The Centennial Of Pete Seeger’s Birthday (1919-2014)- *The Folk Troubadour Of Old- Pete Seeger

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Pete Seeger Doing "Which Side Are You On". Seems, appropriate, right?

That Old Devil Time- The Music Of Pete Seeger

Headlines&Footnotes: A Collection Of Topical Songs, Pete Seeger, Smithsonian/Folkways, 1999

The name Pete Seeger has come up repeatedly in this space over the past few years as the transmission belt from the old 1930’s and 1940’s Depression and World War II era folk revival to the that of the one in the early 1960’s. In other places in this space (check archives) I have mentioned my political differences, great and small, with Brother Seeger so there is no need to go into that here. I would note, however, that despite his folksy style he has always been driven by a political conception to his work. That is, that music, and in his case, folk music can be used to bring political “glad tidings” to the masses. One cannot fault that principle, although what effect music has in driving people to higher political consciousness is a very, very open question in my mind. Nevertheless putting topical subjects to music by the folk balladeer and troubadour alike has a long pedigree and needs no defense here. Moreover, in the capable hands of Pete Seeger, the compilation under review represents a very nice cross-section of that way of driving the political message home.

Everyone in the modern folk milieu owes a debt to Pete Seeger for playing “keeper of the flame” for the old time ‘talking blues’ format of spreading political and social messages (and Woody Guthrie as well, who perfected the art form). This volume is ample proof of that. Good examples here that provide such messages without the drumbeat of heavy political analysis are the pro-women’s liberation “There Once Was A Woman Who Swallowed A Lie” and, most dramatically (and relevantly, as President Obama right now works his way through the “Big Poppy Field” of Afghanistan) “Waist Deep In The Big Muddy” (ostensibly a tale about World War II but really about Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War policy). For social commentary one cannot beat Malvina Reynolds’ “Little Boxes” (almost self-explanatory about the deadening nature of upscale American suburban life) and The Claiborne’s “Listen Mr. Bilbo” (about the simple truths of immigration in America, virtually an immigrant-created country).

Of course, no collection of Seeger efforts is complete without the Spanish Civil War song, “Viva La Quince Brigada”, about the heroic Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th International Brigade that fought valiantly there or to do a cover to commemorate an early heroic Cuban patriot, Jose Marti’s “Guantanamera”. For topical songs, a staple of the folk tradition since about the Middle Ages, try “The Titanic” (yes, that one that went down in 1912-and wasn’t suppose to) and “The Sinking Of The Reuben James” ( an ode to the merchant marines in the early days of World War II). For left wing political struggles under adverse conditions, “Hold The Line”, about a famous Paul Robeson concert at Peekskill, New York that was busted up by fascistic local red necks in the build-up to the ‘red scare of the 1940’s and 1950’s is a good exemplar. And so on. In short, for those who want to hear folk music with a historical sense as it was meant to be presented then here is your primer by one of your master singers of such works. Get to it, okay.


Here are some Pete Seeger-created songs (not all on this reviewed CD)

A LITTLE A' THIS 'N' THAT

My grandma, she can make a soup,
with a little a' this 'n' that.
She can feed the whole sloop group,
with a little a' this 'n' that.
Stone soup! You know the story.
Stone soup! Who needs the glory?
But with grandma cooking, no need to worry.
Just a little a' this 'n' that.

Grandma likes to make a garden grow,
with a little a' this 'n' that.
But she likes to have the ground just so,
with a little a' this 'n' that.
Not too loose and not too firm.
In the spring, the ground's all got to be turned.
In the fall, lots of compost, to feed the worms,
with a little a' this 'n' that.

Grandma knows we can build a future,
with a little a' this 'n' that.
And a few arguments never ever hurt ya,
with a little a' this 'n' that.
True, this world's in a helluva fix,
And some say oil and water don't mix.
But they don't know a salad-maker's tricks,
with a little a' this 'n' that.

The world to come may be like a song,
with a little a' this 'n' that.
To make ev'rybody want to sing along,
with a little a' this 'n' that.
A little dissonance ain't no sin,
A little skylarking to give us all a grin.
Who knows but God's got a plan for the people to win,
with a little a' this 'n' that.

