This makes me happy

Bob Dylan, live at AVA at Casino del Sol, July 19

Now essentially an old bluesman, Bob Dylan continues his habit in recent years of leaning on the organ and harmonica during live performances. But in turning away from the guitar, he's taken a greater role in his band's sound.

As the Never Ending Tour made its fourth Tucson stop in the last decade, the now 70-year-old Dylan delivered a 16-song set drawing broadly from his career. The newest studio album, Together Through Life, and 1965's classic Highway 61 Revisited were the most represented albums, with three songs each. Remarkably, Dylan repeated only two songs from his last local performance, a 2007 AVA show that was also far superior to his Tucson Convention Center stop in 2006.

Starting with "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35," his vocals were clear and strong throughout, but what shined most was his nimble organ playing. When Dylan first brought the organ back to his live show, his style was more subdued, less striking in the band's mix. Now, it's a featured dimension of the band's sound and plays perfectly off Charlie Sexton's lead guitar.

Similarly strong—and more prevalent than in recent years—was Dylan's harmonica, which he played on roughly half the songs, often lacing multiple harp passages into a single song. He played guitar on just one song, "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'."

His stage presence more animated without a guitar, Dylan spent the night making little gestures and poses. They're not details that can be detected from the lawn, but those seated close to the stage were treated to plenty of little moves from Dylan, wearing a black cowboy suit with red piping.

With lightning flashing in the southwest distance, Dylan played a jumpy blues version of "The Levee's Gonna Break," with an excellent call-and-response outro jam between Dylan's organ and Sexton's guitar.

Still updating and shifting his old classics, Dylan meshed both first- and third-person lyrics into his narrative "Tangled Up in Blue," and rearranged "Visions of Johanna" around his organ playing.

To close the set, with the stage lights set low for an interrogation effect and his looming shadow tall on the curtain at the back of the stage, Dylan played a version of "Ballad of a Thin Man" dripping with menace, as accusatory as the day it was written.

Published July 28, 2011 in the Tucson Weekly.

Happy 70th, Bob

So, what did I do yesterday in honor of Bob Dylan's 70th birthday? Well, for one I had to move, which put a huge crunch on my music listening time. But I did put together a 200-song Bob Dylan playlist and managed to get through about a quarter of it. And just pondering things here, but aside from every other accomplishment, isn't the fact fact that Bob Dylan actually lived to 70 one of the greatest achievements in American history?

Here's a great live version of what's probably my all-time favorite song (at least in heavy contention), Tangled Up In Blue (sorry about the ad, but the video is excellent):

Just Because

Man. I'd really planned to leave this story of Bob Dylan gettin' hauled into a cop car by some rookie because he looked "suspicious" well enough alone. I really did. I tried.

Then comes this new wrinkle that he may have been on some rainy night mission to track down an old dwelling of Bruce Springsteen. OK, now I'm gonna have to bring this up.

I don't doubt it. I know for a fact that a few years back Dylan traced down Elvis' childhood home in the middle of the night... so this story rings true to me.

ABC News is apparently devoting quite a bit of time to this, interviewing the cop who picked up Dylan and tracking down all possible angles... I just think it's funny.

From ABC News, quoting the "arresting officer:"

"We got a call for a suspicious person,'' Buble said. "It was pouring rain outside, and I was right around the corner so I responded. By that time he was walking down the street. I asked him what he was doing in the neighborhood and he said he was looking at a house for sale."

"I asked him what his name was and he said, 'Bob Dylan,' Buble said. "Now, I've seen pictures of Bob Dylan from a long time ago and he didn't look like Bob Dylan to me at all. He was wearing black sweatpants tucked into black rain boots, and two raincoats with the hood pulled down over his head.

"So I said, 'OK Bob, what are you doing in Long Branch?' He said he was touring the country with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp. So now I'm really a little fishy about his story. I did not know what to believe or where he was coming from, or even who he was.

"We see a lot of people on our beat, and I wasn't sure if he came from one of our hospitals or something," Buble said.

She asked for identification, but Dylan said he had none. She asked where he was staying and he said his tour buses were parked at some big hotel on the ocean. Buble said she assumed that to be the nearby Ocean Place Conference Resort.

"He was acting very suspicious,'' Buble said. "Not delusional, just suspicious. You know, it was pouring rain and everything."

