We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
The Nerdwriter contemplates All Along the Watchtower. I still do not know what it's about, but there is compelling, very spare, imagery. Thanks, Gerard
It's Folk with Rock-Blues drooped over it. That's Mike Bloomfield on lead guitar. Cool guitar, more flashy I think than the suave Robbie Robertson. Bob, always in motion, never stagnant, never staying put. Good stuff. 1965.
I been double-crossed now for the very last time and now I'm finally free I kissed goodbye the howling beast on the borderline which separated you from me You'll never know the hurt I suffered not the pain I raise above And I'll never know the same about you your holiness or your kind of love And it makes me feel so sorry.
Idiot wind blowing through the buttons of our coats Blowing through the letters that we wrote Idiot wind blowing through the dust upon our shelves We're idiots babe It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves.
“I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of,” he would later write in his memoir Chronicles.
Henry Beston's Outermost House is required reading in the Bird Dog household. To be a confirmed member of the tribe, I guess you need to "get" Cape Cod and its history and traditions.
Photo below of Beston's cottage (before it got washed away in a storm caused by global warming) via TDP. I saw it one time, on a beach hike with dogs when I was young.
In AARP Magazine (!), the not-retired Bob Dylan Does the American Standards His Way - In his first interview in nearly three years, the legendary singer-songwriter talks about his new disc, ‘Shadows in the Night,’ his love for Frank Sinatra and about life in his 70s
Dylan's recording on Empire Burlesque is better and deeper than this one with Patti Smith, but this is all I could find.
The remarkable lyrics:
Oh, the gentlemen are talking and the midnight moon is on the riverside They're drinking up and walking and it is time for me to slide I live in another world where life and death are memorized Where the earth is strung with lover's pearls and all I see are dark eyes.
A cock is crowing far away and another soldier's deep in prayer Some mother's child has gone astray, she can't find him anywhere But I can hear another drum beating for the dead that rise Whom nature's beast fears as they come and all I see are dark eyes.
They tell me to be discreet for all intended purposes They tell me revenge is sweet and from where they stand, I'm sure it is But I feel nothing for their game, where beauty goes unrecognized All I feel is heat and flame, and all I see are dark eyes.
Oh, the French girl, she's in paradise and a drunken man is at the wheel Hunger pays a heavy prize to the falling gods of speed and steel Oh, time is short and the days are sweet and passion rules the arrow that flies A million faces at my feet but all I see are dark eyes.
Here's the place he bought in Scotland in 2007: Aultmore
I don't want nothin' from anyone, ain't that much to take Wouldn't know the difference between a real blonde and a fake Feel like a prisoner in a world of mystery I wish someone would come and push back the clock for me.
... then there’s plain sonic impact: Even his earliest important songs have a cerebral and reverberating authority in the recording, his voice sometimes filling the speakers, his primitive but blistering guitar work adding confrontation, ease, humor, anger, and contrariness, presenting all but the most unwilling listeners with moment after moment of incandescence.
And, finally, a key component often overlooked: Dylan’s artistic process. On a fundamental level, he doesn’t trust mediation or planning. The story of his recording career is littered with tales of indecisive and failed sessions and haphazard successful ones, in both cases leaving frustrated producers and session people in their wake. You could say the approach served him well during his early years of inspiration and has hobbled him in his later decades of lesser work. Dylan doesn’t care. During the recording of Blood on the Tracks, which may be the best rock album ever made, one of the musicians present heard the singer being told how to do something correctly in the studio. Dylan’s reply: “Y’know, if I’d listened to everybody who told me how to do stuff, I might be somewhere by now.”