doom-laden concerts Bob's given for a while. Thanks to <a href="http://www.boblinks.com/">Bill Pagel</a> for the set list.raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-75449705751156892712009-04-16T05:28:00.000-07:002009-04-19T14:32:40.805-07:00Correction: New Dylan Album Is Down in the Groove Revisited!<div style="text-align: justify;"><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=ramofaragclo-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B001VNB57C&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="width: 120px; height: 240px;" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" align="right" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe><br /></div><a href="http://tinyurl.com/czy3xj">A Columbia spokesman</a> has now confirmed that nine out of the ten songs on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001VNB57C?ie=UTF8&tag=ramofaragclo-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B001VNB57C">Together Through Life</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=ramofaragclo-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B001VNB57C" alt="" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important;" border="0" height="1" width="1" /> were co-written with Robert Hunter.<br /><br /><blockquote>The liner notes will read “All music by Bob Dylan except ‘My Wife’s Home Town’ (music by Bob Dylan and Willie Dixon) - All lyrics by Bob Dylan with Robert Hunter except ‘This Dream Of You’ which is lyrics and music by Bob Dylan.”</blockquote><br /><br />If you remember, Bob's main reason for going into the studio was to record a song for a forthcoming movie. He seems to have enjoyed the experience enough to have wanted to make a complete album. Or maybe he just wanted to cash in on his recent commercial success.<br /><br />Quite clearly, he didn't have much other material in the tank, hence <span style="font-style: italic;">the </span>"collaboration." What would be interesting to know is: whether this is a real collaboration, or whether Bob just raided the Robert Hunter notebooks for unused lyrics (presumably rejected as second-rate or unfinished by Hunter himself), as he did with <span style="font-weight: bold;">Silvio </span>and the unspeakable <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ugliest Girl in the World</span> on the near-disastrous <span style="font-style: italic;">Down in the Groove</span>(1987)* (*liking a couple of songs does not change my view of that album as a total failure<span style="font-style: italic;"> as an album</span>).<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEWmQ-FvaTWWayDwZhX28ccvY0mzvw0JQLlHURjDRcouMNTDDRSlCRVnAtfLmONw2iufkddPsufFg7hdOWg7vlHD__LzSWSl0cg-RQUujWouRZpKErx_Dl8WGJT0qFcdCZ6amHyZmyAqU/s1600-h/BeyondHereLiesNothing_Polish.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEWmQ-FvaTWWayDwZhX28ccvY0mzvw0JQLlHURjDRcouMNTDDRSlCRVnAtfLmONw2iufkddPsufFg7hdOWg7vlHD__LzSWSl0cg-RQUujWouRZpKErx_Dl8WGJT0qFcdCZ6amHyZmyAqU/s320/BeyondHereLiesNothing_Polish.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5325268099715144690" border="0" /></a><br />The sneaky point is that Hunter can write a reasonable pastiche of second-rate Bob (<span style="font-weight: bold;">Silvio </span>is like an inferior <span style="font-weight: bold;">Up to Me</span>), so that many people have difficulty in distinguishing between the two.<br /><br />Robert Hunter is of course an accomplished lyricist in his own right, who should not be judged on rejected offshoots of his pen mined for the use of a lyricist whose own muse has deserted him. A <span style="font-style: italic;">genuine </span>collaboration between Dylan and Hunter (i.e. one in which they actually sat down together to cook up a song or songs) could, in fact, be a very interesting affair. Alas, my head tells me that <span style="font-style: italic;">Together Through Life</span> will consist of rehashed cast-off lyrics, no doubt with equally "borrowed" and derivative music (Otis Rush has already been identified as the source of the music for "Beyond Here Lies Nothing", while the great Willie Dixon, the self-styled "poet of the blues" and the most significant blues <span style="font-style: italic;">writer </span>of the 20th century, is actually honoured with a co-writing credit for the music of one song).<br /><br />Please note, that the title of this blog entry is somewhat tongue in cheek, and of course, I may turn out to be pleasantly surprised by <span style="font-style: italic;">Together Through Life</span>, collaboration or no.raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-83896425953148220652009-04-08T04:44:00.000-07:002009-04-08T05:52:07.912-07:00New Dylan Tracks Are 'Knocked Out Loaded'<div style="text-align: justify;"><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=ramofaragclo-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B001VNB57C&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="width: 120px; height: 240px;" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" align="right" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe><br /></div><br />Well, it may be unfair to assume that Bob was tight ("loaded") when he recorded these new tracks, but they certainly sound like he cooked them up and knocked them out in the studio without much thought or deliberation. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Beyond Here Lies Nothing</span> might as well be entitled "Here Lies Nothing," and for all its (highly derivative) musical charm, <span style="font-weight: bold;">I Feel A Change Coming On</span> isn't even as interesting lyrically as the slightly underrated <span style="font-weight: bold;">Under Your Spell</span> from one of Bob's least successful albums. The refrain is quite catchy, but most of the rest of the lyrics are trite. Also, I'm a bit fed up with Bob telling us who he's listening to or reading all the time. This is a lazy way of filling in a couple of lines. Still, if that's what he likes, here's a suggestion for his next album:<br /><br />I'm listening to Britney Spears<br />I almost forgot the taste of fears<br /><br />The second line is a near quotation from Macbeth (V.v) , which gives you the impression that something clever is being said, a bit like "I'm listening to Billy Joe Shaver and reading James Joyce/Some people say I've got the blood of the land in my voice," but you see how easy it is? I could write dozens of couplets like this, and I'm sure you could too, but it's a cheap trick.<br /><br />Also, the refrain seems a bit exploitative, tapping into the expectations generated by Obama's "change we can believe in" slogan, while refraining from commenting on those expectations. Again the comparison is with a <span style="font-style: italic;">Knocked Out Loaded </span>song, one of Dylan's very worse, the execrable <span style="font-weight: bold;">Got My Mind Made Up</span>:<br /><br />Well I'm going off to Libya<br />There's guy I gotta see<br />He's been living there three years now<br />In an oil refinery<br /><br />Lines so bad, and at the same time, so deliberately evocative of an interest he has no intention of satisfying, and therefore exploitative, that I have always taken the easy way out and blamed poor Tom Petty for them!<br /><br />Musically,<span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><span style="font-weight: bold;">I Feel A Change Comin' On </span>is somewhat reminiscent of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Handy Dandy</span>, a much better song.<br /><br />For the benefit of anyone who has problems with streaming audio files, I include below mp3s of these two pre-release songs. If you do download them, please delete them if you don't like them or if you do not buy <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001VNB57C?ie=UTF8&tag=ramofaragclo-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B001VNB57C">Together Through Life</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=ramofaragclo-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B001VNB57C" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /> when it's released.<br /><br />Also, if you have time and inclination, please click on some of the Google links!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.sendspace.com/file/0l9pj8">Beyond Here Lies Nothing</a> (pre-release from bobdylan.com, 192 kb/s)<br /><br /><a href="http://www.sendspace.com/file/d44olc">I Feel A Change Comin' On</a> (mp3, 192 kb/s captured via soundcard from streaming mp3)raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-40042145658960991562009-03-30T10:22:00.001-07:002009-03-30T12:47:49.938-07:00Whan that April with his shoures soote...thanne longeth folk to buy new Dylan albums!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTY6VabRydop3kHUsQ3z04yXDDFDZ69Wc3u4F13_53eOGxD6EMAD1ZMi1ItmbOVhaDtpMHrrK_qTwZ32jjiZ46ssg7BuTTq5U0fJQA8eURZm4NA7O4NpD6w4Pf4sfKoqa_DNhn98Y4moo/s1600-h/Benson_(Riverside_Chaucer).gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 142px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTY6VabRydop3kHUsQ3z04yXDDFDZ69Wc3u4F13_53eOGxD6EMAD1ZMi1ItmbOVhaDtpMHrrK_qTwZ32jjiZ46ssg7BuTTq5U0fJQA8eURZm4NA7O4NpD6w4Pf4sfKoqa_DNhn98Y4moo/s200/Benson_(Riverside_Chaucer).gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5319057104835188898" border="0" /></a>I was hoping to finish my piece on 'Joey' and post it here (see <a href="http://ramblingsofaraggedclown.blogspot.com/2009/03/bob-wakes-up-and-smells-coffee-in.html">previous blog</a>), but I am still unwell and can't spend too long on line these days. Thanks for the get well messages, I will respond to every one of them individually when I'm fully recovered.<br /><br />One of the few things I've been able to do since getting out of hospital is sit up in bed and read. Over the past six weeks I've read lots of Dryden, Pope, Keats, Coleridge, Byron, Arnold, Plath and much more besides. I also ordered a new copy of my Riverside Chaucer, a splendid work of American scholarship that makes it easy to read Chaucer in the original almost as quickly as in a modernized version (and with a good deal more satisfaction). My old <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Riverside-Chaucer-Geoffrey-Chaucer/dp/0199552096/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238435525&sr=8-10">paperback version</a> was falling to bits, so I got a lovely <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Riverside-Chaucer-Geoffrey/dp/0395290317/ref=reader_auth_dp">hardback</a> one from Amazon at a very reasonable price.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm8lnsPgzITUe2NP9oWkMXRbXmK5Y-v37PHPtQs1ZO7EO_aI3VhG0M0IOm0JPCIMqbHoRoxDZg2oV4oawB0qf3fKvg0sLb_oEm78gR61z4A20jcEiDYYNyreyPDnOdb_zj2B1YATtPnik/s1600-h/TogetherThroughLifePromo.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm8lnsPgzITUe2NP9oWkMXRbXmK5Y-v37PHPtQs1ZO7EO_aI3VhG0M0IOm0JPCIMqbHoRoxDZg2oV4oawB0qf3fKvg0sLb_oEm78gR61z4A20jcEiDYYNyreyPDnOdb_zj2B1YATtPnik/s200/TogetherThroughLifePromo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5319053557178867362" border="0" /></a><br />This was before I heard about <a href="http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/blogs/home.cfm?aid=12206">Dylan supposedly quoting Chaucer</a> in a modern translation on his new album, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001VNB57C?ie=UTF8&tag=ramofaragclo-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B001VNB57C">Together Through Life</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=ramofaragclo-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B001VNB57C" alt="" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important;" border="0" height="1" width="1" /><br /></span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%3Ca%20href=%22http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001VNB57C?ie=UTF8&tag=ramofaragclo-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B001VNB57C%22%3ETogether%20Through%20Life%20%28Deluxe%20Edition%29%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=ramofaragclo-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B001VNB57C%22%20width=%221%22%20height=%221%22%20border=%220%22%20alt=%22%22%20style=%22border:none%20%21important;%20margin:0px%20%21important;%22%20/%3E"></a> (link to the Deluxe Edition). However, it wasn't long before I stumbled across an earlier borrowing from England's greatest comic writer (bar Shakespeare) in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Franklyn's Tale</span>:<br /><br /><blockquote>Aurelius, with blisful herte anoon,<br />Answerde thus: "Fy on a thousand pound!<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">This wyde world, which that men seye is round<br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></blockquote><br /><br />Bob quotes the italicised line in <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ain't Talkin'</span>, of course. (Incidentally, it was well known in the Middle Ages that the earth was round -- the myth that before Christopher Columbus's voyage people believed that the earth was flat entered the popular imagination in the 19th century thanks to Washington Irving's novel about the explorer. Chaucer's tale is set in ancient Britanny and the line adds a touch of realism). That indefatibable sleuth <a href="http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/blogs/home.cfm?aid=12206">Scott Warmuth </a>has discovered that Bob also lifts another line for the <span style="font-style: italic;">Tell Tale Signs</span> outtake of the same song from The Reeve's Tale.<br /><br />This (and no doubt the quotations on the new album) are of a piece with Bob's <span style="font-style: italic;">Modern Times </span>quotations: in other words, he is not "intertextualizing" at all, i.e. there appears to be no attempt at an ironic counterpoint or other creative contact with the original. He doesn't expect the listener to make a connection with Chaucer, the Franklyn, or his Tale. He has simply filched the line because it sounds nice. To quote something I wrote about this subject some weeks ago:<br /><br /><blockquote>When Virgil quotes or adapts lines from the earlier Roman poet Ennius or from Homer, he actually wanted to send his audience to the original text, or rather, he assumes that the original text is familiar to his readers, and part of the pleasure is the mutual act of piety (it is more than just an intellectual tip of the hat) of the contemporary poet and his audience to the older master.<br /><br />In 18th century literature, there is not only the assumption of a common store of classic learning that the poet shares with his audience, but also, especially in the works of Pope, an identification between the modern and ancient poet, both on a personal and a sociocultural level. Pope's garden retreat in Twickenham becomes Horace's Sabine farm, Johnson's London becomes Juvenal's Rome. It's a two-way exchange: you actually read Horace differently after reading Pope, and Juvenal differently after reading Johnson.<br /><br />Nor does Dylan's use of cultural reference on <span style="font-style: italic;">Modern Times</span> resemble that of T.S. Eliot, who echoes the lines of so many past texts (not just poets and other writers, but songs and snippets of conversation) to represent them as shards of a decaying culture ("these fragments I have shored against my ruin") in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Wasteland</span>. That is at least somewhat akin to what Dylan is doing, on a much more accessible scale, in <span style="font-weight: bold;">Desolation Row</span>. Rather than lifting quotations wholesale like Eliot, he refers by name to well-known fictional characters (Hunchback of Notre Dame, Ophelia) and drops them into a completely new, usual ironic contexts. And he adds adds to this mosaic sly allusions to the work of Kafka and Eliot himself (as well as name-checking him), also bringing in a sinister flavour of the American South into these mostly European references with "postcards of the hanging". It's a skilful performance, an artistic tour de force. And Dylan does this again to some extent on <span style="font-style: italic;">"Love and Theft"</span> with his amusing use of the names of Romeo and Juliet and Don Pasquale (from the world of opera), dropping them into modern, ironic contexts (the aged Don Pasquale -- in Donizetti's opera the archetypal old man opposing the happiness of the young lovers -- paying a "2am booty call" is priceless!)