Something 4 The Weekend # 235

Bob Dylan: Bob Dylan: "Highway 51 Blues" [mp3]

Highway 51 runs about half a block from my front door. I may never have travelled it all the way down to no man's land, but I've certainly gotten as far as northern Illinois, a mostly bleak, flat place that I've never really cared for, especially Rockford, which may very well be hell on earth, but for entirely mundane reasons. Actually, it's the mundaneness of Rockford that makes it the hellscape that it is.

But I digress. Of course I digress.

A decade ago I had a fling with a woman who actually lived on Highway 51, up past Token Creek Park. I wouldn't say she was my baby, but she was a good time for a short while, and I suppose I was a good time for her, for awhile, and then we weren't. I still drive past her house on occasion, and I imagine her smile, her laugh, and her tits. She also made pretty good grilled cheese sandwiches.

Tonight I went and had a couple of stiff drinks with a couple of friends at The Lazy Oaf, a bar (well, lounge) on Highway 51 about two blocks from here. I think it was the bald dude with the white goattee who played "House Of The Rising Sun", also from Dylan's first album, on the jukebox. And I sat there for a moment wondering if choosing this song "Highway 51 Blues" would have been a better choice, or merely cheesy and obvious. Then I went out into the cold night and smoked a cigarette, staring at Highway 51, covered in brown slush with a dusting of grey snow. Roads often have their stories, even mythologies, but they're still just roads in the end.

I always loved this song.

Hotcha! Hank

Tuesday's Fortune: 11 January 2011

MEAL: 1 order (8) Crab Rangoon + 1 small order Sweet & Sour Chicken = $8.30 + $1.70 tip

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 172

Blitzen Trapper: Destroyer Of The Void: "Sadie" [mp3]

I was listening to the new Blitzen Trapper album this past week, and they're a band that evokes (for me) an era forty years gone...Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Grateful Dead, Lennon & McCartney, Bob Dylan..."Sadie" is the last song on the album, a sweet piano ballad that I can imagine Richard Manuel working out with The Band in some empty afternoon saloon, circa 1969. That's kinda what it sounds like to me. Maybe even a splash of Elton John from way back when. It's all good - the song, the album, the band...

Bob Dylan: Self-Portrait: "Little Sadie" [mp3]

Speaking of Bob Dylan, here he is doing his version of a trad song, "Little Sadie", which you might/should recognize as a variation of "Cocaine Blues" as made famous by Johnny Cash. Both songs were born of, and usurped, an old '20's song called "Bad Lee Brown", about a dude who kills his woman with a .44 which he hides beneath his head when he sleeps that night... The next day Bad Lee Brown gets caught in rhyming places like Jericho or Juarez, Mexico...Anyways...

I love Cash's "Cocaine Blues" as recorded at Folsom Prison because he spits the song out with such fervor, a song of drugs and murder and judges and jail, and the inmates at Folsom cheer like a fucking choir. Nothing beats that, not even this song by Dylan, which is a damn fine version from a strange and interesting album in his catalog, an album that's a small, overlooked gem in it's way, and if nothing else, an album with stories and theories around it...

The Beatles: The Beatles: "Sexy Sadie" [mp3]

"Sexy Sadie" is the third song about a woman named Sadie that I am aware of, or should I say the third song in my MP3 folders? And the thing of it is - this particular song is supposed to be called "Maharishi" to begin with, a stinging indictment of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whom the Beatles had visited in India , and who was accused of making improper and unwanted sexual advances towards one of the young woman in Fab Four's entourage. Harrison (and McCartney)thought the allegations were bullshit, and convinced Lennon to change the title and lyrics...Viola..."Sexy Sadie". "You made a fool of everyone..."

I am well into my 40's, and I cannot recall ever knowing a girl named Sadie. Not once, not ever, not even in passing.

Hotcha! Hank

Happy Birthday, Mr. Zimmerman

May you stay forever young...

Hotcha! Hank

Maneuver Inca Roads Sideways

Good luck finding a Bob Dylan video at YouTube that can be embedded...Damn you, Sony!

Instead, we've got 9:39 of Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention circa 1975, doing "Inca Roads", and the band is outta site...Arguably Zappa's best line-up ever...

Go ahead, argue.

Hotcha! Hank

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

Something 4 The Weekend # 95

Beck: Tropicalia EP: "Tropicalia" [mp3]

I think we take Beck for granted...

I mean, he never really goes away, so maybe we never get the chance to miss him, but I still think we kinda take him for granted...

Or maybe it's just me...I mean, I didn't really choose a Beck song for this week's S4TW. No, I couldn't decide, so I simply opened a random folder full of MP3s on my PC monitor, closed my eyes and clicked my mouse...This was the song I hit...

Beck hadn't even been on my mind this week, or in any recent weeks...That's all well and good, but I still think we take him for granted...

He's released 10 albums in 14 years, if I've done my math right, and in this day and age of artists working slow and milking their meager offerings, that's pretty impressive...Add in all the EPs and remix projects, and well, I've got 20 of 'em on my harddrive myself, and I know I'm far from complete...

In this regard, Beck reminds me of Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan, but for the sake of this post, let's stick with Dylan...

Critics and therefore fans have been waiting and looking for "the next Dylan" ever since Dylan was still in his fucking prime, but I've decided that Beck is the next Dylan.

Or maybe Elvis Costello was the next Dylan, and Beck is the next Elvis Costello...

Hmmm...

Here's what I'm thinking - all three are original voices half-rooted in tradition...Hard-working...Prolific recordings...Consistent while constantly evolving and exploring new styles and sounds...Work well with others...Dylan's and Beck's lyrics are often poetic and enigmatic, while Costello is nothing less than a masterful storyteller...And yes, to a certain extent, we take all three of 'em for granted...

Dylan and Costello are already living legends, but right here and now I'm gonna add Beck to that list...Barring a catostrophic motorcycle accident or whatnot, I believe that 20 years from now we're going to look back at a 35 year career of heavy touring, videowork and whatnot, and a catalog 40 albums thick...And most of it is gonna be good to excellent, none of it is gonna be half-assed and boring, and it's all gonna add up to an undeniably legendary career...

In the meantime, he'll just kinda float along our periphery, I suppose, just doing his thing...

Hotcha! Hank