Arcade Fire’s Will Butler is writing and recording a song a day this week based upon news stories he reads in The Guardian.
“It was partly inspired by Bob Dylan, who used to announce that certain songs were based on headlines,” Butler told the British paper. “It would be a song he wrote in two weeks or something, such as The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, which is one of the greatest songs ever. So I’ve set myself an impossible bar.”
Butler also said: “I was reading The Guardian’s live coverage of the forthcoming Greek proposals of how they’re going to pay off their debts, when a little blurb popped up explaining that the Greek markets were closed today because it was “Clean Monday” – the Greek Orthodox equivalent of Ash Wednesday. It was an amazing/hilarious (well, maybe mildly amusing) coincidence to me that the Greek ministers were scrambling and figuring out how to avoid strict austerity on the day that Lent starts.”
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
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[I published my novel, True Love Scars, in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book. Read it here. And Doom & Gloom From The Tomb ran this review which I dig. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]tter
The new album from Ray Benson & Asleep at the Wheel is called Still The King: Celebrating the Music of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. It’s out March 3, 2015.
The 22-track album includes these guest artists: Willie Nelson, Amos Lee, Merle Haggard, Old Crow Medicine Show, The Del McCoury Band, Robertt Early Keen, Carriue Rodriguez and others.
Give it a listen:
Tracklist:
1. Intro—Texas Playboy Theme (with Leon Rausch)
2. I Hear Ya Talkin’ (with Amos Lee)
3. The Girl I Left Behind Me (with The Avett Brothers)
4. Trouble In Mind (with Amos Lee)
5. Keeper Of My Heart (with Merle Haggard and Emily Gimble)
6. I Can’t Give You Anything But Love (with Kat Edmonson)
7. Tiger Rag (with Old Crow Medicine Show)
8. What’s The Matter With The Mill (with Pokey LaFarge)
9. Navajo Trail (with Willie Nelson and The Quebe Sisters)
10. Silver Dew On The Bluegrass Tonight (with The Del McCoury Band)
11. Faded Love (with The Time Jumpers)
12. South Of The Border (Down Mexico Way) (with George Strait)
13. I Had Someone Else Before I Had You (with Elizabeth Cook)
14. My Window Faces The South (with Brad Paisley)
15. Time Changes Everything (with Buddy Miller)
16. A Good Man Is Hard To Fine (with Carrie Rodriguez and Emily Gimble)
17. Ding Dong Daddy From Dumas (with Robert Earl Keen and Ray Benson)
18. Brain Cloudy Blues (with Jamey Johnson and Ray Benson)
19. Bubbles In My Beer (with The Devil Makes Three)
20. It’s All Your Fault (with Katie Shore)
21. Three Guitar Special (with Tommy Emmanuel, Brent Mason and Billy Briggs)
22. Bob Wills Is Still The King (with Shooter Jennings, Randy Rogers and Reckless Kelly)
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
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[I published my novel, True Love Scars, in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book. Read it here. And Doom & Gloom From The Tomb ran this review which I dig. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]tter
I got hip this excellent album from the late Roebuck “Pops” Staples over at the excellent Wax Atlas site the other day.
Given what a Staple Singers fan Bob Dylan is, I bet he’s digging into this one.
Now you can check it out too.
If you don’t know who the Staple Singers are, you might want to get the rundown over at Wikipedia.
Here’s a video on the making of the album, which Jeff Tweedy did some production and played on.
Here’s some info on this new record from the Anti- website:
The record, which was originally recorded and produced by Pops and daughter Mavis Staples in 1999, now boasts new production as well as bass and guitar by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, and drums by Spencer Tweedy. Jeff previously collaborated with Mavis on her solo releases, One True Vine and the Grammy-winning You Are Not Alone. The album takes its title from the instruction Pops gave to Mavis as the two listened to the unfinished recording before his death: “Don’t lose this.”