Words and Music by Pete Seeger (1991)
(c) 1991, 1993 by Sanga Music Inc.


IF YOU LOVE YOUR UNCLE SAM) BRING THEM HOME

If you love your Uncle Sam,
Bring them home, bring them home.
Support our boys in Vietnam,
Bring them home, bring them home.

It'll make our generals sad, I know,
Bring them home, bring them home.
They want to tangle with the foe,
Bring them home, bring them home.

They want to test their weaponry,
Bring them home, bring them home.
But here is their big fallacy,
Bring them home, bring them home.

I may be right, I may be wrong,
Bring them home, bring them home.
But I got a right to sing this song,
Bring them home, bring them home.

There's one thing I must confess,
Bring them home, bring them home.
I'm not really a pacifist,
Bring them home, bring them home.

If an army invaded this land of mine,
Bring them home, bring them home.
You'd find me out on the firing line,
Bring them home, bring them home.

Even if they brought their planes to bomb,
Bring them home, bring them home.
Even if they brought helicopters and napalm,
Bring them home, bring them home.

Show those generals their fallacy:
Bring them home, bring them home.
They don't have the right weaponry,
Bring them home, bring them home.

For defense you need common sense,
Bring them home, bring them home.
They don't have the right armaments,
Bring them home, bring them home.

The world needs teachers, books and schools,
Bring them home, bring them home.
And learning a few universal rules,
Bring them home, bring them home.

So if you love your Uncle Same,
Bring them home, bring them home.
Support our boys in Vietnam,
Bring them home, bring them home.

Words and Music by Pete Seeger
© 1966 Storm King Music, Inc.

(From Broadside #71, June 1966: "A woman told me, 'I'm praying every night, please bring my son home safe.' I told her, 'Haven't you learned the lesson of the song WE SHALL OVERCOME? There's no solution for you or your son or me and my son unless it's a solution for all of us. It's got to be 'WE' or there's no solving the problem.' Now I don't claim this song is as good as it should be. But I was hoping for a song which would be good for a group of people to sing over and over again, and a frame in which new verses could be improvised, and the melody and harmony developed as the singers got with it.")

HOLD THE LINE

Let me tell you the story of a line that was held,
And many brave men and women whose courage we know well,
How we held the line at Peekskill on that long September day!
We will hold the line forever till the people have their way.

Chorus (after each verse):
Hold the line!
Hold the line!
As we held the line at Peekskill
We will hold it everywhere.
Hold the line!
Hold the line!
We will hold the line forever
Till there's freedom ev'rywhere.

There was music, there was singing, people listened everywhere;
The people they were smiling, so happy to be there -
While on the road behind us, the fascists waited there,
Their curses could not drown out the music in the air.

The grounds were all surrounded by a band of gallant men,
Shoulder to shoulder, no fascist could get in,
The music of the people was heard for miles around,
Well guarded by the workers, their courage made us proud.

When the music was all over, we started to go home,
We did not know the trouble and the pain that was to come,
We go into our buses and drove out through the gate,
And saw the gangster police, their faces filled with hate.

Then without any warning the rocks began to come,
The cops and troopers laughed to see the damage that was done,
They ran us through a gauntlet, to their everlasting shame,
And the cowards there attacked us, damnation to their name.

All across the nation the people heard the tale,
And marveled at the concert, and knew we had not failed,
We shed our blood at Peekskill, and suffered many a pain,
But we beat back the fascists and we'll beat them back again!

Words by Lee Hays; Music by Pete Seeger (1949)

TALKING UNION

If you want higher wages, let me tell you what to do;
You got to talk to the workers in the shop with you;
You got to build you a union, got to make it strong,
But if you all stick together, now, ‘twont he long.
You'll get shorter hours,
Better working conditions.
Vacations with pay,
Take your kids to the seashore.

