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 of Idiot Wind or Sara — and a minor key would be much more suitable.
So I played it in A minor instead of C major, with exactly the same melody — and it worked.
And thus transformed from a put-down song to a breakup song, other references offered themselves up: Sympathy for the Devil, “there must be some way out of here”, etc.
The track is highly unfinished. I’m going to record a more polished version eventually, so take it for what it is.
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.
I suppose one could say that where Dylan’s Jokerman tends towards the enigmatic, mine is more of a joker.
For those so inclined: here are the chords:
Chords:
Bbo x12020
Co x34242
A/c# x42220 or x4222x with half-barre
D/a x04232
E+ 022110
A7/g 34222x
E7-9 076760
Bb 688700
G#+ 476500
|: A . Bbo . Bm7 . E7 . :|
A Bbo Bm7 Co
Standing on the waters casting your bread
A/c# /e F# Bm7 E7 A D/a A E+
While the eyes of the idol with the iron head are glowing.
A Bbo Bm7 Co
Distant ships sailing into the mist,
A/c# /e F# Bm7
You were born with a snake in both of your fists
E7 A D/a A Bbo
while a hurricane was blowing.
Bm /a-g#-f# E /f /f# /g# A D/a A Bbo
Freedom just around the corner for you
Bm /a -g#-f# E /f /f# /g# A /g# A7/g F#7
But with truth so far off, what good will it do?
Bm7 E7-9
Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune,
A G F# F#7
Bird fly high by the light of the moon,
Bm7 Bb G#+ A
Oh, oh, oh, Jokerman.
Edit: Oh, and my friend Lars thought I started out too negative here, with the “I don’t like this and I don’t like that” and all, and that I should at least liven it up with a picture of U2. Go figure.
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:
Graph showing similarities between Dignity and Steel Guitars
This piqued my interest — partly because the skeleton to which “Dignity” was reduced didn’t bear much resemblance to the melody itself, partly because this kind of reductive music analysis, which is still today, for mysterious reasons, en vogue at American universities, is demonstrably not able to reveal much of interest about the musical object, since — as has been shown by many scholars — widely different compositions can be reduced to the same pitch sequence.
I would have liked to hear “Steel Guitars”, but among the many hours of videotaped material Damiano presented on his webpage, that was the one item that was missing. The closest thing was a video from court, where Damiano’s crown witness, Dr. Paul Greene, plays the skeleton melody from the graph above, over the accompaniment of “Dignity”. (Sounds a lot like “Dignity”? Sure — it is “Dignity”, with some random notes added here and there.)
I then wrote a little piece about the questions this graph raised. My conclusion was that it was impossible, based on this graph, to say anything conclusive about possible similarities between the two songs, and that I would like to hear the un-reduced version of the song.
Damiano responded, variously calling my very existence into question and claiming that I was paid by Dylan to put forth such lies, that I was too much of a coward to face the truth (his favoured nickname for me over the past few years has been “The Weasel”), etc.
Act Two: Close Encounters
When he eventually threatened to start an email bombing campaign against me, I decided it was time to contact him directly:
What you’re describing in your mail amounts to a threat of email bombing, which, being a kind of denial of service attacks, is a federal crime in the States, and I could sue you for it. Your ISP probably wouldn’t like it either.
We then entered into a direct communication — a strange experience indeed. During our communication, I finally got to hear the song:
The Last Words: Musical and Psychological Analysis
The following is a revised and condensed version of what I wrote to James Damiano on that occasion (this was in August 2009). I present it here, not to put anyone on the spot, but to complete what I’ve written publicly about the case — most notably: the full musicological analysis of the two tunes:
*
I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but it doesn’t really matter how much effort you put into proving that Dylan — or someone in his ‘organization’ — has actually heard your material: if the songs don’t sound the same, what’s the point of proving it?
And they don’t.
If a song consists of harmony, melody, rhythm, and overall structure to bind them all together, I would say that:
(1) the harmony is different:
your song goes:
||: G . . . | . . . . |
D . . . | . . G . :||
C . G . | C . G . |
C . G . | C D | G . . . |
whereas Dignity goes (transposed to the same key):
||: G . . . | . . . . |
C . G . | . . C/d G :||
D . . . | C . G . |
C . G/d . | Am . D . ||
The only thing they have in common is the first line — which is a single chord….