The Chicago Tribune writes “Pops Staples was a musical visionary who played “gospel in a blues key,” as Duke Ellington once told him. His treble-soaked guitar is instantly recognizable as it appears to rise out of the Mississippi mist…” The NY Daily News adds, “the album’s triumph comes in highlighting both the plaintive quality in Pop’s voice and the wily, sexy, stalwart flick of his guitar.” The New York Times says of the record, “It’s done right: lean, un-slick and focused on Pops’s vividly recorded guitar and determined voice, still finding the unexpected pause and turn.”
Track listing:
1. Somebody Was Watching
2. Sweet Home
3. No News Is Good News
4. Love On My Side
5. Friendship
6. Nobody’s Fault But Mine
7. The Lady’s Letter
8. Better Home
9. Will The Circle Be Unbroken
10. Gotta Serve Somebody
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
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[I published my novel, True Love Scars, in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book. Read it here. And Doom & Gloom From The Tomb ran this review which I dig. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]tter
Nat Hentoff, who had profiled Dylan for the New Yorker in 1964, is the interviewer.
Dylan says some fascinating things, especially given that we now know what’s happened since 1966. This interview was done after the release of Highway 61 Revisited but before Blonde On Blonde was released.
Just one example:
“I refuse to be any kind of Lawrence Welk or something like that. I’ll continue making the records. They’re not going to be any better from now on, they’re gonna be just different.”
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
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[I published my novel, True Love Scars, in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book. Read it here. And Doom & Gloom From The Tomb ran this review which I dig. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Two weeks after release, Bob Dylan’s critically acclaimed new album, Shadows In The Night, has dropped to #22 on the Billboard Top 200 in the U.S., down from its debut at #7.
Sales in the U.S. for the past week total 23,943 copies.
The album sold 49,791 in it’s first week of release, and total sales in the U.S. to date are 83,734.
The album debuted in the Top Ten in 18 countries last week including the U.K., Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Austria, Italy, Poland and Australia.
The album has received near umiversal accliam from music critics. The album scored a rating of 83 out of 100 at Metacritic, based on 30 reviews from such media as Rolling Stone, the New York Times, Mojo, The Guardian and Pitchfork.
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
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[I published my novel, True Love Scars, in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book. Read it here. And Doom & Gloom From The Tomb ran this review which I dig. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Amazing interview from February 1966 that Bob Dylan did for Playboy magazine. I’ve previously posted some of the transcript but now you can hear the interview.
Nat Hentoff, who had profiled Dylan for the New Yorker in 1964, is the interviewer.
By the way, interesting to hear Dylan praise Buck Owens in this interview, given his recent MusicCares speech.
Part One:
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
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[I published my novel, True Love Scars, in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book. Read it here. And Doom & Gloom From The Tomb ran this review which I dig. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
At some point in the ’70s I believe, the writer/editor Robert Christgau gave himself the title, “Dean Of American Rock Critics.”
Whether he was serious or joking at the time, that title turned out to be an accurate one, for not only has Christgau been one of the smartest and street-saavy critics in the relatively brief history of rock criticism, but he mentored many of the best critics that came after him.
Now he’s written his memoir, “Going Into The City: Portrait of a Critic as a Young Man.”
Rolling Stone has run an excerpt, it’s real good, and I can’t wait to read the rest of the book.
Here’s some of the Rolling Stone excerpt, in which Christgau talks about Television. You can read all of it here.
It was also a vinyl album, forty-five minutes split right down the middle, and this sealed its status, because side one, which shifts materially song to unforgettable song without diluting a band sound that ignores every parallel no matter how complimentary (Byrds-Dead-Stones are all miles away), is as good as album sides get, rushing forward as one thing yet revealing new details every time you play it again. With addictive guitar riffs securing each track, there’s not a misplaced second, and much of it was recorded in one take. Side two can’t possibly keep up, and doesn’t — I find the devotional “Guiding Light” soupy myself, and only “Prove It” with its droll “Just the facts” stays with me like “See No Evil” or “Venus” or “Friction” or “Marquee Moon” itself. So make side two a high A minus. But side one is an A plus plus plus, and side one is why so many treasure Marquee Moon as a classic.
