Sunday, October 14, 2018
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: In Honor Of John Brown Late Of Harpers Ferry-1859-...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: In Honor Of John Brown Late Of Harpers Ferry-1859-...: Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Captain John Brown STRIKE THE BLOW-THE LEGEND OF CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN From fairly ...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: Once Again Haunted By The Question Of Questions-Wh...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: Once Again Haunted By The Question Of Questions-Wh...: Once Again Haunted By The Question Of Questions-Who Represented The “Voice” Of The Generation Of ’68 When The Deal Went Down-And No It Wa...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leo...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leo...: Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History journal entry listed in the title. Markin comment: This is an excellent doc...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leo...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leo...: Founding Conference of the 4th International: "Resolution on Youth" Introduction from Revolutionary Communist Youth Newsletter,...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: As Hometown Lowell Celebrates- In Honor Of Jean ...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: As Hometown Lowell Celebrates- In Honor Of Jean ...: In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)-Poet's Corner – Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “Coney Island Of...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leo...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leo...: Click on the headline to link to a Facebook post featuring pictures of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, assassinated 71 year...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: How World War II Was Won-With Cary Grant’s “Kiss T...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: How World War II Was Won-With Cary Grant’s “Kiss T...: How World War II Was Won-With Cary Grant’s “Kiss Them For Me” (1957) In Mind DVD Review By Sandy Salmon Kiss Them...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leo...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leo...: Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History journal entry listed in the title. Markin comment: This is an excellent doc...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leo...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leo...: Click on title to link to a book review of the publication mentioned in the title about the struggle between two early and important leader...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: *Honor The Anniversary of John Brown's Anti-Slaver...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: *Honor The Anniversary of John Brown's Anti-Slaver...: Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for John Brown. This is a repost of an earlier entry in order to honor the 150th Annivers...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: *For The Folkies From Muskogee And Elsewhere- The ...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: *For The Folkies From Muskogee And Elsewhere- The ...: Click on the headline to link to the Bob Feldman Music Blog( for lack of a better name) entry above on My Space . Markin comment: This...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: For Bob Dylan -*This Land May Be Your Land-But Fol...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: For Bob Dylan -*This Land May Be Your Land-But Fol...: Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Roger McGuinn performing The Birds "Eighth Miles High". DVD Review This ...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: As Hometown Lowell Celebrates- In Honor Of Jean ...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: As Hometown Lowell Celebrates- In Honor Of Jean ...: In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60 th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957) By Book Critic Zack James To be honest I know...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: For Bob Dylan -*This Land May Be Your Land-But Fol...
AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: For Bob Dylan -*This Land May Be Your Land-But Fol...: Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Roger McGuinn performing The Birds "Eighth Miles High". DVD Review This ...
Once Again On The - 75th Anniversary (2017) Of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman’s “Casablanca” -
Once Again On The - 75th Anniversary (2017) Of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman’s “Casablanca” -
By Bart Webber
I have spent much ink this year starting almost at the beginning of the year writing about the classic black and white film Casablanca a staple at every retro-film locale including the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts where I first saw it with a “hot date” back in the late 1960s. A date who did not mind going on a cheap date (hell the admission was about a dollar maybe two) when I told her what we would be seeing. (Somehow she had asked her mother about the film and so was intrigued about this hot on-screen romance during wartime between Rick and Ilsa.) That movie coupled with a quick after film stop at equally cheap Harvard Square Hayes Bickford for coffee (always an iffy proposition depending on when the stuff was brewed also iffy) and some kind of pastry that had been sitting on the stainless steel dessert shelves for who knows how long got me away without having to call “dutch treat.” Got me as well another six months of very nice dates so my memories of that gorgeous film with the six million quotable and unforgettable lines from “play it again, Sam” (Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa request to Humphrey Bogart Rick’s main entertainment provider Dooley Wilson to play the sentimental As Time Goes By) to “We will always have Paris” (when Rick responds to Ilsa’s bewilderment that he is letting her take that last plane to Lisbon with those wicked letters of transit provided him to her husband Czech liberation leader Victor Laszlo so he can continue to do his work against the night-takers running the world in those days) are still pristine.
I am not the only one who is crazy for this movie since I am enclosing a link to an interview done by Terry Gross on her Fresh Air show on NPR with film historian Noah Isenberg on the making of the classic Hollywood film in his new book, We'll Always Have Casablanca. Needless to say when I get my greedy little hands on that item I will be reviewing it in this space. This guy has me beaten six ways to Sunday with what he knows about that film. Kudos.
http://www.npr.org/2017/10/11/557101633/75-years-later-a-look-at-the-life-legend-and-afterlife-of-casablanca
Spanish Is The Loving Tongue-Those Sparkling Eyes Of Hers-From The World War II Rationing Vaults- Armida’s “The Girl From Monterey” (1943)-A Film Review
Spanish Is The Loving
Tongue-Those Sparkling Eyes Of Hers-From The World War II Rationing Vaults-
Armida’s “The Girl From Monterey” (1943)-A Film Review
By Lance Lawrence
The Girl From Monterrey,
starring Armida, 1943
WTF. (This is a
family-friendly publication for what it is worth although we have learned from
recent experience that the demographic the new site manager Greg Green, more on
him in a minute as the source of “WTF,” was
trying to reach with his silly experiment of, for example, having grown women
and men review cinematic portrayals of Marvel/DC comic characters like Captain
America to draw the young in a cohort that doesn’t give a, ah, fig for on-line
blogger-induced publications. Try Instagram brother, try Instagram as my eight-year
old granddaughter could have told Greg and avoided a near civil war among the
writers, young and old, and a revolt by the real readership base-the remnants,
the best part of the Generation of ’68 past its flower. So WTF it is although
that same eight-year old granddaughter was hip to that expression about two
years ago and so we are not protecting virgin ears.) I recently reviewed a boxing
film from the 1930s starring a triad of classic stars from that period like
Bette Davis, Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart who went through their
paces in Kid Galahad (not to be confused
with the later Elvis 1960s production under the same title) with Edward G. trying
finally get a champ but who if he lived would have gotten a brother-in-law plus
champ despite his being overly protective of his younger sister who was crazy
for the big guy.
