Daily Ramblings:
One Too Many Mornings ...07/31/2005 03:40:17 pm
Absolutely sweet is this version I was lucky enough to hear of One Too Many Mornings, from October 1st, 2000 in Münster, Germany (mp3 sample here for a little while). About 4 1/2 minutes into it, when the verses are through, you can hear Dylan start to pick out a riff on his acoustic guitar. It's a simple, bouncy riff, and a counterpoint to what is an exquisitely poignant song - one of his Great songs, in my humble opinion, from the album The Times They Are A'Changin'
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He soon stops picking out the riff on his guitar, and then you hear the crowd cheer. I don't think it's because he's stopped playing his guitar, however, but rather because they've seen him pick up his harmonica. He begins blowing, and it's the same riff he had been playing a minute before on guitar, but now the counterpoint is clear, upfront, and - to these ears - completely heartbreaking. He leads it to a soaring finish, and it's just plain wonderful.
This magical moment from just one of the thousands of gigs that Dylan has played in so many little spots all over the world brings to mind for me that curious passage in Chronicles
It's a highly controlled system of playing and relates to the notes of a scale, how they combine numerically, how they form melodies out of triplets and are axiomatic to the rhythm and chord changes.
He credits his resorting to this method in the late '80s with revitalizing not only his guitar playing, but his singing. However, he makes clear that it wasn't about wanting to "play lead guitar and wow anybody." In fact, he even says that if his guitar were buried in the mix where only he could hear it, it "might be more effective."
With any type of imagination you can hit notes at intervals and between backbeats, creating counterpoint lines and then you sing off of it. There's no mystery to it and it's not a technical trick. The scheme is for real. For me, this style would be most advantageous, like a delicate design that would arrange the structure of whatever piece I was performing.
Again, I don't know what he's talking about, technically. Some people have laughed about it, and presumed that he's pulling everyone's leg. I think he's well aware that people would react that way, and he wrote this passage in a slightly impish manner. Nevertheless, I also think that he's being forthright. Anyone who's paid close attention to his concert performances of recent years, particularly from the late 90s through the early 00s (before he switched to piano) would have noticed how he often picked out simple lead lines on his acoustic guitar, and on occasion it became pretty clear that his simple riffs were basically taking the song and his band in a specific direction. It always seemed a little odd, considering his talented sidemen, that Dylan would sort of take over with his simple picking - but there's no question that he was busy trying to achieve something.
Is that some of what's going on in this One Too Many Mornings performance? As said, I'm no musicologist, but I tend to think so.
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