Going outside Manhattan and against type, I assigned the Riff to Virginia-born Boston Episcopalian Ken Emerson, who loved it, only not in the terms I did. For Emerson, Marquee Moon had it all over reductive Ramones and apocalyptic Patti because Television were “grown up.” Everywhere he listened, music or lyrics, he found a “doubleness,” “a golden mean,” an “insistence on seeing things whole.” But while the doubleness is certainly thematic, remembering how young I was when I latched onto “Vacillation” makes me wonder how grown up it is. What I love most about the lyrics of Marquee Moon is their evocation of that youthful moment when you’re this close to figuring everything out, voicing in very few words a multivalence worthy of that adventure’s complexity and confusion — beautifully, profoundly, naively, contradictorily, romantically, kinetically, jokily, cockily, fearfully, drunkenly, goofily, impudently — so nervous and excited you could fly, or is it faint? And with the single line “Broadway looked so medieval” added to what we know about its East Village provenance, it situates this philosophical action in the downtown night.
Like many great albums and more pretentious ones, Marquee Moon has gathered armies of exegetes set on getting to the bottom of every word, and bless ’em, really. But they’re misguided. Not only don’t I know what all the lyrics mean, Verlaine doesn’t know what all the lyrics mean, and it’s a dead end to speculate. When we ran into this problem with Coleridge (who Verlaine would have ditched for being a junkie like Hell and Lloyd), it was because he let the poem get away from him. Here it’s more like Verlaine wanted the poem to get away from him, because he knew the paradoxes it posed were unresolvable and because he knew the guitars would blast through and lift over. So say “See No Evil” is about the onrushing illimitability of desire and “Venus” is about the enveloping impossibility of love and “Friction” is about the bracing inevitability of conflict and I don’t know what the fuck “Marquee Moon” is about except that it’s ten minutes long and you feel it’ll be perfectly OK with you if it goes on forever, like, er — some amalgam of show business and heaven? C’mon. “Elevation” and “Guiding Light”? Getting high and losing either God or love. “Prove It”? So funny it don’t matter. “Torn Curtain”? Ten minutes again, only not much longer please because this case is closed you just said. Ba-da-boom.
In the long wake of punk’s speedy demise and multiple afterlives, UK extremists and their offspring got permanently exercised about a doubleness that pitted “rockism” against — what, exactly? Sometimes the prog tendencies of “post-punk,” sometimes just pop. This polarity is so stupid I generally refuse to discuss it, but in this case I’ll suspend my disbelief in the interest of provisional clarification. Forced at gunpoint to choose, I’d call myself some kind of poppist — Pop Art was formative for me, I have a history of respecting the charts, and what are perception-altering short-fast-hard anythings if not pop? Note too that the two least punk of the indelible albums named above are pop — Parallel Lines proudly, More Songs About Buildings and Food ironically. And then recall that Marquee Moon is a rock album. Why do I believe the rockism-versus-poppism polarity is stupid? Because while most popular musicians who take themselves too seriously are mooncalves, now and again one will home in on something deeper than the pop-identified would dare — in a form livelier and more liberating than the highbrow-identified would know was there if it bit them in the cranium. So I’ll say it and you scoff if you want. The fact that Marquee Moon is a rock album is basic to why it’s a masterpiece — a great work of art. Ba-da-boom.
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
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[I published my novel, True Love Scars, in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book. Read it here. And Doom & Gloom From The Tomb ran this review which I dig. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
The musicians and writers whose art presaged and influenced and influenced The Sixties.
By Michael Goldberg.