It ain’t quite this simple, so I better explain
Just why you got to ride on the union train;
‘Cause if you wait for the boss to raise your pay,
We’ll all be waiting till Judgment Day;
We’ll all he buried - gone to Heaven -
Saint Peter’ll be the straw boss then.

Now, you know you’re underpaid, hut the boss says you ain’t;
He speeds up the work till you’re ‘bout to faint,
You may he down and out, but you ain’t beaten,
Pass out a leaflet and call a meetin’
Talk it over - speak your mind -
Decide to do something about it.

‘Course, the boss may persuade some poor damn fool
To go to your meeting and act like a stool;
But you can always tell a stool, though - that’s a fact;
He’s got a yellow streak running down his back;
He doesn’t have to stool - he'll always make a good living
On what he takes out of blind men’s cups.

You got a union now; you’re sitting pretty;
Put some of the boys on the steering committee.
The boss won’t listen when one man squawks.
But he’s got to listen when the union talks.
He better -
He’ll be mighty lonely one of these days.

Suppose they’re working you so hard it’s just outrageous,
They’re paying you all starvation wages;
You go to the boss, and the boss would yell,
"Before I'd raise your pay I’d see you all in Hell."
Well, he’s puffing a big see-gar and feeling mighty slick,
He thinks he’s got your union licked.
He looks out the window, and what does he see
But a thousand pickets, and they all agree
He’s a bastard - unfair - slave driver -
Bet he beats his own wife.

Now, boy, you’ve come to the hardest time;
The boss will try to bust your picket line.
He’ll call out the police, the National Guard;
They’ll tell you it’s a crime to have a union card.
They’ll raid your meeting, hit you on the head.
Call every one of you a goddamn Red -
Unpatriotic - Moscow agents -
Bomb throwers, even the kids.

But out in Detroit here’s what they found,
And out in Frisco here’s what they found,
And out in Pittsburgh here’s what they found,
And down in Bethlehem here’s what they found,
That if you don’t let Red-baiting break you up,
If you don’t let stool pigeons break you up,
If you don’t let vigilantes break you up,
And if you don’t let race hatred break you up -
You’ll win. What I mean,
Take it easy - but take it!


Words by Millard Lampell, Lee Hays and Pete Seeger (1941)
Music: traditional ("TaIking Blues”)

For Bob Dylan *The Long Ago It Seems “Age Of Obama” Talkin’ Blues-

Click On Title To Link To Erato (Greek Muse Of Poetry, although she may be blushing) Wikipedia entry.

The “Age Of Obama” Talkin’ Blues

I don’t know if the music of this message comes out the same on the page as the music in my head as I write it but I send my thanks to Mr. Woody Guthrie who made an art form out of the talking blues, and to Mr. Bob Dylan for continuing the tradition.


A Talkin’ Blues, Of Sorts

I’ve got the blues, and I’ve got ‘em bad.
I’m out here ramblin’, scamblin’ and far from home.
Not from the wood and brick shelter that has never failed to provide some sustenance in good weathers, or bad.
Nah, not that home.
No, I’m talking about being far from my American home that I have long loved.
And, at times, had to hate.
The home that I have fought to change since my youth.
To fight for that social utopia that always seemed to be just over the next mountain.
The one that our forebears long ago fought to create by a revolution and preserve by civil war.
And that we now need to update.
Yes, that one.
Today, though, I feel like an exile on Main Street.
And I’m starting to feel a hating spell coming on.
I am adrift in the Age of Obama.

Strange, not that long ago I thought I smelled a sweet, fresh wind drifting across the political oceans.
Hell, it seems like just yesterday that it cooled my brow after some forty or so years of being out in the wilderness condition.
That was sure a strong little breeze that I had not felt since my youth back in the days of the fight for “new frontiers” and the times of “seeking newer worlds”.
I thought, at last, I was finished with my exile on Main Street.
But, damn.
I am adrift in the Age of Obama.

Back then I never got tired of saying, to all who would listen, that this breeze that went by the name of “Hurricane Obama”.
It swamped all before it and although I knew it was not the breeze that would lift all boats it was the one that would bring the next breeze that would.
I kept my own heart still easily enough because I knew that this was not, after all, my breeze.
But the people I wanted to reach, the ones that will create that social utopia that I have longed dreamed of, did have their hearts fluttering.
And, despite the mounting evidence to the contrary, still like what they see in Washington.
As for me though,
I am adrift in the Age of Obama.


