Daily Ramblings:
Cash Is King ... 10/18/2004
LGF had a link to this: When The Man Comes Around. The war on terror with a definite point of view, with soundtrack by Johnny Cash. A little over the top maybe; a lot of fun.
Life Is In Mirrors, Death Disappears ... 10/17/2004
Mike Marqusee reviews Chronicles for the UK Guardian. Marqusee is author of the recent book, "Chimes Of Freedom, The Politics Of Bob Dylan's Art," where he takes a classic leftist view of Dylan's work. His general conclusion in that book seems to be that Dylan has written powerful songs that articulately argue left wing points of view, but, lamentably, the man himself has never stepped properly up to the plate to defend the correct causes. Most especially, he indicts what he sees as Dylan's big cop out vis-a-viz the Vietnam war. Dylan never spoke out against that war in an interview or public appearance, despite constant entreaties, and never wrote a song that mentioned the war specifically (until 1985's quirky Clean-Cut Kid. ed: Wrong! see below *) Marqusee writes, "If public life is an ongoing test for the artist, then when it came toVietnam, Dylan failed." His assumption seems to be that but for some kind of moral cowardice or self-serving desire to be seen as above the fray, Dylan would naturally have joined the anti-war movement and condemned the actions of his government and countrymen.
In this assumption, Marqusee is exactly wrong, based on a preponderance of the evidence. However, analyzing the historical record with regard to Dylan's place in the Vietnam war / protest maelstrom will have to wait until I have the time to deal with it at proper length. For now, I just find it interesting to see how Marqusee, in the course of what is overall a positive review, attempts to make his reading of Chronicles conform to his overall thesis on Dylan.
He makes a point of mentioning Dylan's portrait of "blues guitarist and Marxist intellectual Dave Van Ronk," but fails to point out that Dylan's commentary on his politics is: "There was no point in arguing with Dave, not intellectually anyway ... I wasn't comfortable with all the psycho polemic babble." He likewise lauds Dylan's sketch of John Hammond, whom Marqusee chooses to label as "the veteran leftwinger who produced Dylan's first albums." However, though Dylan praises Hammond very highly as a true giant in terms of his contribution to the world of music, he does not grapple with his politics at all, except for a mention of Hammond's ire at having one of his artists (Pete Seeger) blacklisted. And Marqusee chooses not to note many of the other personalities Dylan sketches - how about Ray Gooch? Dylan dwells at length on his time with Ray and Chloe in their West Village apartment, and Ray's rather unconventional view of the Civil War, as well as his mesmerizing and massive collection of guns. (One of my favorite moments is Dylan asking him what all that stuff was for, and Ray's deadpan answer: "Tactical response.") So, Dylan's portraits of powerful personalities like Van Ronk and Hammond are not in themselves a reflection of his agreement with left wing politics. Quite the opposite, as the statement above about Van Ronk illustrates.
On the other hand, when Dylan states that his favorite politician was "Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater," well ... that's pretty darned direct.
Never fear - Marqusee is ready. Pre-emptively, in fact, he observes, regarding Dylan's musings on the inevitable cycles of history, "Here he seems to be reading back into his youth some of the attitudes he struck later on." Ah, so there we are: Dylan is re-inventing himself, rewriting history, or, as someone more tactless might put it: lying.
He says: "The young man who wrote 'Hattie Carroll', 'With God on Our Side', 'Masters of War' and 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall' was a poet of urgency, and he would have found the fatalism of the later Dylan far too pat." Leaving aside Marqusee's apparent belief that those songs were written to achieve some tangible, immediate end, rather than as timeless commentaries on aspects of our human dilemma, what about this notion of "fatalism of the later Dylan?" He is perhaps alluding to Dylan's lack of proper "urgency" with regard to any particular public causes - the fact that in interviews as well as in his music he now appears to be looking towards an eternal, God given peace and justice, rather than expecting such conditions to prevail here on this earth. Maybe he means that Dylan writes from the point of view of someone who sees this life as the blink of an eye, and sees that there is a bigger equation with which we have to reconcile ourselves. Marqusee seems to think that this "fatalism" was thankfully absent from Dylan's early work.
Uh, let me see. On Dylan's first and eponymous album, you can hear this:
Well, in my time of dying don't want nobody to mourn
All I want for you to do is take my body home
Well, well, well, so I can die easy
... Jesus gonna make up my dying bed.Then there are the songs, "Fixin' To Die," and "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean," and "Gospel Plow:"
Dig my grave with a bloody spade,
See that my digger gets well paid,
Keep-a your hand on that plow, hold on,
Oh, Lord, Oh, Lord, Keep-a your hand on that plow, hold on.None of these were written by the 20 year old Dylan, of-course, but rather carefully picked, one would think, as tracks on his first album and the then crowning achievement of his life. If you doubt his understanding of these songs at that age, put on that old LP again and listen to him sing them.