I made a big point there of
detailing my own street-fighting episodes cut short by the realization that if
anything I was more a lover than a fighter but in any case not a fighter, not
even a street fighter much less getting in the ring with anybody. I made the
even bigger point that despite that youthful folly I never was much of a fan of
boxing, of the art of the fist, of pugilism. Yet our own illustrious site
manager (the same one who made me go on and on with the “dirty language”
disclaimer so you know what I was up against) forced me to do the honors.
That was then but on the basis
of that review, the perverse basis if you ask me of that light-headed
experience he decided that I was to be at least temporarily the in-house “boxing
expert” and review the film of the headline-The
Girl From Monterrey. The “how” of that particular choice bears some
explanation. Apparently Greg was going through the archives or had remembered
from his days as editor at American Film
Gazette that during World War II Hollywood, then the sole world capital for
film production spewed out as much patriotic war material as was possible
without destroying every film produced in that period. Somehow he latched onto
this short war-induce film which featured a couple of boxers who would before
the end of the film wind up in uniform and so there you have it, why I am
reviewing this essentially propaganda piece.
But hold on there is a back
story to that as well. This year, 2018, commemorates on November 11th
the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, the day when the bloody
slaughter, the bloody destruction of the flower of the European youth ended
(the supposed “war to end all wars” was the tag to get guys to fight the
freaking thing-another WTF). A couple of stringers here, a couple of Vietnam
veterans, Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris have been spear-heading the efforts, via
their memberships in the anti-war Veterans for Peace group to publicize the
commemoration of that event in this space. Greg’s “find” dove-tails with that
commemoration since this production was a “talkie” and because few World War I
film productions still exist I am the messenger.
Well I have stalled enough
I might as well get to this short sad tale of a film which at least had the
mercy of being short probably due to the rationing of chemicals for the war
effort. This one started out south of the border, started in Mexico when that
was not a dirty word and immigrants were welcome- to harvest the fields. Started
with a spitfire, sparking eyes, Spanish is the loving tongue dancer-singer in
an up-scale cantina named Lita, played by never heard of before but well-known
then Armida. This feisty and short, unbelievably short so that say Alan Ladd
would feel tall next to her had made it clear to management that she was not
available to sit with the customers after doing her stage chores- and got
bounced, or quit depending on whose story you believe, once the manager made
one too many demands on her in that department. What is a girl to do though
when she is bounced. Enter younger
brother Baby, a good=looking middleweight, who had quit college to enter the
ring, to become a pugilist and who was raring to go in that ill-sought
profession. Lita decided against all good judgment to “manage” him after a few
gringo boxing promoters sitting in that cantina watching Lita go through her
paces saw Baby flatten the Mexican contender who made one too many advances on
Lita.
Shift scenes to New York
(presumably with all papers in order and not having creeped in via a borderless
wall) where Baby got some early cream puff fights working his way up the food
chain. But Lita is a singer and dancer, remember that spitfire and sparkling eyes
in that profession and so she found work in a nightclub where she and Baby and
those nefarious promoters went go for entertainment. Lita did a number and got
hired. Baby got all hung up on a gringa torch singer who probably was too big
for him-too cutthroat, too wise for this sap despite his pugilistic prowess. Lita
in her turn gravitated toward another good-looking middleweight, the champ, a
guy named Jerry does it really matter his last name since he was nothing but a “bicycle-rider
anyway, a dancer in the ring tiring out his opponent before the knock-down on canvas.
Baby was making time with this
Flossie the floosy and Lita with the chump champ while Baby worked his way up.
As you can guess two good-looking middleweights are bound to crash into each other
and so it goes when an American promoter gives the high sign to Flossie to get
Baby to sign the contact to fight Jerry. Lita is torn but things work out well
since Baby knocked Jerry on his ass for the championship and then both men show
up in the uniforms of their respective countries. Ho hum. What was not ho hum
was Lita’s stage presence where she sang some songs I had never heard were in
the American Songbook. Check these out on YouTube the jumping Jive, Brother, Jive, Last Night’s All Over and the title The Girl From Monterey. Yeah check those
sparkling eyes as Armida goes through her paces.
For Bob Dylan *Bringing It All Back Home, Indeed- Bob Dylan’s Later Work -"Love And Theft"
Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Bob Dylan Doing His Arrangement Of "High Water" In Honor Of The legendary Bluesman Charley Patton.
CD Review
Love And Theft, Bob Dylan, Columbia Records, 2001
The first paragraph of this review has been used to review other later Bob Dylan CDs.
Okay, okay I have gone on and one over the past year or so about the influence of Bob Dylan’s music (and lyrics) on me, and on my generation, the Generation of ’68. But, please, don’t blame me. Blame Bob. After all he could very easily have gone into retirement and enjoyed the fallout from his youthful fame and impressed one and all at his local AARP chapter. But, no, he had to go out on the road continuously, seemingly forever, keeping his name and music front and center. Moreover, the son of a gun has done more reinventions of himself than one could shake a stick at (folk troubadour, symbolic poet in the manner of Rimbaud and Verlaine, heavy metal rocker, blues man, etc.) So, WE are left with forty or so years of work to go through to try to sort it out. In short, can I (or anyone else) help it if he is restless and acts, well, ….like a rolling stone?
