कल एक नई सुबह होगी …
बीते साल की तस्वीरो  को अब सहेज कर रख देना
नई सुबह एक बार फिर उनको चमक से भर देगी
रौशनी मे सारे स्याह अंधेरे मिट जाएँगे
और नई सुबह मेरा साया फिर मेरे साथ होगा

बर्फ को पिघला देंगी यह तेजपूर्ण किरने
आसमान नीला साफ़ होगा
ज़रा अपने पंखों मे भर लूं थोड़ी सी जान
के भर लू नई उड़ान
अब दूर तक देखना है यह जहाँ
ऐ नज़र अब क्षितिज के भी पार देख
धरती -आसमान के बीच ही नहीं सिमटती है यह दुनिया
एक दुनिया मेरे भीतर भी है
उसी का एहसास करके देख
नई सुबह मे एक बार फिर होसला बुलंद क़र
नई मंजिल ढूंढ नई राह देख
सिरों को स्वतंत्र छोड़ क़र बह जा हवा के साथ
नई सुबह है नए सफ़र का आगाज़ क़र
यकीन तो क़र बहती हवा का..
शायाद झोंके हवा के अनदेखी जन्नत तक पहुचाये  तुझको
बहुत आजमाया किस्मत ने तुझको एक बार अब तू किस्मत को आजमां क़र देख
आज़ाद चल मत रोक कदम…
मिले कोई हमराह हमसफ़र तो ऐतबार क़र
पर इंतज़ार मत क़र
अपनी रफ़्तार से तै क़र फासले…
नई सुबह नई मंजिल पे पहुचायेगी…

Kal ek nai subah hogi
Beetay saal ki tasveero ko ab sahej ker rakh lena …
nai subah ek baar fir unko chamak say bhar degi…
Roshni main saray syah andheray mit jayengay
or nai subah main mera saaya meray saath hoga…

Barf ko pighla dengi yeh tejpoorn kirnay…
Aasmaan neela saaf sa hoga
Zara apnay pankhon may,
main bhar loon thodi si jaan…
ke bhar loon nai udaan…
Ab door tak dekhna hain yeh jahan…
Ai nazar ab kshitiz ke bhi paar dekh…
Dharti aasman kay beech nahi simatti hai duniya…
ek duniya meray bheetar hai…
Usika ehsaas kerkay dekh…

Nai subah mai fir hoslaa buland hoga
nai manzil nai raah dekh
siroon ko swatantra chor
nai subah hai naye safar ka aagaz kar

yakken to ker behti hawa kaa…
shaayad hawa ke jhonkay andekhi jannat tak pahuchayen tujhko
bahut aazmaya kismat ne tujhko ek baar tu kismat ko aazma ker dekh
aazad chal mat rok kadam
milay koi hamrah humsafar to aitbaar ker…
par intezar mat kar
apni raftaar say tay ker faaslay

Nai subah Nai manzil tak pahuchayegi…

Time Flies (neo-acoustic & guitar pop 1982-91).  Home made compilation CD.

1. Exit 13 – Perfect Dream
2. New Morning – Working For The Payroll
3. Jean Go Solo – In Salford The Sun Doesn’t Shine
4. Penny Priest – Sometimes
5. The Suede Crocodiles – Stop The Rain
6. Border Boys – This Picture Is Nailed On My Heart
7. The Incredible Blondes – Where Do I Stand?
8. The Enormous Room – 100 Different Words
9. The Servants – The Sun, A Small Star
10. Bourgie Bourgie – Breaking Point
11. The Wallflowers – Blushing Girl
12. The Morrisons – Travellin’ Boy
13. Gangway – Out On The Rebound From Love
14. Twa Toots – Please Don’t Play ‘A Rainy Night In Georgia’
15. Golden Strings – My Life Is Like A Stanley Knife
16. The Chairs – Honey I Need A Girl Of A Different Stripe
17. The Bridge – Shame Is A Girl
18. April Showers – Abandon Ship
19. Dolly Mixture – Everything And More
20. Stars Of Heaven – Sacred Heart Hotel
21. Blue Train – Land Of Gold
22. Tiberius’ Minnows – Time Flies

By Joel Francis

After delivering three “important” albums in the past dozen years, it’s nice to know Bob Dylan can make an album without making a statement.

“Together Through Life” feels like an afternoon drive through a dusty Texas border town with the windows rolled down. Much of that feel comes from the ubiquitous accordion played by David Hildago of Los Lobos. Lyricist Robert Hunter – who co-wrote all but one of “Life”’s tunes with Dylan and is best known  for writing “Casey Jones” and other songs with the Grateful Dead – deserves some credit for the record’s lack of ponderousness.

But lack of weight doesn’t equal a lightweight record in this case. The album is a cousin to “New Morning,” a solid, offering that is overshadowed by the albums surrounding it and filled with songs Dylan recorded because he wanted to, not because he had something to say.

Sonically, the album is cut from the same cloth that has defined Dylan’s previous ‘00’s offerings. It is a pastiche of Chess blues, Sun Records country and rock and pre-war pop. While there’s nothing as sunny as “Silvio,” a track Dylan and Hunter collaborated on 20 years ago, there’s also nothing as forgettable as “Ugliest Girl in the World,” the other fruit borne of that union.

Guitarist Mike Campbell from Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers adds light acoustic guitars and mandolin to most tracks, but drops a murky electric guitar reminiscent of Neil Young on “Forgetful Heart.”  Lyrically the song resembles the material for “Time Out Of Mind,” right down to the dark lyrics: “The door has closed, if indeed there ever was a door.”

