Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
Bob Dylan: Spring 2003: The Atlanta Lightning Storm (from 2003)
Note: this is an excerpt from a very long Dylan piece I wrote from 2001-2004.
Based on the way the Spring 2003 tour was shaping up, I predicted well before the announcement that Bob would be playing at the Music Midtown fest in again. I almost groaned – trying to sit through another day of Music Midtown was a high price to pay for a Dylan show indeed. Worth it, of course, but still a high price.
Fortunately enough, the 2003 Music Midtown set was scheduled for Friday night, and the festival didn't open until evening on Friday, so I'd only have to hold my place for a few hours, sitting through two other bands, to see Bob.
I cut a class or two on the day of the show and drove to Atlanta that day, arriving about an hour before they opened the gates. When the gates opened, and I found my way to the right stage, I found my friend Sam, ever the overachiever, already staking out a spot along the rail.
"Heya, Sam," I shouted, walking up to spot next to him on the metal grate. He shook my hand and introduced me around to his friends, a couple of whom I'd met briefly at Newport.
There was some brief chatter about reminisces of Newport, largely for the benefit of the other fans who ha set up camp around the rail, whom we wanted to impress. "I think we were the only people from Georgia who made it to that show," said Sam, proudly. But most of the conversation revolved around what sort of show we were likely to see that night.
Based on the way the Spring 2003 tour was shaping up, I predicted well before the announcement that Bob would be playing at the Music Midtown fest in again. I almost groaned – trying to sit through another day of Music Midtown was a high price to pay for a Dylan show indeed. Worth it, of course, but still a high price.
Fortunately enough, the 2003 Music Midtown set was scheduled for Friday night, and the festival didn't open until evening on Friday, so I'd only have to hold my place for a few hours, sitting through two other bands, to see Bob.
I cut a class or two on the day of the show and drove to Atlanta that day, arriving about an hour before they opened the gates. When the gates opened, and I found my way to the right stage, I found my friend Sam, ever the overachiever, already staking out a spot along the rail.
"Heya, Sam," I shouted, walking up to spot next to him on the metal grate. He shook my hand and introduced me around to his friends, a couple of whom I'd met briefly at Newport.
There was some brief chatter about reminisces of Newport, largely for the benefit of the other fans who ha set up camp around the rail, whom we wanted to impress. "I think we were the only people from Georgia who made it to that show," said Sam, proudly. But most of the conversation revolved around what sort of show we were likely to see that night.
15 Songs I Can't Stop Playing (from 2009)
Limit one per artist!
1. "Town Without Pity" by Gene Vincent
Has everyone else made playlists out of their mix tapes? This song is mix tape gold. Why aren't there any bands that sound like this anymore?
2. "Backstreets" by Bruce Springsteen
I'm a bit unclear as to exactly what the plot is in this song, but I know it's about betrayal, at least. And it's full of terrific lines. "Slow dancing in the dark in the beach at Stockton's wing / where desperate lovers park we sat with the last of the Duke Street kings." Evocative of another era that has just recently died out. You just don't SEE greaser gangs anymore, do you? I don't like the sound of the "Born to Run" record nearly as much as the first two Bruce albums, but this one is in my head this week. "For You," off the first record, is ALWAYS in my head. I wish I'd written the line "your life was one long emergency."
1. "Town Without Pity" by Gene Vincent
Has everyone else made playlists out of their mix tapes? This song is mix tape gold. Why aren't there any bands that sound like this anymore?
2. "Backstreets" by Bruce Springsteen
I'm a bit unclear as to exactly what the plot is in this song, but I know it's about betrayal, at least. And it's full of terrific lines. "Slow dancing in the dark in the beach at Stockton's wing / where desperate lovers park we sat with the last of the Duke Street kings." Evocative of another era that has just recently died out. You just don't SEE greaser gangs anymore, do you? I don't like the sound of the "Born to Run" record nearly as much as the first two Bruce albums, but this one is in my head this week. "For You," off the first record, is ALWAYS in my head. I wish I'd written the line "your life was one long emergency."