Do you have your own very special way of playing the same chord over long stretches, which Dylan then has stolen? Or is it something else?
Other than that, the harmonic structure, i.e. the arch of tension in the song, is virtually reversed: you start with a G-D alternation, i.e. a strong tonic-dominant polarity; Dylan starts with a G-C relationship, where the C hardly breaks out of the control of the G.
Your refrain — which is a true refrain with a tonal closure — is harmonically identical to the Everly Brothers’ Bye Bye Love (you haven’t stolen it, have you?). Dylan’s, on the other hand, is not a refrain, but a bridge, ending on the dominant, D, getting ready for the next pair of verses.
The above also implies that the overall harmonic structure is radically different between the two songs. And having heard a few of your songs, and having worked with Dylan’s music more extensively, I can say with some confidence that this is in fact a decisive factor: the differences I have pointed out above correspond closely to differences between your idioms, your musical directions.
(2) As for melody:
I can’t really find something to call a melody in any strong sense of the word in Steel Guitars, and I would have liked to see it pointed out where exactly you find the melodic similarities. Also, where exactly, among all the improvised doodling, Dr. Greene has found the notes that he picked out for his reductive analysis. It’s not that they jump in the eye (or: ear), and Dylan’s melody for “Dignity” is nowhere to be heard.
(3) Lastly, the rhythmical side
is also different, which makes it a nasty trick to play the melody of “Steel Guitars” — whatever it is — over the rhythmic accompaniment of “Dignity” in order to prove the similarity.
(4) Overall Structure
In fact, I would have a much stronger case for the claim that the refrain of your “song” is borrowed/stolen from the Everly Brothers’ “Bye Bye Love” than you have for your claim about Dylan stealing your tune.
I won’t make that claim, however, because all the songs I’ve heard so far on your site are extremely derivative. You’d have a hard time finding a single record in the history of popular music which didn’t have some song which showed similarities with some of your songs. Have they all stolen from you? No. Just as little as every poet who uses the words “love”, “and”, or “flower” have stolen from Shakespeare.
*
You know that scene in Don’t Look Back? Where the guy who is covering up for the one who threw the glass out of the hotel room window is comparing himself to Dylan? “You’re a big noise”, I think is what he says. “You’re a big noise, and I’m a little noise.” Something like that.
That’s the saddest scene I know, at least in any Dylan movie. Because it is so recognizable, somehow. There are some people around who want to be a big noise too. Some of them are — and some turn into it. But some people, like the guy in the movie, are happy to be a small noise (as long, perhaps, as they are allowed to spend some time in the big noise’s hotel room), and that’s the sad part.
Basically, I think we all want to be big noises — and so we should, at least in our own lives and the lives of those close to us.
But here’s the lesson to you: you can stand on a giant’s shoulders and see farther than the giant, but you can’t stand on a big noise and scream louder than him.
You have to figure out where your worth lies, independently of Dylan.
Have you ever tried to open up to the thought: maybe Dylan didn’t steal my song, maybe I’m not the little guy who’s been screwed by the big guy after all?
You may have been screwed — we all have, some way or another — but perhaps nobody in particular is to blame.
It’s nice to have someone to blame for one’s misery, but often things happen without them being anyone’s fault — they just happen.
I can understand it if you’d rather be a music star than paint people’s houses. But perhaps it’s not Dylan’s fault that things are the way they are?
Postscript
Our conversation came to a halt after I asked Damiano to comment, in his own words, on what I had written.
I’m still waiting.
I consider the case closed. And I urge anyone who still thinks Dylan has stolen “Dignity” to come forth with clear arguments.
I’ve pursued the case as far as I have, not to harm James Damiano, and definitely not to defend Bob Dylan, but mainly out of righteous, professional anger at the analysis of Dr. Greene, which is either just flawed or — more likely — simply fraudulent.
There are two intriguing things in all this.