While Dylan albums are rarely sunny endeavors, the gloom of “Forgetful Heart,” and the sarcasm of “It’s All Good” are broken by upbeat numbers like “Jolene” and “Shake Mama Shake” – both of which sound like they came from the Chess Studios at 2120 S. Michigan Avenue circa 1958. The tongue-in-cheek “My Wife’s Hometown” might be Dylan’s funniest number since his knock-knock joke in “Po’ Boy “ while “I Feel A Change Coming On” has a twilight optimism.

Fans have grown accustomed to waiting nearly five years between new offerings. “Together Through Life” is surprise arrival little more than two years after “Modern Life.” “Life”’s runtime of 10 tracks and 45 minutes and lack of “statement song” like “Highlands” or “Ain’t Talkin’” make a tempting case to write the album off as a lesser work. Although it will never measure among the first-tier cannon, those who dismiss it do so at their own folly.

Et enfin, au revoir.  Thursday May 14 I woke up to a cloudy/rainy sky.  I had two things left on my todo list for Paris – le Musée Rodin and les Catacombes.  First, le Musée Rodin.

It was beautiful.

I wish I had known about it before; I would’ve gone there to study from time to time.  The Musée itself was nice, but the gardens in the back were absolutely stunning.  (In fairness, it was rainy so no one else was around and I more or less had the place to myself…)  It was really enchanting to walk through.

I finally found my way out and took the metro down to Denfert-Rochereau to the Catacombes.  I went in and found out it was free for art-history students.  Thanks for lying on my behalf, BU!

It was a ton of steps down, then a ton of boneless tunnels until I finally made it to the crypt.  (Who knew, I thought there were just bones everywhere.)  Before you walk in you read, “Arrête! C’est ici l’empire de la mort,” or, “Stop! This is the empire of death.”  The catacombs were enchanting in a totally different way… in an obviously more morbid way.  It was dreamlike almost.  The bones were everywhere, just tons of them, and there were quotes from old Roman and French poets about death scattered throughout.  The quotes were more impactful than the bones, I thought.  My favorite (I found out afterward) was an excerpt from Jacques-Charles-Louis Clinchamps de Malfilâtre’s Le Soleil fixe au milieu des planètes.  The excerpt that was in the catacombs was:

Insensés ! nous parlons en maîtres,
Nous qui dans l’océan des êtres
Nageons tristement confondus,
Nous dont l’existence légère,
Pareille à l’ombre passagère,
Commence, paraît, et n’est plus !

I won’t translate – translating common phrases I use every day is very different from translating famous French poetry from the 18th century.

After the catacombs, I wandered home and along the way found myself in an old record store called “Jazz Ensuite…” which was très charmant.  The guy had all sorts of amazing old records for pretty cheap it seemed, but alas I have no turntable.  He swore to me that there is no better sound than vinyl.  Yes sir.

But better than vinyl is live: so I met Thea again Thursday night for some jazz.  A failed attempt at New Morning (no way I’m paying 26€ entry) we went over to The Station, which I’d never been to, by the Moulin Rouge.  We got there 5 minutes before the band went on and thus were lucky enough to get seats.  We stayed for three hours.  It was good, what can I say.  And good company too!

Friday I woke up, did laundry, packed, cleaned, etc.  All day.  At 8:30pm I met Thea again, this time at Hippocampus, where the wait staff already knew it was my last night with them…  The music was good, the company was better, and we stayed and chatted till midnight.  Right before we left, the barmaid came over and gave me a pin that says Hippocampus.  It was uber cute.

Not wanting to say goodbye, I took Thea up to Duc des Lombards to listen in on a final jam session.  We got there a little after midnight, and we stayed until a little before 4am.  It was superb, a wonderful night to have been my last.  A few saxes, a few different drummers and pianists, a trumpet or two, a flugelhorn, and a violin.  Some of the coolest instrumentation ever (especially the violin – wicked awesome, I could never have imagined).  When Thea was literally falling asleep, we left Duc and went to catch the bus at Châtelet.

Half an hour later, the bus showed up.  And wouldn’t let any one on, with absolutely no explanation.  Nice one, Paris public transit.  We were on our way in another half hour, up to Thea’s.  When we finally got there (after the bus didn’t stop at the right place, another point for the RATP) it was 5am.  The first metro comes at 5:30, so I figured I’d wait around.  Thea kindly stood outside with me for a half hour and froze, then we said our goodbyes and I headed off for the metro.

I got home a little after 6am, put AC/DC on in my headphones and cleaned up my room for an hour.  Then I showered, had a pain au chocolat with my host family, and left for the bus.  My last view of the Arc de Triomphe:

The bus and plane rides were uneventful.  I met a man named Ousmane from the Democratic Republic of Congo.  He has twelve children.  He was headed to New York to sell African goods, buy American goods, and take them back for sale in the Congo.  We exchanged email addresses and phone numbers.  It was a nice way to use my French one last real time.

My father picked me up at JFK and drove me home.  Feeling brave I drank a V8 on the way home.  It was terrible.

I’ve been home for a week and I’m still acclimating to the lack of French and the lack of city.  I will be back in Boston soon, and I think that is when my Paris-sickness will hit me hardest.  When I’m in a city but don’t have a boulangerie around the corner, or a giant and amazingly beautiful oil derrick tower downtown that lights up and sparkles at night.

Whew, just hit me again.  I miss you, Paris.

But life is good here too, and in the end I’m sure that I will return to my beloved city of lights.  Until then, Paris will hold a very dear and very sore part of my heart.  Paris, je t’aime.

          Our mind has to understood deeply — the mind which needs lies, the mind which needs illusion, the mind which needs passion, the mind which cannot exist with the real, the mind which needs dreams The very truth is you are not dreaming only in the night. Even while awake, you are dreaming continuously about things that make you fresh for the next day…

          You may be looking at someone; you may be listening to me, but a dream current goes on within you might navigate you to some extent of life… There is no such nonsense say that a man can live without sleep, but he cannot live without dreams. In those days ideologist say sleep is necessity for our lives, but ironically they meant to say dream is the necessity.

