Something 4 The Weekend # 113

Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited: "Tombstone Blues" [mp3]

Now, if you got me really drunk, and really high, around a campfire some dark Saturday night, I'd tell you that my favorite Bob Dylan tune is "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)", and I'd start singing "Darkness at the break of noon, Shadows even the silver spoon, The handmade blade, the child's balloon, Eclipses both the sun and moon, To understand you know too soon, There is no sense in trying..." And I'd fumble with the chords on my guitar, and take another hit off the pipe, and exclaim suddenly and as a matter of fact, that my all-time favorite Bob Dylan tune is actually "I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)"...

And as I sit here typing this, messed up on nothing more than 3 Tylenol PM gelcaps and two fingers of Maker's Mark, I'm gonna stick with that one..."I Don't Believe You" is a song about a hook-up, a one-night-stand during which Bob falls in love with the lady in question, or becomes smitten at the very least...Which is kinda adorable, when you think about it, because nobody really ever thinks about a smitten Dylan, but there he is, in all his glorious youth, bewildered because the woman ignores him the next day...And you can hear the anguish and confusion in his voice (further proof that Dylan is a much better singer than most people ever gave him credit for), but by the end Bob gives us what we've all come to expect from him, a bit of wisdom delivered with the slightest of sneers and some clear-eyed cynicism...

[blather]

But for the purposes of the weekend, and S4TW, I'm gonna go with my third favorite Bob Dylan tune, "Tombstone Blues"...Not only is it a early example of Country-Rock, but it's possibly the hardest song on an album that was the second in the defiant one-two punch of Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited in 1965...when Dylan "went electric" and pissed off the non-believers...And they called him "Judas"!

So, not only does "Tombstone Blues" blast with an almost Punk-like fury, but it's fully-loaded with non-sequiters and kitchen wisdom for six minutes and twelve verses, and I think if one listens to this song enough times, eventually it all makes absolute and perfect sense. I've probably listened to it 200 times (and even performed it a handful of times), and I'm still not sure...But it's fun, and it rocks seriously, and right now I believe it's actually a telling of the history of The United States, except in my mind, I think America...

But that might just be the Tylenol talking...

Hotcha! Hank