One is that Dylan’s organization apparently is so musically incompetent that they have let it come as far as a court case — even one they won. I heard somewhere that Dylan had advised his son never to receive anything from his fans, partly because of the Damiano madness. Why not just contact some competent musicologist who could conclusively state what anyone can hear (even Judge Simandle): that there isn’t an ounce of similarity between the two songs?
The other strange thing is that all this fuss is about this song, “Dignity” — hardly Dylan’s most exciting song, I’d almost say: musically rather boring. If I wanted to claim authorship of a Dylan-song, I’d go for “Most of the Time” or something — not a simple three-(plus)-chord song.
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 to art exhibitions who will be able to see it without having Like a Rolling Stone or Just Like a Woman playing on their internal sound system, in some way or another.
In any case, when Statens Museum for Kunst (the National Gallery of Denmark) contacted Dylan one and a half years ago after his exhibition in Chemnitz (his first ever) to suggest that the exhibition was shown in Denmark as well, it was a delightful surprise when the answer was “yes”, and an even greater surprise when it turned out to be forty brand-new painting instead. The pictures are all based on sketches made during travels in Brazil.
The simple reality
Both as a series and individually, the paintings use powerful visual tools. Dylan is a fearless colorist who has obviously taken some inspiration from Gauguin’s and van Gogh’s colors. He chooses sharply outlined motifs, he tends to place the persons in his pictures at the very front of the frame, close to the viewer, and facial features are frequently painted strongly marked. Most of the characters are painted with an almost cartoonish line, with black outlines around figures, and facial expressions that are just indicated with quick lines.
The motifs are just as clear-cut, and seemingly simple: stylized versions of everyday situations.
And this is where one sees a glimpse of the singer, the sly Jokerman, behind the pictures. Fair enough, Dylan has said, in conncection with the exhibition: “If I could have expressed the same in a song, I would have written a song instead.” And if one is looking for the painted version of one’s favorite song, one has come to the wrong place. But still, there is a way of negotiating between form and contents in the pictures which one recognizes from the singer and musician Dylan.
For if the simple, figurative style and the clear-cut motifs makes one think that there is a correspondingly simple meaning in the paintings, one has been fooled. The best paintings are those which venture towards the absurd: The naked woman in Bamboo Road, who attacks a bamboo grove with a sword; another naked woman in Revelations, who reveals herself to a statue of an angel while she is reading from a book in front of her, which spills over with red colour; or the overdimensioned, grinning ventriloquist’s dummy who forces the woman in the picture half ways out of the canvas, in a way which we normally see only in bad amateur holiday snapshots.
It is as if Dylan is saying: “it looks simple, but it isn’t”. Or: “You think you know what you’re seeing, but you don’t.” Or perhaps rather: “You think you know what you’re seeing, and that may be so, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you understand what’s going on.” Reality, however trivial it may appear, is not something one just grasps.
The world that Dylan exhibits, isn’t a particularly nice place. Many of the paintings are operating in the borderland of morals. Here are corrupt politicians, self-assured mafia bosses, gang wars, poverty, murder, sexual promiscuity, and gluttony. Some of the depraved persons in these pictures look almost content, but other than that, there isn’t much joy in the Brazil Series. A Religious Couple seem to be filled up with anything but humble religious sentiment. The workers in The Vineyard at first sight seem to be smiling, but the mood in the picture is ominous. The most aesthetically pleasing pictures are a pair of paintings with motifs from the slum quarters outside of Rio, the so called favelas, which gives the pure aesthetical enjoyment a touch of the miserable.
But there is no condemnation or pointed fingers from Dylan. He presents a section of reality — not as it really is, but with the artist’s emphases and omissions — and leaves it to the viewer to make up his own mind.
If the purpose of art is to communicate a perspective on reality, I would claim that Dylan at the moment is a greater artist as a painter, film maker, and radio host than in his traditional role as a stage artist. And if part of this purpose is to set some thoughts in motion, create some images for the viewer to elaborate further, then he succeeds quite well in Brazil Series. And then it may not matter so much if the experts find technical flaws or the critics claim that “If it wasn’t Dylan, nobody would care.”