Fatalism? Let me see. The album is "The Times They Are A-Changin'," the year 1964. This one has some of Mike Marqusee's favorite songs on it. It also has "The Ballad Of Hollis Brown." Marqusee also speaks highly of this song in his book, describing it as "Dylan's presentation of the self-destruction of the oppressed ... ." Well, since Dylan was so young and filled with verve to change the world, I guess that this song about a destitute farmer who shoots his family and himself must end with some kind of call to the barricades - some direct plea to end all the suffering and to stamp out all poverty once and for all. No? Well, not exactly.
There's seven people dead
On a South Dakota farm
There's seven people dead
On a South Dakota farm
Somewhere in the distance
There's seven new people born.Seven people dead and seven new people born? Oh, well, that's alright then.
OK - Dylan is not being callous and dismissive of the loss, but he is taking a longer and more profound view of human tragedy and of life and of death. It is precisely this that Marqusee accuses Dylan of "reading back" into his younger self with this memoir: "He claims that the old songs taught him there was nothing new on this earth." Yes, Mike, that's exactly what those songs did teach him, and it's exactly what a song like "The Ballad Of Hollis Brown" teaches to those who can listen to it without leftist kneejerk blinders on.
Fatalism? A bad thing, we're supposed to believe? In what sense? If there's anything true that everyone should appreciate about life, it's that it's bound to be fatal. Being born is nothing if not a death sentence. Living - it kills ya every time. The truth however is that it's the easiest fundamental truth to ignore, and most of us breeze through the precious moments of our lives believing ourselves effectively immortal. If we didn't, it's obvious we'd act differently. I'd suggest that this is a constant and intense theme of Dylan's work, and you can draw a straight line from "In My Time Of Dyin'" on his first album through, "It's Alright Ma":
For them that think death's honesty
Won't fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes
Must get lonely.and on to "Sugar Baby," the last track of his most recent album, which ends:
Just as sure as we're living, just as sure as you're born
Look up, look up - seek your Maker - 'fore Gabriel blows his horn
And many songs in between (if not all of them, in some deeper sense).
So, I would say that Marqusee's attempt to show Dylan "reading back" and reinventing his younger self completely falls apart on cursory examination. And the entire broader effort by the left to co-opt and own the work of Bob Dylan is thankfully falling apart too, slowly but surely, aided and abetted by Dylan's great and irrefutable memoir, and loudly applauded here in the cavernous offices of RightWingBob.com.
* Wrong! Clean-Cut Kid does not include the word "Vietnam," though its reference to a "napalm health-spa" and the overall story certainly leave the listener convinced that this is the military action that the "kid" was involved in. On the other hand, the 1986 soundtrack song Band Of The Hand DOES mention Vietnam ("for all of my brothers from Vietnam and my uncles from World War II") though the song occupies a different landscape. Likewise, the 1981 unreleased track Legionnaire's Disease includes this verse:
Granddad fought in a revolutionary war, father in the War of 1812,
Uncle fought in Vietnam and then he fought a war all by himself,
But whatever it was, it came out of the trees.
Oh, that Legionnaire's disease.So that would be the FIRST mention of Vietnam in a published Dylan song.
Finally, one of Dylan's presumed contributions to the Traveling Wilburys, a 1988 song called Tweeter & The Monkey Man, includes these lines:
Tweeter was a boy scout before she went to Vietnam
And found out the hard way nobody gives a damn
They knew that they found freedom just across the Jersey Line
So they hopped into a stolen car took Highway 99So, my original statement that Clean-Cut Kid is the only Dylan song to mention Vietnam could hardly be more wrong, in a technical sense, and I'm indebted to a visitor named Michael M. for pointing this out. Nevertheless, I think that the intended point of my sloppily researched statement - that Clean-Cut Kid is the only Dylan song that directly deals with the "Vietnam question" - remains true.
That long black cloud is comin' down ... 10/14/2004
It was Bush's best performance of the three debates, in terms of both addressing the questions asked and taking apart Kerry's positions. So, Bush finishes strong, and from here on I think that his strength will only build, as the reality of who John F. Kerry is continues to percolate (albeit painfully slowly) into the consciousness of ordinary Americans.
Some of Bush's best lines, from my point of view:
(On healthcare)
I want to remind people listening tonight that a plan is not a litany of complaints, and a plan is not to lay out programs that you can't pay for.
He just said he wants everybody to be able to buy in to the same plan that senators and congressmen get. That costs the government $7,700 per family. If every family in America signed up, like the senator suggested, if would cost us $5 trillion over 10 years.
It's an empty promise. It's called bait and switch.
(On taxes and spending)
He talks about PAYGO. I'll tell you what PAYGO means, when you're a senator from Massachusetts, when you're a colleague of Ted Kennedy, pay go means: You pay, and he goes ahead and spends.
And ...
You know, he talks to the workers. Let me talk to the workers.
You've got more money in your pocket as a result of the tax relief we passed and he opposed.
If you have a child, you got a $1,000 child credit. That's money in your pocket.
If you're married, we reduced the marriage penalty. The code ought to encourage marriage, not discourage marriage.
We created a 10 percent bracket to help lower-income Americans. A family of four making $40,000 received about $1,700 in tax relief.
It's your money. The way my opponent talks, he said, "We're going to spend the government's money." No, we're spending your money.