<br /><br />But his use of quotation in <span style="font-style: italic;">Modern Times </span>is different. He doesn't expect his listeners to make a connection to Ovid (if anyone reads Ovid, it's usually the <span style="font-style: italic;">Ars Amatoria</span> -- "the art of love" is actually name-checked by Bob -- or the <span style="font-style: italic;">Metamorphoses</span>, probably the most influential book on English literature after the Bible; not Ovid's self-pitying diatribes from exile on the Black Sea coast). Nor is he identifying himself with Ovid in exile or making a critique of modern culture by collecting its detritus. He's just using some lines he found in one of Ovid's modern translators to eke out his verses. There is no kind of cultural interchange between Dylan and Ovid or his translator at all. (The same can be said of Bob's use of Timrod on the same album, although his use of the Civil War poet in <span style="font-weight: bold;">Cross the Green Mountain</span> does seem more apposite). No one would ever suggest that Virgil borrowed from Homer and Ennius because he wasn't able to think up lines of his own, but that does seem to be the case, sadly, with Dylan's borrowings from Ovid on <span style="font-style: italic;">Modern Times</span>.<br /><br />(Oh, and the routine practice of Shakespeare and his contemporaries of borrowing plots from older literature doesn't really belong in this argument. The nearest equivalent would be something like Ben Jonson lifting whole passages of Tacitus verbatim for dialogue in Sejanus. But Jonson had a definite purpose for this near-plagiarism, whereas Dylan has no apparent reason or need to lift from Ovid.)<br /></blockquote><br />After the Franklyn's Tale I read the Nun's Priest's Tale, and while I didn't find any Dylan link (maybe there will be one on the new album), I have to say that this is one of the most delightful of all the tales, and if Dylan read it in his <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199535620?ie=UTF8&tag=ramofaragclo-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0199535620">modernized version</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=ramofaragclo-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0199535620" alt="" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! important;" border="0" height="1" width="1" /> (link to David Wright's translation for Oxford World Classics, which appears to be the edition Bob is using), he would no doubt have appreciated this "animal song"! Perhaps his attitude to his sources can be summed up in a line from this tale: "Taketh the fruyt, and lat the chaf be stille."raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-54765180103103020352009-03-24T15:52:00.000-07:002009-03-24T19:38:50.929-07:00Dylan Wakes Up and Smells the Coffee in Stockholm<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4GEiZzcLgiHrPxiByP6DrUPJzjNIEUVuNfkGIsrXfdvgVHb-iPkxG0gg0MjDnvmAexHRAllG682yp-8yZ5USxbm-4lD4jWdmldaeNIq4Of6kAF-ZUbot_7FLv3FgezmmYJUKTqSpV280/s1600-h/sara2web.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4GEiZzcLgiHrPxiByP6DrUPJzjNIEUVuNfkGIsrXfdvgVHb-iPkxG0gg0MjDnvmAexHRAllG682yp-8yZ5USxbm-4lD4jWdmldaeNIq4Of6kAF-ZUbot_7FLv3FgezmmYJUKTqSpV280/s400/sara2web.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316944238751610994" border="0" /></a><br />Another night, <a href="http://www.boblinks.com/032309s.html">another NET show</a>, again in Sweden, but a different (larger) venue than Monday's show. As I anticipated, there was no second night for Billy, but Bob whipped out another forgotten song from his mid-seventies back pages, a period that has rarely been revisited during the NET years. This was <span style="font-weight: bold;">One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)</span>, which according to the <a href="http://hisbobness.info/">His Bobness database</a> had till then been played only nine times since 1978, mostly in 1990 -- and the most recent performance (Nashville 2007) only counts as half a time really, as Jack White was squawking away on it (it's a difficult song to sing without sounding strained, and Jack sounds...well, strained). Apart from that, until last night, the only coffee Bob has treated us to was the excellent fifth show of his Theme Time Radio Hour.<br /><br />According to reviews, Bob played this with acoustic guitar, standing centre stage. That must have been a sight for sore eyes indeed, but you can't really hear any acoustic on the recording below. I must say, though, the band is quite tight on this one: as with <span style="font-weight: bold;">Billy</span>, this is no half-hearted stab. Unfortunately there are a few lyrical flubs. Still, after the stagnant setlists of recent years, these surprises are very welcome, and let's hope they continue.<br /><br />While on the subject of <span style="font-style: italic;">Desire </span>songs, I would like to say something about Bob's claim in the second part of his <a href="http://www.bobdylan.com/#/conversation?page=1">interview with Bill Flanagan on bobdylan.com</a> (see page 9) that Jacques Levy wrote all the words to <span style="font-weight: bold;">Joey</span>. In short, "I don't believe you, Bob, you're a liar!"<br /><br />I'm going to hold over my thoughts on this subject until the next blog entry, because I ended up writing much more than I'd intended. For now, here is an mp3 of last night's performance of One More Cup of Coffee, from the taper romeo's excellent recording of the show.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.sendspace.com/file/nn5c5w">One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below) - Stockholm, Sweden 23-03-09</a><br /><br />Once again, if you download, I'd appreciate it if you clicked on one of the Google ads, if you have time.<br /><br />P.S. Oh the image above? It's the patron saint of the Camargue gypsies in the South of France, whose annual festival is celebrated on May 24th, which happens to also be Bob Dylan's birthday. According to legend, she was the (black) maidservant of one of the three Marys (Lazarus's sister Mary Magdalene; Mary Salome, mother of James; and Mary Jacobe, sister of St. Joseph) who fled Christian persecution in the Holy Land and landed on the South of France near the place now known as Saintes-Maries de la Mer. Dylan claims to have written this song after visiting the King of the Carmargue gypsies during the festival in the saint's honour. Her name? St. <span style="font-style: italic;">Sara</span>.raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-19359748384041142002009-03-23T09:37:00.001-07:002009-03-23T10:56:47.386-07:00Bob opens European tour with live debut!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMz-NaiSoYy2PaLYm6DPd5jDzfQt8nz3FMB4jbDyyHQ5hoQX2BW91LH9YEY7l5pGaUf1J3ADH8mA-lxHKdAw19Qr7FZQq8Hspru42-g43LNsFr5uLudTEorlldpCKv3o7vySrb5d408XY/s1600-h/alias.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 322px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMz-NaiSoYy2PaLYm6DPd5jDzfQt8nz3FMB4jbDyyHQ5hoQX2BW91LH9YEY7l5pGaUf1J3ADH8mA-lxHKdAw19Qr7FZQq8Hspru42-g43LNsFr5uLudTEorlldpCKv3o7vySrb5d408XY/s400/alias.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316437822903593970" border="0" /></a><br />I apologise for the lack of new posts lately; I fell seriously ill in January and have only recently left hospital.<br /><br />It's nice to see that in my absence there has been quite a lot of activity on the His-Bobness front. Not content with preparing to release a new album, Bob has kicked off a new tour by including that rarity nowadays, <span style="font-weight: bold;">a live debut of an old song...</span> And what a left-field choice it is too -- <span style="font-weight: bold;">Billy</span>, from the 1973 soundtrack to Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (to be precise, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Billy 4</span>).<br /><br />Unlike a lot of Bob's one-off (and who's to say this is a one-off?) choices, which often amount to no more than gestures, Bob really puts some effort into this. When I heard that he'd performed the song, I thought we'd just get a couple of desultory verses with a few half-remembered lines, but no! We get the whole damn song, every single verse, quite engagingly performed, and with a bit of harp too!<br /><br />Typical of the old man with a new album in the can -- to treat us instead to a blast from the past! If past form is anything to go by, we will have to wait until the next tour to here live performances from the new album.<br /><br />Here's the mp3, kindly uploaded to The Watchtower by the user named appleberry. I've taken the liberty of re-uploading it to sendspace, which I think is easily the best of these public upload sites.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.sendspace.com/file/01t9jy">Billy 4 -- Stockholm, Sweden 22nd March, 2009</a><br /><br /><br />If you download, I would appreciate it if you would take a second or two to click on one of the Google ads -- thanks.raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-57199827831179494302008-12-17T08:19:00.000-08:002008-12-17T08:20:38.321-08:00Davey Graham, Folk Pioneer, R.I.P.<i class="bbcode">Folk, Blues, and Beyond</i> is one of those albums that changed the musical direction of a generation and is still cited today by anyone who really aspires to play the acoustic guitar. Most people find him, as I did, as a result of familiarity with the great Bert Jansch. Now I suppose the connection is at one more remove, but Bernard Butler, who worships Jansch, certainly knows him. And I suppose the proto-emo pissings of Neil Drake are where most younger people would have heard the influence of Davey Graham, even if they were unaware of it.<br /><br />But everyone knows at least one tune of Graham's, <i class="bbcode">Angi</i>, as a result of its being covered by Paul Simon (who changed the spelling to <i class="bbcode">Anji)</i> and many others.<br /><br />After the 60s Graham basically lost the next 30 years or more of his life to drugs, but he had returned to playing in recent years. A good job was done of issuing some of his old albums at the beginning of this century. They also issued "After Hours", recorded in a student's room at Hull University in 1967 after Graham's performance there the same evening. This is one of my favourite recordings by Graham. That's the sort of setting where you hear real music that no producer has sprinkled with so-called magic dust. Its release was a shot in the arm for anyone who's ever played a "concert" in someone's bedsit or student digs (I've spent some of the most enjoyable musical hours of my life in those settings).<br /><br /><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v36/bunlover/rccd_3021.jpg" class="bbcode" alt="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v36/bunlover/rccd_3021.jpg" /><br /><br />Nowadays aspiring musicians make digital recordings on computers and upload them to MySpace. Graham belonged to that generation of musicians who paid their dues by busking their way around Europe (Ralph McTell is another guy who learned his trade this way, busking in subways or near cinema queues. McTell learned ragtime from a young American who'd studied with the legendary Gary Davies whom McTell met while busking on a freezing cold day on the Left Bank in Paris; you just don't get that sort of experience from the internet).<br /><br />Graham's travels also took him to India, where he became one of the first British musicians to come under the spell of Ravi Shankar and Indian music generally (see under Harrison, George). Graham was one of the founders of British "folk baroque", which mixed American blues and English folk, renaissance and early classical music, plus what was not then, but is now called "world music." Thus we have lost not merely a fine musician, but a true pioneer.<br /><br />At least we still have Bert Jansch, who now can quite properly be said to be the finest living British acoustic guitar player, a controversial claim while Graham was alive.raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-19133189219319926952008-12-09T08:34:00.000-08:002008-12-09T14:20:31.370-08:00On Milton's 400th Birtthday<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzJWP6C9ydJZwaJJPKxy3okvS39ArVSTQ-YM9Oovina2rUSLaq9_xt5s69CEKuIvm8CQk1KAxhJlegaVjhUCrAnkQyZz00vgs71pLvXdnP3acHp9QvSGRo9bh91lxGj_ogItxOdylmQuo/s1600-h/miltonportrait.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 298px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzJWP6C9ydJZwaJJPKxy3okvS39ArVSTQ-YM9Oovina2rUSLaq9_xt5s69CEKuIvm8CQk1KAxhJlegaVjhUCrAnkQyZz00vgs71pLvXdnP3acHp9QvSGRo9bh91lxGj_ogItxOdylmQuo/s400/miltonportrait.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5277835327094972850" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Milton and the Sonnet</span></span><br /><br />The following piece is heavily indebted to the Introduction to <span style="font-style: italic;">A Century of Sonnets: The Romantic Era Revival</span> by <span class="addmd">Paula R. Feldman and Daniel Robinson</span>, available in the UK from Amazon.co.uk (<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0195115619/ref=dp_proddesc_1?ie=UTF8&n=266239">hardback</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Century-Sonnets-Romantic-Era-Revival-1750-1850/dp/0195115627/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228840785&sr=1-1">softback</a>) and highly recommended.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">On His Blindness</span></span><br /><br /> When I consider how my light is spent<br /> Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,<br /> And that one talent which is death to hide<br /> Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent<br /><br /> To serve therewith my Maker, and present<br /> My true account, lest he returning chide,-<br /> Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?<br /> I fondly ask:-But Patience, to prevent<br /><br /> That murmer, soon replies; God doth not need<br /> Either man's work, or his own gifts: who best<br /> Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best: His state<br /><br /> Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed<br /> And post o'er land and ocean without rest:-<br /> They also serve who only stand and wait.<br /><br /><span class="postbody">Milton wrote </span><span class="postbody">only </span><span class="postbody">24 sonnets, but they were the last great contribution to the form before it fell into disrepute and neglect until the second half of the 18th century. Johnson dismissed the sonnet form altogether as being unsuited to the English language, and excepted not even Milton's contributions to the genre. Boswell records "a lively saying of Dr Johnson to Miss Hannah More, who had expressed a wonder that the poet who had written Paradise Lost, should write such poor sonnets: ' Milton, madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock, but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones'."<br /><br />To the 18th century, eager for satire, intellect and clarity, the eroticism of the Petrarchan sonnet as adapted to the English language by Surrey, Wyatt, Spenser, Sidney and Shakespeare (who developed a new form not until much later known as the Shakespearean sonnet) seemed morbid, its courtly tradition seemed quaint and obscure, its habitual tone of resignation unmanly and unsuited to an age of reason and confidence, its "conceited" imagery wilfully obscure and much too clever by half. Johnson's <span style="font-style: italic;">Dictionary </span>defines "sonneteer" as a contemptuous word for a "small poet" and in his <span style="font-style: italic;">Essay on Criticism</span> Pope writes,<br /><br />What woeful stuff this madrigal would be<br />In some starv'd hackney sonneteer, or me<br /><br />And George Steevens was praised by critics for omitting Shakespeare's sonnets from his 1793 edition of the collected works!<br /><br />And yet Milton had already modernized the sonnet for the new age. He had moved it away from erotic themes, and beyond the purely devotional (such as Donne's immortal <span style="font-style: italic;">Holy Sonnets</span>). His sonnets are either personal (but nonerotic) such as <span style="font-style: italic;">On His Blindness</span> (see above) or <span style="font-style: italic;">Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint</span>) or political such as <span style="font-style: italic;">On the Late Massacre in Piedmont</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">To the Lord General Cromwell</span>. He created a model for a sonnet free of the burden of the Italian erotic tradition, suitable for public themes and for private themes other than love. While restoring the Petrarchan rhyme scheme in place of the Shakespearean form (indeed, five of his sonnets are in Italian), he abandoned its rhetorical division and made extensive use of <span style="font-style: italic;">enjambement</span>. This can be seen very well in <span style="font-style: italic;">On His Blindness</span> -- Milton uses enjambement not only between individual lines but between quatrains and between the octet and the sestet. The <span style="font-style: italic;">volta </span>or "turn" begins after the second foot of line 8, rather than the beginning of line 9. These metrical innovations gave the sonnet the same taut, stately feel as his blank verse.