things twice

Time for another track, perhaps.

This one is a long time coming as well. It started with the idea that this song has two faces.

One is the defiant, harsh, “screw you” character that puts it in the category with Positively 4th Street and Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat. The cocky, major-key bravado that says: “you may think we have something going here, but we don’t.”

But there is also a more mellow angle to the song. All those things that it ain’t me that’s going to put up with — it’s not that they’re all that unreasonable, really, as long as they don’t turn into a lifestyle or a pattern of empty habit. In this light, the song becomes more of a second cousin …

Jokerman is, without any doubt whatsoever, one of the great classics on a rollercoaster album such as Infidels. The single-guitar version on dylanchords, however, never really did it for me: great song, great harmonies, but so thin when you’re alone with your guitar, without the exquisite drums’n'bass work by Sly and Robbie.

Then, one day, on my way home from work, I was somehow humming Jokerman while thinking Moonlight (this was back when “Love and Theft” was recent news), and something clicked.

I’ve had it in the back of my head for some years now, so I figured it was time to record it.

Enjoy:

Jokerman meets Moonlight

I suppose one could say that where Dylan’s Jokerman tends towards the enigmatic, mine is more …

The story so far
I’ve been involved with the Damiano-Dignity “case” now for more than a decade. Here’s a summary, and my last words (I hope) on this matter.
Act One: Musicological Inquiries
When I first heard that Dylan had stolen “Dignity” from a poor songwriter, James Damiano, I was more sympathetic towards the victim than surprised about the theft.

Then, the victim started flooding the net with his case. Somewhere in the vast material, which mostly set out to prove — in tedious detail — the degree and kind of contact between Damiano and various persons somehow associated with Dylan’s organization, there was also one piece of musical evidence: a graph comparing Dignity” and “Steel Guitars”, the song Dylan allegedly had appropriated:

[caption id=”attachment_760″ …

It can’t be easy: to be a painter and be called Bob Dylan. If one exhibits one’s pictures, most of the visitors will be fans of the musician Bob Dylan who probably show up mainly because they love his songs, or to find hidden references to Visions of Johanna. Then there are the curious ones, who just want to see how a rock singer and an icon paints. And lastly those who malevolently claim that if it hadn’t said “Dylan” over the door, no gallery would ever have exhibited them, and nobody would have cared anyway.

And perhaps they’re right — we’ll never know, since there isn’t a single person in existence in that segment of the population where people go …

I love this album. It’s a perfect follow-up, not to Dylan’s trilogy of albums vacuum-cleaning the American song tradition for inspiration, but to his Theme Time Radio Hour. (And for the record, my negative evaluation of his latest studio albums does not stem from indignation over ‘theft’, should anyone have gotten that impression, but from a number of lacklustre performances of material of declining quality.)

It’s hilarious. Finally, the ‘wolfman’ voice has found a home where it belongs: as a counterweight to the saccharine, a way to scare the living soul out of the unsuspecting innocent, and perhaps – just perhaps – blow some meaning into these songs again.

Because surely it’s hilarious. But that’s not the main reason why …

While there is general agreement that no matter what one thinks about the lyrics on Slow Train Coming, musically it is one of Dylan’s strongest, the general verdict is not equally lenient with Saved. With its ghastly cover — rivalled in tackiness only by Shot of Love — and its unequivocal title, it has proved to be an even bitterer pill to swallow than the precursor.

Which is understandable, but not quite fair. Saved is an excellent album, provided one can endure the obnoxious born-again evangelization. It may be a far cry from Slow Train Coming in the areas of polish and commercial appeal, but it has an energy, a punch, and a new approach to communication and message that …

… or at least his little helper. You know, the little guy who sneaks in when Mr Frost has gone for lunch, and turns knobs that are best left alone. His intentions may be the noblest, but as we all know, Satan sometimes comes as a Man of Peace.

Frost, who also goes by the name of Bob Dylan, has produced a number of said artist’s records, and one would suspect that he, of all people, would agree with Dylan’s harsh verdict in a recent Rolling Stone interview on the sound quality of records today:
You listen to these modern records, they’re atrocious, they have sound all over them. There’s no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like — …

The Danish artist Steffen Brandt has reinterpreted a number of Dylan songs and presented them in a theatre concert. The show runs at Betty Nansen Teatret in Copenhagen until the end of January.

Here’s my review of the show (in Danish).

There are currently nine (and counting) [edit: ten and counting] [edit: twelve and counting, one of them to this post] identical comments in this site’s spam box, all pointing out the shocking instance of web censorship in the headline: “The Bob Dylan link Eyolf Østrem does not want you to read or see.” They’re all from a guy named Richard Clark, and they point to jamesdamiano dot yolasite dot com (see? I don’t mind you seeing it — or reading it, if you have a week to spare).
But it’s not just my blog that gets flooded. At the discussion board over at expecting rain, we find, from the same Richard:
“The Eyolf Østrem link about The Bob Dylan James Damiano Plagiarism …