DOWNLOAD:
Bob Dylan & Bruce Springsteen - Forever Young
Bruce Springsteen - The Times They Are A-Changin' (Bob Dylan Cover)
Bruce Springsteen - Knockin' On Heaven's Door (Bob Dylan Cover)
Bruce Springsteen - I Want You (Bob Dylan Cover)
Neil Young & The Grateful Dead - Forever Young (Bob Dylan Cover)

Townes covering Bob - Bob covering Townes

I just recently came across this fantastic 1985 recording of Townes Van Zandt on a Tennessee NPR station and I nearly flipped when I heard him start playing Dylan's "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" right in the middle of his "Colorado Girl."

It's stunning - a perfect recording and just an absolutely flawless performance. And it's extra huge to my ears, because this is the first prime Dylan song I've ever heard Townes sing.

Before this, I've only known two Dylan songs that Townes has covered, both obscure tunes to even the biggest Dylan fans: "Man Gave Names To All The Animals" (from Slow Train) and "Rambling, Gambling Willie" (unreleased before the 1991 Bootleg Series, which Townes played as "Little Willie The Gambler"). Both covers are on Townes' Roadsongs disc.

Dylan, of course, is a fan of Townes' classic "Pancho & Lefty."

DOWNLOAD:
Townes Van Zandt - Colorado Girl -> Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues
Bob Dylan - Pancho & Lefty (live 2004 Bonnaroo)

Together Through Life review

My review of the new Bob Dylan record, Together Through Life, is now online. Check it out at the Tucson Weekly. The album is "a mix of spooky blues romps and lonesome country ballads."

For more Dylan, check out Rolling Stone's collection of excerpts from various interviews with Bob over the years.

And for Bob sakes, go get the damn album if you haven't already.

DOWNLOAD:
Bob Dylan - Beyond Here Lies Nothin

I don't know much about Cinco de Mayo - I'm never sure what it's all about

Actually, I do know what Cinco de Mayo is all about - a relatively minor battle against the French (?) and the fact that at this point in the calendar year, it's been a little while since there was a holiday for all the marketing folks to get all jazzed about. So eat Mexican food, drink Corona and "tequila" (the vast majority of what is consumed is not actually pure agave) and maybe catch a sale somewhere. In other words, celebrate this manufactured little holiday to your heart's content.

That sounds harsh, and in truth I've enjoyed some wonderful Cincos de Mayo in my years. But there's something in me that can't get over the fact that it brings so many assholes out of the woodwork. Here's a little theory: the spring has all these extra holidays to compensate for the lack of football - or more precisely the lack of tailgating and other football-related drinking festivities.

Think about it: aside from perhaps Halloween, there's nothing else in the fall that compares to the grand triumvirate of vaguely cultural springtime drinking fests - St. Patrick's Day, Mardi Gras and Cinco de Mayo.

Anyway, I'm doing my celebrating more in the Fifth of May realm than the Cinco de Mayo realm, by listening to Bob Dylan's "Isis" several times over. It was maybe the hardest Dylan song to crack for me, and it's been a fascinating relationship for years and years.

The opening line "I married Isis on the fifth day of May, but I could not hold onto her for very long" is a clever misdirection as the bulk of the song is some dreamlike journey into the "wild unknown country" and a "high place of darkness and light." There's a bit of treasure-seeking double cross and then it's back to Isis, and the awesome closing verse:

Isis, oh, Isis, your a mystical child.
What drives me to you is what drives me insane.
I still can remember the way that you smiled
On the fifth day of May in the drizzlin' rain.

The various live versions I have - including the official releases on Biograph and Bootleg Series vol. 5 - add an otherworldly menace to the song, with Dylan shouting the lyrics in a frenzied, chanting rush, as opposed to the casual violin-driven swing of the Desire version, which featured Dylan on piano and no guitar. I don't have any clue how much of the song was written by collaborator Jacques Levy, but it's fair to say that there's certainly nothing else in Dylan's catalog that is close to "Isis," not even anything else on Desire.

Various live recordings have Dylan shouting "This is a song about marriage" or "This is a true song" to introduce "Isis," and it's no secret his own marriage was rocky as hell around that time. But "Sara" it ain't. Another recorded version I have has Dylan dedicating the song to Keith Richard. I've read interpretations of "Isis" that tie the whole mystical treasure-seeking journey into Dylan's comeback tour of 1974. And returning to Isis equates to Dylan finding his muse again, after which he produced the stunning Blood on the Tracks and then Desire. Huh.