<br /><br />Nevertheless, an "18th century sonnet" failed to develop from Milton's innovations. When the sonnet returned to favour in the second half of the 18th century, it did so not as a vehicle for public or personal themes, but as part of the "Cult of Sensibility" and largely in the hands of female poets.<br /><br />Ironically, it was Wordsworth, the romantic who broke with most of the traditions of post-Restoration poetry, who proclaimed himself the heir of the Miltonian sonnet. He praised Milton for his reforms, noting that they gave the sonnet "the intense unity...of an orbicular body, a sphere, or a dew drop." That master epigrammist Walter Savage Landor summed up Milton's contribution to the sonnet best in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Last Fruit Off An Old Tree</span> (the first lines refer, of course, to Milton's sonnet to Cromwell):<br /><br />'TWAS not unseemly in the bravest bard Milton<br />From Paradise and angels to descend,<br />And crown his country's saviour with a wreath<br />Above the regal : few his words, but strong,<br />And sounding through all ages and all climes.<br />He caught the sonnet from the dainty hand<br />Of Love, who cried to lose it ; and he gave<br />The notes to Glory.</span>raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-78939760544140299772008-12-07T11:32:00.000-08:002008-12-09T09:20:23.852-08:00English Sportsmen in "Taking Moral Stand" Shock<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBL8ZQJgxTGZj7teOEczi3TxXWsFOaIadzjFcdD0S9HYqKMuk2bRpp4-L14n4tvBSKYl1ntz74USbczTCwK9us4T7NzLbzC72g5zkvDnNnQcIdQtSVPxrrbyzWXPYFFfxY6ukFdCTZZxw/s1600-h/Kevin-Pietersen-001.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBL8ZQJgxTGZj7teOEczi3TxXWsFOaIadzjFcdD0S9HYqKMuk2bRpp4-L14n4tvBSKYl1ntz74USbczTCwK9us4T7NzLbzC72g5zkvDnNnQcIdQtSVPxrrbyzWXPYFFfxY6ukFdCTZZxw/s400/Kevin-Pietersen-001.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5277840613985914434" border="0" /></a><br /><br />In my last blog entry, I hesitated before congratulating the England cricket team for showing solidarity with their Indian counterparts at this terrible moment in India's history. At that stage, as Andrew Miller put it in on cricinfo, the Englishmen (and their admirable South African-born leader) were still <a href="http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/380869.html">one step short of a hero's welcome</a>, having arrived at their training camp in Abu Dhabi, but not having fully committed to taking the plane from Dubai Airport to India for the resumption of their interrupted tour. But <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/england/7769823.stm">now that it has been formally announced that England will tour with their full squad</a>, I can offer my warmest congratulations to every member of the team for standing up to terrorism and with their Indian fellow professionals, the Indian nation, and their touring supporters.<br /><br />Press reports suggested that chief doubts surrounded two crucial members of the England squad, fast bowler Steve Harmison (who has in the past not required much incentive to quit tours and scurry back to his family in the northeast) and talisman Andrew Flintoff. Surely "Freddie" wouldn't jump ship? Not our Fred, who nobly stepped in on the last tour to India, when Vaughan was injured and stand-in captain Marcus Trescothick suffered the first onset of the stress-related injury that eventually ended his international career. Flintoff had been due to fly back for the birth of his child, but put the needs of the team above his personal concerns, an all too rare gesture in modern sport.<br /><br />I don't imagine it took too many appeals from Kevin Pietersen to get Flintoff to do the right thing. Steve Harmison may have needed a little more persuasion, and I can imagine both KP and Freddie doing sterling work behind the scenes to get our sometimes reluctant fast bowler, but potential match winner, on board.<br /><br />To announce that they will be arriving in India with their full squad (apart from the injured Sidebottom and Swann, who may arrive later) clearly raises the prestige of their decision to continue the tour. This makes the first time that a first-choice England team has toured India for many years -- there were players who dropped out in 2002 for "security reasons", when the world was just getting used to the idea that terrorism was no longer something that happened "over there", but a permanent feature of our lives that we must resist, or surrender everything that makes our civilization superior to the Islamo-nihilists bent on destroying it.<br /><br />I have to say that the BCCI (Board for Control of Cricket in India) doesn't deserve this gesture; its shameless protection of Zimbabwe within the ICC, ignoring the fact that the Zimbabwean Cricket Board is merely an extention of Rubert Mugabe's Zanu-PF, is rife with finanical corruption and political interference, and chooses its team on blatantly racist lines, is a permanent and uneradicable stain on the reputation of cricket; the BCCI has sold its soul in return for Zimbabwe's vote within the ICC that allows India to run that organization as its own private fiefdom. For its role in propping up Mugabe's bloody dictatorship, everlasting shame should descend on the Indian board. Please spare me allegations of hypocrisy: there is no comparison between the MCC's embarrassing procrastination before doing the right thing over the Basil D'Oliveira affair and the BCCI's chronic and ongoing (and very possibly corrupt) opposition to the lancing of the Zimbabwean boil. The British were shamed into taking a stand against apartheid in South African sport; the BCCI have shown themselves to be quite beyond the reach of shame, and to have no interest in anything apart from maximizing their revenue from TV coverage.<br /><br />But screw the BCCI and its narrow-minded, venal politicos; damn the bastards to hell; this is a gesture of solidarity with the Indian people, made for the good of cricket, the first time in a long time that anyone in the sport has taken a long-term, broad view for the good of the game.<br /><br />Let's make no mistake too: it's a brave decision, even more than <a href="http://content-www.cricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/380051.html">Da</a><a href="http://content-www.cricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/380051.html">vid Gower's decision to continue England's tour of India after Indira Gandhi's assissination in 1984. </a>Then the act of terror and the ensuing unrest were confined to Indian nationals, or at least to non-cricketers: no one believed then that terrorists would lift a hand against the game of cricket, a second religion for Hindus and Muslims alike throughout the subcontinent. The main problem for Gower's team was going into a test match having been unable to practise for nearly two weeks because of a national period of mourning. The major danger to the players then, as Matthew Engel wrote in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Guardian</span>, was incurring sunstroke beside their hotel swimming pool. (Admittedly, the crisis hit nearer home when, on the day before the Test match, Percy Norris, who had recently been appointed British Deputy High Commissioner to India, was murdered half a mile from the team's hotel, days after meeting the team.)<br /><br />Even then, it took some aggressive persuasian to get some members of the squad to stay. According to Derek Pringle in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Daily Telegraph</span>, team manager Tony Brown threw all their passports on a table and told those who wanted out to take theirs and 'piss off'.<br /><br />One hopes that, even though there is a much clearer danger to Westernisers after the Bombay attacks, and even cricket may not be immune from the Islamo-nihililsts, such moral blackmail was not required this time. Kevin Pietersen had already shown that he has more subtle powers of persuasion in the summer, when he talked Harmison out of retirement from the one day game and Flintoff into batting at five in that format and six in the test match: excellent decisions that brought England victory in all the remaining fixtures of the summer bar the two that were rained off. It is to be hoped that reluctant members of the squad were persuaded by the force of the arguments rather than implied threats to their careers.<br /><br />However this was achieved, Pietersen and no doubt others such as the England and Wales Cricket Board's managing director Hugh Morris, deserve enormous credit; and so do the rest of the squad, even those who initially dragged their feet. Because, make no mistake about it, it takes some courage to continue with a mere game after the atrocity that was inflicted on Bombay, where one target was the Taj Mahal hotel, where the team had been staying only days earlier, and where their kit was still awaiting their return, even as gunmen rounded up all the British, American, and Israeli nationals they could find and held them hostage.<br /><br />However, it is not as though terrorism is something that happens far away to other people any more. In July 2005, terrorists struck in the heart of London right near the beginning of the Ashes tour. If the Australians had gone home then, we would not only have been deprived of one of the great sporting contests of recent history, but the terrorists would also have been emboldened to new atrocities by the success in disrupting the British way of life. What happened instead was a show of defiance by Londoners from all walks of life: on the Sunday after the atrocity, the nation commemorated jointly the anniversaries of VE and VJ day in the capital. As England and Australia began their one-day international at Lord's, the famous ground was buzzed by RAF jets. A million poppies were dropped from the London skies over Buckingham Palace to commemorate those who died in an earlier struggle with a different group of fascists. An anti-monarchist, I was nevertheless proud of our Queen for defying the terrorists and riding through the capital as scheduled in an open coach. As the Daily Record wrote,<br /><br /><blockquote>Grief for those killed last week merged with painful memories of a city devastated by the blitz 60 years ago. It brought generations together. And the quiet dignity of the day sent a silent - but crystal clear - message to the world. Londoners said: our city will never be beaten.</blockquote><br /><br />It is clear that we have a duty to India as a fellow member of the cricketing commonwealth, to stand by it in its hour of need, just as Australia did with us.<br /><br />In case anyone asks of me: What about you? Why aren't you in India right now? Isn't it easy to demand that other people make these sorts of decisions, which might potentially have tragic consequences for them and their families?<br /><br />Well, I would be in India right now if I had the money and leisure to follow the England cricket team. ButI do have a little experience in being in a foreign country in the midst of an international crisis: On 30th April, 1986 I was studying in the city of Minsk in what is now the Republic of Belarus, when word got to us via some of the Russian students that there had been some kind of nuclear accident near Kiev.<br /><br />The following day, we were evacuated from Minsk by order of the British Foreign Office; but none of us wanted to go. We wanted to stay as a gesture of solidarity to our roommates and fellow students. After all, they had nowhere to go. But we were bundled on an overnight train to Moscow, while our Russian friends waved us goodbye from the platform, tears in their eyes. My roommate Sergey was still on board the train, giving me last minute advice about eating more cake (I was terribly thin in those days), and had to jump off the moving train in the nick of time.<br /><br />I should say that the British Embassy was absolutely useless in this whole affair: they had been unable to find us tickets to Moscow (the following day was May Day and thousands of people were travelling to the capital to take part in<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeZDiQmaN7MATRHuOLjmtJrxfVGAhJW8PIzTK4H7vn8mXj_S3WDPkLQUkQjau8yP_vCUB3rjpnXoLhaM-J6gthO50WvUj1HIJARkxWBxxRPfSNQa5P8f-atoq3T2HF6Xbm1NPPadqVykM/s1600-h/cjw1986-05-01.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 399px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeZDiQmaN7MATRHuOLjmtJrxfVGAhJW8PIzTK4H7vn8mXj_S3WDPkLQUkQjau8yP_vCUB3rjpnXoLhaM-J6gthO50WvUj1HIJARkxWBxxRPfSNQa5P8f-atoq3T2HF6Xbm1NPPadqVykM/s400/cjw1986-05-01.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5277203313182244354" border="0" /></a> the biggest holiday in the Soviet calendar), but eventually our tutor Viktor Viktorovich, who had always managed to get us scarce opera and theatre tickets, came up with the goods. The Embassy got its collective finger out and got us a plane out of Moscow only when it became apparent that otherwise they'd have to allow a bunch of student oinks to stay overnight at the palatial British Embassy itself.<br /><br />I can still recall our horror and disgust at the sensational headlines that awaited us when we boarded the plane, after hours of delay while we underwent compulsory medical checks by the Soviet authorities on the outskirts of Moscow. "Millions of Red Babies at Risk", "Students Escape Nuclear Hell-Hole..." The Soviet authorities in this pre-glasnost era were secretive, but the British press made up for lack of information with ghoulish and sensational speculation.<br /><br />I read in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Times</span> the next day that the Soviets had refused to allow our plane to leave Moscow Airport until Soviet sympathizers among the students (our group and another from Kiev) had been able to make propaganda statements. I can safely say that there were no Communist sympathizers in our group. We made a joint statement via the oldest member of our party (a retired subeditor in his sixties) that we didn't want to leave but were being forced to do so, and that we thanked our Russian friends for their hospitality and friendship, and hoped that they were in no present danger. The other group stated something similar. Nor had we been prevented from leaving until such statements were made; a Russian official merely boarded the plane and invited us to do so. A far longer delay was caused by British Airways's requirement that we doff all our clothes and put them into the hold, and wear BA tracksuits to board the train.<br /><br />There were reporters on the plane from the Daily Mail who had boarded British Airways airbus in Gatwick without a visa in their bid for a scoop. But to our party's credit, we refused to talk to them or feed their desire for sensational headlines.<br /><br />On arrival in Gatwick, after a rowdy flight in which the British Airways pilot had made the bold decision, which he later regretted, of making all drinks on board, including alcohol, free by way of apology to the passengers who had been waiting for hours on the runway while we underwent our checks and the rest (students + free alchohol + four hour flight is not a pretty mixture), we were met by a scum of journalists (my preferred collective noun for that profession). I pushed angrily past a <span style="font-style: italic;">Daily Express</span> man who wanted me to tell my story.<br /><br />When I got home, I started smashing up my room in a fit of rage. My parents couldn't understand why I was so angry: why wasn't I happy to have escaped from the potential danger?<br /><br />Because for more than 48 hours, we had been helpless pawns in an international game, unable to do anything but obey orders. Because we had exposed to the sheer mindlessness of the British tabloid and broadsheet press. But most of all because we had been denied the opportunity to make a moral decision to stay with our friends and continue our studies in the face of unknown peril. At least England's cricketers have been given the opportunity to make this brave decision, and I salute them for it.