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 I’ve played this album more than any Dylan album since Time out of Mind. The reason is simple: the way he sings ‘ad Bethlehem’ in Adeste fideles sends shivers down my spine; his demonstration of Santa’s laughter in Must be Santa is the funniest thing since ‘Talkin’ WWIII Blues’; the sombre tone of Do you hear what I hear? is stunning and a perfect counterpart to the angelic serenity of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, perspectivizing both qualities and leaving us, not somewhere undefined in the middle, but somewhere where there is room for both sombre and serene, hilarious and breathtakingly beautiful.
Of course, it’s a brilliant idea of Dylan to make a Christmas album, because it’s the last thing anyone would have expected (and, for that reason alone, perhaps not at all surprising). But Christmas in the Heart is much more than a funny idea, a joke, or, for that matter, just a nice way to do charity. It’s obvious that he loves this stuff. And somehow, amid the croaking and the frolicking, he manages to communicate that love, at least to this listener.
And when love is communicated, what more can one ask?
Have yourselves a merry Christmas!
*
[Update:] But wait, there is more. Two things more: “Dylan and tradition” and “Dylan and religion”.
Dylan and tradition
Quite a lot has been made out of the fact that this is a 1950s version of the American christmas song tradition. Someone pointed out that seven of the songs are from Frank Sinatra’s 1957 A Jolly Christmas album; others that Dylan secretly wants to be Dean Martin, another source for many songs.
I won’t repeat all that has been said about that. Here, just a brief remark about harmony. If there is one thing that runs through Dylan’s entire production, all period included, it is his consistent avoidance of the plain dominant, especially the dominant seventh: the strong harmonic tension generator, which is resolved to the key note, e.g. G7 ? C. Even when he plays covers, or when he relates to fixed genres, such as the blues, he usually finds ways to modify the dominant relation.
Not so here. In no other Dylan album will one find as many chains of dominant seventh as here. Just a sample:
Christmas blues has
F#7 B7 E7 A7 Dmaj7
I’ll be home for christmas has
Bm7-5 E7 Am7 D7 G
Here comes Santa Claus
A7 Dm7 G7 C
Have yourself a merry Iittle Christmas,
B7 E7 A7 D7 Gmaj7
This is not in itself surprising — that’s how the songs were written, and the room for taking liberties is smaller in this genre than in folk and blues. What is interesting about it, is the degree to which (and the ease with which) Dylan has subordinated himself to the style, without feeling the need to make a statement about it, the way he did on Self Portrait, the only album which is comparable in this respect (but not in many other).
The same can be said about the way he treats melody: he actually sings the tunes, straight up, with none of the trademark “you couldn’t even recognize the melody” treatment. And he does it wonderfully. He takes his mastery of vocal delivery into this — for him, as a public persona — foreign territory, and does it convincingly.
Dylan and religion
This one is inevitable when Dylan chooses to make a Christmas album. What does he mean with it? Is it a clear sign that he’s still a Christian, or is it a just as clear sign of the opposite; that it’s all “just” heritage?
I have no idea, and I don’t care (there is only one song that has made me wonder what he thinks in this area, but it’s not on Christmas in the Heart). What I do know is that the lyrics to “Here Comes Santa Claus” in the version that Dylan sings is a most fascinating mix of symbols. From the “jingle bells” intro with the smooth, soft jazz choir, and through the first two verses, it’s classic American pop culture Christmas all the way, with reindeer, stockings and toys.
But then, in the third verse:
[He doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor]
for he loves you just the same
Oh, that was Santa, was it? For a moment there, I thought I was in the wrong song — I thought that was Christ or something.
[Santa knows that we’re God’s children]
and that makes everything right
The real Santa: St Nicholas
OK, so it was something in that direction after all. From here to the end of the song, it is quite clear that this has something to do with God, but it is delightfully unclear if it’s Santa or someone else who comes as God’s gift to Man on Christmas day.
This is emphasised by the arrangement: the alternation between the slow, solemn “Let’s give thanks to the Lord above” and the jinglebellsy “Cause Santa Claus comes tonight” is … Well, I have no idea what to call it. Hilarious? not quite. Blasphemous? Not at all. Devout? Get out of here!