           Day, night, mind goes on moving from no-dream to dream, then from dream to no-dream again. This is an inner rhythm. Not only that we continuously dream, in life also we project hopes into the future. The present is almost always a hell. You can prolong it only because of the hope that you have projected into the future. You can live today because of the tomorrow. You are hoping something is going to happen tomorrow — some doors of paradise will open tomorrow. They never open today, and when tomorrow will come it will not come as a tomorrow, it will come as today, but by the time your mind has moved again. You go on moving ahead of you: this is what dreaming means.

             You are not one with the real, that which is nearby, that which is here and now, you are somewhere else — moving ahead, jumping ahead. And that tomorrow, that future, you have named it in so many ways.

Comme nous en informe 20 minutes, le nouvel album de Bob Dylan, Together through life, s’est installé dès sa sortie en tête des ventes de disques aux Etats-Unis et en Angleterre.

En Angleterre, c’est son premier N° 1 depuis le sous-estimé New Morning (ressorti il y a quelques semaines dans une jolie édition digipack remastérisée) paru en… 1970.

Aux Etats-Unis, Billboard signale que Together through life est le cinquième N° 1 de Bob Dylan depuis 1963.

A 67 ans, Bob Dylan devient ainsi l’artiste le plus âgé à être en tête des “charts” !

Today morn, I opened up some brand new files from internet and searching in ways to escape this material world. Though I found to be very stupidous, some believe in destiny, some not, someone afraid-off neither someone would love it, may it will be true source of all the one I’m in searching for…

May my endless journey begin to reach the shadow less origin of source…

By ALEXANDER LAWRIE

ROCK legend Bob Dylan’s first chart-topping album for almost 40-years has seen him rewrite the history books – and spark a huge surge in sales for his back catalogue.

His new disc means he becomes the artist with the longest gap between chart number ones – an incredible 38 years and five months.

The crown was previously held by Tom Jones - whose 1999 comeback Reload topped the UK charts in October of that year – just over 31 years after his career-defining Delilah reached the top of the charts in August 1968.

And sales of Dylan’s back catalogue have also rocketed with purchases of his most notable recordings almost trebling their sales over the past month.

Music retailer HMV have reported sales of Dylan’s 1975 album Blood On The Tracks have rocketed by an amazing 188 per cent in the last six weeks, while his 60’s recordings Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde have increased by 145 and 176 per cent respectively.

Number One spot

HMV’s Gennaro Castaldo said: “Dylan is arguably our greatest cultural icon, and his words and music remain as relevant and as powerful today as they did five decades ago.

“His albums always sell consistently well, but with demand for his catalogue of recordings up significantly in recent months, it’s evident that Dylan is going through one of his zeitgeist moments, as a new generation of fans join his more-established followers in appreciating his musical legacy.”

The 60’s icon, who has just completed two successful concerts in Scotland, last hit the album chart number one spot in 1970 with his country album New Morning.

The Like A Rolling Stone star, now 67, performed two sell-out shows at Glasgow’s SECC and Edinburgh’s Playhouse over the weekend.

Fans were treated to a two hour performance in which Dylan thrilled them with a set-list that, unusually, contained many of his past hits.

Tracks from new album Together Through Life were also aired during his Scottish dates and received an enthusiastic response from his devoted fans.

Dylan still relevant

Dylan fan Fraser Wood, 42, from Musselburgh, was at the Edinburgh gig and says he is not surprised to hear of the increased sales.

He said: “The Edinburgh concert was terrific and the new songs really stand up well against his classics. There were a lot of young people at the Playhouse on Sunday night and I’m sure they will all be out buying his older material.

“It’s great to see because it shows how relevant Dylan still is to the music industry, even though he’s almost 70 now.”

By Calvin Palmer

American icon Bob Dylan jumped to the top of Britain’s album charts today, almost 40 years since his last  number one album in the UK, according to the Official Charts Company

Together Through Life, the singer-songwriter’s 33rd studio album, released in the UK on April 28, went in straight at number one some 38 years and five months after he last claimed the top slot.

He last topped the UK album chart in 1970, when New Morning reached number one on November 28 after its release in October.

Together Through Life is Dylan’s seventh number one album in Britain. His first was The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan in 1964.

“Dylan’s words and music remain as relevant and as powerful today as they did five decades ago,” said Gennaro Castaldo of music retailer HMV.

“His albums always sell consistently well, but it’s evident that Dylan is going through one of his zeitgeist moments, as a new generation of fans joins his more established followers in appreciating his musical legacy.”

Dylan now holds a record, previously held by Tom Jones, for the longest gap between solo number one albums.

Jones’ 1999 comeback album, Reload, topped the UK chart more than 31 years after Delilah reached the top in 1968.

Together Through Life was recorded late last year and is Dylan’s first studio album since 2006 and is his 53rd album, including compilations and soundtracks.

[Based on reports by BBC News and AFP.]

Uitati de pijamalele desuete!
Primavara aceasta, I.D. Sarrieri vine cu oferte speciale irezistibile pentru colectia New Morning  :

- camasuta scurta din satin negru  cu aplicatii de dantela (pret 104.3 RON)

- halat scurt din satin cu detalii din dantela (pret 171.5 RON)

Senzuale si rafinate, pentru dimineti si seri provocatoare.

You got a lotta nerve.

Bob Dylan publikfriar inte, han tänker inte att nu är det lördagkväll i Malmö och här sitter tiotusen människor som älskar mina gamla sånger.

Jag tror inte att han tänkte så på Globen heller, men där fick vi ändå den där konserten som jag kommer att minnas länge.

Jag menar: Lay, Lady, Lay och Tangled Up in Blue och Desolation Row och Love Sick och Chimes of Freedom.