That was then and this is now.
Now we are saddled with Obama- sized wars, “good wars” we are told in the Af-Pak (or is it Pak-Af?) theater where more money, materials and manpower are going down the drain.
I need hardly mention the “bad war” in Iraq.
To even speak of that little mess in this Age is so very passé among those in the know.
It is no longer mentioned in polite society.
Yet again we are being asked to pay the piper for the errant dreams of the American imperium.
And a compliant, complaisant so-called anti-war Congress is ready to grease the skids.
When the right answer, just like when a sated kid asks for more, is to “just say no”.
I am ready to scream to high heaven against these war budgets.
No, there is now no question now.
I am adrift in the Age of Obama.

And there is more smoke and mirrors.
This regime is fully committed, and gladly, to putting major triage on the moribund capitalist system that got us into this current mess in the first place.
We are told that somehow if capitalism fails the very low bar stress tests imposed on it then all of us will go to hell in a hand basket.
I say, rather, if your system failed then move on over and give the rest of us a chance to breathe. Let our dreams get an airing.
But the Commander-in- Chief of the American enterprise and his cronies don’t get it.
And so I need not wonder about the why.
I am adrift in the Age of Obama.

Day by day it becomes clearer that the people in charge are clueless about what to really do on the pressing needs of the day.
Healthcare proposals that will not produce health.
Education that does not educate.
Jobs that are not jobs but makeshift.
Hopes tied in ribbons that turn out be merely press releases.
And the elephant in the room.
Black faces in high places or not,
Blacks and Latinos are still at the back of the bus.
This is the age of the technocrat, the bureaucrat and the chattering class.
Tomorrow they say.
After this, that or the other thing is done, they say.
And then tomorrow, tomorrow.
I may be alone today confronted with this agenda.
I am adrift in the Age of Obama.

Know this though:
the blow back is coming.
Substance will out over style.
Here is the real deal.
A man like Malcolm X spoke more “truth to power” in one day than Obama ever did in his whole sorry life.
I am embarrassed to even mention their names on the same page.
Yet there is hope.
I see some small signs even now.
People are starting to wake up, just a little, to their still empty wallets,
to their very much here today-gone tomorrow jobs,
to their constant struggle to keep a roof, any roof, over their heads and
… to question the why of their shattered dreams.
If I was wrong to think that last year’s breeze was the breeze of my youth, damn, I do not want what is happening now to be the breeze of my old age.
Hell, I am ready to fight for that next new breeze right now.
Then I will not be adrift in the Age of Obama.

Today, though, I’ve got the blues, and I’ve got ‘em bad. 

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 7^th 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.         

*Bob Dylan's Bootleg Legacy- "To Be Young Was Very Heaven"- The 1964 Concert At The Philharmonic Hall

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Bob Dylan Doing "Gates Of Eden".

CD REVIEW

The 1964 Dylan At The Philharmonic Concert, Bootleg Series Volume 6, Sony Records, 2004

As of late I have been railing against various secondary Bob Dylan materials that are mainly of historical interest. In those cases I was describing my reactions to a two-disc set "The Basement Tapes" of about twenty songs and another five volume set entitled "The `Genuine" Basement Tapes of about one hundred songs both done with The Band in 1967 while he was "hiding" out in rural New York after his motorcycle accident. I dubbed both items as strictly for aficionados. I also noted that I was less than enamored of the virtual cottage industry that has grown up around various bootleg, basement, cellar, barn, attic or other odd versions of Dylan's work, electric or acoustic. This archival material is nice for folk, rock and cultural historians but I would argue that Mr. Bob Dylan's usually well-produced mainline albums are after over forty years more than enough to listen to without having to get into the minutia of his career. And, moreover, somehow left to feel that one has missed something without this other more esoteric material in one's collection. Having said that, I am now have to eat a little crow and recommend one bootleg volume that is a notch above the others- the famous October 1964 Philharmonic Concert.

