Reading more Dylan; finished up the Oh Mercy chapter. Speaking as someone who'd never given '80s Dylan any thought, and having read the review of Chronicles (forget which publication) which proposed that most people would be perplexed and frustrated that Dylan concentrated a chapter on the making of a late-'80s record rather than Blood on the Tracks, I wasn't sure what I'd get from this part...
but you know what? A lotta times, there's nothing to be said about something going right, is there? I mean, do sports reporters grill the team that won? No; they ask them a couple sentences of some inane shit about "How does this feel?" It's the losers that have to dissect the preceding 2-3 hours like it was the friggin Battle of the Bulge. Do people write analytical online journals about their love-lives going well? Hah.
Having read this chapter though, I'm guessing that hey- this might be a good album after all. For instance, one of the "throwaway" songs, which Dylan says he wrote just because producer Dan Lanois had asked him to write more Bob-Dylan-type songs, is "The Man in the Long Black Coat," one of my fave Joan Osborne songs (covered it on her debut).
Certainly, too, nobody can say Dylan takes it easy on his mid-'80s output; he spends the first 5 pages or so of the chapter tearing himself to bits for going through the motions. Don't believe me? I'll take a quote or two from each page:
145 - "...up 'til then, I had been kidding myself, exploiting whatever talent I had beyond the breaking point. I'd known it for a while."
146 - "...too many distractions had turned my musical path into a jungle of vines... The windows had been boarded up for years and covered with cobwebs, and it's not like I didn't know it."
147 - "I felt done for, an empty burnt-out wreck. Too much static in my head and I couldn't dump the stuff. Wherever I am, I'm a '60s troubadour , a folk-rock relic... I'm in the bottomless pit of cultural oblivion."
148 - "My own songs had become strangers to me... I couldn't wait to retire and fold up the tent... I was what they call over the hill. If I wasn't careful I could end up ranting and raving in shouting matches with the wall."
148-149 (re: repertoire-change requests from Tom Petty's band, on their joint tour) "The problem was that after relying so long on instinct and intuition, both these ladies had turned into vultures and were sucking me dry. Even spontaneity had become a blind goat. My haystacks weren't tied down and I was beginning to fear the wind."
149 - (re: rehearsals with the 'Dead) "I felt like a goon and didn't want to stick around. The whole thing might have been a mistake. I'd have to go somewhere for the mentally ill and think about it."
Wow! Well, he eventually breaks from the rehearsals and finds some new inspiration a few blocks away from some jazz musicians, and starts planning changes in his live-performance approach.
He later talks about the arious things that possibly influenced the Oh Mercy songs, such as the song "Disease of Conceit" possibly suggested by the Jim Swaggart sex scandal:
"If you paid any amount of mind to all this Mickey Mouse stuff, the way these hoity-toity people's doors and windows aren't shut tight, you might end up in a private lunatic asylum. This incident might have had something to do with inspiring the song, but then again, it's hard to say. Conceit is not necessarily a disease. It's more of a weakness. A conceited person could be set up easily and brought down accordingly. Let's face it, a conceited person has a fake sense of self-worth, an inflated opinion of himself. A person like this can be controlled and manipulated completely if you know what buttons to push. So in a sense, that's what the lyrics are talking about. The song rose up until I could read the look in its eyes. In the quiet of the evening I didn't have to hunt far for it."
but you know what? A lotta times, there's nothing to be said about something going right, is there? I mean, do sports reporters grill the team that won? No; they ask them a couple sentences of some inane shit about "How does this feel?" It's the losers that have to dissect the preceding 2-3 hours like it was the friggin Battle of the Bulge. Do people write analytical online journals about their love-lives going well? Hah.
Having read this chapter though, I'm guessing that hey- this might be a good album after all. For instance, one of the "throwaway" songs, which Dylan says he wrote just because producer Dan Lanois had asked him to write more Bob-Dylan-type songs, is "The Man in the Long Black Coat," one of my fave Joan Osborne songs (covered it on her debut).
Certainly, too, nobody can say Dylan takes it easy on his mid-'80s output; he spends the first 5 pages or so of the chapter tearing himself to bits for going through the motions. Don't believe me? I'll take a quote or two from each page:
145 - "...up 'til then, I had been kidding myself, exploiting whatever talent I had beyond the breaking point. I'd known it for a while."
146 - "...too many distractions had turned my musical path into a jungle of vines... The windows had been boarded up for years and covered with cobwebs, and it's not like I didn't know it."
147 - "I felt done for, an empty burnt-out wreck. Too much static in my head and I couldn't dump the stuff. Wherever I am, I'm a '60s troubadour , a folk-rock relic... I'm in the bottomless pit of cultural oblivion."
148 - "My own songs had become strangers to me... I couldn't wait to retire and fold up the tent... I was what they call over the hill. If I wasn't careful I could end up ranting and raving in shouting matches with the wall."
148-149 (re: repertoire-change requests from Tom Petty's band, on their joint tour) "The problem was that after relying so long on instinct and intuition, both these ladies had turned into vultures and were sucking me dry. Even spontaneity had become a blind goat. My haystacks weren't tied down and I was beginning to fear the wind."
149 - (re: rehearsals with the 'Dead) "I felt like a goon and didn't want to stick around. The whole thing might have been a mistake. I'd have to go somewhere for the mentally ill and think about it."
Wow! Well, he eventually breaks from the rehearsals and finds some new inspiration a few blocks away from some jazz musicians, and starts planning changes in his live-performance approach.
He later talks about the arious things that possibly influenced the Oh Mercy songs, such as the song "Disease of Conceit" possibly suggested by the Jim Swaggart sex scandal:
"If you paid any amount of mind to all this Mickey Mouse stuff, the way these hoity-toity people's doors and windows aren't shut tight, you might end up in a private lunatic asylum. This incident might have had something to do with inspiring the song, but then again, it's hard to say. Conceit is not necessarily a disease. It's more of a weakness. A conceited person could be set up easily and brought down accordingly. Let's face it, a conceited person has a fake sense of self-worth, an inflated opinion of himself. A person like this can be controlled and manipulated completely if you know what buttons to push. So in a sense, that's what the lyrics are talking about. The song rose up until I could read the look in its eyes. In the quiet of the evening I didn't have to hunt far for it."
VIEW 18 of 18 COMMENTS
mikael:
D'ja get it yet?????
nocontrol:
What are you doing for the Super Bowl?