På en och samma kväll.

Det var magiskt.

Igår var Dylan förvisso på ett strålande humör. Han log säkert tre gånger i en sprittande version av Tweedle-Dee & Tweedle-Dum, han betonade varje stavelse i Beyond The Horizon, som om det vore den viktigaste låten i världen.

Kort sagt: det var en något felbalanserad förställning igår, det var några låtar för mycket från de två senaste albumen, Love and Theft och Modern Times.

Jag hörde flera missnöjda röster efteråt, folk som inte hade känt igen särskilt många sånger.

Inte konstigt det, för när han blundade och stack ner handen i den gamla skattkistan så drog han upp verkliga rariteter, mest för oss finsmakare.

Framför allt Ballad of Hollis Brown och The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll – båda från The Times They Are A-Changin’, båda två texter »baserade på en sann historia«.

Man undrar ju lite hur han tänkte där.

Men vi fick också något så exklusivt som ett spår från New Morning, The Man In Me, och vi fick se Dylan fyra av två halvakustiska gitarrsolon i Watching The River Flow.

Det var alltså en intressant afton, men den var smalspårig, inte för en bred lördagspublik.

Själv tyckte jag att Hattie Carroll var värd hela biljetten.

Men jag är inte riktigt normal heller, som enligt min hustru lagt 200 timmar de senaste månaderna på att skriva en hel massa Dylan på den här bloggen.

Men nu är det slut.

Nu sätter jag punkt.

Här.

The space shuttle astronauts awoke this morning to the sounds of the Grateful Dead playing “Box of Rain,” according to today’s NASA mission update. Nice. “What do you want me to do?” is certainly an appropriate lyric for a space shuttle crew. 

I’ve always thought American Beauty was all the Grateful Dead anyone needed for normal purposes, though I’ve been known to play Workingman’s Dead on mornings when I’ve had a good night’s sleep and at least two cups of coffee.  I’d have requested “Ripple” myself, though maybe the key line — “If I knew the way, I would take you home” — might sound a little ominous under the circumstances.

Surely there’s a Bobcat lurking somewhere in the ranks of Mission Control who will do what needs to be done and play “New Morning” one of these space days.

“Main Nay Kaha” is a satirical poem by the famous leftist poet Habib Jalib called “Musheer” (Advisor). Jalib wrote it in response to a conversation he had with Hafiz Jalandari during the time of Ayub Khan’s dictatorship. It remains just as fresh and valid today.

Translation:

I said this to him
These hundred million
Are the epitome of ignorance
Their conscience has gone to sleep
Every ray of hope
Is lost in the darkness
This news is true
They are the living dead
Completely mindless
A disease of life
And you hold in your hands
The cure for their ills

You are the light of God
Wisdom and knowledge personified
The nation is with you
It is only through your grace
That the nation can be saved
You are the light of a new morning
After you there is only night
The few who speak out
Are all mischief makers
You should tear out their tongues
You should throttle their throats

Those proud of their eloquence
Their tongues are completely silent
There is calm in the land
There is an unexampled difference
Between yesterday and today
Only at their own expense
Are people in prison, under your rule

China
China is our friend
We’d give our lives for her
But the system that they have
Steer well clear of that
From far away say “salaam”
These hundred million asses
That are named the masses
Could surely never become rulers
You are the truth; they’re an illusion
My prayer is that
You remain President forever

by Dave Gebroe

I can remember very clearly the experience of discovering Bob Dylan’s mistakenly lambasted double-LP, ”Self-Portrait.”  I was but a mere babe in the rock ‘n’ roll woods at the time – no more than thirteen – and while I’d heard of the record, what I mainly knew was that it was not “Blonde on Blonde.”  If anything, it was the anti-”Blonde on Blonde.”

I unwrapped my vinyl copy, staring with stupefaction at the supposed Bob likeness that (dis)graced the cover.  In a 1984 interview, Bob admitted that he “knew somebody who had some paints and a square canvas, and I did the cover up in about five minutes.  And I said, ‘Well, I’m gonna call this album ‘Self Portrait.’”  Although its title insinuates full disclosure, tellingly this is actually the first Dylan album that doesn’t feature his face on the sleeve.

Flip the jacket over, and there he is gazing up at a bunch of trees – you know, just your ordinary, everyday country bumpkin.  Open up the bizarre gatefold, and one of the pictures that greets you is Dylan kneeling down next to a bunch of chickens.  Oh, so he’s a farmer now.  Put the first record on and what lightning bolt of genius greets you?  A group of female background singers warbling, over and over, “All the tired horses in the sun/How’m I supposed to get any riding [writing?] done?”  We wait for Dylan to come in.  We keep waiting.  Bob doesn’t come.  We’ve now officially tipped over from bad into WTF territory, but then we’re drenched in a thick, syrupy layer of Mantovani-like strings and  shoved beyond WTF-ville into a state of morbidly acute fascination.  It’s nothing less than a dare to the listener to bother hanging in there for the remaining 23 tracks.

If this all strikes you as overly strange, if the images and sounds are too far at odds with the notion of Dylan-as-genius for you to cozy up to, it’s possible this record’s not for you.  Frankly, you’d be missing the point entirely. ”Self-Portrait” is probably the most fascinating release by a major artist in the history of music, a perversely misanthropic, fanbase-alienating, contemptuous flip of the bird to all who’d ever had the gall to put this or any other artist on a pedestal.  The only record it can be compared to in its seething antagonism toward its audience is Lou Reed’s “Metal Machine Music.”

The most interesting thing about “Self-Portrait” and “Metal Machine Music” is that while musically dissimilar, they achieve the same effect. The artist wants you to hate it so badly he pulls every ace from his artistic sleeve to produce the end result of making you get up and remove it from the stereo.