On Highway 61 – Music, Race and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom, Dennis McNally, Counterpoint Press (471 pages)
Let me start at the end and tell you that the final section of On Highway 61, some 120 pages, provides the best portrait of Bob Dylan and his creativity, what nurtured it, and how it evolved, that I’ve read to date.
Additionally, author Dennis McNally focuses on how Dylan’s worldview – and the songs he wrote and/or sung – can be characterized as part of the ongoing search for freedom in all it’s manifestations, physical, spiritual and cultural. And more. Dylan was at least as influenced by the music made by African Americans, as he was by white country and folk musicians. And this is important, as it is simply one of many examples in this terrific book that make the case that African Americans are primarily responsible for what is truly great in American music.
But there are other reasons it’s appropriate to start with Dylan. Like some of that artist’s surrealist (or perhaps hyper-real) songs of 1965 – “Desolation Row,” “Ballad of a Thin Man” and “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream” — McNally has populated his book with an incredible array of iconic figures — including Henry David Thoreau, Miles Davis, Mark Twain, Bessie Smith and Jack Kerouac – who, like Dylan, have allowed those who have paid attention to their art to experience, as McNally puts it, “a widening of vision, a softening of the heart, and an increase in tolerance.”
No Anita Ekberg (“to make the country grow”)) and no Shakespeare (“with his pointed shoes and his bells”), but what the hell. As artfully as Dylan in his songs, McNally has made his superhuman crew fit seamlessly into this treatise on cultural freedom. In fact, those artists and their work is the story of cultural freedom.
And what is cultural freedom?
Taking from the past and making something new.
Leave it to Mr. Dylan, who McNally quotes from a 1987 US magazine interview, to give us a clue.
“When I first heard Elvis’s voice I just knew that I wasn’t going to work for anybody and nobody was gonna be my boss,” Dylan said. “Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail.”
Art that makes you feel like busting out of jail. That would be one definition.
Or, as Dylan sang it, “I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.”
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
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[I published my novel, True Love Scars, in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book. Read it here. And Doom & Gloom From The Tomb ran this review which I dig. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Clearly Bob Dylan said some things during his MusicCares speech last Friday night (February 6, 2014) that bothered some people. At one point during the speech, Dylan goes off on Merle Haggard.
A transcript of the speech was posted on the L.A. Times website and this is what the Times has Dylan saying:
Merle Haggard didn’t even think much of my songs. I know he didn’t. He didn’t say that to me, but I know way back when he didn’t. Buck Owens did, and he recorded some of my early songs. Merle Haggard — “Mama Tried,” “The Bottle Let Me Down,” “I’m a Lonesome Fugitive.” I can’t imagine Waylon Jennings singing “The Bottle Let Me Down.”
“Together Again”? That’s Buck Owens, and that trumps anything coming out of Bakersfield. Buck Owens and Merle Haggard? If you have to have somebody’s blessing — you figure it out.
A day or so after the Times published their transcript, Rolling Stone published what they said was “a transcript of the singer’s speech, taken from Dylan’s own notes.” You’ll notice that this is a big different than what the Times ran. Since I haven’t heard a tape of the speech, I don’t know if this is what Dylan actually said, or if it’s what he intended to say.
Merle Haggard didn’t think much of my songs, but Buck Owens did, and Buck even recorded some of my early songs. Now I admire Merle – “Mama Tried,” “Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down,” “I’m a Lonesome Fugitive.” I understand all that but I can’t imagine Waylon Jennings singing “The Bottle Let Me Down.” I love Merle but he’s not Buck. Buck Owens wrote “Together Again” and that song trumps anything that ever came out of Bakersfield. Buck Owens and Merle Haggard? If you have to have somebody’s blessing – you figure it out. What I’m saying here is that my songs seem to divide people. Even people in the music community.
Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle, for example, posted this on Facebook in response to me posting the transcript of Dylan’s speech”
In any case, Dylan has followed up the speech with a fascinating interview with music journalist Bill Flanagan that is posted at Bob Dylan’s own website.
