Modern Times

Modern Times, Bob Dylan's latest work of original songs, was released on Tuesday, August 29th. Dylan's last record, Love and Theft, was released on September 11, 2001, making the apocolyptic overtones of some the lines all the more spooky. But as one critic said, when you've been singing about the ends of days for 40 years sooner or later you're going to be right.

Modern Times feels like a natural progression from Love and Theft. Both were produced by Dylan under the pseudonym Jack Frost. Unlike the sea change of tone and sound between 1997's Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft, there's nothing unexpected musically about Modern Times: Chicago blues riffs, Hoagy Carmichael chord progressions and long ballads. Modern Times was recorded with Dylan's touring band, who provide a steady and professional backing lacking some of the urgency of Love and Theft. The emphasis of the record on Dylan's singing.

Dylan's voice - mocked by clever 6th graders and 50 year old librarians alike - has evolved into quite an instrument. On "Someday Baby," Dylan occassionaly whispers lines in a higher register giving the impression that he can barely utter the words of spite: "Well you take my money and you turn it out / You fill me up with nothin' but self doubt / Someday baby, you ain't gonna worry po' me any more." Dylan has learned when to growl, when to wail, and when to whisper.

But the utter joy of Modern Times as with all of Dylan's recent material in this grand stage of his career including the memoir Chronicles is the wonderful one liners. No one writes with more wit and beauty as Bob Dylan. He's also a bit of a salty dog. A sampling:

"I got the porkchops, she got the pie / She ain't no angel and neither am I"
"They brag about your sugar / Brag about it all over town / Put some sugar in my bowl I feel like laying down."
"You think I'm over the hill / You think I'm past my prime / Let me see what you got / We can have a whoppin' good time."
"When I was young, driving was my crave / You drive me so hard, almost to the grave."

There's lots more to say about Modern Times, but listening to it after reading a few reviews, one notices how lazy and repetitive these reviewers are. Some repetitions: "Thunder on the Mountain" is a Chuck Berry-like song, the drummer uses brushes instead of sticks throughout, and Modern Times is the third part of a trilogy of records starting with Time Out of Mind and continuing through Love and Theft. All of these statements can be easily called into question, but reviewers repeat them like seagulls bleating in unison at the beach.

summer reading

Asked about his summer reading, President Bush told NBC's Brian Williams: "I was in Crawford and I said I was looking for a book to read, and Laura said, 'You oughtta try Camus.' I also read three Shakespears."

Thin Wild Mercury Sound

Here's an excerpt from an interview with Dylan talking about his ideal sound.

'It’s that thin, that wild mercury sound. It’s metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up. That’s my particular sound.

Was that wild mercury sound in “I Want You”?
Yeah, it was in “I Want You.” It was in a lot of that stuff. It was in the album before that, too.

“Highway 61 Revisited”?
Yeah. Also in “Bringing It All Back Home.” That’s the sound I’ve always heard. . . .

The period when you came out with “Highway 61” must have been exciting.
Those were exciting times. We were doing it before anybody knew we would—or could. We didn’t know what it was going to turn out to be. Nobody thought of it as folk-rock at the time. There were some people involved in it like The Byrds, and I remember Sonny and Cher and the Turtles and the early Rascals. It began coming out on the radio. I mean, I had a couple of hits in a row. That was the most I ever had in a row—two. The top ten was filled with that kind of sound—the Beatles, too—and it was exciting, those days were exciting. It was the sound of the streets. It still is. I symbolically hear that sound wherever I am.

You hear the sound of the street?
That ethereal twilight light, you know. It’s the sound of the street with the sunrays, the sun shining down at a particular time, on a particular type of building. A particular type of people walking on a particular type of street. It’s an outdoor sound that drifts even into open windows that you can hear. The sound of bells and distant railroad trains and arguments in apartment buildings and the clinking of silverware and knives and forks and beating with leather straps. It’s all—it’s all there. Just lack of a jackhammer, you know.

You mean if a jackhammer were—
Yeah, no jackhammer sounds, no airplane sounds. All pretty natural sounds. It’s water, you know water trickling down a brook. It’s light flowing through the . . .

Late-afternoon light?
No, it’s usually the crack of dawn. Music filters out to me in the crack of dawn.

The “jingle jangle morning”?
Right.'

The "thin wild mercury sound" has been quoted extensively when discussing the sound of Dylan's music, but that longer reflection with the "sound of bells and distant railroad trains" is quite beautiful.

Modern Times, Dylan's latest record of new material, will be released on Tuesday.

Down by the Riverside

Here's a clip of Sister Rosetta Tharpe performing "Down by the Riverside." Not to be missed. And then play it again:

Big Abyss

I just finished reading Hellfire, Nick Tosches's biography of Jerry Lee Lewis. Jerry Lee once said that there are only four distinct stylists in American music: Al Jolson, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Tosches said that he had two inspirations for Hellfire: the King James Bible and William Faulkner. There can be no better subject for a biography than Jerry Lee Lewis showing his constant wavering between the Assembly of God and the devil's music. Tosches traces Jerry Lee's ancestry back to 1803 and depicts Jerry Lee's childhood friendship with his first cousin Jimmy Lee Swaggart. Hellfire was published in 1982, so Tosches misses the opportunity to write about the mysterious deaths of at least two of Jerry Lee's wives in the 80s and 90s.

An interviewer once commented that Hellfire shows Jerry Lee roaming the Earth and facing the abyss. Tosches replied, "It's the way we all live. Shallow life, shallow ditch. Big life, big abyss."

Not sure if Charley Jordan's song "Keep It Clean" is actually dirty, but Charley tells us how to keep it clean. An easy-going blues with a sweet touch, this song exemplifies the good times of 1920s blues music.

"Ride him over;
Give him Coca-Cola,
Lemon soda,
Sauce of ice cream.
It takes soap n' water,
For to keep it clean."

Here's a link to a free (and legal) download of "Keep It Clean" from the Internet Archive:

http://www.archive.org/details/KeepItClean

In the beginning

The title of this blog is taken from a passage from Bob Dylan's 2004 memoir Chronicles. Here he is reflecting about the world of folk music:

"I had already landed in a parallel universe with more archaic principles and values; one where actions and virtues were old style and judgmental things came falling out on their heads. A culture with outlaw women, super thugs, demon lovers, and gospel truths...streets and valleys, rich peaty swamps, with landowners and oilmen, Stagger Lees, Pretty Pollys and John Henrys--an invisible world that towered overhead with walls of gleaming corridors."

A beautiful rumination about the world of the imagination. No further thesis or mission statement is really necessary besides remembering the tag line from the modern rock station in Winston-Salem, NC during the mid-90s; this blog will be all about "cool stuff that rocks."