Is that you who just asked, “Where the hell’s the appeal in that?”  Admittedly, it does help to be a big Bob Dylan fan to like this collection, but if you’re not a big Dylan fan you’ve got far greater issues to sort out than not comprehending the perversity of cherishing what may just be a purposely terrible double album.  The typical Dylan fanatic’s debate about “Self-Portrait” generally centers around “Sure, it’s conceptually fascinating, but are the songs anything to write home about?”  This is an almost impossible debate.  The record is like performance art; it’s all about intention.

The songs themselves are like a parade of preening sideshow freaks daring you to point and laugh.  It’s a grotesque blend of queasily disparate ingredients: a hodgepodge of covers by other Dylans (such as Gordon Lightfoot and Paul Simon), four limp live tracks from the Band-backed, 1969 Isle of Wight performance, alternate versions of songs thoroughly undeserving of alternate versions, and a smattering of unimaginably listless originals, instrumentals, lifeless jams, and easy-listening curios.

A few of the low-lights include:

• “In Search Of Little Sadie,” a gloriously crappy, cornpoke room-clearer that sounds like your drunk uncle whipping out his guitar at two in the morning;
• “Woogie Boogie,” contender for most half-hearted effort in Dylan’s entire catalog.  This is possibly the lamest blues jam in existence, replete with sock-hop sax belting its way through a party atmosphere so thoroughly ersatz it practically undergoes rigor mortis before your very ears.  I just have to believe that he was conscious this sucked;
• “The Boxer,” wherein Bob tries awfully hard to do his poorest possible impression of both Simon and Garfunkel, harmonizing in a mind-bogglingly out-of-tune manner that makes you think it has to be a parody…except that at that time Dylan was palling around with Simon in New York and out on Fire Island;
• “The Mighty Quinn (Quinn The Eskimo),” in which Dylan farts out his first released version of this classic song in the form of a yelpy, honky-tonk rendering suitable exclusively for driving home drunk from mid-western strip clubs;
• “Wigwam,” at the very least a glimpse into what a fly on the wall might be subjected to while Dylan showers;
• Last and, yes, least, “Alberta #2″ takes the cake as the very definition of ”limping to a close.”  This is no grand statement of badness, that would be too good.  Instead, Dylan goes for the kill with something thoroughly tossed off and redundant.

To throw off the scent of having enacted a purposeful act of musical terrorism, Dylan was careful to also include a small handful of classically good songs, like “Days Of ‘49″ and “Copper Kettle.”  He then insured a sense of consistency for the listener by coating the entire enterprise in a suffocating blanket of Muzak-y strings and generic female background singers.  But he proceeded to make mincemeat of that consistency by hopscotching back and forth between two distinct singing voices: voice-of-his-generation Dylan and the froggy, nasal whine he’d previously affected for “Nashville Skyline” the year previous.  So…will the real Bob Dylan please stand up?

Or, better yet, sit out.

To understand “Self-Portrait,” you have to understand where Dylan was at this point in his life and career.  Having created such an impressive body of work, he was saddled with the baggage that comes with straddling the cusp between man and myth. When people are gaining notoriety for simply rifling through your trash for “clues,” you’ve officially got problems.

Here’s Dylan in 1984 again:

This was just about the time of that Woodstock festival, which was the sum total of all this bullshit.  And it seemed to have something to do with me, this Woodstock Nation, and everything it represented.  So we couldn’t breathe.  I couldn’t get any space for myself and my family, and there was no help, nowhere.  I got very resentful about the whole thing…There’d be crowds outside my house.  And I said, ‘Well, fuck it.  I wish these people would just forget about me.  I wanna do something they can’t possibly like, they can’t relate to.  They’ll see it, and they’ll listen, and they’ll say, ‘Well, let’s get on to the next person.  He ain’t sayin’ it no more.’

Of course, it wouldn’t be Bob Dylan if there weren’t also indications that contradicted the idea as “SP”-as-joke.  For example, in Anthony Scaduto’s 1971 bio “Bob Dylan: An Intimate Biography“, Dylan says flat-out: “It’s a great album.  There’s a lot of damn good music there.  People just didn’t listen at first.”

This kind of kaleidoscopic reasoning may strike some as endlessly aggravating, but back in 1970 Dylan was laying the groundwork for the mercurial, you-can’t-catch-me approach that artists like Eminem later took, defying their audience to peg them down with each turn of phrase.  To a true artist, this is a crucial step – not just donning a series of costumes, a la Bowie, but confounding expectations to a point where all that one has worked for is potentially razed to nothing, to be built back up from scratch.  Forget aesthetic truth, this seems like an imperative to the maintenance of sanity when a level of fame like Dylan’s is taken into consideration.  If he’s not one step ahead, if he just doles out all the answers like a good little monkey, we will swallow him whole, given half a chance.

Thus, ”Self-Portrait” is as crucial and important a record as “Blonde On Blonde.”  The latter built the house, and the former knocked it down.  And “New Morning” was, well…a new morning.  Those with discerning taste know all too well the difference between “good-bad” and “bad-bad.”

In a 2005 interview, Dylan said, “Well my wife and kids and me would sit around after supper on a Saturday night, and we’d all put ideas into a hat.  I picked a slip of paper out of the hat, and that would be the week’s activity.  One time it might be to get myself photographed at the Western Wall so people would think I was a Zionist.  Another time it might be to get a job pumpin’ gas in Paramus, New Jersey, so the press would report I was crazy, or a sicko, or a Mormon.”