All of this is by way of introduction to the latest group of CDs from the vaults of one Bob Dylan’s vast repertoire of musical interests. I note that there is a touch of going back, way back, and a life times’ summing up driving the music. I also note the increased emphasis on the music that influenced him early on in his rise to fame and many tips of the hat to the so-called American Songbook that he seemingly knows by heart. While we are all familiar with the various periodizations of the Dylan musical trajectory- folk troubadour a la Woody Guthrie, hard rockster, semi-Christian evangelical, old vaudeville showman and sentimental (for him) songster it is good to see him return ever more to his beginnings. “Bringing It All Back Home”, “Blonde On Blonde” and “Blood On The Tracks” will probably be his monuments in the folk/rock/pop pantheons but some of the late work, especially some of the covers of the early blues men like Skip James and Blind Willie McTell will endure as well.
Stick outs here include "High Water" (his tribute to the legendary Mississippi bluesman Charley Patton; a very lyrically mysterious "Mississippi"; a plaintive "Po' Boy": and, a seeming return to 1920's pop culture Rudy Vallee crooner-type "Bye And Bye".
"Charley Patton- High Water Everywhere (part 1) lyrics"
Well, backwater done rose all around Sumner now,
drove me down the line
Backwater done rose at Sumner,
drove poor Charley down the line
Lord, I'll tell the world the water,
done crept through this town
Lord, the whole round country,
Lord, river has overflowed
Lord, the whole round country,
man, is overflowed
You know I can't stay here,
I'll go where it's high, boy
I would goto the hilly country,
but, they got me barred
Now, look-a here now at Leland
river was risin' high
Look-a here boys around Leland tell me,
river was raisin' high
Boy, it's risin' over there, yeah
I'm gonna move to Greenville
fore I leave, goodbye
Look-a here the water now, Lordy,
Levee broke, rose most everywhere
The water at Greenville and Leland,
Lord, it done rose everywhere
Boy, you can't never stay here
I would go down to Rosedale
but, they tell me there's water there
Now, the water now, mama,
done took Charley's town
Well, they tell me the water,
done took Charley's town
Boy, I'm goin' to Vicksburg
Well, I'm goin' to Vicksburg,
for that high of mine
I am goin' up that water,
where lands don't never flow
Well, I'm goin' over the hill where,
water, oh don't ever flow
Boy, hit Sharkey County and everything was down in Stovall
But, that whole county was leavin',
over that Tallahatchie shore Boy,
went to Tallahatchie and got it over there
Lord, the water done rushed all over,
down old Jackson road
Lord, the water done raised,
over the Jackson road
Boy, it starched my clothes
I'm goin' back to the hilly country,
won't be worried no more
"High Water Everywhere (part 2)"
Backwater at Blytheville, backed up all around
Backwater at Blytheville, done took Joiner town
It was fifty families and children come to sink and drown
The water was risin' up at my friend's door
The water was risin' up at my friend's door
The man said to his women folk, "Lord, we'd better go"
The water was risin', got up in my bed
Lord, the water was rollin', got up to my bed
I thought I would take a trip, Lord,
out on the big ice sled
Oh, I can hear, Lord, Lord, water upon my door,
you know what I mean, look-a here
I hear the ice, Lord, Lord, was sinkin' down,
I couldn't get no boats there, Marion City gone down
So high the water was risin' our men sinkin' down
Man, the water was risin' at places all around,
boy, they's all around
It was fifty men and children come to sink and drown
Oh, Lordy, women and grown men drown
Oh, women and children sinkin' down Lord, have mercy
I couldn't see nobody's home and wasn't no one to be found
CD Review
Love And Theft, Bob Dylan, Columbia Records, 2001
The first paragraph of this review has been used to review other later Bob Dylan CDs.
Okay, okay I have gone on and one over the past year or so about the influence of Bob Dylan’s music (and lyrics) on me, and on my generation, the Generation of ’68. But, please, don’t blame me. Blame Bob. After all he could very easily have gone into retirement and enjoyed the fallout from his youthful fame and impressed one and all at his local AARP chapter. But, no, he had to go out on the road continuously, seemingly forever, keeping his name and music front and center. Moreover, the son of a gun has done more reinventions of himself than one could shake a stick at (folk troubadour, symbolic poet in the manner of Rimbaud and Verlaine, heavy metal rocker, blues man, etc.) So, WE are left with forty or so years of work to go through to try to sort it out. In short, can I (or anyone else) help it if he is restless and acts, well, ….like a rolling stone?
All of this is by way of introduction to the latest group of CDs from the vaults of one Bob Dylan’s vast repertoire of musical interests. I note that there is a touch of going back, way back, and a life times’ summing up driving the music. I also note the increased emphasis on the music that influenced him early on in his rise to fame and many tips of the hat to the so-called American Songbook that he seemingly knows by heart. While we are all familiar with the various periodizations of the Dylan musical trajectory- folk troubadour a la Woody Guthrie, hard rockster, semi-Christian evangelical, old vaudeville showman and sentimental (for him) songster it is good to see him return ever more to his beginnings. “Bringing It All Back Home”, “Blonde On Blonde” and “Blood On The Tracks” will probably be his monuments in the folk/rock/pop pantheons but some of the late work, especially some of the covers of the early blues men like Skip James and Blind Willie McTell will endure as well.
Stick outs here include "High Water" (his tribute to the legendary Mississippi bluesman Charley Patton; a very lyrically mysterious "Mississippi"; a plaintive "Po' Boy": and, a seeming return to 1920's pop culture Rudy Vallee crooner-type "Bye And Bye".