Of course this concert falls into the above-mentioned categories of being for aficionados and music historians. But this one also, unlike some others in these series, gives a glance at what Bob Dylan was like as a performer as he was rising to the top of the folk world before the old electric/acoustic controversy fouled the air. I would draw the reader's attention to a sharp contrast between carefree, light-hearted stage presence and response to his audience here and the later 1966 Prince Albert Royal Hall Concert (Bootleg Volume 4) where he is on the defensive with his British audience and at the end of it practically ignores that audience as a result of their negative response to his going `electric'. I would also note the distant and mumbled answers of his interview style noted in Martin Scorsese's documentary "No Direction Home" of a few years ago. Here, though add his duos on Disc Two with his `paramour', folk queen Joan Baez, and the mixture is practically irresistible.

Again, virtually all the material in this set is available in more polished and technically proficient studio performances and if one has to choose, or is a Dylan rookie, then that is the place to look for his copies of his work. However, for those of us who are aficionados (Hey, I never said I wasn't, did I?) then here are some things to look for: "Gates Of Eden"; "Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall"; "It All Right, Mama" (remember that classic line "even the President must sometimes have to stand naked" as we enter the Obamian `new age'); and "Mr. Tambourine Man". Some of the more topical songs of the time (part of the true folk tradition and what keeps this genre moving forward) like "Talking World War III Blues" and "John Birch Blues" will require a translator or a click to Wikipedia to 'get' the references in those pieces. So do a little homework. That's okay here.

BALLAD OF HOLLIS BROWN

Words and Music by Bob Dylan
1963 Warner Bros. Inc
Renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

Hollis Brown
He lived on the outside of town
Hollis Brown
He lived on the outside of town
With his wife and five children
And his cabin fallin' down

You looked for work and money
And you walked a rugged mile
You looked for work and money
And you walked a rugged mile
Your children are so hungry
That they don't know how to smile

Your baby's eyes look crazy
They're a-tuggin' at your sleeve
Your baby's eyes look crazy
They're a-tuggin' at your sleeve
You walk the floor and wonder why
With every breath you breathe

The rats have got your flour
Bad blood it got your mare
The rats have got your flour
Bad blood it got your mare
If there's anyone that knows
Is there anyone that cares?

You prayed to the Lord above
Oh please send you a friend
You prayed to the Lord above
Oh please send you a friend
Your empty pockets tell yuh
That you ain't a-got no friend

Your babies are crying louder
It's pounding on your brain
Your babies are crying louder now
It's pounding on your brain
Your wife's screams are stabbin' you
Like the dirty drivin' rain

Your grass it is turning black
There's no water in your well
Your grass is turning black
There's no water in your well
You spent your last lone dollar
On seven shotgun shells

Way out in the wilderness
A cold coyote calls
Way out in the wilderness
A cold coyote calls
Your eyes fix on the shotgun
That's hangin' on the wall

Your brain is a-bleedin'
And your legs can't seem to stand
Your brain is a-bleedin'
And your legs can't seem to stand
Your eyes fix on the shotgun
That you're holdin' in your hand

There's seven breezes a-blowin'
All around the cabin door
There's seven breezes a-blowin'
All around the cabin door
Seven shots ring out
Like the ocean's pounding roar

There's seven people dead
On a South Dakota farm
There's seven people dead
On a South Dakota farm
Somewhere in the distance
There's seven new people born

DON'T THINK TWICE, IT'S ALL RIGHT

Words and Music by Bob Dylan
1963 Warner Bros. Inc
Renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe
It don't matter, anyhow
An' it ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe
If you don't know by now
When your rooster crows at the break of dawn
Look out your window and I'll be gone
You're the reason I'm trav'lin' on
Don't think twice, it's all right

It ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe
That light I never knowed
An' it ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe
I'm on the dark side of the road
Still I wish there was somethin' you would do or say
To try and make me change my mind and stay
We never did too much talkin' anyway
So don't think twice, it's all right

