Maggie's Farm

The words of Blind Willie McTell begin:

Seen the arrow on the doorpost
Saying, "This land is condemned
All the way from New Orleans
To Jerusalem."
I traveled through East Texas
Where many martyrs fell
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell.

Dylan on piano:

This superb song was an outtake from his album Modern Times. I love it. Lyrics here:

From the Rolling Stone review of Dylan's new record:

...as a young folk singer, he strained to sound older and more sorely tested than he was, as if he had known Charley Patton, A.P. Carter and the Great Depression firsthand. He's finally there, with an authentically pitted instrument ideally suited to the devastated settings of these songs and the rusted desert-shed production (by Dylan under his usual pseudonym, Jack Frost): brushed-snare strolls and bar-band shuffles; bag-of-snakes guitars, with frequent stinging fills by Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers; the rippled sigh and mocking laugh of an accordion icing most songs, played by David Hidalgo of Los Lobos. Compared to the Western-swing-like buoyance of Love and Theft and the Fifties-Chess-session air of Modern Times, this record sounds like it was cut in the dead-end Mexican border town in Orson Welles' 1958 film noir, Touch of Evil, especially when Dylan gets to lines like the closing few in "Forgetful Heart," a musky blend of banjo, dirty guitar and utter emotional defeat: "All night long/I lay awake and listen to the sound of pain/The door has closed forevermore/If indeed there ever was a door."

From Mark Edwards at TimesOnline, who begins:

Bob Dylan fans are in for a treat. The man’s new album, Together Through Life, will be released on April 27. Before that, Dylan begins the latest instalment of the Never-Ending Tour at Sheffield Arena on Friday; and Thursday sees the publication of Revolution in the Air, a new book by the man The New York Times described as “the only Dylanologist worth reading”, Clinton Heylin.

Another one from Dylan's new record: Feel a Change Coming On.

Beyond Here Lies Nothin', from his new record Together Through Life (audio only):

From the Dylan interview last week re life in general, and his new record:

BF: Are you a mystical person?

BD: Absolutely.

BF: Any thoughts about why?

BD: I think it’s the land. The streams, the forests, the vast emptiness. The land created me. I’m wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I‘m more at home in the vacant lots. But I have a love for humankind, a love of truth, and a love of justice. I think I have a dualistic nature. I’m more of an adventurous type than a relationship type.

BF: But the album is all about love – love found, love lost, love remembered, love denied.

BD: Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it.

The Jerry Garcia Band with Dylan's song (h/t, Env. Repub):

Dylan's first live performance of 1972's "Billy," in Stockholm last week (March 22, 2009). It's Billy the Kid. Lyrics here. Audio only. He goes into that stacatto singing he's been doing this year: it's like a tic.

From Stockholm, March 22, 2009. Lyrics here.

Minneapolis, 1998. It's a Maggie's Farm theme song. Lyrics here.

"I looked at my watch, I looked at my wrist.
I punched myself in the face with my fist.
I took my potatoes down to be mashed,
then I made it on over to that million dollar bash."

I thought the song was a bit of a spoof about Woodstock, but who knows? Dylan with The Band, on the Basement Tapes (which were just fooling-around practice tapes):

Video of a studio rehearsal, with Mark Knopfler and his band. Again, no date or place. 70s for sure. It's a lovely tune:

When the Deal Goes Down, from Modern Times (2006). I think we posted this one in the past, but it's been on my mind -

"Well, I picked up a rose and it poked through my clothes
I followed the winding stream
I heard the deafening noise, I felt transient joys
I know they're not what they seem
In this earthly domain, full of disappointment and pain
You'll never see me frown
I owe my heart to you, and that's saying it's true
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down."

It's not embeddable, but it's worth listening to. The video isn't bad either.

Today's Free Advt for Bob is a good piece for Lent, I think. Dylan's song is like a Psalm.

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There's a dyin' voice within me reaching out somewhere,
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair.

Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake,
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break.
In the fury of the moment I can see the Master's hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear,
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer.
The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay.

I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name.
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand.

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer's dream, in the chill of a wintry light,
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space,
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face.

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other times it's only me.
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.

If you don't care for Dylan, here's Emmy Lou Harris' cover of the song: you will like this. 1995.

with the Grateful Dead. I don't know the year or place. It begins like this:

Sometimes I feel so low-down and disgusted
Can't help but wonder what's happening to my companions
Are they lost or are they found, have they counted the cost it'll take to bring down
All their earthly principles they're gonna have to abandon ?
There's slow, slow train coming up around the bend.

I had a woman down in Alabama
She was a backwoods girl, but she sure was realistic
She said, Boy, without a doubt, have to quit your mess and straighten out
You could die down here, be just another accident statistic
There's slow, slow train coming up around the bend.

Full lyrics here.

Bob with the Dean Martin classic. Not sure when this was done. Good photos:

Those photos of Florence, Alabama moved me to post this, a Dylan cover of the Grateful Dead's Alabama Getaway from 1997. I heard Dylan do this great song in New Haven around that time. Same band. He had so much incense or smoke or whatever he uses that you could barely see the band through it. And he did shake hands or slap hands with everybody up front, too. I do remember that he opened with a rousing  Crash on the Levee that night, and did an acoustic set too including Girl from the North Country.

My theory is that he always likes to keep his band off balance and challenged. I do not think that they rehearse. Dylan was playing some interesting electric at this time.

Lyrics here.

An unusual recording from Dylan, from his often-disparaged 1970 Self Portrait record. I cannot embed this YouTube, but it's here.

My guess is that he never got around to making up words for the tune.

Brings back poignant memories for me, but I won't tell you what they are other than that they involve a stunningly beautiful but erratic girl who had two Chessies.

Via HuffPo:

"Actually, one of my favorites during the political season is 'Maggie's Farm,'" Obama said of one of Dylan's tracks. "It speaks to me as I listen to some of the political rhetoric."

Here's the 1965 recording:

This is live, from Cork, 2006:

Today, the Jokerman seems like Father Time.

Well, the Book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy
The law of the jungle and the sea are your only teachers
In the smoke of the twilight on a milk-white steed
Michelangeo indeed could've carved out your features
Resting in the fields, far from the turbulent space
Half asleep near the stars with a small dog licking your face.

Audio only. Full lyrics here.