<br /><br />Now then. What about announcing a date for the postponed ICC Trophy tournament in Pakistan?raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-4615791459283863042008-12-05T12:34:00.000-08:002008-12-05T13:36:24.434-08:00Bombay Burns and We Are All Indians NowA few days ago an unspeakable attack was carried out on one of the world's most heavily populated, culturally and racially diverse, and cosmopolitan cites -- a city that I shall call Bombay rather than "Mumbai", the name it was given in 1996, for aesthetic reasons, though according to Christopher Hitchens, there are excellent political and anti-theist reasons for continuing to call it by its former name as well (I'm not entirely convinced he's right on this subject, but anyway).<br /><br />The target was the city's most famous cultural landmarks in the first place, and anyone of American, British, or Jewish nationality in the second.<br /><br />No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but it bears all the hallmarks of Al Qaida's filthy handiwork, and, according to the Indian authorities, there are unmistakable links too to Pakistan's ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence).<br /><br />Those who doubt that Al Qaida are waging a nihilistic, cultural, religiously-motivated war against the whole world have to answer why their targets are always symbolic buildings, multi-cultural communities, and cosmopolitan cities. These Islamic nihilists loathe such culturally diverse centres with every evil fibre of their rotten beings. They advocate not only religious exclusivity, but racial and cultural exclusivity also. As <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2205710/">Hitchens wrote in <span style="font-style: italic;">Slate </span>magazine</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>...what's at stake is the whole concept of a cosmopolitan city open to its own citizens and to the world—a city on the model of Sarajevo or London or Beirut or Manhattan. There is, of course, a reason they attract the ire and loathing of the religious fanatics. To the pure and godly, the very existence of such places is a profanity. In a smaller way, the same is true of the Islamabad Marriott hotel, where I also used to stay. It was a meeting point and crossroads for foreigners. It had a bar where the Pakistani prohibition rules did not apply. Its dining rooms and public spaces featured stylish Asian women who showed their faces. And so it had to be immolated, like any other Sodom or Gomorrah [the Marriott Hotel was bombed in September this year].</blockquote><br /><br />That of course was also why the World Trade Center had to be destroyed -- those who point out, correctly, that many of those killed in the WTC on 9/11 were Muslims, as well as Christian and people of other religions and none at all don't always make the connection that this is the very reason why the WTC was so offensive to the Islamic nihilists: it's not that they didn't realize that Muslims were also present in the building: they did not class those persons as true Muslims because they were working alongside the Infidel.<br /><br />And that's why one of the world's most admired buildings, the Taj Mahal also had to burn:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.alarabiya.net/files/image/large_58971_61023.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 327px; height: 218px;" src="http://www.alarabiya.net/files/image/large_58971_61023.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />Just because America has elected a liberal president, and <span style="font-style: italic;">mirabile dictu</span>, one with a brain to boot, does not mean that he won't have to deal with the same problems as Bush contended with so ineptly. Moreover, in the light of some of Obama's campaign trail comments about Pakistan, the involvement of the ISI, if proven, could have serious implications for future U.S. foreign and military policy. In what many portrayed as a major blunder and sign of his lack of experience in foreign affairs, Obama implied that he would be willing to extend the hunt for Al Qaida within Pakistan's borders if that country did not fully cooperate with the war on terror.<br /><br />He also indicated a willingness to contemplate a surge inside Afghanistan -- quite a volte face for someone who staked so much political capital on his <span style="font-style: italic;">ab initio </span>opposition to the Iraq war. And yet, if his strategy is to withdraw from Iraq while shoring up the allied effort in Afghanistan, he cannot ignore Pakistan, which is effectively the Taleban's hinterland. But such a policy is fraught with danger, in that Pakistan is already notoriously volatile and possesses (like India) nuclear weapons.<br /><br />One of the earliest indications of Obama's politicals skills will be his handling of the Pakistani issue. Can he bring the Indian and Pakistani presidents together? Can he organize a collective miltiary responce with broad international backing if necessary? It's a real tester for the new President's early days.<br /><br /> In the meantime, all the rest of us can do is offer India our solidarity. In this respect, I am delighted by the news that England are to return to India to play their rescheduled test matches against India, though I won't say too much at this point in case they back down. If it goes ahead, as it should, it would be a clear sign that we stand shoulder to shoulder with the Indian people in their hour of need.raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-68871677402953124192008-12-02T15:39:00.000-08:002008-12-02T16:15:35.657-08:00Always look on the bright side of lifeEver since I quoted that Edwin Muir poem the other day, the Google ads on this blog have been about nothing else but grief counselling and will making.<br /><br />So in a bid to dispel the gloom, I hereby offer, courtesy of youtube, Eric Idle's classic song about looking up even when things are looking down. I dedicate it to all those facing hard times due to the world economic downturn. Indeed, our governments have decreed that pessimism is unpatriotic, and we must all feast in the time of plague and above all, spend, spend, spend our way out of recession! So let the Clown spread a little optimism.<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/jHPOzQzk9Qo&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/jHPOzQzk9Qo&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br />In case that doesn't work, here's a version of the song that Idle may have been parodying. Irving Berlin's <span style="font-weight: bold;">Let's Face the Music and Dance</span> was written for the film <span style="font-style: italic;">Follow the Fleet</span> in the middle of growing economic depression and the looming spectre of war in Europe. In place of Fred and Ging, here are <span style="font-style: italic;">Strictly Come Dancing</span>'s own Anton du Beke and Flavia Caccace, and for double the fun, Vincent Simone and Erin Boag. This was a gloriously cheeky routine, one of my favourite dances by the professionals on my favourite show.<br /><br />Did you know Anton du Beke's real name is Tony Beak? That certainly brought a smile to my face!<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/A4rExL8KpPY&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/A4rExL8KpPY&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object>raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-66085987431094653732008-11-28T04:17:00.000-08:002008-11-28T09:28:42.477-08:00Bob's Big Freeze Left Me Lukewarm at Best<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.punkhart.com/dylan/images/madhouse.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 287px; height: 347px;" src="http://www.punkhart.com/dylan/images/madhouse.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">BOB DYLAN'S BIG FREEZE - BBC Radio 2, November 25th 2008</span> <span style="font-family:times new roman;">Bob's Big Freeze</span> <span style="font-family:times new roman;">November 25th 2008</span> <span style="font-family:times new roman;">BBC Radio 2, 10.30-11.30pm</span><br /><br /> <span style="font-family:times new roman;">From </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >The Times</span> <span style="font-family:times new roman;">:<br /><br />Radio Choice</span> <span style="font-family:times new roman;">Bob's Big Freeze</span> <span style="font-family:times new roman;">Chris Campling</span> <span style="font-family:times new roman;">Bob Harris tells the fascinating story of a significant but largely unknown chapter in the life of that living god, Bob Dylan. In 1962 the newly famous Bobster came to Britain to appear in a BBC TV play called Madhouse On Castle Street. While he was here he stayed with that eminent British folkie, Martin Carthy, who opened Dylan's ears to a whole new way of making music (Don't Think Twice It's Alright, and Bob Dylan's Dream were heavily influenced by his exposure to traditional English folk music). He also had the unequalled joy of living through the famously bitter winter of 1962-63, when Carthy was reduced to chopping up a piano for firewood.</span><br /><br />This BBC radio documentary about Bob Dylan's first visit to the United Kingdom in the freezing winter of 1962/3 was OK, but could have been better, especially as this ground has been trod before and fairly recently, also by the BBC (<span style="font-style: italic;">Dylan in the Madhou</span>se, 2005). It was interesting to hear a few different voices from the early 60s British folk scene, although of course Carthy and Davenport were trotted out again (not that I'm complaining, I love Martin in particular).<br /><br />I also think it could have been a little less sloppy. For instance, when Bob Harris asks "Who knows what a big influence the U.K. folk scene had on Dylan at this time?" (or words to that effect), the song playing behind him is <span style="font-weight: bold;">A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fal</span>l, which was written a couple of months <span style="font-style: italic;">before </span>Bob set foot in England. It was left to Carthy to make the point that Dylan was already familiar with English, Scottish, and Irish folk music before he arrived in England. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Hard Rain</span>, for instance, is based partly on the Child Ballad, "Lord Randall." However, it was fascinating to hear in this programme that Bob may have also been influenced by another source (I shall elaborate later in an edit to this post). This was one of the few genuinely new (to me, at any rate) pieces of information in <span style="font-style: italic;">Dylan's Big Freeze</span>.<br /><br />It was also implied that the protest element in Bob's music came from the UK folk scene (especially Scottish folk song, which Davenport told him was all political). Carthy also claims that the anthemic quality of some of the songs Dylan wrote in the next couple of years came from his exposure to the UK scene.<br /><br />But Bob was already writing political songs -- <span style="font-weight: bold;">Death of Emmett Till, Let Me Die in My Footsteps, </span>and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Talking John Birch Society Paranoid Blues</span>, for example. The important person here, apart from Bob himself, was his girlfriend at the time, Suze Rotolo, who inspired his interest in politics. Plus there is a protest element in some blues (Big Bill Broonzy, for instance, whose "When Will I Get To Be Called A Man?" may have given Bob the idea for one verse of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Blowin'</span>). And for anthemic material, Bob could turn to negro spirituals (as he did for <span style="font-weight: bold;">Blowin' in the Wind</span>, which was inspired by <span style="font-weight: bold;">No More Auction Block</span>, which he probably learned from Odetta). Plus, of course, Bob couldn't help being influenced by the Civil Rights movement in America itself at the time. All of this was surely more influential on Bob's political material than Carthy or Davenport. And that's without even mentioning Woody Guthrie!<br /><br />It is true, though, that on his return to the States he withdrew the first version of <span style="font-style: italic;">Freewheelin' </span>and replaced four of the songs with what he called "fingerpointing songs", which was probably the result of his British visit. Otherwise the record would probably have been more blues- oriented (its original title was <span style="font-style: italic;">Bob Dylan's Blues</span>). But it already contained <span style="font-weight: bold;">Blowin' in the Wind</span> (recorded in July, written months earlier) and <span style="font-weight: bold;">A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall</span> (recorded in December at what was supposed at the time to have been the final session for the album).<br /><br />There is so much that Bob was absorbing at this time (including Brecht, which is a major influence on <span style="font-style: italic;">The Times, They Are A-Changin'</span>). That's why he's so fascinating, and why programmes like this one, which only focus on one element, miss the point. The first part of Martin Scorsese's brilliant <span style="font-style: italic;">No Direction Home</span> is the best documentary of Bob's early period precisely because it shows what a sponge he was, soaking up a wide range of influences incredibly quickly and using them to produce something new.<br /><br />Incidentally, it is ironic that Bob left Minnesota because (as he tells us in his interview in <span style="font-style: italic;">No Direction Home</span>) it was "too cold to be different", only to arrive in New York in the middle of "the coldest winter in 17 years." Then when he went to England for the first time, it was our coldest winter since the 18th century!<br /><br />For those who missed the transmission, I have provided an mp3 below. If you download it, by way of thanks you might like to click on some of the Google Ads, which will help me stay on line.<br /><a href="http://www.sendspace.com/file/nryo79"><br />Bob Dylan's Big Freeze</a><br /><br />(Big download, 78MB).raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-16176609372794378802008-11-25T10:16:00.000-08:002008-11-25T10:18:56.437-08:00Snatched from deceiving death/By the articulate breath<span class="postbody">I've had this volume of the collected poems of Edwin Muir (1887-1959) for several years now, but for some reason, I have hardly ever dipped into it. Which made it a pleasant surprise to discover the following superb poem today (from a series of meditations on time and eternity in his 1956 collection <span style="font-style: italic;">One Foot in Eden</span>):<br /><br />THE ANIMALS<br /><br />They do not live in the world,<br />Are not in time and space.<br />From birth to death hurled<br />No word do they have, not one<br />To plant a foot upon,<br />Were never in any place.<br /><br />For with names the world was called<br />Out of the empty air,<br />With names was built and walled,<br />Line and circle and square,<br />Dust and emerald;<br />Snatched from deceiving death<br />By the articulate breath.<br /><br />But these have never trod<br />Twice the familiar track<br />Never never turned back<br />Into the memoried day.<br />All is new and near<br />In the unchanging Here<br />Of the fifth great day of God,<br />That shall remain the same<br />Never shall pass away.<br /><br />On the sixth day we came. </span>raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-47186013749844430832008-11-18T22:30:00.000-08:002008-11-18T22:56:50.412-08:00Bullingdon Conservatives Trash Talk the UK Economy<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/186/456281554_3f493b2fa3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 500px; height: 321px;" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/186/456281554_3f493b2fa3.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2008/11/18/gordon-brown-slashes-conservative-lead-in-polls-115875-20905402/">An Ipsos Mori opinion poll</a> puts Labour just three points behind the New Tories, which of course makes it a statistical dead heat.