"Charley Patton- High Water Everywhere (part 1) lyrics"
Well, backwater done rose all around Sumner now,
drove me down the line
Backwater done rose at Sumner,
drove poor Charley down the line
Lord, I'll tell the world the water,
done crept through this town
Lord, the whole round country,
Lord, river has overflowed
Lord, the whole round country,
man, is overflowed
You know I can't stay here,
I'll go where it's high, boy
I would goto the hilly country,
but, they got me barred
Now, look-a here now at Leland
river was risin' high
Look-a here boys around Leland tell me,
river was raisin' high
Boy, it's risin' over there, yeah
I'm gonna move to Greenville
fore I leave, goodbye
Look-a here the water now, Lordy,
Levee broke, rose most everywhere
The water at Greenville and Leland,
Lord, it done rose everywhere
Boy, you can't never stay here
I would go down to Rosedale
but, they tell me there's water there
Now, the water now, mama,
done took Charley's town
Well, they tell me the water,
done took Charley's town
Boy, I'm goin' to Vicksburg
Well, I'm goin' to Vicksburg,
for that high of mine
I am goin' up that water,
where lands don't never flow
Well, I'm goin' over the hill where,
water, oh don't ever flow
Boy, hit Sharkey County and everything was down in Stovall
But, that whole county was leavin',
over that Tallahatchie shore Boy,
went to Tallahatchie and got it over there
Lord, the water done rushed all over,
down old Jackson road
Lord, the water done raised,
over the Jackson road
Boy, it starched my clothes
I'm goin' back to the hilly country,
won't be worried no more
"High Water Everywhere (part 2)"
Backwater at Blytheville, backed up all around
Backwater at Blytheville, done took Joiner town
It was fifty families and children come to sink and drown
The water was risin' up at my friend's door
The water was risin' up at my friend's door
The man said to his women folk, "Lord, we'd better go"
The water was risin', got up in my bed
Lord, the water was rollin', got up to my bed
I thought I would take a trip, Lord,
out on the big ice sled
Oh, I can hear, Lord, Lord, water upon my door,
you know what I mean, look-a here
I hear the ice, Lord, Lord, was sinkin' down,
I couldn't get no boats there, Marion City gone down
So high the water was risin' our men sinkin' down
Man, the water was risin' at places all around,
boy, they's all around
It was fifty men and children come to sink and drown
Oh, Lordy, women and grown men drown
Oh, women and children sinkin' down Lord, have mercy
I couldn't see nobody's home and wasn't no one to be found
Once Again Haunted By The Question Of Questions-Who Represented The “Voice” Of The Generation Of ’68 When The Deal Went Down-And No It Was Not One Richard Millstone, Oops, Milhous Nixon
By Seth Garth
I have been haunted recently by various references to events in the early 1960s brought to mind by either seeing or hearing those references. First came one out of the blue when I was in Washington, D.C. on other business and I popped in as is my wont to the National Gallery of Art to get an “art bump” after fighting the dearies at the tail-end of the conference that I was attending. I usually enter on the 7th Street entrance to see what they have new on display on the Ground Floor exhibition areas. This time there was a small exhibit concerning the victims of Birmingham Sunday, 1963 the murder by bombing of a well-known black freedom church in that town and the death of four innocent young black girls and injuries to others. The show itself was a “what if” by a photographer who presented photos of what those young people might have looked like had they not had their precious lives stolen from them by some racist KKK-drenched bastards who never really did get the justice they deserved. The catch here, the impact on me, was these murders and another very disturbing viewing on television at the time, in black and white, of the Birmingham police unleashing dogs, firing water hoses and using the ubiquitous police billy-clubs to beat down on peaceful mostly black youth protesting against the pervasive Mister James Crow system which deprived them of their civil rights.
Those events galvanized me into action from seemingly out of nowhere. At the time I was in high school, in an all-white high school in my growing up town of North Adamsville south of Boston. (That “all white” no mistake despite the nearness to urban Boston since a recent look at the yearbook for my class showed exactly zero blacks out of a class of 515. The nearest we got to a black person was a young immigrant from Lebanon who was a Christian though and was not particularly dark. She, to my surprise, had been a cheer-leader and well-liked). I should also confess, for those who don’t know not having read about a dozen articles I have done over the past few years in this space, that my “corner boys,” the Irish mostly with a sprinkling of Italians reflecting the two major ethic groups in the town I hung around with then never could figure out why I was so concerned about black people down South when we were living hand to mouth up North. (The vagaries of time have softened some things among them for example nobody uses the “n” word which needs no explanation which was the “term of art” in reference to black people then to not prettify what this crowd was about.)
In many ways I think I only survived by the good graces of Scribe who everybody deferred to on social matters. Not for any heroic purpose but because Scribe was the key to intelligence about what girls were interested in what guys, who was “going” steady, etc. a human grapevine who nobody crossed without suffering exile. What was “heroic” if that can be used in this context was that as a result of those Birmingham images back then I travelled over to the NAACP office on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston to offer my meager services in the civil rights struggle and headed south to deadly North Carolina one summer on a voting drive. I was scared but that was that. My guys never knew that was where I went until many years later long after we had all gotten a better gripe via the U.S. Army and other situations on the question of race and were amazed that I had done that.
The other recent occurrence that has added fuel to the fire was a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition where they deal with aspects of what amounts to the American Songbook. The segment dealt with the generational influence of folk-singer songwriter Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ as an anthem for our generation (and its revival of late in newer social movements like the kids getting serious about gun control). No question for those who came of political age early in the 1960s before all hell broke loose this was a definitive summing up song for those of us who were seeking what Bobby Kennedy would later quoting a line of poetry from Alfred Lord Tennyson call “seeking a newer world.” In one song was summed up what we thought about obtuse indifferent authority figures, the status quo, our clueless parents, the social struggles that were defining us and a certain hurried-ness to get to wherever we thought we were going.
I mentioned in that previous commentary that given his subsequent trajectory while Bob Dylan may have wanted to be the reincarnation Plus of Woody Guthrie (which by his long life he can rightly claim) whether he wanted to be, could be, the voice of the Generation of ’68 was problematic. What drove me, is driving me a little crazy is who or what some fifty plus years after all the explosions represented the best of what we had started out to achieve (and were essentially militarily defeated by the ensuing reaction before we could achieve most of it) in those lonely high school halls and college dormitories staying up late at night worrying about the world and our place in the sun.