Bush is no Cicero, but in these statements he got to the heart of the differences between him and Kerry on economic issues in language anyone can understand. Most Americans are in Bush's corner on these things - the "swing voters" just have to appreciate the degree to which Kerry obfuscates, and understand who he really is, based on his votes and actions and statements of the past. It's beginning to sink in, and a good healthy dose of negative advertising should finish him off. The new Swift Boat ads continue to be powerful and go to character, but other sources will and must pound home how his past betrays him as a hardcore liberal.
Then this election should shake out exactly as has been on the cards all along - a Bush victory more than big enough to make any post-election lawsuits moot.
PS: You know, the more I think about it, the more George W. Bush reminds me of Tom Mix.
Jet Pilot ... 10/13/2004
Who'd a thunk? The Village Voice reviews Chronicles and it's a fine review, with no mention of anti-war protest songs, no gratuitous slams of Bush, no back biting of Dylan for imaginary back slidings. Just a perceptive, appreciative review. There are quite a few of them around of-course, though this one is better written than most.
So, contrary to some of the negative pre-publication talk by some fearful and defensive Dylanites ("it's not going to be the truth blah blah blah"), it looks like Dylan has genuinely succeeded, thanks to the sheer strength of his writing, in blowing away his potential critics. It's just about impossible for any person with a fraction of fair-mindedness to read Chronicles and think that Bob is making it all up, and pursuing some twisted agenda of his own for re-invention, though this had been the line some were taking in advance, as covered in this space back then. Though there are some vignettes where he's self-evidently taking license ("I cut the radio off, crisscrossed the room, pausing for a moment, to turn on the black and white TV. 'Wagon Train' was on.") he's clearly doing it to set a scene and offer a flavor, before going on to describe experiences of greater import, which are actually believable memories.
NPR has their radio interview snippet with Bob. Pretty short, and pretty short on anything new, but, since it's so rare, it's just nice to hear Bob talking - even giggling. One piece of news (to me): Dylan says that along with being able to sail a boat, he can also fly a plane. Add that to his affinity for firearms and it seems he's a regular James Bond.
But could Roger Moore sing "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding" in a convincing fashion? Even Sean Connery? I think not.
Killing Me By Degrees ... 10/11/2004b
Since the Princeton episode came up, maybe it's a chance to focus on one of the countless delightful passages in Chronicles. I don't want to ruin the whole thing, which is worth reading in full along with the whole book, but to summarize, it's a moment when Dylan is frustrated at being labeled by a speaker as "the authentic expression of the disturbed and concerned conscience of Young America." He feels he's been taken by surprise, kind of a victim on stage maybe. This is 1970 and he's particularly upset because he felt he'd made all kinds of progress at getting away from titles like that, from the adoration of those worshipping him for something he was not. Now he laments with a mix of comedy and tragedy, that "this kind of thing could set it back a thousand years." He goes on:
Didn't they know what was happening? Even the Russian newspaper Pravda had called me a money-hungry capitalist. Even the Weathermen, a notorious group who made homemade bombs in basements to blow up public buildings, who had taken their name from a line in one of my songs, had recently changed their name from the Weathermen to the Weather Underground. I was losing all kinds of credibility.
Just hilarious stuff.
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The Winds Of Change Are Blowing Wild And Free ... 10/11/2004
CBS News Sunday Morning did a segment yesterday on Bob Dylan. Right Wing Bob interrupted his devastating boycott of that entity long enough to take it in. Though apparently timed to coincide with the release of Chronicles (they acknowledged that Simon & Schuster is a sister company of CBS), the segment didn't deal with that book specifically at all. It was basically set around the Christopher Ricks book, "Dylan's Visions Of Sin," and included on-camera chatting with both Ricks and the mid-atlantic pop music critic Paul Gambaccini. So it hovered around the question of whether Dylan is really a poet (how many times must a man ask a question, before he realizes the asking has answered it?). Oddly, though Ricks makes a thoroughly well studied case with his book, the CBS segment producers almost undid it all by having some English drama students solemnly reading aloud some of Dylan's better known lyrics while staring intensely into the camera.
If anyone reading this missed it, you didn't miss much. Reading a chapter of the Ricks book is worth about 500 of these shows. Most noteworthy to Right Wing Bob was this: it may have been the first time a TV show did a cheap summary of Dylan's career without labeling him the spokesman of a generation. They almost did, but not quite.
"It's an argument that has raged for decades: Is Dylan the voice of the baby-boom generation that without him, wouldn't have a voice?" (from the website, but the TV broadcast used a similar line.)
There's the key difference: they used the term, but they phrased it as a question. That alone is progress.
Still, I hope if Dylan was watching that he didn't do any serious damage by biting himself or anything. See the story in Chronicles on receiving the honorary degree at Princeton for more on that.
Landslide... 10/09/2004
Unapologetically copying Allah this morning, but picking a different photo.
And going out to Mullah Omar, wherever you may be:
Of-course Omar forgot to get those swimming lessons.
Original text copyright © 2004 by RightWingBob.com
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