<br /><br />While Gordon Brown, the victim of so much yah-boo derision over the past 12 months, has emerged as virtually the savour of the European economy, the Tories' collection of ex-Etonian hooray-henries has been exposed as weak, opportunistic, and out of their depth. In particular, the reputation of 'Boy' George Osborne will possibly never recover. His attempt to discredit Peter Mandelson over the <a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1853565,00.html">"Deripaska yacht" affair</a> backfired spectacularly (how silly to try to out-Mandy Mandy in the black arts!), and his latest irresponsible talk about the economy is likely to provoke a run on the pound and will be viewed very dimly in the City (he and his other fellow graduates from Eton's notorious Bullingdon Club have been trash-talking the UK economy in the way they allegedly used to trash restaurants, totally without regard for the consequences for other people, secure in their own unearned wealth).<br /><br />In short, the dangers of Britain sleepwalking into Bullingdon Conservatism* have somewhat receded. We just need Boris to make a complete chump of himself now; so give it a couple of months tops, then.<br /><br />*Please feel free to chuck this phrase around liberally. I don't know if it's my own coinage, but I'm trying to give it currency as a counterpart to the long-standing "Bolinger socialist".raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-91277465459449198342008-11-13T23:05:00.000-08:002008-11-18T23:28:29.629-08:0010 Reasons Why Rolf Harris Is Better Than Bob Dylan<span style="font-weight: bold;">1. Two Little Boys</span>. The children's classic that has a strange effect on grown men (and on a certain <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7725624.stm">evil ex-prime minister</a>). The real greatest single ever made!<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Uw26DHIs4o4&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Uw26DHIs4o4&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2. Didgeridoo vs. harmonica</span> -- I mean, which is cooler?<br /><div style="text-align: right;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.gabriellereillyweekly.com/gabrielle_reilly/life/life_jpgs_gabrielle_reilly/outback_aboriginal_didgeridoo_gabrielle_reilly.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: left; cursor: pointer; width: 83px; height: 104px;" src="http://www.gabriellereillyweekly.com/gabrielle_reilly/life/life_jpgs_gabrielle_reilly/outback_aboriginal_didgeridoo_gabrielle_reilly.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a></div> Well, ok, but which is more phallic?<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3. Bob can't play the wobble board</span> either.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">4. His Rolfness has been backed by all four Beatles</span> on a remake of 'Tie Me Kangaroo Down' sport -- Bob has only ever sung with George and Ringo, separately, and has never sung about kangaroos.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Z7zhB1Wyqns&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Z7zhB1Wyqns&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">5. The Rolfster has sung on a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dreaming_%28album%29">Kate Bush album</a>.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">6. Make that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_%28album%29"><span style="font-style: italic;">two </span>Kate Bush albums</a>!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">7. Rolf can draw</span>. Sorry, Bob, but just because you have <a href="http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article4074327.ece">an exhibition of your pisspoor paintings</a> nowadays, it doesn't mean they're any good.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">8. Jake the Peg</span> -- a more poignant story of an outcast than Hollis Brown?<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/KJleJbn9G6Y&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/KJleJbn9G6Y&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9. Has Bob Dylan ever performed a cover of the Divynyls 'I Touch Myself' accompanied only by a wobble board?</span> I think not.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_AY5K2qIdwU&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_AY5K2qIdwU&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10. Bob was the voice of his generation, but Rolf is the voice of <span style="font-style: italic;">every </span>generation.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What's more, that "vocal percussion" thing that Tom Waits does -- Rolf invented that, he did.</span><br /></span>raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-83703690256409427992008-11-13T00:01:00.000-08:002008-11-19T00:18:22.159-08:00The Pet Goat -- the Reviews Deleted by Amazon<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh85-Lt3fTpt9XKmo63PwwSmBo_b72EszURtV1Sxyw-69473O8io3XwH5RhOok3fTsg982FprUh3iHYdcy7nUCnkX3CIe5KP_VKwdwYycGm01oEs2d1rU9sNhHVWOdmaQQCwSu6cCYWUFw/s1600-h/obama_poetry_1110005a.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh85-Lt3fTpt9XKmo63PwwSmBo_b72EszURtV1Sxyw-69473O8io3XwH5RhOok3fTsg982FprUh3iHYdcy7nUCnkX3CIe5KP_VKwdwYycGm01oEs2d1rU9sNhHVWOdmaQQCwSu6cCYWUFw/s320/obama_poetry_1110005a.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5270278061766600370" border="0" /></a><br />News that President-elect Barack Obama has been reading Derek Walcott's <span style="font-style: italic;">Collected Poems 1948-1984</span> (it's apparently the book he's holding in the picture) reminds me that outgoing President George W. Bush will soon finally have an opportunity to finish reading <span style="font-style: italic;">The Pet Goat</span>, the story (often erroneously referred to as <span style="font-style: italic;">My Pet Goat</span>) in a children's book he spent so much time immersed in on September 11, 2001.<br /><br /><span class="postbody">The book prominently sold out, and inspired lots of satirical reviews on Amazon.com, which has since deleted them.<br /><br />But of course, on the Internet, nothing really disappears</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheoeKb6Cru_ugl3zD0PMdb6diQ74ovQfXU6ZRXFjKeYGDwFsDFR-U4pUjplLgzdMy2uXjbChYRlwqz_V1Wt53Dq9yZeyT2c_uH4U4sBlsbo681s6wCKnesnMBy17UTwDi4MZkv1hkbOa4/s1600-h/mypetgoat.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 176px; height: 144px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheoeKb6Cru_ugl3zD0PMdb6diQ74ovQfXU6ZRXFjKeYGDwFsDFR-U4pUjplLgzdMy2uXjbChYRlwqz_V1Wt53Dq9yZeyT2c_uH4U4sBlsbo681s6wCKnesnMBy17UTwDi4MZkv1hkbOa4/s320/mypetgoat.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5270278209181269138" border="0" /></a><span class="postbody">, so here are some of those reviews: <a href="http://www.sadlyno.com/uploads/sadlynogoats.htm" target="_blank">http://www.sadlyno.com/uploads/sadlynogoats.htm</a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span><span class="postbody">It's out of work and back to school for Dumbfuck!</span>raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-22487741274601530972008-11-11T12:46:00.000-08:002008-11-18T23:57:46.091-08:00I Finally Remembered Who McCain's Attack Bimbo Reminds Me Of....<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">I've been trying to work out who Sarah Palin reminds me of, and now I've got it!<br /><br />Anyone remember the Gus Van Sant movie from the mid-nineties, <span style="font-weight: bold;">To Die For</span>, about a dim but ruthless weather girl (Nicole Kidman) who has her husband bumped off to further her career?<br /><br />Its tagline was, as I recall: "All she wanted was a little <i>attention</i>"...!</div>raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-72032714270674593722008-11-07T22:10:00.000-08:002008-11-18T22:27:58.636-08:00Return of the Brown Bounce?Compared to the U.S. presidential election, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/7710999.stm">Labour holding onto a once safe seat in Scotland</a> with a reduced majority is not even on the scale. And yet it may just be the turning point in Gordon Brown's premiership. His stewardship of the economy at this momentous time has won golden praise globally from political leaders across the spectrum. If Labour had lost, as the polls had predicted that they would throughout the campaign and even on polling day, it would have been the end for Brown, and probably Labour too. At last there is the hope of stopping the election of a Tory government that would take us right back to the discredited Thatcherite economics of the 1980s.<br /><br />Not to mention that Alex Salmond and the SNP are starting to look like a busted flush. Salmond's ridiculous claim that Scotland would have been able to weather the current economic storm alone, comparing it to Norway, is laughable. Norway is one the richest countries in Europe with considerable greater oil reserves than Scotland, and due to sensible economic management it has been largely untouched by the present economic crisis. In fact, Scotland (pop. 5 million, among whom pensioners greatly outnumber schoolchildren) would probably have been more like Iceland. The SNP's claims are pure demagoguery.<br /><br />Perhaps the election of the most liberal U.S. President since JFK will encourage more progressive policies from Labour, the sort of policies it is rumoured that Gordon Brown would in fact like to pursue.raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-42766746394926786632008-09-17T05:54:00.001-07:002008-09-17T10:28:23.636-07:00Tears and Laughter in Romeo and Juliet<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicmqFCFa6cSs4PiYZagaIlbYlc5wkj22BDUUk_h56z4EpF_4IefLqXfxny5FBGlWmVTE1U_iNf0fOQDDckh3X0l7_fmMnFChSdvVSBJR9l3raNSyqFe1jsWxWx93Kteu5cxxLlfEHbAPk/s1600-h/32.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicmqFCFa6cSs4PiYZagaIlbYlc5wkj22BDUUk_h56z4EpF_4IefLqXfxny5FBGlWmVTE1U_iNf0fOQDDckh3X0l7_fmMnFChSdvVSBJR9l3raNSyqFe1jsWxWx93Kteu5cxxLlfEHbAPk/s400/32.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5247016807112409778" border="0" /></a><br /><div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><a href="http://www.rutopia.info/forum/viewtopic.php?p=430546#430546"></a>I have been re-reading, with much pleasure, Shakespeare's earliest plays. <span style="font-style: italic;">Two Gentlemen of Verona</span> might not be a play-goer's or a reader's favourite, but its themes and even plot elements run through all the later comedies up to <span style="font-style: italic;">Twelfth Night</span>, and the early play can in fact be seen as a comic version of "The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet", Arthur Brooke's narrative poem based on the Italian legend (Brooke's poem is used as a source in both <span style="font-style: italic;">Two Gentlemen</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Romeo and Juliet</span>).<br /><br />At the same time, Shakespeare was probably writing his sonnets, with their rumination on Time and Love. <span style="font-style: italic;">Romeo and Juliet</span> makes use of the sonnet form, firstly in the famous prologue:<br /><blockquote><br />Two households, both alike in dignity,<br />In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,<br />From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,<br />Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.<br />From forth the fatal loins of these two foes<br />A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;<br />Whole misadventured piteous overthrows<br />Do with their death bury their parents' strife.<br />The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,<br />And the continuance of their parents' rage,<br />Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,<br />Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;<br />The which if you with patient ears attend,<br />What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.</blockquote><br /><br />but also -- and much more daringly -- within the action itself, in the most "public" part of the action: Capulet's feast, which Romeo (rather reluctantly) and his friends have gate-crashed in disguise (masquers were often welcomed as uninvited guests on such occasions). The headstrong Tybalt has recognized Romeo and is champing at the bit to challenge him to a duel there and then; he is restrained by his angry father, for whom even the presence of a hated Montague isn't worth spoiling his party for. Meanwhile, the guests and the disguised Montagues are enjoying a public dance, from which the love-lorn Romeo (still in love with Rosaline Capulet at this point; a character we never see in the play!) feels excluded by his melancholy ("I have a soul of lead/So stakes me to the ground I cannot move") and he takes little interest in proceedings until he catches sight of Juliet ( ("O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!"), and goes over at the change-over between dances to introduce himself, still in disguise, obviously. At this point, in this most public of scenes, the two lovers enter into their own private world; and Shakespeare uses a sonnet to symbolise this removal of the lovers to an internal sphere into which the world, even at its noisiest, may not intrude:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">ROMEO</span><br /><br /><blockquote>[To JULIET] If I profane with my unworthiest hand<br />This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:<br />My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand<br />To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.</blockquote><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">JULIET</span><br /><br /><blockquote>Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,<br />Which mannerly devotion shows in this;<br />For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,<br />And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.</blockquote><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">ROMEO</span><br /><br /><blockquote>Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?</blockquote><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">JULIET</span><br /><br /><blockquote>Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.</blockquote><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">ROMEO</span><br /><br /><blockquote>O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;<br />They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.</blockquote><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">JULIET</span><br /><br /><blockquote>Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.</blockquote><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">ROMEO</span><br /><br /><blockquote>Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.</blockquote><br /><br />They begin another sonnet at once, but this one is interrupted by the nurse; all too brief are the private moments allowed to the lovers in this play.<br /><br />At the same time, some parts of the play are not so successful. I find Juliet's sudden use of extended legal metaphor (a favourite trope with our poet) when she tells Friar Laurence of her woes in Act 4 scene 1 to be highly unsuitable both for the character and for the situation. Also, when the Capulets learn of Juliet's supposed death (she's taken the friar's potion which makes her appear lifeless for 42 hours, remember), their lamentation borders dangerously on the comic.<br /><br /><a name="speech2"><b>LADY CAPULET</b></a> <blockquote> <a name="17">What noise is here?</a><br /></blockquote> <a name="speech3"><b>Nurse</b></a> <blockquote> <a name="18">O lamentable day!</a><br /></blockquote> <a name="speech4"><b>LADY CAPULET</b></a> <blockquote> <a name="19">What is the matter?</a><br /></blockquote> <a name="speech5"><b>Nurse</b></a> <blockquote> <a name="20">Look, look! O heavy day!</a><br /></blockquote> <a name="speech6"><b>LADY CAPULET</b></a> <blockquote> <a name="21">O me, O me! My child, my only life,</a><br /><a name="22">Revive, look up, or I will die with thee!</a><br /><a name="23">Help, help! Call help.</a><br /><p><i>Enter CAPULET</i></p> </blockquote> <a name="speech7"><b>CAPULET</b></a> <blockquote> <a name="24">For shame, bring Juliet forth; her lord is come.</a><br /></blockquote> <a name="speech8"><b>Nurse</b></a> <blockquote> <a name="25">She's dead, deceased, she's dead; alack the day!</a><br /></blockquote> <a name="speech9"><b>LADY CAPULET</b></a> <blockquote> <a name="26">Alack the day, she's dead, she's dead, she's dead!</a><br /></blockquote> <a name="speech10"><b>CAPULET</b></a> <blockquote> <a name="27">Ha! let me see her: out, alas! she's cold:</a><br /><a name="28">Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff;</a><br /><a name="29">Life and these lips have long been separated:</a><br /><a name="30">Death lies on her like an untimely frost</a><br /><a name="31">Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.