For a long time, probably far longer than was sensible I believed that it was somebody like Jim Morrison, shaman-like leader of the Doors, who came out of the West Coast winds and headed to our heads in the East. Not Dylan, although he was harbinger of what was to come later in the decade as rock reassembled itself in new garb after some vanilla music hiatus but somebody who embodied the new sensibility that Dylan had unleashed. The real nut though was that I, and not me alone, and not my communal brethren alone either, was the idea that we possessed again probably way past it use by date was that “music was the revolution” by that meaning nothing but the general lifestyle changes through the decade so that the combination of “dropping out” of nine to five society, dope in its many manifestations, kindnesses, good thought and the rapidly evolving music would carry us over the finish line. Guys like Josh Breslin and the late Pete Markin, hard political guys as well as rabid music lovers and dopers, used to laugh at me when I even mentioned that I was held in that sway especially when ebb tide of the counter-cultural movement hit in Nixon times and the bastinado was as likely to be our home as the new Garden. Still Jim Morrison as the “new man” (new human in today speak) made a lot of sense to me although when he fell down like many others to the lure of the dope I started reappraising some of my ideas -worried about that bastinado fate.
So I’ll be damned right now if I could tell you that we had such a voice, and maybe that was the problem, or a problem which has left us some fifty years later without a good answer. Which only means for others to chime in with their thoughts on this matter.
For Bob Dylan Bringing It All Back Home, Indeed- Bob Dylan’s Later Work- "World Gone Wrong"
Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Bob Dylan Covering Blind Willie McTells' "Delia".
CD Review
World Gone Wrong, Bob Dylan, Columbia Records, 1993
The first paragraph of this review has been used to review other later Bob Dylan CDs.
Okay, okay I have gone on and one over the past year or so about the influence of Bob Dylan's music (and lyrics) on me, and on my generation, the Generation of '68. But, please, don't blame me. Blame Bob. After all he could very easily have gone into retirement and enjoyed the fallout from his youthful fame and impressed one and all at his local AARP chapter. But, no, he had to go out on the road continuously, seemingly forever, keeping his name and music front and center. Moreover, the son of a gun has done more reinventions of himself than one could shake a stick at (folk troubadour, symbolic poet in the manner of Rimbaud and Verlaine, heavy metal rocker, blues man, etc.) So, WE are left with forty or so years of work to go through to try to sort it out. In short, can I (or anyone else) help it if he is restless and acts, well, ...like a rolling stone?
All of this is by way of introduction to the latest group of CDs from the vaults of one Bob Dylan's vast repertoire of musical interests. I note that there is a touch of going back, way back, and a life time's summing up driving the music in this later work. I also note the increased emphasis on the music that influenced him early on in his rise to fame and many tips of the hat to the various genres that make up the so-called "American Songbook" that he seemingly knows by heart. While we are all familiar with the various periodizations of the Dylan musical trajectory- folk troubadour a la Woody Guthrie, hard rockster, semi-Christian evangelical, old vaudeville showman and sentimental retro (for him) songster it is good to see him return once more to his beginnings. "Bringing It All Back Home", "Blonde On Blonde" and "Blood On The Tracks" will probably be his monuments in the folk/rock/pop pantheons but some of the late work, especially some of the covers of the early blues men like Skip James and Blind Willie McTell will endure as well. Kudos, Bob.
"World Gone Wrong" represents the highest expression in this later work of Dylan's return to his roots as he "merely" rearranges (as he has always done with covers) many old traditional ballads and songs that "spoke" to him in the early 1990's when he was making yet another "endless tour" comeback. Stick outs here include a couple of Mississippi Sheiks tunes ( a group, by the way, that will be reviewed on its own merits separately in this space at a later date). Blind Willie McTell (a seminal influence in the Dylan old days) also rates a cover with "Delia".
Finally, a song (also covered by Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard and, I believe, from which Dylan is taking his cover)from back in the depths of time, "Two Soldiers", explores the pathos and futility of war from a personal perspective. I should also note here that Dylan provides a very interesting, if sometimes cryptic, set of liner notes filled with symbolic meanings that a generation of devotees will spend plenty of time trying to decipher. Nice.
Once Again Haunted By The Question Of Questions-Who Represented The “Voice” Of The Generation Of ’68 When The Deal Went Down-And No It Was Not One Richard Millstone, Oops, Milhous Nixon
By Seth Garth
I have been haunted recently by various references to events in the early 1960s brought to mind by either seeing or hearing those references. First came one out of the blue when I was in Washington, D.C. on other business and I popped in as is my wont to the National Gallery of Art to get an “art bump” after fighting the dearies at the tail-end of the conference that I was attending. I usually enter on the 7th Street entrance to see what they have new on display on the Ground Floor exhibition areas. This time there was a small exhibit concerning the victims of Birmingham Sunday, 1963 the murder by bombing of a well-known black freedom church in that town and the death of four innocent young black girls and injuries to others. The show itself was a “what if” by a photographer who presented photos of what those young people might have looked like had they not had their precious lives stolen from them by some racist KKK-drenched bastards who never really did get the justice they deserved. The catch here, the impact on me, was these murders and another very disturbing viewing on television at the time, in black and white, of the Birmingham police unleashing dogs, firing water hoses and using the ubiquitous police billy-clubs to beat down on peaceful mostly black youth protesting against the pervasive Mister James Crow system which deprived them of their civil rights.
Those events galvanized me into action from seemingly out of nowhere. At the time I was in high school, in an all-white high school in my growing up town of North Adamsville south of Boston. (That “all white” no mistake despite the nearness to urban Boston since a recent look at the yearbook for my class showed exactly zero blacks out of a class of 515. The nearest we got to a black person was a young immigrant from Lebanon who was a Christian though and was not particularly dark. She, to my surprise, had been a cheer-leader and well-liked). I should also confess, for those who don’t know not having read about a dozen articles I have done over the past few years in this space, that my “corner boys,” the Irish mostly with a sprinkling of Italians reflecting the two major ethic groups in the town I hung around with then never could figure out why I was so concerned about black people down South when we were living hand to mouth up North. (The vagaries of time have softened some things among them for example nobody uses the “n” word which needs no explanation which was the “term of art” in reference to black people then to not prettify what this crowd was about.)