Here’s the exchange between Dylan and Flanagan regarding Merle Haggard:
WHAT WAS THAT THING ABOUT MERLE, SOUNDS LIKE YOU WERE DISSING HIM, WHAT WAS THAT ABOUT?
No, not at all, I wasn’t dissing Merle, not the Merle I know. What I was talking about happened a long time ago, maybe in the late sixties. Merle had that song out called “Fighting Side of Me” and I’d seen an interview with him where he was going on about hippies and Dylan and the counter culture, and it kind of stuck in my mind and hurt, lumping me in with everything he didn’t like. But of course times have changed and he’s changed too. If hippies were around today, he’d be on their side and he himself is part of the counter culture … so yeah, things change. I’ve toured with him and have the highest regard for him, his songs, his talent – I even wanted him to play fiddle on one of my records and his Jimmie Rodgers tribute album is one of my favorites that I never get tired of listening to. He’s also a bit of a philosopher. He’s serious and he’s funny. He’s a complete man and we’re friends these days. We have a lot in common. Back then, though, Buck and Merle were closely associated; two of a kind. They defined the Bakersfield sound. Buck reached out to me in those days, and lifted up my spirits when I was down, I mean really down – oppressed on all sides and down and that meant a lot, that Buck did that. I wasn’t dissing Merle at all, we were different people back then. Those were difficult times. It was more intense back then and things hit harder and hurt more.
It seems to me that whatever Dylan thought in the past, he know values Haggard as a musician, songwriter and friend.
One of the surprises in the interview, at least for me, was Dylan’s praise of an artist I have dug since I first heard him: Willy DeVille.
DeVille fronted a terrific band, Mink DeVille, got their break during the New York punk moment of the mid-’70s. They recorded two terrific albums, before breaking up.
Here’s what Dylan has to say about Willy DeVille:
Bill Flanagan: ARE THERE ANY OTHER PERFORMERS BESIDES BILLY LEE RILEY THAT YOU CAN RECOMMEND FOR THE HALL OF FAME?
Dylan: Yeah sure, Willy DeVille for one, he stood out, his voice and presentation ought to have gotten him in there by now.
Flanagan: I AGREE WITH YOU, MAYBE HE’S BEEN OVERLOOKED. HE CARRIED A LOT OF HISTORY. THE DRIFTERS, BEN E. KING, SOLOMON BURKE, STREET CORNER DOO WOP AND JOHN LEE HOOKER WERE ALL THERE IN WHAT HE DID AND HOW HE PERFORMED.
Dylan: I think so too.
Flanagan: YOU SUGGESTED THAT SOME OF THE ACTS IN THE HALL OF FAME MIGHT NOT BE TRUE ROCK & ROLL. YOU MENTIONED THE MAMAS AND THE PAPAS, ABBA, ALICE COOPER. I HAVE TO STICK UP FOR STEELY DAN. NOT EVERYTHING THEY DID WAS ROCK & ROLL BUT “BODHISATTVA,” “SHOW BIZ KIDS,” “MY OLD SCHOOL” – THOSE SONGS ROCKED LIKE A BASTARD.
Dylan: Yeah they might have rocked like a bastard, and I’m not saying that they didn’t, but put on any one of those records and then put on “In The Heat of the Moment” by Willy or “Steady Driving Man” or even “Cadillac Walk.” I’m not going to belittle Steely Dan but there is a difference.
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
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[I published my novel, True Love Scars, in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book. Read it here. And Doom & Gloom From The Tomb ran this review which I dig. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
“The Mexican” is a new single from GZA, who recorded it with Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello. It’a version of “Babe Ruth’s 1972 song of the same name that has been sampled numerous times,” according to Pitchfork.
Check it out.
-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
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[I published my novel, True Love Scars, in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book. Read it here. And Doom & Gloom From The Tomb ran this review which I dig. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