</a><br /></blockquote> <a name="speech11"><b>Nurse<br /><br /></b></a><blockquote> <a name="32">O lamentable day!</a><br /></blockquote> <a name="speech12"><b>LADY CAPULET</b></a> <blockquote> <a name="33"> O woful time!</a><br /></blockquote> <a name="speech13"><b>CAPULET</b></a> <blockquote> <a name="34">Death, that hath ta'en her hence to make me wail,</a><br /><a name="35">Ties up my tongue, and will not let me speak.</a><br /><p><i>Enter FRIAR LAURENCE and PARIS, with Musicians</i></p> </blockquote> <a name="speech14"><b>FRIAR LAURENCE</b></a> <blockquote> <a name="36">Come, is the bride ready to go to church?</a><br /></blockquote> <a name="speech15"><b>CAPULET</b></a> <blockquote> <a name="37">Ready to go, but never to return.</a><br /><a name="38">O son! the night before thy wedding-day</a><br /><a name="39">Hath Death lain with thy wife. There she lies,</a><br /><a name="40">Flower as she was, deflowered by him.</a><br /><a name="41">Death is my son-in-law, Death is my heir;</a><br /><a name="42">My daughter he hath wedded: I will die,</a><br /><a name="43">And leave him all; life, living, all is Death's.</a><br /></blockquote> <a name="speech16"><b>PARIS</b></a> <a name="44">Have I thought long to see this morning's face,</a><br /><a name="45">And doth it give me such a sight as this?</a><a name="speech11"><br /></a><br /><a name="speech17"><b>LADY CAPULET</b></a> <blockquote> <a name="46">Accursed, unhappy, wretched, hateful day!</a><br /><a name="47">Most miserable hour that e'er time saw</a><br /><a name="48">In lasting labour of his pilgrimage!</a><br /><a name="49">But one, poor one, one poor and loving child,</a><br /><a name="50">But one thing to rejoice and solace in,</a><br /><a name="51">And cruel death hath catch'd it from my sight!</a><br /></blockquote> <a name="speech18"><b>Nurse</b></a> <blockquote> <a name="52">O woe! O woful, woful, woful day!</a><br /><a name="53">Most lamentable day, most woful day,</a><br /><a name="54">That ever, ever, I did yet behold!</a><br /><a name="55">O day! O day! O day! O hateful day!</a><br /><a name="56">Never was seen so black a day as this:</a><br /><a name="57">O woful day, O woful day!</a><br /></blockquote> <a name="speech19"><b>PARIS</b></a> <blockquote> <a name="58">Beguiled, divorced, wronged, spited, slain!</a><br /><a name="59">Most detestable death, by thee beguil'd,</a><br /><a name="60">By cruel cruel thee quite overthrown!</a><br /><a name="61">O love! O life! not life, but love in death!</a><br /></blockquote> <a name="speech20"><b>CAPULET</b></a><br /><br /><a name="62"></a><blockquote><a name="62">Despised, distressed, hated, martyr'd, kill'd!</a><br /><a name="63">Uncomfortable time, why camest thou now</a><br /><a name="64">To murder, murder our solemnity?</a><br /><a name="65">O child! O child! my soul, and not my child!</a><br /><a name="66">Dead art thou! Alack! my child is dead;</a><br /><a name="67">And with my child my joys are buried.<br /><br /></a></blockquote>How did Shakespeare expect his audience to take this highly artificial scene of extravagant lamenting? First, the audience remembers that the Capulet family has repeatedly rebuked Juliet for (as they supposed) over-doing her mourning of her kinsman Tybalt (slain by Romeo in revenge for the death of Mercutio). In Act 3, scene v, though Tybalt, by the play's chronology, cannot have been dead for more than a few hours, Lady Capulet, advancing the case for Juliet to marry Paris, rebukes her daughter thus:<br /><br /><a name="71"></a><blockquote><a name="71">Ever</a>more weeping for your cousin's death?<br />What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears?<br />An if thou couldst, thou couldst not make him live;<br />Therefore, have done: some grief shows much of love;<br />But much of grief shows still some want of wit.<a name="75"></a></blockquote>Not just "want of wit" (i.e. derangement); excessive grief was held to border on heresy, by seeming to impugn the justice of providence, as Claudius reminded Hamlet:<br /><br /><a name="89"></a><blockquote><a name="89">Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,</a><br /><a name="90">To give these mourning duties to your father:</a><br /><a name="91">But, you must know, your father lost a father;</a><br /><a name="92">That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound</a><br /><a name="93">In filial obligation for some term</a><br /><a name="94">To do obsequious sorrow: but to persever</a><br /><a name="95">In obstinate condolement is a course</a><br /><a name="96">Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief;</a><br /><a name="97">It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,</a><br /><a name="98">A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,</a><br /><a name="99">An understanding simple and unschool'd:</a><br /><a name="100">For what we know must be and is as common</a><br /><a name="101">As any the most vulgar thing to sense,</a><br /><a name="102">Why should we in our peevish opposition</a><br /><a name="103">Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to heaven,</a><br /><a name="104">A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,</a><br /><a name="105">To reason most absurd: whose common theme</a><br /><a name="106">Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,</a><br /><a name="107">From the first corse till he that died to-day,</a><br /><a name="108">'This must be so.' </a></blockquote>Although Claudius is of course disingenuous (since he is the undiscovered murderer of Hamlet's father), his advice is sound from the religious point of view; as is Lady Capulet's more curt advice, albeit showing a want of feeling for her daughter's grief (although she does not know that her grief is for Romeo, her cousin's murderer, rather than for Tybalt himself).<br /><br />The Capulets extravagant woe over their apparently lifeless daughter lends a retrospective irony to Lady Capulet's earlier advice. This has the effect of distancing the audience from the Capulets' grief; although, since we know that Juliet is not really dead, but only sleeping, we cannot enter into their feelings anyway. Furthermore, well-meant advice that is useless because the giver of it cannot truly enter into the feelings of the person for whom it is intended is a common Shakespearian theme found already in his earliest comedies, <span style="font-style: italic;">Two Gentlemen of Verona</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">The Comedy of Errors</span>. However, Shakespeare goes still further than this: the Capulets' over-use of rethorical tropes* (*for the record, as listed by the Oxford Shakespeare they are a) <span style="font-style: italic;">apostrophe</span>: "O lamentable day!"; b) <span style="font-style: italic;">exergasia</span>, repeating the same thought in many figures; c) <span style="font-style: italic;">repetition</span>; d) <span style="font-style: italic;">prosopopeia</span>, the personification of death; e) <span style="font-style: italic;">asyndeton</span>, the omission of conjuctions; f) recurring <span style="font-style: italic;">epizeuxis</span>, the repetition of the same word in close succession) makes one suspect that Shakespeare is sending up the whole tradition of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senecan_tragedy">Senecan Tragedy</a>. Indeed, a line of Paris's ("<a name="61">O love! O life! not life, but love in death!") </a>directly recalls a much parodied passage ofThomas Kyd's <span style="font-style: italic;">The Spanish Tragedy:<br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: left;"></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">O eyes, no eyes, but fountains fraught with tears;<br /> O life, no life, but lively form of death;<br /> O world, no world, but mass of public wrongs...<br /></div></blockquote><br />Evidently, a parody of the older play's bombast could be counted on for a laugh even at the end of the century; Kyd's flowery rhetoric is memorably sent up in the Pyrrhus speech in <span style="font-style: italic;">Hamlet</span>. At this point in <span style="font-style: italic;">Romeo and Juliet, </span>however, with the action moving swiftly towards its tragic denouement, this highly stylized scene of artificial lament has struck many directors, audiences, and readers as inappropriate. For once Friar Laurence's sententious rhetoric, reminding Lady Capulet of her own earlier sentiments, in putting an end to this scene of extravagant lamenting is entirely welcome:<br /><br /><a name="68"></a><blockquote><a name="68">Peace, ho, for shame! confusion's cure lives not</a><br /><a name="69">In these confusions. Heaven and yourself</a><br /><a name="70">Had part in this fair maid; now heaven hath all,</a><br /><a name="71">And all the better is it for the maid:</a><br /><a name="72">Your part in her you could not keep from death,</a><br /><a name="73">But heaven keeps his part in eternal life.</a><br /><a name="74">The most you sought was her promotion;</a><br /><a name="75">For 'twas your heaven she should be advanced:</a><br /><a name="76">And weep ye now, seeing she is advanced</a><br /><a name="77">Above the clouds, as high as heaven itself?</a><br /><a name="78">O, in this love, you love your child so ill,</a><br /><a name="79">That you run mad, seeing that she is well:</a><br /><a name="80">She's not well married that lives married long;</a><br /><a name="81">But she's best married that dies married young.</a><br /><a name="82">Dry up your tears, and stick your rosemary</a><br /><a name="83">On this fair corse; and, as the custom is,</a><br /><a name="84">In all her best array bear her to church:</a><br /><a name="85">For though fond nature bids us an lament,</a><br /><a name="86">Yet nature's tears are reason's merriment.</a></blockquote><a name="86">There is a strong suggestion that Shakespeare may have been trying to add "local colour" by sending up the extravagance of Italian lamentation. Under this interpretation, Friar Laurence becomes an honorary Englishman, reasserting the importance of restraining one's emotions and maintaining a "stiff upper-lip"! After this rebuke, Capulet's sad and dignified speech is more genuinely moving than his family's previous weeping and wailing:<br /><br /></a><a name="87"></a><blockquote><a name="87">All things that we ordained festival,</a><br /><a name="88">Turn from their office to black funeral;</a><br /><a name="89">Our instruments to melancholy bells,</a><br /><a name="90">Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast,</a><br /><a name="91">Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change,</a><br /><a name="92">Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse,</a><br /><a name="93">And all things change them to the contrary.</a></blockquote><a name="93"><br /><br />This almost rescues the scene from parody. Directors have frequently gone further by cutting the preceding lamentations; indeed the "bad" quarto of <span style="font-style: italic;">Romeo and Juliet </span>omits several lines, suggesting that even in Shakespeare's day the scene may have been cut. One wonders whether the play's earliest directors, or Shakespeare himself, realized that a scene that was written with the intention of provoking some mirth was destabilizing the tragic resonance of the play as a whole by provoking out-right hilarity among the "groundlings", and consequently reduced the scene significantly in later performances (the "bad" quarto also cuts many of Juliet's legal tropes in the scene discussed earlier). The audience's reception of the scene as originally written may have inspired Shakespeare to write a parody of his entire tragedy and play it purely for laughs as the play acted by the "mechanicals" in <span style="font-style: italic;">A Midsummer Night's Dream</span> (which most scholars believe was written shortly after <span style="font-style: italic;">Romeo and Juliet</span>). Theseus and Philostrate may give us an indication, allowing for exaggeration, as to how the lamentation scene in <span style="font-style: italic;">Romeo and Juliet</span> was received by its first audiences:<br /></a><a name="93"><br /></a><a name="speech10"><b>THESEUS</b></a><blockquote><i>Reads</i> <a name="59">'A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus</a><br /><a name="60">And his love Thisbe; very tragical mirth.'</a><br /><a name="61">Merry and tragical! tedious and brief!</a><br /><a name="62">That is, hot ice and wondrous strange snow.</a><br /><a name="63">How shall we find the concord of this discord?</a><br /></blockquote> <a name="speech11"><b>PHILOSTRATE</b></a> <a name="64"><br /><br /></a><blockquote><a name="64">A play there is, my lord, some ten words long,</a><br /><a name="65">Which is as brief as I have known a play;</a><br /><a name="66">But by ten words, my lord, it is too long,</a><br /><a name="67">Which makes it tedious; for in all the play</a><br /><a name="68">There is not one word apt, one player fitted:</a><br /><a name="69">And tragical, my noble lord, it is;</a><br /><a name="70">For Pyramus therein doth kill himself.</a><br /><a name="71">Which, when I saw rehearsed, I must confess,</a><br /><a name="72">Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears</a><br /><a name="73">The passion of loud laughter never she</a><a name="93">d.<br /></a></blockquote><a name="93"><br />Not that laughter and death need be kept wholly separate. Earlier in <span style="font-style: italic;">Romeo and Juliet</span>, Mercutio (one of Shakespeare's superly drawn minor characters) dies as he has lived: with a merry quip and a pun.<br /><br /></a><a name="speech35"><b>ROMEO</b></a> <blockquote> <a name="95">Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.</a><br /></blockquote> <a name="speech36"><b>MERCUTIO</b></a><br /><br /><a name="96"></a><blockquote><a name="96">No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a</a><br /><a name="97">church-door; but 'tis enough,'twill serve: ask for</a><br /><a name="98">me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man.<br /></a></blockquote><a name="98"><br />Some find the pun as excruciating as Tybalt's mortal thrust itself; but it is entirely in character for the jesting Mercutio, who cannot even be "grave" about his own death. Death has the last laugh, however; only he can make Mercutio "grave", by providing him <span style="font-style: italic;">with </span>one. Symbolically, Mercutio's death marks a change in the mood of the play, which up till then had been mostly a comedy; thereafter the tone of the play becomes, on the whole, more grave.<br /><br />But not entirely, for Shakespeare was aware of how laughter and tears, life and death, are closer to each other in the real world than in the discreet genres insisted on by the neo-classical playwrights, for whom comedy and tragedy must be rigorously separated. Auden captured something of Shakespeare's understanding of life when he wrote, in <span style="font-style: italic;">Museé des Beaux Art</span>s:<br /><br /></a><blockquote><a name="98">A</a>bout suffering they were never wrong,<br /> The Old Masters; how well, they understood<br /> Its human position; how it takes place<br /> While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;<br /> How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting<br /> For the miraculous birth, there always must be<br /> Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating<br /> On a pond at the edge of the wood...</blockquote><br /><br /><br />Shakespeare shares the Old Masters' sense of live as a tragicomedy: while Hamlet is immersed in his melancholy, the grave-diggers pun and quip amidst the remains of human existence; while the Capulets are preparing for a feast upstairs, the servants are noisily moving joint-stools and clattering pots and pans below.<br /><br />The Shakespearean pun has often come in for criticism; but the pun shows in verbal form how easily tragedy and comedy may slide into one another, how closely allied are laughter and tears; as such it is eminently suited to convey Shakespeare's concept of life as tragicomedy. However, this balance between tears and laughter must be handled very acutely by the playwright, and there are signs that Shakespare temporarily lost control of this balance in Act 4, scene iv of<span style="font-style: italic;"> Romeo and Juliet</span>.