On the week of August 31, 1969 , Dylan seems to have pulled a particularly interesting slip of paper out of the hat.  I’m guessing it read “Desecrate the classics.”  The “Self-Portrait” version of “Like A Rolling Stone,” in particular, truly captures an artist setting fire to his muse.  It’s in this deflation of his biggest classic that the album is best captured in miniature.  Only three short years after utilizing the provocation of the notorious “Judas!” heckler to reach celestial heights with the same tune, backed by the same Band, Dylan reclaims “Rolling Stone” as his possession fully, to do with what he will.  Whether that means bestowing upon us the incendiary fulfillment of rock’s potential, or mischievously scrawling moustaches on his own Mona Lisa, it’s a decision that is only Dylan’s to make.  Here, he’s bringing it all back home, all right. He drives the song into the ground, underscoring the valid point that if an artist can create a masterpiece, it should be entirely up to him to fuck it up if he should so desire.  What better way for mojo to be recycled back into the canon of artistic creation than to create fertilizer out of it?

P.S. Even stranger than anything involving the actual “Self-Portrait” is the fact that there’s another album called “Dylan” that’s actually partially composed of “Self-Portrait” outtakes!  That’s like taking out your trash, deciding it stinks way too bad to be placed with the rest of your garbage, and finding a whole new dumpster in which to throw it away.

The story goes that Columbia released “Dylan” in 1973 as a revenge tactic after Bob changed labels.

But me? I’d like to think it was Dylan’s decision.

]]> http://laurentsamuel.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/happy-birthday-mr-elliott-murphy/ Sun, 15 Mar 2009 23:00:43 +0000 laurentsamuel http://laurentsamuel.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/happy-birthday-mr-elliott-murphy/

Ce 16 mars 2009, Eliott Murphy fête ses 60 ans. Joyeux anniversaire !

Un anniversaire célébré avec un peu d’avance samedi 14 mars au New Morning. Le rendez-vous annuel d’Elliott Murphy et ses Normandy All Stars avec ses fans parisiens s’est transformé en une célébration bon enfant et émouvante de l’entrée du chanteur américain dans une soixantaine épanouie. Choeurs assurés par l’un des chanteurs du groupe Pow Wow et les chanteuses de Native, messages d’amis absents (rien cependant d’un certain Bruce S. du New Jersey…), intervention de la soeur d’Elliott venue spécialement de New York, parodie de Marilyn Monroe souhaitant happy birthday au Président Kennedy par l’épouse du chanteur… Autant de moments émouvants.

Mais la musique était aussi au rendez-vous, avec un Olivier Durand plus en forme que jamais, notamment sur des titres comme Diamonds by the yard ou Last of the rock stars. Et Gaspard, le fils d’Elliott Murphy, bien parti pour se faire un prénom. Un superbe concert qui s’est terminé en apothéose sur Rock Ballad, l’une des plus belles chansons d’Elliott Murphy.

Ci-dessous, une version live de Rock Ballad, enregistrée le 25 janvier 2009 en Espagne.

Elliott Murphy

Un concert à ne pas rater : Elliott Murphy le 14 mars au New Morning.

Pour ceux qui n’ont pas encore leur billet pour le show annuel du correspondant parisien de Bruce Springsteen, les infos pratiques sont ici.

On occasion, I write book reviews for the website www.goodreads.com. These reviews cover the gamut of whatever I happen to be reading at the time–from monsters like David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest to miniaturized books of short stories put out by McSweeneys and everything in between. I have a definite lean towards fiction with no sense of chronology, style, or especially, popularity. If you are hoping for an imminent review of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, don’t hold your breath.

Anyhow, the review below is of Bob Dylan’s celebrated memoir, Chronicles: Volume 1. Enjoy.

I am excited to report this book is fucking awesome.

There are some problems, however, in writing a cultural, multi-perspective review, which is what a book like this requires. Let me put it to you this way: I am only a measly 26 years old. Bob Dylan started performing music in like 1957, almost a quarter century before I was born. From then to now, he’s released nearly 1,000 songs, toured around the world, and oh yeah, become a musical Icon, Legend, Myth, and whatever other capitalized word you want to call him. Rolling Stone magazine ranked his song “Like a Rolling Stone” (go figure) the number 1 greatest song of all time. How is that for an endorsement? His songs have been covered innumerable times by an wide and eclectic range of artists, from Joan Baez to Jimi Hendrix. He went from traditionalist folk hero with a super hard-on for Woody Guthrie to a rock and roll bandleader, backed up by The Band, who subsequently pissed off all the old folk snobs by saying “Play it fucking loud.” With a voice that sounds like coarse sandpaper and a singing cadence that can best be described as wobbly, Bob Dylan became America’s Poet, a surging Lifeforce of thought and feeling, summing up the 60s counterculture in a few songs, and becoming a ubiquitous name on a lot of people’s minds throughout the world and over the years. It’s really kind of hard to grasp the enormity of that.

And yet Dylan has charged through it all, remaining an elusive, seclusive, all-too-human guy. Constantly adapting new sounds and guises, he admits in his memoir Chronicles, that when his record producer Danny Lanois asks him what he’s been listening to lately, he says without a hitch, “Ice T, Public Enemy, N.W.A., Run D.M.C.” His producer was surprised, but Bob didn’t see why. He says, “These guys weren’t standing around bullshitting. They were beating drums, tearing it up, hurling horses off cliffs. They were all poets and knew what was going on.” He goes on to say, “Somebody different was bound to come along sooner or later who would know that world, been born and raised with it . . . be all of it and more . . . . . He’d be able to balance himself on one leg on a tightrope that stretched across the universe and you’d know him when he came–there’d be only one like him.” I think we can definitively say this hypothetical person he is referring to is not Kanye.

This memoir is dripping with experience and insight. If Bob Dylan applied at Subway tomorrow, what would his resume look like? How do you condense that down to one page? These ruminations are a revelation, and I’m not even super keen on the guy’s music. My parents, for that matter, can’t stand the guy. I admit to getting a lot of mileage making fun of the way he sings. Yet he still sucks me in. There’s something very real and very important about him, some indefinable presence that spans across the eons. But what another good question to ask is if Bob Dylan could have lived and thrived in any other time than now? Is he a product of serendipity, mixed in with an earnest approach and truthful voice? There are no easy answers.