On "Cowboys" by Counting Crows (from 2006)
When i have to pick a favorite Bob Dylan song, I tend to go with "Changing of the Guards." It's majestic, heroic, mysterious, and dashing - all things that I like. Other than that, though, the song really doesn't make even the foggiest bit of sense, and I don't expect that I'll ever really understand what Dylan is on about in that song. But I understand the sort of emotion and feeling he's trying to convey in the song - it makes sense on that level.
At first, I thought "Cowboys," the best song on the new Counting Crows album (or on any of their albums in ten years, for my money), worked in the same way. With the help of the handy track-by-track interview I've started to make more sense of it now. I still don't exactly know what the Circle K has to do with anything (or why having a gas station in the song makes it more effective, thought it does), but I have a pretty good line on what's going on in the song, overall, and I see why it ends the Saturday Nights half of the album, and why "1492" had to be in the beginning.
Bob Dylan's Modern Times: A Study Guide (from 2006)
MODERN TIMES: SEX AND VIOLENCE
One thing I do a lot of lately is talk about how Dylan's writing style
is like Shakespeare's - they both have this thing where the writing
goes beyond just the words and what they mean - there's this whole
other layer about the way the sounds of the words bounce off each
other, the way the rhymes relate to one another, the rhythm of the
words and the structures and so forth. Stuff that no one can do
consciously - if you tried, it'd come off as a mess. And when Dylan
sings his songs, he can bring that quality out in a way that no one
else can. We only have bits and pieces of info about what Shakespeare
was like as a performer, but I suspect he was like Dylan - erratic, not
to all tastes, but occasionally transcendent.
One thing I do a lot of lately is talk about how Dylan's writing style
is like Shakespeare's - they both have this thing where the writing
goes beyond just the words and what they mean - there's this whole
other layer about the way the sounds of the words bounce off each
other, the way the rhymes relate to one another, the rhythm of the
words and the structures and so forth. Stuff that no one can do
consciously - if you tried, it'd come off as a mess. And when Dylan
sings his songs, he can bring that quality out in a way that no one
else can. We only have bits and pieces of info about what Shakespeare
was like as a performer, but I suspect he was like Dylan - erratic, not
to all tastes, but occasionally transcendent.
Songs That Scared Me as a Kid (from 2006)
SONGS THAT SCARED ME AS A KID
-"The Ghost Of John" - you've probably heard this. "Have you seen the ghost of John / long white bones with the skin all gone." We sang it in first grade music class.
-"The Old Woman All Skin and Bones" Raffi's arrangement of this old folk song about the woman who lives down by the old graveyard ("oooh ooh ooh ooooh") scared me a bit, and scared the crap out of one of my friends. I remember we made up a parody of it called "The Old Woman Who Drank Old Milk" that went on for several verses, each more disgusting than the last. I wish I remembered more than a few verses. Playground Jungle entry
-"Little Lies" by Fleetwood Mac. The organ part was a bit spooky, but Stevie Nicks' backing vocals made me think she was a witch a long time before I knew who she was or heard any such rumors about her.
-"Scarborough Fair" - this was playing on the radio one morning when I woke up at about the age of 9. It spooked me good. Sounded very ghostly to me.
-"some song" - another song that I heard in the middle of the night was some song about a ghost ship. One line, I think rhymed "the captain felt a chill" with "the tomb grew closer still." I might have misheard. I've never found out what song that was, and googling the lyrics doesn't help. People I ask about it tend to suggest "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." That wasn't it.
-"Karma Chameleon" by Boy George (though I just knew the Kids Inc version) - I misheard some lyrics in this one and thought it was about death (listening to it now, I suppose it's as good a guess as any). It disturbed me in the same way that scene in A Boy Named Charlie Brown where Schoeder plays the second movement of the Pathetique Sonata and the screen is filled with images of gravestones, cathedrals, and Warholesque Popes disturbed me (and if there's a stranger scene in all of mainstream animation, I haven't seen it).