<br /><br /><br /><a name="93"><br /></a></div>raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-55551370971620402692008-08-31T12:54:00.000-07:002008-09-01T09:05:09.718-07:00The wind began to howl... Good luck this time, NOLA<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi80eg8Uyd5172cqzfcc20cTnRIhrKn54xaJcK3k9p4112PqdG-OsLS7InxT4w6Hb7yWaPQXZClJZodnVlfCJ8SUsS8FX0OTBoHcJi0NkJPn68Nd1yM7Mga6BdQeeaU1Qi322wkBrvfbzA/s1600-h/hum.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi80eg8Uyd5172cqzfcc20cTnRIhrKn54xaJcK3k9p4112PqdG-OsLS7InxT4w6Hb7yWaPQXZClJZodnVlfCJ8SUsS8FX0OTBoHcJi0NkJPn68Nd1yM7Mga6BdQeeaU1Qi322wkBrvfbzA/s400/hum.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5241084596334677010" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjua8kPFieqZ5gVdXuq-ZeIE251kTrzZ5l-bXINUwUItdyebP1lniuzL7yu1EsGMVspgEqO_MhSjOpHxWJLtY91MzyohCl85b2QFGnsBBvzHb2klH9PgVT3Q7x8lB68Jer_bR2_sNNvYMc/s1600-h/hum.jpg"></a><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Crash on the levee, water's gonna overflow</span><br /><br />One thing I neglected to mention in my previous blog entry about <span style="font-style: italic;">Modern Times</span> is that its worldwide official release day was also the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina making landfall in Lousiana. Meanwhile, President Bush strummed a guitar [right] in California while New Orleans drowned, a lasting symbol of his presidency.<br /><br />Perhaps the release date of <span style="font-style: italic;">Modern Times</span> was a coincidence; but on the other hand, it does feature a song entitled <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Levee's Gonna Break</span>. This is the album's most transparent "borrowing", the song clearly deriving from <span style="font-weight: bold;">When the Levee Breaks</span> by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie, which was about the Mississippi Flood of 1927, a calamity that inspired several blues songs. (Incidentally, Memphis Minnie's shout-out to Ma Rainey is the model for Dylan's name-dropping of Alicia Keys in <span style="font-weight: bold;">Thunder on the Mountain</span>; but Bob was sampling Memphis Minnie as far back as <span style="font-weight: bold;">Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again</span>, as the outtake of that song released on <span style="font-style: italic;">Bootleg Series 7: No Direction Home</span> shows.) A youtube user has made a very appropriate video to the Kansas Joe/Memphis Minnie version.<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/6SrNc7ueMDA&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/6SrNc7ueMDA&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br />The most famous version of the song is the one by Led Zeppelin on their 1971 album <span style="font-style: italic;">Led Zeppelin IV</span>. Dylan's new version is a curate's egg; it quotes some lines directly from the original, and adds some of his own that might refer to either the 1927 or the 2005 disaster:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> Everybody saying this is a day only the Lord could make</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Some people on the road carrying everything that they own</span><br /><br />But other lines are unrelated and could be sampled from a dozen blues songs or improvised randomly in a way reminiscent of <span style="font-weight: bold;">10,000 Men</span> on <span style="font-style: italic;">Under the Red Sky</span>. One line seems to allude sarcastically to the plight of the proletariat (in the manner of Joe Hill's "Pie in the Sky When You Die"), thus harking back to <span style="font-weight: bold;">Workingman's Blues #2</span>:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> Few more years of hard work, then there'll be a 1,000 years of happiness</span><br /><br />But the previous lines incongruously refer to Carl Perkin's rockabilly classic "Put Your Cat Clothes On", cat clothes of course being what hepcats (guys) and kittens (chicks) wear; the juxtaposition with the more formal-sounding "evening dress" is amusing.<br /><br />Here's <a href="http://www.sendspace.com/file/ygsy13">a fine live version</a> of Dylan's version of the song, from Chatillon, Italy 18th June this year:<br />It's noticeable how much stronger the song has become in live performance this year.<br /><br />(I found a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA3wGwkBBrc%29.">youtube clip of this performance</a>, but it's only one minute long.)<br /><br />How typical that Dylan's new title for the song should use his own favourite tense, the immediate future ("gonna"), which he uses so much (particularly in the Basement Tapes era) that it might well be called the Bob Dylan tense.<br /><br />An early song that uses this tense is <span style="font-weight: bold;">A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall</span>. On his visit to the city in 2003, Bob Dylan performed an inspired version of this anthemic song, almost as though he knew what was in store for the city (so it seems with hindsight, which can make a prophecy out of the slightest coincidence). <a href="http://www.sendspace.com/file/kmhola">Here </a>is that performance.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">They're trying to wash us away</span><br /><br />A more recent song about the 1927 flood became suddenly topical in 2005 because of the inevitable parallels between President Coolidge's racist indifference to the plight of Lousiana flood victims and the criminal negligence of the Bush administration. The original version of Randy Newman's <span style="font-weight: bold;">Louisiana 1927 </span>is on his 1974 album <span style="font-style: italic;">Good Old Boys</span>, perhaps Newman's masterpiece and an essential album in anybody's record collection. Here is Randy singing it at a benefit for the victims of Hurricane Katrina:<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/91Eb3FiebTs&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/91Eb3FiebTs&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br />Incidentally, I am relieved, if not surprised, that Randy sticks to his original lyrics and uses the phrase "this poor crackers land." The contemptuous term <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_%28pejorative%29">"crackers"</a> is similar to the more recent "poor white trash", and nails Coolidge's attitude to the flood victims exactly. Other versions of the song, such as Aaron Neville's, for reasons of misguided political correctness substitute a more neutral term ("farmers") that softens the original song's condemnation of Coolidge.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">They say prayer has the power to help</span> (</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">Ain't Talkin'</span><span style="font-style: italic;">)</span><br /><br />As I write, people are being evacuated from New Orleans in preparation for the landfall of Hurricane Gustav, expected in the early hours of Monday morning. It is sincerely to be hoped that the city rides out this new storm and the levees hold firm this time. Of all the cities in America, New Orleans is the one I'd most like to visit, because of the richness of its musical heritage, the fame of its cuisine, and the celebrated conviviality of its people. Alas, I do not share Dylan's belief in the power of prayer, but my thoughts are with NOLA right now. If I were to frame a prayer, it might be like Lear's in the storm:<br /><br /><a class="anchor" name="12">Poor</a> naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,<br /> That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,<br /> How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,<br /> Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you<br /> From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en<br /> Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;<br /> Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,<br /> That thou mayst shake the superflux to them<br /> And show the heavens more just.raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-613401639259628637.post-71882659337652473532008-08-29T07:24:00.000-07:002008-08-30T08:34:03.853-07:00'Modern Times' is two years old today<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v36/bunlover/dylan/album%20covers/ModernTimes-deluxeedition18.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 400px;" src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v36/bunlover/dylan/album%20covers/ModernTimes-deluxeedition18.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Bob Dylan's 32nd studio album was released 29th August, 2006. It was greeted with almost universal critical praise, but how does it hold up two years later? And how have the individual songs fared in live performance?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Modern Times</span> was released at the high point of a tide of critical praise that had been rising ever since Bob's brush with death in 1997 reminded critics, many of whom had been bashing Dylan's work since as far back as the release of Renaldo & Clara, that Dylan would not be always there for them to take for granted, and that we ought to celebrate his achievements while we still have him. With the subsequent release of the Grammy-winning <span style="font-style: italic;">Time Out of Mind </span>there began a period in which Dylan's critical stock rose so high that nowadays he is in receipt of praise that is almost as undiscriminating as the critical brickbats levelled at him in the eighties and early nineties. One of the few dissenting voices in the general chorus of praise for Modern Times, Alex Petridis in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Guardian</span>, wrote waspishly: "It's hard to hear the music of <i>Modern Times</i> over the inevitable standing ovation and the thuds of middle-aged critics swooning in awe."<br /><br />Two years later it is even more apparent that Petridis has a point. A solid achievement, <span style="font-style: italic;">Modern Times </span>must be counted a relative disappointment compared to its illustrious predecessor "<span style="font-style: italic;">Love and Theft</span>", Dylan's finest album since <span style="font-style: italic;">Blood on the Tracks</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Desire </span>in the mid-seventies. The quality that "<span style="font-style: italic;">Love and Theft"</span> had in abundance was Dionysian energy: so welcome after the ennui and existential angst that had marked all Dylan's work since <span style="font-style: italic;">Infidels</span>. Indeed, this ennervating ennui really begins with <span style="font-weight: bold;">Don't Fall Apart on Me Tonight</span> on the album just mentioned:<br /><br />I wish I'd been a doctor<br />Maybe I'd have save some lives that have been lost<br />Maybe I'd have done some good in the world<br />'Stead of burning every bridge I've crossed.<br /><br />Fine lines, undoubtedly, but a Dylan who looks back, and especially one who looks back with such despair and disappointment, is an unrecognizable shell of the energetic, questing, Dionysian figure of his best work. By contrast on <span style="font-style: italic;">Blood on the Tracks</span> the singer plumbs the depths of despair, but drags from it the Lear-like rage of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Idiot Wind</span> and with <span style="font-weight: bold;">Buckets of Rain</span>, learns Lear's lesson of Stoic patience also.<br /><br />This existential ennui came in Dylan's late middle age at the end of a period of great creative achievement from 1974 through 1983, and from there on becomes the dominant note of his work; think of songs like <span style="font-weight: bold;">When the Night Comes Falling From the Sky </span>and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Dark Eyes </span>on <span style="font-style: italic;">Empire Burlesque</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">What Good Am I?</span> , <span style="font-weight: bold;">What Is It You Wanted?</span>, and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Shooting Star</span> on <span style="font-style: italic;">Oh Mercy</span>, in which Bob basically repeats the same mantra over and over: he knows no answers, he has no hope, he lives companionless in a world apart where "life and death are memorized." All these negative feelings reach their peak of artistic expression on <span style="font-weight: bold;">Time Out of Mind</span>, which contains what may be the most negative, nihilist line in his entire output:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Well my sense of humanity has gone down the drain</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Behind every beautiful thing there's been some kind of pain</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">She wrote me a letter and she wrote it so kind</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">She put down in writing what was in her mind</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"> I just don't see why I should even care</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">It's not dark yet, but it's getting there</span><br /><br />When I first heard the line I've marked in bold, I found it so upsetting and depressing that it took me a long time to appreciate the real artistic achievement of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Time Out of Mind</span>, which is to state in the starkest form yet the existential ennui that had been overpowering Dylan's work since the mid-eighties. In that sense, it performs the same function as did <span style="font-weight: bold;">Watching the River Flow</span>, which faced up to the loss of his muse in the midst of his domestic content with its disarming opening line: "What's the matter with me? I don't have much to say." A Dylan who doesn't care, who is indifferent to love and desire, and who relies on negativity to pull him through is not the Dylan who once declared "this music that I’ve always played is a healing kind of music" and who wrote<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Desire... never fearful<br />Finally faithful<br />It will guide me well<br />across all bridges<br />inside all tunnels<br />never fallin’.</span><br /><br />A spiritual sickness hangs over <span style="font-weight: bold;">Time Out of Mind</span> from its opening lines, and it is only reinforced by the album's grim focus on physical decay: scars that won't heal, flesh falling off the singer's face, every nerve so vacant and numb. When he sings "But my heart just won't give in", you get the sense that he only wishes it would. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Highlands</span>, which does have its moments of humour and relief, nevertheless leaves us with a portrait of the singer as an old man shuffling along the street, talking to himself, and envying the younger people from whose unselfconscious joys and laughter he is forever banished:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I see people in the park forgetting their troubles and woes</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> They're drinking and dancing, wearing bright colored clothes</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> All the young men with their young women looking so good</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> Well, I'd trade places with any of them</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> In a minute, if I could</span><br /><br />So in the 14 years since <span style="font-weight: bold;">Don't Fall Apart on Me Tonight</span>, Dylan has gone precisely nowhere: still wishing he were living someone else's life, looking back with regret and despair.<br /><br />The achievement of <span style="font-style: italic;">Time Out of Mind</span>, as heretofore stated, is to state these negative feelings in unpredecentedly stark terms. But the album marks a dead end: he cannot go forward artistically by simply restating over and over these feelings of existential isolation, of negativity and regret.