I'm in love with the mystery of this song and how much force Dylan brings to live versions. He's pushing, forcing, prodding, giving the lyrics an almost violent delivery. It's a song that crashes whether it's a subtle version or lit on fire. It's not an easy song, but it's absolutely one of the best ever written. Happy Fifth of May.

DOWNLOAD:
Bob Dylan - Isis (live)
White Stripes - Isis (live Bob Dylan cover)

Dylan playing AZ in August!

In the immediate future, Bob Dylan will: 1. Release his 33rd studio album, Together For Life; 2. Turn 68 years old; 3. Embark on another summer tour of minor league baseball stadia, and for the first time on such a tour play in Arizona.

That's right friends, on Aug. 11, you can find me at someplace called Camelback Ranch in Glendale. Oh, and Dylan is bringing along a couple friends - Willie Nelson and John Cougar Mellencamp (Do you think the Coug knew that 30 years after adopting the nickname that it'd see common use as slang for a sexy older woman on the prowl? I doubt it.)

Barring any unforeseen hitches, this will be my 11th Dylan show, the first in two years. It's a shame he's not playing in Tucson, given that our very own minor league ballpark is completely empty for the entire summer (screw you Reno!). And Glendale's new park is technically a spring training facility, not a minor league one, but it's essentially the same. I'm betting this is the first concert for Camelback Ranch (stupid name), which stole the White Sox from Tucson this year.

I'm curious and excited to hear this new album, and also how Dylan brings some of the new songs to the stage. Will Dylan and Willie play together? These minor league ballpark tours started in 2004 and each year I looked at the schedule just wishing one would come out West. I think the closest one of those shows to Tucson in the past was Kansas City. And this trio will be together sharing one stage for the first time since Farm Aid in 1985. Not too bad, not too bad.

DOWNLOAD:
Bob Dylan - All Along The Watchtower (2006-04-08 Sun City)
Bob Dylan & Willie Nelson - Pancho & Lefty (live)
John Cougar Mellencamp and T Bone Burnett - Pink Houses (live)

Dylan - Together Through Life

Despite waking up and putting on my Marathon Dylan playlist (the master's longest album songs, eight of them, which clock in at nearly 90 minutes), I don't think I can really claim to have any real credit for conjuring the news that his new album now has a name, a face and a release date.

Together Through Life comes out April 28, and it's another "Jack Frost" production, extending this unbelievably strong late-career period for Dylan.

I don't think its any surprise or coincidence that this is his fourth straight album cover to feature black & white photography. The music sort of sounds black & white, with all the throwback Americana that implies. There's certainly nobody else around these days who's making records that sound like this 21st Century Bob Dylan.

In a conversation with Bill Flanagan that's posted online today, Bob talks about his love of old Chess and Sun records. It's not as memorable as the "thin, wild mercury" quote Bob gave about Blonde on Blonde, but I love his description of the sound of the old rock, country and R&B records that sort of inspired and encouraged him on this new one:

I like the mood of those records - the intensity. The sound is uncluttered. There’s power and suspense. The whole vibration feels like it could be coming from inside your mind. It’s alive. It’s right there. Kind of sticks in your head like a toothache.

The Dylan-as-chameleon notion has always been an interesting one in my mind. He's had so many twists and turns in his career, with so much excellent music at every phase, that he's left more entry places than any other musician. The variety is only exceeded by his consistency.

I can remember how thrilled I was when Time Out Of Mind came out, and how much it meant for me personally to have a Dylan classic for my listening era, my fandom. And this new one I'm sure will make four classic albums.

Dylan himself covers some of this same ground, recognizing that each album must necessarily continut to push the envelope, and that his fans stopped coming at him from any one main direction a long time ago:

I think we milked it all we could on that last record and then some. We squeezed the cow dry. All the Modern Times songs were written and performed in the widest range possible so they had a little bit of everything. These new songs have more of a romantic edge.

How so?

These songs don’t need to cover the same ground. The songs on Modern Times brought my repertoire up to date, and the light was directed in a certain way. You have to have somebody in mind as an audience otherwise there’s no point.

What do you mean by that?