In many ways I think I only survived by the good graces of Scribe who everybody deferred to on social matters. Not for any heroic purpose but because Scribe was the key to intelligence about what girls were interested in what guys, who was “going” steady, etc. a human grapevine who nobody crossed without suffering exile. What was “heroic” if that can be used in this context was that as a result of those Birmingham images back then I travelled over to the NAACP office on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston to offer my meager services in the civil rights struggle and headed south to deadly North Carolina one summer on a voting drive. I was scared but that was that. My guys never knew that was where I went until many years later long after we had all gotten a better gripe via the U.S. Army and other situations on the question of race and were amazed that I had done that.
The other recent occurrence that has added fuel to the fire was a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition where they deal with aspects of what amounts to the American Songbook. The segment dealt with the generational influence of folk-singer songwriter Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ as an anthem for our generation (and its revival of late in newer social movements like the kids getting serious about gun control). No question for those who came of political age early in the 1960s before all hell broke loose this was a definitive summing up song for those of us who were seeking what Bobby Kennedy would later quoting a line of poetry from Alfred Lord Tennyson call “seeking a newer world.” In one song was summed up what we thought about obtuse indifferent authority figures, the status quo, our clueless parents, the social struggles that were defining us and a certain hurried-ness to get to wherever we thought we were going.
I mentioned in that previous commentary that given his subsequent trajectory while Bob Dylan may have wanted to be the reincarnation Plus of Woody Guthrie (which by his long life he can rightly claim) whether he wanted to be, could be, the voice of the Generation of ’68 was problematic. What drove me, is driving me a little crazy is who or what some fifty plus years after all the explosions represented the best of what we had started out to achieve (and were essentially militarily defeated by the ensuing reaction before we could achieve most of it) in those lonely high school halls and college dormitories staying up late at night worrying about the world and our place in the sun.
For a long time, probably far longer than was sensible I believed that it was somebody like Jim Morrison, shaman-like leader of the Doors, who came out of the West Coast winds and headed to our heads in the East. Not Dylan, although he was harbinger of what was to come later in the decade as rock reassembled itself in new garb after some vanilla music hiatus but somebody who embodied the new sensibility that Dylan had unleashed. The real nut though was that I, and not me alone, and not my communal brethren alone either, was the idea that we possessed again probably way past it use by date was that “music was the revolution” by that meaning nothing but the general lifestyle changes through the decade so that the combination of “dropping out” of nine to five society, dope in its many manifestations, kindnesses, good thought and the rapidly evolving music would carry us over the finish line. Guys like Josh Breslin and the late Pete Markin, hard political guys as well as rabid music lovers and dopers, used to laugh at me when I even mentioned that I was held in that sway especially when ebb tide of the counter-cultural movement hit in Nixon times and the bastinado was as likely to be our home as the new Garden. Still Jim Morrison as the “new man” (new human in today speak) made a lot of sense to me although when he fell down like many others to the lure of the dope I started reappraising some of my ideas -worried about that bastinado fate.
So I’ll be damned right now if I could tell you that we had such a voice, and maybe that was the problem, or a problem which has left us some fifty years later without a good answer. Which only means for others to chime in with their thoughts on this matter.
CD Review
World Gone Wrong, Bob Dylan, Columbia Records, 1993
The first paragraph of this review has been used to review other later Bob Dylan CDs.
Okay, okay I have gone on and one over the past year or so about the influence of Bob Dylan's music (and lyrics) on me, and on my generation, the Generation of '68. But, please, don't blame me. Blame Bob. After all he could very easily have gone into retirement and enjoyed the fallout from his youthful fame and impressed one and all at his local AARP chapter. But, no, he had to go out on the road continuously, seemingly forever, keeping his name and music front and center. Moreover, the son of a gun has done more reinventions of himself than one could shake a stick at (folk troubadour, symbolic poet in the manner of Rimbaud and Verlaine, heavy metal rocker, blues man, etc.) So, WE are left with forty or so years of work to go through to try to sort it out. In short, can I (or anyone else) help it if he is restless and acts, well, ...like a rolling stone?
All of this is by way of introduction to the latest group of CDs from the vaults of one Bob Dylan's vast repertoire of musical interests. I note that there is a touch of going back, way back, and a life time's summing up driving the music in this later work. I also note the increased emphasis on the music that influenced him early on in his rise to fame and many tips of the hat to the various genres that make up the so-called "American Songbook" that he seemingly knows by heart. While we are all familiar with the various periodizations of the Dylan musical trajectory- folk troubadour a la Woody Guthrie, hard rockster, semi-Christian evangelical, old vaudeville showman and sentimental retro (for him) songster it is good to see him return once more to his beginnings. "Bringing It All Back Home", "Blonde On Blonde" and "Blood On The Tracks" will probably be his monuments in the folk/rock/pop pantheons but some of the late work, especially some of the covers of the early blues men like Skip James and Blind Willie McTell will endure as well. Kudos, Bob.
"World Gone Wrong" represents the highest expression in this later work of Dylan's return to his roots as he "merely" rearranges (as he has always done with covers) many old traditional ballads and songs that "spoke" to him in the early 1990's when he was making yet another "endless tour" comeback. Stick outs here include a couple of Mississippi Sheiks tunes ( a group, by the way, that will be reviewed on its own merits separately in this space at a later date). Blind Willie McTell (a seminal influence in the Dylan old days) also rates a cover with "Delia".
Finally, a song (also covered by Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard and, I believe, from which Dylan is taking his cover)from back in the depths of time, "Two Soldiers", explores the pathos and futility of war from a personal perspective. I should also note here that Dylan provides a very interesting, if sometimes cryptic, set of liner notes filled with symbolic meanings that a generation of devotees will spend plenty of time trying to decipher. Nice.