Let me try and reign in the abstractness of this review. Looking at the whole, the big picture, is too cloudy and overwhelming. It just doesn’t serve a purpose. It’s fitting that Dylan broke this book down into five sections, different periods of his life broken up chronologically. It begins with him signing his first record contract in New York and then breaks off into a reminiscence about literally showing up in the city one day with some ragged clothes and a guitar strapped to his shoulder, breaking into the Greenwich Village folk scene, and crashing at people’s apartments, listening to their collection of old 78s, and reading historical books and Rimbaud. He speaks of the people, the music, and the things that influenced and shaped him, led him in the direction he needed to go. Naturally, he talks a lot about the great importance of folk music and how that those archetypes and stories seemed more real to him than the real world, life distilled down to its essence, that folk music spoke to him in mysterious ways like no other could, and that he saw no other future other than making his own music in that way. It’s like The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but without all the guffawing and percolating indecisions and insecurities. Dylan even takes a jab at James Joyce in this book, actually.

The middle sections of this book skip over his most famous albums and years, and instead focuses on more obscure albums, New Morning and Oh Mercy, albums that I haven’t even listened to, actually. I guess he’s saving the real juicy stuff for subsequent Chronicles. I read somewhere online that he’s busy writing the second one now. The New Morning and Oh Mercy sections cover Dylan at two very different points in his life. New Morning was released in 1970, when times were a-changin’, and Dylan found himself not wanting to be the countercultural icon he’d become. He had a family and just wanted to put bread on the table and live an easy life. At the same time, he became involved in writing the music for a play for the poet Archibald MacLeish. Though he wrote a few songs for the play, he eventually backed out, saying, “Archie’s play was so heavy, so full of midnight murder, there was no way I could make its purpose mine.”

Oh Mercy was released in 1989. For that album, he went down to New Orleans to record the album with the record producer Danny Lanois. Lanois is probably most famous for his producer credits for U2, most notably The Joshua Tree. Lanois came recommended from Bono, and so Dylan traveled down there, shacked up in a rented house for a few months, and got to work. Just prior to that, he had mangled his hand in an accident and didn’t even know if he’d be able to play music again. His songwriting well had dried up and he thought he was at the end of the road. Yet during his recuperation, some spark hit him again, and down to New Orleans he went.

Dylan spends a lot of time on these album sections writing about the craft on songwriting and music-making in general. He sees patterns and formulas in the way he works. A little alteration from a rhythmic pattern can be messed with in infinite ways if one has the imaginative know-how. He seems to draw his poetic inspirations from the earth itself, conjuring them up like a sorcerer. Oh God, I’m starting to write like Dylan now too.

Chapter 5 goes back to New York in the early days, encapsulating the novel. He speaks at length of growing up in Minnesota, getting out on his own, discovering folk music for the very first time. Forgive the messianic metaphor, but before God made the earth, God had to be born himself.Chronicles is written with a unique elegance, a voice undeniably Dylan’s. No ghostwriters here. It’s informative, ruminative, and inspiring. It’s a wonderful self-portrait of a sturdy, American man, and I will anxiously seek out Volume 2.

As a finishing postscript aside, Dylan recalls traveling to Princeton sometime in 1969 with David Crosby to receive an honorary doctorate degree. Essentially, the people there are cow-eyed, suck-ass morons from their point of view, and Crosby remarks on the car ride back to Connecticut, “Bunch of dickheads on auto-stroke.” I must admit: it really explained to me why I want to hang out with David Crosby.

Redaktionen är hårt belastad för närvarande och ber därför om ursäkt för att Dagens Dylan Vol. 5 landar först nu här på Meningen med livet.

Åter igen är det exklusivt för er med Spotify.

Av outgrundliga skäl hittade vi inte Bob Dylans album New Morning på Spotify, vilket gör att Dagens Dylan # 46, Went To See The Gypsy, inte finns med.

Dagens Dylan Vol. 5 innehåller således bara 9 låtar.

God lyssning!

Went to see the gypsy,
Stayin’ in a big hotel.
He smiled when he saw me coming,
And he said, “Well, well, well.”
His room was dark and crowded,
Lights were low and dim.
“How are you?” he said to me,
I said it back to him.

I went down to the lobby
To make a small call out.
A pretty dancing girl was there,
And she began to shout,
“Go on back to see the gypsy.
He can move you from the rear,
Drive you from your fear,
Bring you through the mirror.
He did it in Las Vegas,
And he can do it here.”

(Went To See The Gypsy, 1970)

I en intervju från 1975, fem år efter New Morning släpptes, bemötte Bob Dylan de misstankar som växte till en sanning 1970, nämligen att han skulle ha skyndat på releasen av New Morning, för att han var missnöjd med föregångaren Self Portrait, ett album som fick motta mycket ljum kritik i pressen.

I didn’t say, ‘Oh my God, they don’t like this, let me do another one’. It wasn’t like that. It just happened coincidentally that one came out and then the other one did as soon as it did. The Self Portrait LP laid around for I think a year. We were working on New Morning when the Self Portrait album got put together.

Hur som helst: New Morning innehåller tre låtar som spelades in i mars, under sessionen med Self Portrait. Utöver denna låt, Went Down To The Gypsy, var det If Not For You och Time Passes Slowly. Ingen av dessa inspelningar godkändes för master-version till albumet, utan Dylan spelade in dem på nytt, dels i den berömda sessionen med George Harrison, den 1 maj i New York, och dels i början av juni.