There didn’t seem to be any general consensus among my listeners. Some people preferred my first period songs. Some, the second. Some, the Christian period. Some, the post Colombian. Some, the Pre-Raphaelite. Some people prefer my songs from the nineties. I see that my audience now doesn’t particular care what period the songs are from. They feel style and substance in a more visceral way and let it go at that. Images don’t hang anybody up. Like if there’s an astrologer with a criminal record in one of my songs it’s not going to make anybody wonder if the human race is doomed. Images are taken at face value and it kind of freed me up.

So Dylan keeps going, and his fans keep following. When I was 18, Time Out Of Mind became the first Dylan classic for my era, and Together Through Life will be the first Dylan album of my 30s. And, I suppose, so it goes.

DOWNLOAD:
Bob Dylan - Lily, Rosemary & the Jack of Hearts (outtake)

New Dylan

New Dylan music is always a good thing, and if this latest record sounds anything like the "raw country tunes" and "seductive border-cafe feel" that David Fricke describes, then I'm even more thrilled. As of yet untitled, Dylan's 32nd studio album is scheduled to appear in late April.

Apparently the songs came out of a session he did to work on a song for "My Own Love Song," a movie starring Renée Zellweger and Forest Whitaker (strange pairing).

I think this album will close out the trilogy that started with Love & Theft and Modern Times, leaving Time Out Of Mind as sort of the loner record that it sounds like. A new tour can't be far off.

DOWNLOAD:
Bob Dylan - Workingman's Blues #2 (live in Tucson, 2007-07-24)

Dylan's Gospel

This is the first time I've posted a full-album link that I found elsewhere, but I came across an utterly amazing record today, a gospel band covering Dylan.

The long out-of-print Dylan's Gospel comes from the group Brothers & Sisters of Los Angeles, and I'll be damned if I can dig up much, other than the fact that they put out this album in 1969. It was a five-piece band with a nearly 30-person choir. It was produced by Lou Adler, who co-wrote Sam Cooke's "Wonderful World," and arranged and conducted by Gene Page, who has worked with Marvin Gaye, The Temptations and The Four Tops, among many, many others.

Apparently Mojo magazine put this on a list of musical buried treasures a few years back and there was some stir then, but interest seems to have diminished. There was a CD reissue in the UK in 1990 and later in Japan, but this has been an LP-only release in the U.S. There's a bit more detail here.

I've been a ravenous and dedicated listener, seeker and appreciator of Dylan covers for quite some time (with close to 800 different cover versions of Dylan songs in the iTunes library) and I've never heard anything quite like it: an album-length series of reinventions that ignite these songs with an entirely new fire. There's nothing in the sound of this album to suggest that these are re-appropriated songs instead of traditional spirituals, or originals from a multi-singer choir and band that knows how to bring the house down.

Usually covers like these - in which the performers completely transform and own the song in their own right - show up one at a time. Hendrix doing "All Along the Watchtower." Nico doing "I'll Keep It With Mine." Nina Simone doing "I Shall Be Released."

I have full albums of Dylan covers from Odetta, Joan Baez, Jerry Garcia, the Dead and The Byrds, and while there are great moments scattered throughout those records, they're almost all the type of performances that are fully expected.

This gospel group breaks through on every song, with a heavily percussive and organ-based treatment that just gives this multitude of voices the chance to soar. A lot of it sounds so much like a precursor to Dylan's own Christian/gospel-rock period that I can't help but think he heard this album and and brought some elements into his own recording sessions.

"Just Like A Woman" opens with a steady and stately organ, then builds and builds, with several singers taking time to "ooh" and "ahh" as the drummer pounds out fills as the music swells to bring back the chorus, all the voices tying together, with a call-and-response developing as the men throw back "Yes she does."

On "I Shall Be Released" I can't help but think at times of the all-star group during The Last Waltz, that sort of swaying, arm-in-arm joyousness that this song brings out so well.

There's an extra R&B touch to "The Mighty Quinn," but what I love most is how the lead singer - who can belt out a song as well as any I've ever heard - adds in a "Hallelelujah!" to the end of the line "When Quinn the Eskimo gets here, everybody's gonna jump for joy." It sounds like it belongs because it does.

DOWNLOAD:
Brothers & Sisters - The Mighty Quinn (Bob Dylan cover)
and click through to Cousin Mike for the full album

Monday Morning QB: Super Bowl Rock

Was Bob Dylan softening up the American football audience for a performance at next year's Super Bowl by agreeing to appear in a commercial during this year's broadcast?