- "The Age of Not Believing" from Bedknobs and Broomsticks - I can't remember, exactly, whether this actually scared me or just depressed me. Maybe a little of both. After all, it's a song about puberty, so it should have done both. Edit to add: a couple of days after this was posted, my mother called me up from a Toys R Us that was blasting the song over the loudspeaker. Why in the world would they play this in a toy store? Isn't it all about being too old for toys?
I can find a lot of songs in my playlist now that would have scared me then if I'd heard them - I can imagine that Long Black Veil would have scared me out of my wits if I'd ever heard it as a kid.
-"The Ghost Of John" - you've probably heard this. "Have you seen the ghost of John / long white bones with the skin all gone." We sang it in first grade music class.
-"The Old Woman All Skin and Bones" Raffi's arrangement of this old folk song about the woman who lives down by the old graveyard ("oooh ooh ooh ooooh") scared me a bit, and scared the crap out of one of my friends. I remember we made up a parody of it called "The Old Woman Who Drank Old Milk" that went on for several verses, each more disgusting than the last. I wish I remembered more than a few verses. Playground Jungle entry
-"Little Lies" by Fleetwood Mac. The organ part was a bit spooky, but Stevie Nicks' backing vocals made me think she was a witch a long time before I knew who she was or heard any such rumors about her.
-"Scarborough Fair" - this was playing on the radio one morning when I woke up at about the age of 9. It spooked me good. Sounded very ghostly to me.
-"some song" - another song that I heard in the middle of the night was some song about a ghost ship. One line, I think rhymed "the captain felt a chill" with "the tomb grew closer still." I might have misheard. I've never found out what song that was, and googling the lyrics doesn't help. People I ask about it tend to suggest "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." That wasn't it.
-"Karma Chameleon" by Boy George (though I just knew the Kids Inc version) - I misheard some lyrics in this one and thought it was about death (listening to it now, I suppose it's as good a guess as any). It disturbed me in the same way that scene in A Boy Named Charlie Brown where Schoeder plays the second movement of the Pathetique Sonata and the screen is filled with images of gravestones, cathedrals, and Warholesque Popes disturbed me (and if there's a stranger scene in all of mainstream animation, I haven't seen it).
- "The Age of Not Believing" from Bedknobs and Broomsticks - I can't remember, exactly, whether this actually scared me or just depressed me. Maybe a little of both. After all, it's a song about puberty, so it should have done both. Edit to add: a couple of days after this was posted, my mother called me up from a Toys R Us that was blasting the song over the loudspeaker. Why in the world would they play this in a toy store? Isn't it all about being too old for toys?
I can find a lot of songs in my playlist now that would have scared me then if I'd heard them - I can imagine that Long Black Veil would have scared me out of my wits if I'd ever heard it as a kid.
On 90s Alternative as Oldies (from 2007)
Today the cafe is blasting the 90s alternative classics station - I suppose that listening to songs that you loved as a kid in an oldies context is sort of a rite of passage. Since I'm not working on anything in particular this morning, I'm taking the time simply to reflect a bit on the music that was so, so important to me when I was a teenager, now that I can sort out which songs from the era are going to be the "oldies" and which I'll never hear again. Just as with any other era, the songs that are hits when they come out and the songs that become "standards" may not be related to each other at all. I rarely hear a song on classic rock radio that I don't know, but if I look at a Top 10 list from any given week in 1968, there'll be maybe one or two songs that I recognize. Many of the standards were never big hits in their day. I'd say that it was all about the Test of Time, but there's probably more to it than that. And one day, I'll figure it out.
Anyway, today the radio is playing...
Anyway, today the radio is playing...