At the same time, it’s all of those, and more. The best way I can describe this album is as a balancing act. A balancing act that you can only perform if you’re enjoying yourself and what you’re doing, perfectly unaffected by the 70,000 fathoms of thin air between you and total disaster. Dylan seems to have been staring into that abyss for quite some time, ever since he first tried to shake off the yoke of being some Generation’s Voice. Christmas in the Heart is a sign that he is finally free.
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 is quite unique in Dylan’s production, and, as such, quite refreshing.
It should be said, however, that this more positive verdict is only partly true about the published album. Saved is unique in connection with Dylan in consisting only/mostly of songs that had already been tried out on stage for a long time before they were committed to vinyl. There is critical and historiographical consensus that the album suffered from this: by the time of the sessions for the record, the band (the same band that had played the songs on tour — another Dylan rarity) was already tired, and the spirit of the live renditions, which even the staunchest critics could not deny, did not translate well into a studio production.
There may be something true in this. Many of the songs are exuberant numbers of praise and thanksgiving, which come better into its own from a stage, where extatically jubilant confession seems more natural than on a record.
This applies to the title track, a born-again statement if there ever was one, slightly too over-eager to be taken quite seriously (unless one shares the sentiment), perhaps, but a powerful and driving gospel rock number all the same, which I don’t mind listening to.
The same could be said about the brother-in-arms, “Solid Rock” (or, as the full title goes when it is presented during the shows: “Hanging On To A Solid Rock Made Before The Foundation Of The World”); and, to an even higher degree, to “Pressing On” og “Are You Ready?” — the intensity that grows out of the slow build-up of these two songs during the live concerts can make even the hardest of heart jump to his feet and rejoice: “Yes! I’m ready! Take me, Bob! Take me with you!”, but that is mostly lost in the album version.
It probably couldn’t be any other way. None of the songs I’ve mentioned are among his strongest — from the gospel period or any other — but their effect depends on presence — the physical presence of the person and the band producing a sound of wall to bang one’s head against, and the temporal presence, exploiting the contrast between the indefiniteness of not knowing where this is going to end, and the inevitability of the process set in motion by the first “on-an-don-an-don-an-doon”. In the absence that the record medium necessarily entails, some of that is naturally lost. But some remains (and five bonus points for trying).
Besides, it doesn’t matter: there are strong songs left that do make the transition from concert stage to recording studio. Partly, perhaps, because they are stronger songs altogether, but mainly because they don’t depend on the live situation to the same extent.
“In The Garden” is easily Dylan’s most harmonically complex song, and although it shares some traits with the likes of “Saved”, such as the escalating intensity and the lyric repetitiveness, it depends more on the harmonic meandering to hold our attention.
Both “Covenant Woman” and “Saving Grace” are harmonically interesting, although not as wild as “In the Garden”. They are also touching, introspective reflections on the role of faith and salvation in the trials and tribulations of everyday life (at least that’s what a theologian might say about them). Especially “Covenant Woman” stands out in this respect, in a way which transcends the religious sphere. Lines like:
He must have loved me so much to send me someone as fine as you.
and
I’ll always be right by your side — I’ve got a covenant too.
work well with or without God in the equation.
This leaves the two real gems. “What Can I Do For You” gives us Dylan’s best harmonica solos ever — for once captured better on an official album than in any live rendition, at least among the ones I’ve heard. It is inventive, it is raw, and it is fragile, all at the same time. (It may be to go way beyond what kind of metaphors are appropriate for this particular album to say so, but there’s good sex in those two solos.) The sound of the mix in general comes across to me as a bit on the hard side, but the harp sound is unsurpassed.
And last but not least, and the opener, “A Satisfied Mind”, which in my book is one of Dylan’s crowning achievements as a singer. It’s not powerful, it’s not showy, at times he breaks like a little girl, but there is an intimacy in the delivery which gives the message credibility and urgency. The interaction with the backing singers is exquisite all the way through, and my mental image of the song is that of calm deliberation, there is actually an intensity which just grows as the song progresses. There happens remarkably much in a little less than two minutes.