Went To See The Gypsy anses handla om när Dylan mötte Elvis Presley. Liksom i Winterlude, från samma album, är Went To The Gypsy en sorts förövning till materialet på Planet Waves, i det att Dylan söker sig tillbaka till sina rötter i Minnesota och låter dåtidens minne reflektera i samtiden. Tanken att Dylan ska ha träffat Elvis i Minnesota vid en tidpunkt, när de båda var så kända, och dessutom efter en av Elvis spelningar i Las Vegas, förefaller dock orimlig. Däremot kan Dylan mycket väl ha sett någon tidig konsert med Elvis i Minnesota. Elvis spelade nämligen i S:t Paul den 13 maj 1956. Alltså bara någon vecka innan Robert Allen Zimmerman fyllde 15 år.

I love you more than ever, more than time and more than love,
I love you more than money and more than the stars above,
Love you more than madness, more than waves upon the sea,
Love you more than life itself, you mean that much to me.

Ever since you walked right in, the circle’s been complete,
I’ve said goodbye to haunted rooms and faces in the street,
To the courtyard of the jester which is hidden from the sun,
I love you more than ever and I haven’t yet begun.

(Wedding Song, 1973)

En av alla anledningar att fascineras av Bob Dylan är att följa honom och ständigt se hur han “återföds”. Resan genom 60-talet med den första tidens protestsånger, perioden med “gotta-move-on” sånger och, slutligen, den avskalade John Wesley Harding, som ett första – och magnifikt – livstecken efter den berömda motorcykelolyckan. Vid den här tiden är Bob Dylan en gift man, och några veckor innan 60-talet övergår i 70-talet (Jacob Dylan föddes den 9 december 1969) är han dessutom fyrabarnspappa.

Vi är några stycken som kan skriva under på att den sortens yttre förändringar påverkar oss som män.

Allt detta kan vi avläsa i Bob Dylans sånger. Uppföljaren Nashville Skyline, och till stor del även New Morning, visar upp en Dylan som finner lycka i, och vila i, en kvinnas kärlek. Kärleken omfamnade allt, övervann allt. Som i I Threw It all Away:

Love is all there is, it makes the world go ’round,
Love and only love, it can’t be denied.

Tre och ett halvt år senare, när Dylans nästa “riktiga” album Planet Waves släpps, tar han ännu ett steg bort från askesen på John Wesley Harding. På albumets slutspår Wedding Song förklarar Dylan att vägen till frälsning går genom kvinnan, snarare än religionen:

What’s lost is lost, we can’t regain what went down in the flood,
But happiness to me is you and I love you more than blood.

Men, som jag nämnde i samband med Dirge, på Dagens Dylan # 42,  så är Planet Waves en rik platta, som präglas av även mörkare stråk. Som Michael Gray skriver låter albumet rentav, i likhet med New Morning, ännu bättre idag än när det kom. Till exempel låter Dylan här, på flera spår, det förflutna reflektera i nuet. Så här avslutar han Wedding Song:

‘Cause I love you more than ever now that the past is gone.

Och i en annan vers passar han på, än en gång, att markera avståndet till den ofrivilliga ledarrollen i 60-talets proteströrelse:

It’s never been my duty to remake the world at large,
Nor is it my intention to sound a battle charge

Welcome
d new
morning
wid a
Smile
on ur “Face”,
Love
in ur “Heart”
Gud Thoughts
in ur Mind
& U will
hav a Wonderful Day.
Wish u
A Lovly mrng

I hate myself for lovin’ you and the weakness that it showed
You were just a painted face on a trip down Suicide Road.
The stage was set, the lights went out all around the old hotel,
I hate myself for lovin’ you and I’m glad the curtain fell.

I hate that foolish game we played and the need that was expressed
And the mercy that you showed to me, who ever would have guessed?
I went out on Lower Broadway and I felt that place within,
That hollow place where martyrs weep and angels play with sin.

Heard your songs of freedom and man forever stripped,
Acting out his folly while his back is being whipped.
Like a slave in orbit, he’s beaten ’til he’s tame,
All for a moment’s glory and it’s a dirty, rotten shame.

(Dirge, 1973)

1974 års Planet Waves, där Bob Dylan återförenades med The Band, vispades ihop på knappt fyra dygn i början av november 1973 i Los Angeles. Robbie Robertson hade, i likhet med Dylan, vid den här tiden, flyttat till västkusten, och deras förnyade kontakt ledde så småningom också till comeback-turnén, som påbörjades efter nyåret 1974.

Planet Waves bär vissa spår av hastverk. Några sånger flyter samman, och det hör till saken att Dylan lade ner mer än halva inspelningsperioden på att få till en version av Forever Young som han var nöjd med. Till slut hamnade två versioner på plattan.

Planet Waves präglas också, till skillnad från till exempel New Morning, av lite mörkare stråk. Detta gäller inte minst den allra sista låten som spelades in, den 14 november. Dylan hade redan material till plattan men tydligen var det viktigt att få med Dirge. En låt som i mångt bör läsas som en sorgesång, ja, stundtals en närmast hatisk sådan, över folkmusikperioden i Greenwich Village.

Rob Fraboni, tekniker vid inspelningen minns:

Bob went out and played the piano while we were mixing the album. All of a sudden, he came in and said, ‘I’d like to try ‘Dirge’ on the piano.’…We put up a tape and he said to Robbie, ‘Maybe you could play guitar on this.’ They did it once, Bob playing piano and singing, and Robbie playing acoustic guitar. The second time was the take.

Ännu ett bevis, i Dylans karriär, på när det första (eller här andra) ögonblicket är det som innehåller mest nerv och autencitet. Michael Gray skriver:

And to listen to the shimmering, edgy, perfectly attuned duet between Dylan’s piano and Robertson’s guitar, out there alone on an aural high-wire on ‘Dirge’ is to hear what long-term musical togetherness can yield between two engaged musicians.