On Green Day: An Essay (Feb, 2010)
Ever since the Grammys, when Green Day performed "21 Guns" with the cast of the new rock opera version of "American Idiot," I've seen a lot of people snidely pointing out that Green Day can't be punk anymore if they're going to be on Broadway. I'm amused by this. I thought we went through the whole "Green Day Isn't Really Punk" backlash in 1994.
At the beginning of that year, my only exposure to punk had been back in 1986, when, on a family trip to Minneapolis, we went downtown to an area where, I was told, there would be punks. I had no idea what that meant, being barely 6, but when I saw a guy with a leather jacket and spiked green hair, I knew right away. "There's one!" I shouted. My parents freaked out while the guy smirked; they thought he might come beat us up or make us take drugs. In reality, I probably made his day.
When Green Day's major lable debut, "Dookie," became a hit, I was in eighth grade. That album knocked me out - even now I think it's an extremely well-written album of happy, bouncy, songs about how depressing and frustrating adolescence is. .The opening song, "Burnout," plays like a manifesto; if you can think of a better opening line for a punk album than "I de-clare I don't care no more," I'd like to hear it. Suburban angst had never been done better.
At the beginning of that year, my only exposure to punk had been back in 1986, when, on a family trip to Minneapolis, we went downtown to an area where, I was told, there would be punks. I had no idea what that meant, being barely 6, but when I saw a guy with a leather jacket and spiked green hair, I knew right away. "There's one!" I shouted. My parents freaked out while the guy smirked; they thought he might come beat us up or make us take drugs. In reality, I probably made his day.
When Green Day's major lable debut, "Dookie," became a hit, I was in eighth grade. That album knocked me out - even now I think it's an extremely well-written album of happy, bouncy, songs about how depressing and frustrating adolescence is. .The opening song, "Burnout," plays like a manifesto; if you can think of a better opening line for a punk album than "I de-clare I don't care no more," I'd like to hear it. Suburban angst had never been done better.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Counting Crows: Indiana 2007
There are certain concerts that are so great, or such milestones in your life, that every time the date of the concert rolls around, you take notice. 8/2 is when I saw Dylan at Newport. 8/27 was Tom Waits on the Mule Variations tour. And 8/4 and 8/5 - exactly ten years ago today - were the Counting Crows shows at the Chastain in Atlanta on the Recovering the Satellites tour.
Bob Dylan: Milwaukee 2009
Yesterday, Michael G. Smith officially wrapped the short movie we've
been filming, AT LAST OKEMAH. What better way to celebrate than with
a Bob Dylan concert?
We piled into my car with his wife, Jill, and left Chicago early
enough to beat rush hour and hit the Mars Cheese Castle in Kenosha,
where we picked up some curds (when in Wisconsin...) and a local
"butterscotch root beer" called Dang. It was fantastic.
I had imagined summerfest as one of those music festivals like Music
Midwtown, River Stages, etc, but it was really more of a state fair
vibe - everywhere you looked, people were selling food on a stick.
There was a guy on a unicycle juggling fire. Nice way to kill time
before a concert. The trouble with the circus atmosphere was it almost
seemed like the concert was an afterthought (and Willie played
appropriately), but the minute Dylan stepped on stage, everything
changed.
been filming, AT LAST OKEMAH. What better way to celebrate than with
a Bob Dylan concert?
We piled into my car with his wife, Jill, and left Chicago early
enough to beat rush hour and hit the Mars Cheese Castle in Kenosha,
where we picked up some curds (when in Wisconsin...) and a local
"butterscotch root beer" called Dang. It was fantastic.
I had imagined summerfest as one of those music festivals like Music
Midwtown, River Stages, etc, but it was really more of a state fair
vibe - everywhere you looked, people were selling food on a stick.
There was a guy on a unicycle juggling fire. Nice way to kill time
before a concert. The trouble with the circus atmosphere was it almost
seemed like the concert was an afterthought (and Willie played
appropriately), but the minute Dylan stepped on stage, everything
changed.
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