Have I made my point clear enough? Damn, this is one hell of an album. If you’re a godless heathen, don’t let the cover scare you away from this album. And if you’re a true believer, don’t let your benevolence and agreement prevent the album from grabbing hold of you in ways and places you might not have expected.
… 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 — static.
Here’s the LP version of ‘Thunder on the Mountain’:
And here is what most of us — who are not sound geeks and have therefore bought the CD — hear:
The difference (according to the two posts — I’m no expert in sound engineering), stems from the abuse of compression, a technique that is used in order to fill the sound-space as much as possible, and make the music stand out more clearly, even in the soft moments. Put to moderate use, it can enhance a recording, but as a weapon in the “Loudness War”, it is lethal — it kills the dynamic range in the recording (as the above examples show), and since dynamics is one of the most important tools to make music alive, we may have a serious baby and bath water situation here.
I refer to the other posts for further evidence and explanation. I, for one, am convinced, and it’s ironic that the “static” that Dylan refers to is so predominant on his own latest albums.
Why there should be this difference between the CD and the LP versions, I don’t know. One of the commenters at the Flowering Toilet mentions that the same difference could be noticed between the version of ‘Beyond Here Lies Nothing’ which was given out as a free download, and the version on the released album. So apparently the little helper works late, and only in the CD plant.
For the record, if I consider Modern Times and especially Together Through Life lacklustre and on the whole unsucessful, it’s mainly because of the material. But a sound (huh…) advice for Dylan/Frost might be: Don’t shoot yourself in the foot — shoot the sound engineer instead.
Thanks to Heinrich Küttler of SEAL fame for bringing those posts to my attention.
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.
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 Litigation”
And at rec.music.dylan (r.m.d.?!? does anyone actually post there anymore?!) we have:
New ! Dylan E-book
New Dylan Book Eyolf Østrem ?
It’s like the flu: not every year, but with consistency to be counted on, it comes flushing over you and there is nothing you can do but wait for it to pass: James Damiano’s campaign to convince the world that he “wrote songs released by Bob Dylan”, as it says on his facebook page.
I have no idea what my name is doing there. He has nothing new to say, and neither do I, so I’ll just point to the conversation we had back in the 90s:
Did Dylan steal ‘Dignity’?
It’s remarkable that nowhere in the humongous material that he has amassed is there a sounding example — just a snippet would do — of the song “Steel Guitars” that Dylan allegedly stole.
Can we from this conclude that the song doesn’t even exist, to paraphrase Damiano?
[Update: I just found another incarnation of the videotaped depositions, which are a hoot to watch, btw, and lo and behold, there, in the background of Danny Gallagher’s testimony, is “Steel Guitars”! I have seen that snippet a couple of times now, but I had no idea that was the song, because I was listening for something that may have sounded like Dignity…]
What we do get is a musicologist who plays a generic melody line over the accompaniment of “Dignity”. Of course Dylan’s song sounds a lot like that…
I must say I like it when Dylan agrees with me. I once suggested to let the brown passports in ‘Desolation Row’ mean brown passports, and then see what happens. Now Dylan says:
Images don’t hang anybody [i.e. in the new audience] up. Like if there’s an astrologer with a criminal record in one of my songs it’s not going to make anybody wonder if the human race is doomed. Images are taken at face value and it kind of freed me up.
In what way?
Well for instance, if there are shadows and flowers and swampy ledges in a composition, that’s what they are in their essence. There’s no mystification. That’s one way I can explain it.
Like a locomotive, a pair of boots, a kiss or the rain?
Right. All those things are what they are. Or pieces of what they are. It’s the way you move them around that makes it work.
The image with the crooked astrologer is hilarious. The sad thing about it is that I can imagine that it is not just a hypothetical example exaggerated out of proportions. That at times, that’s what it’s been like to be Dylan. If it’s true that his project in the early nineties was to get that monkey off his shoulder, that’s quite understandable. I almost feel sorry for him, that poor Voice of a Generation.
The whole interview is a nice read. Highly recommended.
World Gone Wrong (1993) is a body. Not just a great body of work, but a body.
The greatness of this album of folk and blues classics is that there is one voice speaking on it and one person speaking with this voice, whether he speaks guitar, harmonica, or English.