It ain't no use in callin' out my name, gal
Like you never did before
It ain't no use in callin' out my name, gal
I can't hear you any more
I'm a-thinkin' and a-wond'rin' all the way down the road
I once loved a woman, a child I'm told
I give her my heart but she wanted my soul
But don't think twice, it's all right

I'm walkin' down that long, lonesome road, babe
Where I'm bound, I can't tell
But goodbye's too good a word, gal
So I'll just say fare thee well
I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind
You could have done better but I don't mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don't think twice, it's all right

GATES OF EDEN

Words and Music by Bob Dylan

Of war and peace the truth just twists
Its curfew gull just glides
Upon four-legged forest clouds
The cowboy angel rides
With his candle lit into the sun
Though its glow is waxed in black
All except when 'neath the trees of Eden

The lamppost stands with folded arms
Its iron claws attached
To curbs 'neath holes where babies wail
Though it shadows metal badge
All and all can only fall
With a crashing but meaningless blow
No sound ever comes from the Gates of Eden

The savage soldier sticks his head in sand
And then complains
Unto the shoeless hunter who's gone deaf
But still remains
Upon the beach where hound dogs bay
At ships with tattooed sails
Heading for the Gates of Eden

With a time-rusted compass blade
Aladdin and his lamp
Sits with Utopian hermit monks
Side saddle on the Golden Calf
And on their promises of paradise
You will not hear a laugh
All except inside the Gates of Eden

Relationships of ownership
They whisper in the wings
To those condemned to act accordingly
And wait for succeeding kings
And I try to harmonize with songs
The lonesome sparrow sings
There are no kings inside the Gates of Eden

The motorcycle black madonna
Two-wheeled gypsy queen
And her silver-studded phantom cause
The gray flannel dwarf to scream
As he weeps to wicked birds of prey
Who pick up on his bread crumb sins
And there are no sins inside the Gates of Eden

The kingdoms of Experience
In the precious wind they rot
While paupers change possessions
Each one wishing for what the other has got
And the princess and the prince
Discuss what's real and what is not
It doesn't matter inside the Gates of Eden

The foreign sun, it squints upon
A bed that is never mine
As friends and other strangers
From their fates try to resign
Leaving men wholly, totally free
To do anything they wish to do but die
And there are no trials inside the Gates of Eden

At dawn my lover comes to me
And tells me of her dreams
With no attempts to shovel the glimpse
Into the ditch of what each one means
At times I think there are no words
But these to tell what's true
And there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden

A HARD RAIN'S A-GONNA FALL

Words and Music by Bob Dylan
1963 Warner Bros. Inc
Renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways,
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it,
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin',
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin',
I saw a white ladder all covered with water,
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin',
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin',
Heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin',
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin',
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony,
I met a white man who walked a black dog,
I met a young woman whose body was burning,
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow,
I met one man who was wounded in love,
I met another man who was wounded with hatred,
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',
But I'll know my song well before I start singin',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

TALKIN' JOHN BIRCH PARANOID BLUES

Words and Music by Bob Dylan
1970, 1973 Special Rider Music

Well, I was feelin' sad and feelin' blue,
I didn't know what in the world I was gonna do,
Them Communists they wus comin' around,
They wus in the air,
They wus on the ground.
They wouldn't gimme no peace. . .

So I run down most hurriedly
And joined up with the John Birch Society,
I got me a secret membership card
And started off a-walkin' down the road.
Yee-hoo, I'm a real John Bircher now!
Look out you Commies!

Now we all agree with Hitlers' views,
Although he killed six million Jews.
It don't matter too much that he was a Fascist,
At least you can't say he was a Communist!
That's to say like if you got a cold you take a shot of malaria.

Well, I wus lookin' everywhere for them gol-darned Reds.
I got up in the mornin' 'n' looked under my bed,
Looked in the sink, behind the door,
Looked in the glove compartment of my car.
Couldn't find 'em . . .

I wus lookin' high an' low for them Reds everywhere,
I wus lookin' in the sink an' underneath the chair.
I looked way up my chimney hole,
I even looked deep inside my toilet bowl.
They got away . . .