The Golden Age Of The B-Film Noir- Lloyd Bridges’ “The Big Deadly Game” (1954)
The Golden Age Of The B-Film Noir- Lloyd Bridges’ “The Big Deadly Game” (1954)
DVD Review
By Film Editor Emeritus Sam Lowell
The Big Deadly Game, starring Lloyd Bridges (Jeff’s father okay when he needed dough I guess and hit the bricks in London and Spain), Simone Silva, Hammer Productions, 1954
Recently in a review of the British film Terror Street (distributed in Britain as 36 Hours) and subsequently another British entry The Black Glove (distributed in Britain as Face The Music probably a better title since it involved a well-known trumpet player turning from searching for that high white note everybody in his profession is looking for to amateur private detective once a lady friend is murdered and he looked for all the world like the natural fall guy) I noted that long time readers of this space know, or should be presumed to know, of my long-standing love affair with film noir. Since any attentive reader will note this is my third such review of B-film noirs in the last period I still have the bug.
I went on to mention some of the details to my introduction to the classic age of film noir in this country in the age of black and white film in the 1940s and 1950s when I would sneak over to the now long gone and replaced by condos Strand Theater in growing up town North Adamsville and spent a long double feature Saturday afternoon watching complete with a stretched out bag of popcorn (or I think it is safe to say it now since the statute of limitation on the “crime” must surely have passed snuck in candy bars bought at Harold’s Variety Store on the way to the theater) some then current production from Hollywood or some throwback from the 1940s which Mister Cadger, the affable owner who readily saw that I was an aficionado who would pepper him with questions about when such and such a noir was to be featured would let me sneak in for kid’s ticket prices long after I reached the adult price stage at twelve I think it was, would show in retrospective to cut down on expenses in tough times by avoiding having to pay for first –run movies all the time. (And once told me to my embarrassment that he made more money on the re-runs than first runs and even more money on the captive audience buying popcorn and candy bars-I wonder if he knew my scam.
I mentioned in passing as well that on infrequent occasions I would attend a nighttime showing (paying full price after age twelve since parents were presumed to have the money to spring for full prices) with my parents if my strict Irish Catholic mother (strict on the mortal sin punishment for what turned out to have been minor or venial sins after letting my older brothers, four count them, four get away with murder and assorted acts of mayhem) thought the film passed the Legion of Decency standard that we had to stand up and take a yearly vow to uphold and I could under the plotline without fainting (or getting “aroused” by the fetching femmes).
What I did not mention although long time readers should be aware of this as well was that when I found some run of films that had a similar background I would “run the table” on the efforts. Say a run of Raymond Chandler film adaptations of his Phillip Marlowe crime novels or Dashiell Hammett’s seemingly endless The Thin Man series. That “run the table” idea is the case with a recently obtained cache of British-centered 1950s film noirs put out by the Hammer Production Company as they tried to cash in on the popularity of the genre for the British market (and the relatively cheap price of production in England). That Terror Street mentioned at the beginning had been the first review in this series (each DVD by the way contains two films the second film Danger On The Wings in that DVD not worthy of review) and now the film under review under review the overblown if ominously titled The Big Deadly Game (distributed in England, Britain, Great Britain, United Kingdom or whatever that isle calls itself these Brexit days as the innocuous Third Party Risk is the third such effort. On the basis of these four viewings (remember one didn’t make the film noir aficionado cut so that tells you something right away) I will have to admit they are clearly B-productions none of them would make anything but a second or third tier rating.
After all as mentioned before in that first review look what they were up against. For example who could forget up on that big screen for all the candid world to see a sadder but wiser seen it all, heard it all Humphrey Bogart at the end of The Maltese Falcon telling all who would listen that he, he Sam Spade, no stranger to the seamy side and cutting corners, had had to send femme fatale Mary Astor his snow white flame over, sent her to the big step-off once she spilled too much blood, left a trail of corpses, for the stuff of dreams over some damn bird. Or cleft-chinned barrel-chested Robert Mitchum keeping himself out of trouble in some dink town as a respectable citizen including snagging a girl next door sweetie but knowing he was doomed, out of luck, and had cashed his check for his seedy past taking a few odd bullets from his former femme fatale trigger-happy girlfriend Jane Greer once she knew he had double-crossed her to the coppers in Out Of The Past. Ditto watching the horror on smart guy gangster Eddie Mars face after being outsmarted because he had sent a small time grafter to his doom when prime private detective Phillip Marlowe, spending the whole film trying to do the right thing for an old man with a couple of wild daughters, ordered him out the door to face the rooty-toot-toot of his own gunsels who expected Marlowe to be coming out in The Big Sleep. How about song and dance man Dick Powell turning Raymond Chandler private eye helping big galoot Moose Malone trying to find his Velma and getting nothing but grief and a few stray conks on the head chasing Claire Trevor down when she didn’t want to be found having moved uptown with the swells in Murder, My Sweet. Those were some of the beautiful and still beautiful classics whose lines you can almost hear anytime you mention the words film noir.
In the old days before I retired I always liked to sketch out a film’s plotline to give the reader the “skinny” on what the action was so that he or she could see where I was leading them. I will continue that old tradition here (as I did with Terror Street and The Black Glove and will do in future Hammer Production vehicles to be reviewed over the coming period) to make my point about the lesser production values of the Hammer products. Lloyd Bridges is a music guy (not a trumpeter which might have given him some juices but some kind of second-string composer) who is in Spain on holiday as they say in England, Britain, the United Kingdom, or whatever when he runs into an old war buddy who seems to be in trouble. And he is since he winds up dead, very dead, for some unknown transgression. Seems that this war buddy had run afoul of an international smuggling ring centered in Spain and run by some mal hombres from the look of them and had to pay the price for his treason. Naturally clean-cut good guy Lloyd figures out what was what and the bad guys fell down, fell down hard once he put the hammer to them. Vaya con dios mal hombres.
