Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To

Tag: bob dylan (Page 6 of 6)

Forget The Dead You Left

The ony thing less interesting than someone else’s dreams is someone else’s weather, so lemme tell you about both. It’s spattering and spitting outside the doors of Fillmore South, and likely to keep doing it all day. Florida is the only place in the world (and for the purposes of these bloggings, the whole world encompasses the contiguous states of America) where it actually gets more humid when it rains. The anole lizards, usually skinny and frantic, swell up like Nerf footballs soaked in Viagra and loll about  to be trod upon by careless adults and compassion-less children.

The gators love it: more rain means bigger lakes means more water’s edge. The water’s edge is the gator’s buffet line.

Maybe that’s why there are so many lunatics down here. Between the dinosaurs lurking in the ponds and the reptiles on your doorstep and the palmetto bugs–giant malformed cockroaches with the power of flight–doing kamikaze runs into your windshield, mammals instinctively know they’re not supposed to be here. When the white man first showed up here, the Seminole and Miccosukee never fought face-to-face, just led them deeper into the swamps and let Florida take their heads. Just like the Russians with Napoleon and Hitler, but with fewer clothes or 1000-page novels.

And the dream has come back. I’ve invited a few friends over and things have gotten out of hand. People begin to show up and won’t leave: I toss ’em out, give ’em the old heave-ho, walk ’em Spanish out the door–no luck. Danny DeVito showed up in last night’s episode; so did Bobbi Starr, whom you should not google at work.

So when commenter DJ5000 (who, sadly, has been discontinued to make way for the DJ6000 model) sent me this, it made my early morning:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5di9t4KONSo&w=420&h=315]

If you had a rough night–and that’s redundant: they’re all rough, ain’t they, Enthusiasts–and the carpet’s moving under you and all you’ve got to live for is what you left behind, then grab a powder keg, strike a match, blow that silver mine, and start anew. You get another chance every morning.

Smooth Like A Rhapsody

Check out Masterpiece from MSG, 9/18/87. Not Bobby killing it, which he always did on the Dylan tune. (Not so much in the blues number. Bobby’s blues number didn’t give you the blues, it made you genuinely sad.) Not even Phil winding and wending his way through the tale of a Grand Snarl through the  Old Country.

No, check out Garcia on the backup vocals. He’s yelpin’ and-a hollerin’, only to shut right up ‘n play this here GI-tar and play it right, boy. Garcia’s singing the high harmony line, almost up where Brent normally is. It’s just at the top of his range: notes you have to make an effort for, and he does, verse after verse. He’s in time with Bobby (kind of) and he’s in tune with Bobby (for a vast majority of the song) and it’s not just exactly perfect, because it’s better than perfect…

It’s human.

P.S. Here’s my favorite thing about When I Paint My Masterpiece: Dylan gave it away.  Other writers have made their reputations–their careers!–on far less, and he gave it to Robbie fucking Robertson. Robbie Robertson’s such a prick that three of his former band members preferred to die rather than spend anymore time on the same planet as him. Only Garth Hudson remains, and he is clearly some sort of immortal wood elemental.

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