Well, I wus sittin' home alone an' started to sweat,
Figured they wus in my T.V. set.
Peeked behind the picture frame,
Got a shock from my feet, hittin' right up in the brain.
Them Reds caused it!
I know they did . . . them hard-core ones.

Well, I quit my job so I could work alone,
Then I changed my name to Sherlock Holmes.
Followed some clues from my detective bag
And discovered they wus red stripes on the American flag!
That ol' Betty Ross . . .

Well, I investigated all the books in the library,
Ninety percent of 'em gotta be burned away.
I investigated all the people that I knowed,
Ninety-eight percent of them gotta go.
The other two percent are fellow Birchers . . . just like me.

Now Eisenhower, he's a Russian spy,
Lincoln, Jefferson and that Roosevelt guy.
To my knowledge there's just one man
That's really a true American: George Lincoln Rockwell.
I know for a fact he hates Commies cus he picketed the movie Exodus.

Well, I fin'ly started thinkin' straight
When I run outa things to investigate.
Couldn't imagine doin' anything else,
So now I'm sittin' home investigatin' myself!
Hope I don't find out anything . . . hmm, great God!

TALKIN' WORLD WAR III BLUES

Words and Music by Bob Dylan
1963, 1966 Warner Bros Inc
Renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

Some time ago a crazy dream came to me,
I dreamt I was walkin' into World War Three,
I went to the doctor the very next day
To see what kinda words he could say.
He said it was a bad dream.
I wouldn't worry 'bout it none, though,
They were my own dreams and they're only in my head.

I said, "Hold it, Doc, a World War passed through my brain."
He said, "Nurse, get your pad, this boy's insane,"
He grabbed my arm, I said "Ouch!"
As I landed on the psychiatric couch,
He said, "Tell me about it."

Well, the whole thing started at 3 o'clock fast,
It was all over by quarter past.
I was down in the sewer with some little lover
When I peeked out from a manhole cover
Wondering who turned the lights on.

Well, I got up and walked around
And up and down the lonesome town.
I stood a-wondering which way to go,
I lit a cigarette on a parking meter
And walked on down the road.
It was a normal day.

Well, I rung the fallout shelter bell
And I leaned my head and I gave a yell,
"Give me a string bean, I'm a hungry man."
A shotgun fired and away I ran.
I don't blame them too much though,
I know I look funny.

Down at the corner by a hot-dog stand
I seen a man, I said, "Howdy friend,
I guess there's just us two."
He screamed a bit and away he flew.
Thought I was a Communist.

Well, I spied a girl and before she could leave,
"Let's go and play Adam and Eve."
I took her by the hand and my heart it was thumpin'
When she said, "Hey man, you crazy or sumpin',
You see what happened last time they started."

Well, I seen a Cadillac window uptown
And there was nobody aroun',
I got into the driver's seat
And I drove down 42nd Street
In my Cadillac.
Good car to drive after a war.

Well, I remember seein' some ad,
So I turned on my Conelrad.
But I didn't pay my Con Ed bill,
So the radio didn't work so well.
Turned on my record playerÑ
It was Rock-A-Day, Johnny singin',
"Tell Your Ma, Tell Your Pa,
Our Loves Are Gonna Grow Ooh-wah, Ooh-wah."

I was feelin' kinda lonesome and blue,
I needed somebody to talk to.
So I called up the operator of time
Just to hear a voice of some kind.
"When you hear the beep
It will be three o'clock,"
She said that for over an hour
And I hung it up.

Well, the doctor interrupted me just about then,
Sayin, "Hey I've been havin' the same old dreams,
But mine was a little different you see.
I dreamt that the only person left after the war was me.
I didn't see you around."

Well, now time passed and now it seems
Everybody's having them dreams.
Everybody sees themselves walkin' around with no one else.
Half of the people can be part right all of the time,
Some of the people can be all right part of the time.
But all of the people canÕt be right all of the time.
I think Abraham Lincoln said that.
"I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours,"
I said that.