This is the story: Ten years ago, I was sitting on the lawn outside the library with a beer and my good friend and fine Dylan interpreter Lars. Somehow, the similarities between Bob and Jesus came up: Carpenter/Zimmerman Jews from the north going south to change the world; performing their most important work in the country’s main city at 33, etc.
Since I was extremely busy at the time, working 24/7 to finish my Ph.D. in time (i.e., while I was still 33), I immediately sat down and turned our chat into a website.
I had this idea that it would be fun if it was completely anonymous: a full-scale religious framework developed solely out of religious fervor and love for the Cause. I think I spent more time on it than it deserved, and then I forgot all about it.
But that’s the nice thing about the net: I had almost forgotten that it existed, I have no idea anymore how to log in to the server, but it’s still there, the counter has been ticking in two visits a day and is now up to 21977, and it’s as anonymous as it ever was (which means that my name is there in the source code — this was in the days of Microsoft Front Page, and I’m not ashamed to admit it).
And I still think it’s hilarious . . .
Update: I couldn’t stand looking at that crappy html of the original site, so I decided to clean it up a bit. Since I can’t get in there, I put up a new version at a website near you. I cleaned up some of the mess, but left the layout mostly intact, as a memento of how things used to be. Don’t expect the external links or the mail address to work, though. The original is still over here.
Scott Warmuth, who first discovered Dylan’s extensive borrowing from Henry Timrod for the lyrics to Modern Times and went on to dig deeper into the Ovidian connection, presents more findings in his blog. Well worth a visit!
The third season of Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour is well underway, and it’s as good as it used to be. Get the shows, and read up on them. Highly recommended!
Acoustic Guitar Magazine has an online lesson with the basics of the guitar styles of Maybelle Carter, Jimmie Rodgers, Roy Harvey, and Riley Puckett, compete with music examples, a video, and thorough background material.
Two things in particular make Tell Tale Signs a god-send for the Dylan analyst. One is that it shows how tightly interconnected Dylan’s last three albums are, not only musically but also lyrically: text fragments and themes float between them as if they were part of the same triple album. The other is that it gives an opportunity to study the process that so many musicians who have worked with him have mentioned: that songs can change radically from one session to the next or even between takes. The three versions of “Can’t Wait” are particularly revealing in this respect.
I admit it: the chords part of dylanchords may be in a decent state (apart from the use of frames, which is sooo last century), but the articles are a mess. There’s the collected pdf volume, the selected links on the Self-ordained Professors page, the blog posts here, and the introductions to some of the albums.
I’ve now decided to do something about it. Here’s the state of affairs:
Things Twice — the book. This will always be the definitive version. If/when I do revisions to articles, this is where they are made. The layout is more pleasant than in any of the other formats. It’s a pdf file, currently c. 2 Mb.
Self-ordained professors. This used to be where new stuff appeared, but that is no longer the case. Static html is not the most versatile format to work with, and when I moved on to greener pastures, the versions that were left here, became more and more obsolete. I therefore opted for the radical approach: the articles on the Self-ordained Professors page are now converted versions of whatever is found in the pdf version. This makes them an inferior option, for several reasons: some of the layout is lost, the images are of a horrible quality, and the way the footnotes appear is a bit cumbersome (and I care a great deal about my footnotes!). All in all, this should only be an option if you don’t fancy a 2 Mb download.
Finally, there’s Things twice — the blog — this place right here. This is the place for experiments, drafts, work-in-progress. In other words, it will never be the final version of anything, but it’s where you have a chance to comment. There has been a time when there was more activity here than now, but let me also take this opportunity to say that some of the articles could not have been written without — and others have become immensely better thanks to — the feedback I have gotten from you at the blog.
I have no idea, and I don’t care (there is only one song that has made me wonder what he thinks in this area, but it’s not on Christmas in the Heart). What I do know is that the lyrics to “Here Comes Santa Claus” in the version that Dylan sings is a most fascinating mix of symbols. From the “jingle bells” intro with the smooth, soft jazz choir, and through the first two verses, it’s classic American pop culture Christmas all the way, with reindeer, stockings and toys.