Why not speculate about a Dylan halftime show, considering that the last five years seem to be paving the way: Paul McCartney (who Dylan introduced to pot), the Rolling Stones (who covered Dylan when their career needed a shot in the arm), Prince (who actually snuck in a Dylan song during his halftime performance), Tom Petty (a fellow Willbury and Dylan tourmate) and now Springsteen (who reveres Bob and is perhaps the only living rock musician whose name can be rightly used alongside Dylan's).

So here's that commercial, which I kind of liked, if for no other reason that because it dusted off the alternate version of "Forever Young," a somewhat inferior take that sounds completely fresh after so long listening to the more classic rendition:



And now for a collision course of "Forever Youngs," culminating in one that joins The Boss and The Bob, which is served up here as more proof that Dylan will play at next year's Super Bowl. Or so I hope.

DOWNLOAD:
Neil Young & The Grateful Dead - Forever Young (live)
Eddie Vedder - Forever Young (live)
Bob Dylan - Forever Young (live on David Letterman)
Bob Dylan & Bruce Springsteen - Forever Young (live)

Obamicon Covers

I didn't read through the lengthy Obamicon.Me terms and conditions, but I doubt you're supposed to use it for classic album covers... but c'mon, what else is a music blogger to do?

Here are some favorites:













Any other great Obamicon album covers?

DOWNLOAD:
Bob Dylan - Let Me Die In My Footsteps (outtake)
Bruce Springsteen - Rosalita (live 1974)
Nirvana - Lithium (live)
Ween - Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down) (live at Bonnaroo)
Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
Warren Zevon - Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner (live)
Willie Nelson - Remember Me (live 1975)
Beck - The Golden Age (YouTube)
Neko Case - People Got A Lotta Nerve
Soul Coughing - Screenwriter's Blues (live)
Roger Clyne - Banditos (acoustic)

Today, America is better

Barack Obama is the new president of the United States of America, soon to be the 44th man to hold the office, and without a doubt his election is the greatest and most positive even to occur in my lifetime.

Four years and a few months ago, after his star-making speech at the last Democractic National Convention, I wrote that I expected to cast a presidential vote for Barack Obama someday. And, way sooner than I expected, I got that privilege.

This is my president. At 29 years old, I feel more American, more an active and influential part of this tremendous country, than ever before. This is the history I will tell to my children someday, describing how this wave of enthusiasm overcame the country and surge, at the perfect moment, pushing the destructive and depressive Bush years aside in a heartbeat.

Last night at the Marriott, among some 2,500 other joyous folks, I watched as big screen projected Obama's victory speech. Amazing. My friends were the millions around the country watching with pride and a surging sense of possibility in this shared future represented by Barack Obama.


I had plenty of other stuff to do last night, and I slept in, but on my drive to work today, I heard Otis Redding's version of the Sam Cooke classic "A Change Is Gonna Come" on KXCI - and that flood of joy from the night before came back, more real in the bright light of another day than it had been the night before.

So, to celebrate this election, which I cared about and fought and worked for so much these long months, here's two more versions of that classic American song - one from some great friends and one from a legend greater than any other. And somehow this promise of the Obama presidency seems to make it all that much closer to my heart.


DOWNLOAD:
Chango Malo - A Change Is Gonna Come
Bob Dylan - A Change Is Gonna Come

A Theme Time Radio film

I've been loosely following Bob Dylan's XM radio show since it started and found a sort of dual fascination to the program: one is Dylan's transfixingly quirky personality as DJ, yapping in between tracks like it's his dream come true to host a radio program, while the other is not only a reverence for these unearthed treasures he plays week after week, but just the pure enjoyment that damn near every one of those old-timey country, blues, R&B, jazz and rock songs bring.

Dylan is now up to 75 hours worth of broadcasts, each episode thematically defined. And the amazing Night Time In The Big City blog has 'em all.

I just stumbled across a creative short movie made by stringing together audio of the various sultry opening lines and panning across a marvelously detailed painting that incorporates images of all those lines:



I've loved the Baseball episode most, and given away the Mother and Father episodes as gifts to my folks. And I gave the Young & Old episode as a joke for a just-turned-30 friend. It's an immensely entertaining show. Check out a typical Dylan fact-filled interlude and a cut from one Dylan's most played artists, Mose Allison.

DOWNLOAD:
Bob Dylan - Fountain of Youth (spoken interlude from Theme Time Radio Hour season 2)
Mose Allison - Young Man's Blues