<br /><br />That is why "<span style="font-style: italic;">Love and Theft</span>" was such a spectacular achievement. It has an energy and vitality not heard in any Dylan song probably since <span style="font-weight: bold;">Jokerman </span>and the brilliant, underrated <span style="font-weight: bold;">Tell Me</span> in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Infidels </span>sessions. Gone is the companionless, misanthropic singer of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Dark Eyes, Not Dark Yet,</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Highlands</span>; the singer on this album shows himself still receptive to feelings of love, friendship, and gratitude:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Well my ship's been split to splinters and it's sinking fast</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I'm drownin' in the poison, got no future, got no past</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">But my heart is not weary, it's light and it's free</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I've got nothin' but affection for all those who've sailed with me</span><br /><br />(Of course, these lines are from <span style="font-weight: bold;">Mississippi</span>, which was written for the <span style="font-style: italic;">Time Out of Mind</span> album; and that album's atmosphere of bleak misanthropy and spiritual ennui would have been considerably relieved by that song's inclusion, as Dylan intended. Unfortunately, he and producer Daniel Lanois could not see eye to eye on the song's production, and so the song was dropped from the album. The original recording of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Mississippi </span>is to appear on the forthcoming Bootleg Series collection of outtakes, <span style="font-style: italic;">Tell Tale Signs</span>.)<br /><br />Best of all, perhaps, is the brilliant jump blues <span style="font-style: italic;">Summer Days</span>, a song that could not have appeared on <span style="font-style: italic;">Time Out of Mind</span>. In contrast to the despairing resignation of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Not Dark Yet</span>, which dolefully accepted that "it's not dark yet, but it's getting there", the singer of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Summer Days</span> reminds us of Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night":<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Do not go gentle into that good night,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Old age should burn and rave at close of day;</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Rage, rage against the dying of the light.</span><br /><br />But rather than raging against the dying of the light, the singer of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Summer Days</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">dances </span>against it, leaping on the table to propose a toast to the King, and declaring that though summer days and nights are gone, that doesn't mean that there is no more fun to be had. The Dionysian energy of this singer is more like the Dylan we know of old, one busy being born rather than busy dying.<br /><br />The energy, high spirits, and perhaps most welcome of all, the humour of <span style="font-style: italic;">"Love and Theft"</span> made it Dylan's finest album for over 20 years. It sparkles with wit, and contains more quotable lines than any album since <span style="font-style: italic;">Street-Legal</span>. It was perhaps too much to hope that <span style="font-style: italic;">Modern Times </span>could equal this standard. But refreshingly, there is no relapse into the doldrums of most of Dylan's post-<span style="font-style: italic;">Infidels</span> output. Most welcome is the extension of Dylan's musical palate beyond his usual reliance on blues and ballad forms, although there are some disappointingly generic blues shuffles on this album also (a couple of which border on musical plagiarism). Not since the underrated <span style="font-style: italic;">Shot of Love</span> has Dylan dipped so much into the rich waters of American popular music. A particular source is pre-rock pop of the twenties to the fifties. Bing Crosby is a particularly strong influence; "When the Deal Goes Down" is musically a chord-by-chord recreation of Bing's "Where the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day" and "Beyond the Horizon" lifts the tune of "Red Sails in the Sunset." Moreover, Bing's version of "Brother, Can you Spare A Dime?" (played by Bob on the Theme Time Radio Hour show "Rich Man, Poor Man") hangs over Workingman Blues #2. How much love and how much theft lies in all these borrowings has been furiously debated.<br /><br />One of the most pleasing aspects of <span style="font-style: italic;">"Love and Theft</span>" was its cheerful sexuality, as in the artful suggestion of waning potency in <span style="font-weight: bold;">Summer Days</span>:<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />My dogs are barking, there must be someone around<br />My dogs are barking, there must be someone around<br />I got my hammer ringin', pretty baby, but the nails ain't goin' down</span><br /><br /><p style="font-style: italic;">or this saucy invitation in <span style="font-weight: bold;">High Water (for Charley Patton)</span>:<br /></p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">Got a cravin' love for blazing speed<br />Got a hopped up Mustang Ford<br />Jump into the wagon, love, throw your panties overboard</span></p><p>And best of all, this allusive third-person reference:<br /></p><span style="font-style: italic;">Last night 'cross the alley there was a pounding on the walls<br />It must have been Don Pasquale makin' a two a.m. booty call</span><br /><br />Don Pasquale is the eponymous character in Donizetti's opera buffa, based on the <span style="font-style: italic;">commedia dell'arte</span> archetype of the vain and foolish old man who tries to thwart the young heroine's love for the hero by marrying her himself. With a touch of comic genius Dylan has this stock character paying a "2 a.m. booty call"; and the pounding on the walls suggests that <span style="font-style: italic;">this </span>Don Pasquale is no impotent figure of fun, but a virile figure capable of satisfying his younger lover.<br /><br />By contrast, the sexuality on <span style="font-style: italic;">Modern Times</span> comes over as idle boasting or even slightly creepy, as in the shout out to Alicia Keys in <span style="font-weight: bold;">Thunder on the Mountain</span> and in the unpleasantly sexist line "I want some real good woman to do just what I say" in the same song, in which the singer studies Ovid's <span style="font-style: italic;">Art of Love</span> and proclaims "here's hot stuff here and it's everywhere I go." Unlike Don Pasquale who is getting on with it, paying his booty call, the singer of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Thunder on the Mountain</span> is just beating on his trumpet, or rather blowing his trombone (a rather obvious sexual metaphor).<br /><br />Compare also the confident strut of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Cry A While</span> on <span style="font-weight: bold;">"Love and Theft":<br /><br /></span>Well, there's preachers in the pulpits and babies in the cribs<br />I'm longin' for that sweet fat that sticks to your ribs<br />I'm gonna buy me a barrel of whiskey - I'll die before I turn senile<br /><br />and the same song's earlier line about feeling like a fighting rooster with the much less convincing boast in Spirit on the Water:<br /><br />You think I'm over the hill<br />You think I'm past my prime<br />Let me see what you got<br />We can have a whoppin' good time<br /><br />That corny and dated phrase "whoppin' good time" is the antithesis of Don Pasquale's ultra-hip "booty call" and rather deflates the intended boast. Rather than as the still virile aging stud that the singer intends to present himself as, he comes over more like a paunchy dad trying to dance at his daughter's wedding reception.<br /><br />Dylan does improve this verse considerably in concert by singing the first two lines as questions, with an implied "Oh yeah?!", invariably getting a reaction from the audience. And this viagra-induced boasting is at least an improvement on the indifference to desire manifest on <span style="font-weight: bold;">Time Out of Mind</span>.<br /><br />Another weakness of Modern Times compared to its predecessor is its rather precious and somewhat stilted lyricism that at times borders on Victorian pastiche, especially in the parlour ballad<span style="font-weight: bold;"> When the Deal Goes Down</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Spirit on the Water. </span>This may be due to Dylan's falling under the spell of the Civil War poet Henry Timrod (reflected in several borrowings from the earlier poet's work). Compare the freshness of these lines from <span style="font-weight: bold;">Moonlight:<br /></span><p style="font-style: italic;">The clouds are turnin' crimson<br />The leaves fall from the limbs an'<br />The branches cast their shadows over stone<br />Won't you meet me out in the moonlight alone?</p> <p style="font-style: italic;">The boulevards of cypress trees<br />The masquerades of birds and bees<br />The petals, pink and white, the wind has blown<br />Won't you meet me out in the moonlight alone?</p> <p style="font-style: italic;">The trailing moss and mystic glow<br />Purple blossoms soft as snow<br />My tears keep flowing to the sea<br />Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief<br />It takes a thief to catch a thief<br />For whom does the bell toll for, love? It tolls for you and me</p>where the self-conscious poeticism is relieved by Dylan's familiar tricksy rhyming ("crimson", "limbs an'") and the admixture of nursery rhyme and familiar quotation; with<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I picked up a rose and it poked through my clothes</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> I followed the winding stream</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> I heard the deafening noise, I felt transient joys</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> I know they're not what they seem</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> In this earthly domain, full of disappointment and pain</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> You'll never see me frown</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> I owe my heart to you, and that's sayin' it true</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> And I'll be with you when the deal goes down<br /></span><br />which undoubtedly have a certain charm, but border on pastiche.<br /><br />Against this, <span style="font-style: italic;">Modern Times</span> has strengths of his own. It is much better sung than its predecessor (though the musicianship is not of a similarly high standard), and its three best songs are outstanding. The first, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Workingman Blues #2</span>, is the closest the album gets to evoking the spirit of Charlie Chaplin's <span style="font-weight: bold;">Modern Times. </span>The<br />song features some of the strongest, most evocative writing of the album, for instance, in this reminder that all of us, rich or poor, walk in the valley of the shadow of death:<br /><br /></span><br />The opening lines seem to have an extra topical relevance as the world's economy goes into recession:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">There's an evenin' haze settlin' over the town</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> Starlight by the edge of the creek</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> The buyin' power of the proletariat's gone down</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> Money's gettin' shallow and weak</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> The place I love best is a sweet memory</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> It's a new path that we trod</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> They say low wages are a reality</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> If we want to compete abroad</span><br /><br />However, this is no rewrite of <span style="font-weight: bold;">North Country Blues </span>or <span style="font-weight: bold;">Hollis Brown</span>. Its narrative element is non-linear and its protagonist's situation more complex; whoever the singer is supposed to be, he is hardly the typical working man. Dylan is unlikely to usurp Springsteen's status as the poet laureate of the blue collar worker. It's a complex song full of strong images, memorable lines, and with a rousing chorus.<br /><br />Even more impressive is <span style="font-weight: bold;">Nettie Moore</span>, one of Dylan's great ballads, and a song that he has invariably interprets powerfully in concert. A notable feature of the song, despite its folk ballad form, is its saturation in the language of the blues. The opening line quotes the old song "Lost John":<br /><br />Lost John standin' by the railroad track<br />Waitin' for the freight train to come back<br /><br />while later lines evoke the famous story of Frankie and Albert. The crossroads where Robert Johnson is said to have sold his soul to the devil is also evoked. As with many of Dylan's recent songs, it is difficult to say what this collage of recollected and original lines means, but the song is undoubtedly highly evocative.<br /><br />And finally, the album's closer <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ain't Talkin'</span>, a mysterious and somewhat sinister epic that returns us to some extent to the atmosphere of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Time Out of Mind</span>. The claim that Modern Times was the final album of a trilogy stemmed from his record label rather than the artist himself; in fact, Dylan has specifically denied it. Nevertheless, this dark tale of a man walking, walking, walking, until he reaches the edge of the world (which he appears to doubt is round as men say) brings us full circle to the earlier album, which opens with the words "I'm walking..." and thereafter uses the image of the singer walking "a thousand miles from home" (or rather a million miles) repeatedly as a symbol of his isolation from society. The song begins with a reminiscence of the story of Mary Magdalene mistaking the risen Christ for the gardener of the grounds; but this "mystic" garden is a place of violent menace where "wounded" flowers hang from the vine and the singer is struck from behind. The singer himself threatens to slaughter his enemies if he ever catches them sleeping. He is not alone (which separates him from the isolated figure of TOOM, who seems more of an autobiographical than the mysterious narrator of "Ain't Talkin'), but accompanied by a band of brothers who "share my code", a faith that's long been abandoned, as he walks through a world of hostile infidels and "cities of the plague". The song raises more questions than it answers, and when the narrator steps off the end of the world in the song's final lines, we still have no idea who he is supposed to represent. Several lines in the grim discursive narrative are borrowed from Ovid's self-pitying letters from his exile on the Black Sea, the <span style="font-style: italic;">Tristia</span>, but the story seems closer to Homeric epic than classical elegy. Although it raises more questions than it answers, as a performance it is gripping, full of menace, horror, and intensity.<br /><br />I leave you with videos of these three songs, each of them a classic of the modern Dylan.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Workingman Blues #2</span> was a song Bob found difficult to make effective in its first year of live performance. It wasn't until the Australian tour of 2007 that the song really came into its own. It is now a regular concert standout. The following video is identified only as "live 2008"; great sound, though poor video.<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/bJ3ae2MUTgk&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/bJ3ae2MUTgk&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br />Here's a fine <span style="font-weight: bold;">Nettie Moore</span> from 2006:<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/li0uTgWF0Is&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/li0uTgWF0Is&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br />And here's my favourite performance of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ain't Talkin' </span><span>(Melbourne, Australia 19th August, 2007):</span><br /><br /><object height="350" width="425"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7rCBvoab4xE"> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7rCBvoab4xE" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="350" width="425"></embed> </object><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /><p><br /></p><br /><p style="font-style: italic;"><br /></p><br /></span>raggedclownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11409198158282001526noreply@blogger.com2