That is the gist of the main crime story but what this one really was about if you looked at time spent on the subject was his romance with this Spanish senorita, played by Simone Silva, who was running a dance school, a folkloric dance school teaching the ninas how to do the old time dances and doing a pretty good job of it. So between bouts of fighting crime Lloyd was keeping company with his coy mistress.
Better that Terror Street but not as good as The Black Glove although it can’t get pass that Blue Gardenia second tier in the film noir pantheon. Sorry Hammer.
For Bob Dylan -*This Land May Be Your Land-But Folk Musak Has Got To Go
Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Roger McGuinn performing The Birds "Eighth Miles High".
DVD Review
This Land Is Your Land: The Folk Years, Rhino Records, 2002
Sorry, fellow folkies but I am going to get up on my soapbox today. I have just viewed a Public Broadcasting System (PBS)- made concert film from 2002 that stars a number of the lesser lights of the folk revival of the 1960s that, frankly, has set my teeth on edge. You know groups like the Kingston Trio, The Highwaymen, the present day version of the New Christy Minstrels, and individuals like Judy Collins and Roger McGuinn. Soft-core folk, or as I put it in my headline- folk musak. Hell, the producers even brought out the Smothers Brothers and their tired old shtick. Now, as I pointed out elsewhere, this is a calculated and clever stratagem on their parts, in order to use this concert as a vehicle for the seemingly endless fundraiser that the system does. As I also pointed out a number of month ago in a similar review of a James Taylor concert these PBS guys know their demographics.
What they apparently don’t know is when to cry “uncle”. Some voices from the folk revival of the 1960s still have some spunk. Dylan on a good night. Same with Baez. A whole slew of lesser known names like Geoff Muldaur, Maria Muldaur, Jim Kweskin, Rosalie Sorrels before she retired, and others put on solid performances with new material at comparable ages to the folks who performed here. Now all musical tastes are highly individual and I admit that, on more than one occasion, have been heard in the old hootenanny days and now, to sing a go to things like the Kingston Trio’s “MTA” song and “Tom Dooley”. Judy Collins’ “Amazing Grace” and “Both Sides Now”. Or even the Limelighters “Greensleeves”. But, almost two hours of this stuff. Come on. Give me fifteen minutes of Dave Van Ronk, Lou Reed, or any of that slew mentioned above any day. No, I will not go gentle into that good night, thank you.
Note: The only really redeeming musical factor in this whole concert were the three songs performed by Roger McGuinn. He came alive with his versions of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man”, Pete Seeger’s adaptation of “Turn, Turn, Turn” and a virtuoso long acoustic performance of “Eight Miles High”. He, at least, knew how to keep us awake past our bedtimes. Thanks, Roger.
Mr. Tambourine Man
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.
Though I know that evenin's empire has returned into sand,
Vanished from my hand,
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping.
My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet,
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.
Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin' ship,
My senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip,
My toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels
To be wanderin'.
I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way,
I promise to go under it.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.
Though you might hear laughin', spinnin', swingin' madly across the sun,
It's not aimed at anyone, it's just escapin' on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin'.
And if you hear vague traces of skippin' reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it's just a ragged clown behind,
I wouldn't pay it any mind, it's just a shadow you're
Seein' that he's chasing.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.
Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.
Copyright ©1964; renewed 1992 Special Rider Music
DVD Review
This Land Is Your Land: The Folk Years, Rhino Records, 2002
Sorry, fellow folkies but I am going to get up on my soapbox today. I have just viewed a Public Broadcasting System (PBS)- made concert film from 2002 that stars a number of the lesser lights of the folk revival of the 1960s that, frankly, has set my teeth on edge. You know groups like the Kingston Trio, The Highwaymen, the present day version of the New Christy Minstrels, and individuals like Judy Collins and Roger McGuinn. Soft-core folk, or as I put it in my headline- folk musak. Hell, the producers even brought out the Smothers Brothers and their tired old shtick. Now, as I pointed out elsewhere, this is a calculated and clever stratagem on their parts, in order to use this concert as a vehicle for the seemingly endless fundraiser that the system does. As I also pointed out a number of month ago in a similar review of a James Taylor concert these PBS guys know their demographics.
What they apparently don’t know is when to cry “uncle”. Some voices from the folk revival of the 1960s still have some spunk. Dylan on a good night. Same with Baez. A whole slew of lesser known names like Geoff Muldaur, Maria Muldaur, Jim Kweskin, Rosalie Sorrels before she retired, and others put on solid performances with new material at comparable ages to the folks who performed here. Now all musical tastes are highly individual and I admit that, on more than one occasion, have been heard in the old hootenanny days and now, to sing a go to things like the Kingston Trio’s “MTA” song and “Tom Dooley”. Judy Collins’ “Amazing Grace” and “Both Sides Now”. Or even the Limelighters “Greensleeves”. But, almost two hours of this stuff. Come on. Give me fifteen minutes of Dave Van Ronk, Lou Reed, or any of that slew mentioned above any day. No, I will not go gentle into that good night, thank you.
Note: The only really redeeming musical factor in this whole concert were the three songs performed by Roger McGuinn. He came alive with his versions of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man”, Pete Seeger’s adaptation of “Turn, Turn, Turn” and a virtuoso long acoustic performance of “Eight Miles High”. He, at least, knew how to keep us awake past our bedtimes. Thanks, Roger.
Mr. Tambourine Man
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.
Though I know that evenin's empire has returned into sand,
Vanished from my hand,
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping.
My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet,
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.
Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin' ship,
My senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip,
My toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels
To be wanderin'.
I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way,
I promise to go under it.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.
Though you might hear laughin', spinnin', swingin' madly across the sun,
It's not aimed at anyone, it's just escapin' on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin'.
And if you hear vague traces of skippin' reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it's just a ragged clown behind,
I wouldn't pay it any mind, it's just a shadow you're
Seein' that he's chasing.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.
Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.
Copyright ©1964; renewed 1992 Special Rider Music
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