Two Dishes But To One Table

How Does It Feel -- to stop laughing at B.D.?

I'm becoming ridiculously obsessed with an artist that I had ALWAYS FOUND TO BE RIDICULOUS.

Blame it on the crazy movie, I’m Not There and my accidental viewing of it at a theater twice within 18 hours. [I accidently double booked with two different sets of friends to see it last month.]  So now, I have Bob Dylan on heavy repeat while biking, commuting, lying down to sleep, grading papers, and everywhere else.

And today, as usual, only complete with a ritualistic playing of the last song from his 1966 notorius Manchester concert, Like a Rolling Stone, basically a 6 minute long sneer at his detractors, caught on tape, a great moment that stands alongside other art biography moments, e.g. The Agony And the Ecstasy. 

The song itself is way better than I ever realized, on many levels.  It occurrs to me that an entire book of chapter titles might be created based on the lines from the lyrics of Like a Rolling Stone.  Every couplet of that song is as quotable as Shakespeare or at least the Old Testament.   Admittedly it would be a real bummer of a book, since, from my interpretation, Bob is singing about people living with cognitive dissonance, armchair quarterbacks and other people living at a distance from the people in this world [like presumably Bob] who are having an authentic experience.

If you're in a spending mood, I can only say that I think downloading the live 1966 version of “L.A.R.S.” is the best 99 cents a person could spend at the Apple Music Store – that version especially is probably worth about 10 bucks, just on its own, especially for the hecklers at the beginning and Bob’s dismissive response.

UPDATE:

Majority Opinion:  A.O. Scott loving "INT" in the NY Times Movie Review

Dissenting view:  "Dylan Pic wins Worst Movie of 2007" in the lit mag n + 1

Paint it Brown with a Ween Video

You will enjoy this low-tech Ween video.
Cardboard robots stomp around to their song "Roses Are Free". 
I was hooked all the way through because the robots kept changing.  Low budget animation + lots of ideas = pleasurable viewing.  A charming video -- especially the guitar solo!

I think you also need to watch their  submission for a Pizza Hut commercial (rejected!).

And, if you're still with me, here they are in 1993, rocking a falsetto and a very slowed down version of their song about Philadelphia prostitutes on something called The Jane Pratt show.

Fordham Jesuits Prompt Middle Aged Epiphany in 42 Year-old Brooklyn Man

I never gave Jackson Browne songs any thought, assuming they were relentlessly upbeat, some longer playing version of "Theme from the show Bosom Buddies" or something, but this morning, over a pre-commute coffee, WFUV-FM blew me away playing treacly Jackson Browne from 1982.   Hearing the actual words to "Running on Empty" made me want to jump off the 8th floor.

Darkness and nihilism from the No Nukes hippy!  This made me happy!   

I'm curious to go sample Browne's whole back catalog now.  And what about Barry Manilow... 

Have you ever had an abrupt epiphany about what a song is really about ? 

The songs of J Browne (if you dare).

2 Very Different Musics by things named Mickey

2003 Version (dystopia)

1929 Version (pre-Irony)

English translation of lyrics to Mickey 3D's "Respire" is here.

Thank You Frank

Hearing a played-out song after twenty years I recognize Frank Black as a great, in a rock sense, vocalist, giving me all the falsetto, ironic intonations, stutter step droll delivery of a depressing heroin reference overlaid on an absurd LA beach party tune that I could ever hope for.   Here comes your man.

Sell Them Back

Cartoons by Mike the Pod, trying to purge himself of formerly liked bands such as Def Leppard, Ween, and the Beastie Boys.

Eminem Baby Photos

I'm enjoying the hyperbolically titled "The Dark Story of Eminem", by Nick Hasted.   Considering the the lack of pith to the whole Eminen story, the book compares favorably to the last great rock bio I read, Grail Marcus' The Last Gang in Town (The Clash).  The Eminem book has lots of details on the initial meeting with Dre, the work done by the  Bass Bros. before Dre, the adolescent beating up stories, including D'Angelo Bailey, etc, etc.   One funny thing is that at least half of the references and quotes are footnoted from weird, tiny sources, incl many fanzines and internet-only publications.   The early rap battles seem to match pretty well with the scenarios we all saw in the movie 8 Mile.   

Hasted notes, tantalizingly, that there is an entire album out there, from 1996, full of completely different sounding stuff than the "Hi, My Name Is..." album we all know as Em's debut.   This apocryphal release,  "Infinity", is available as a bootleg only.

The ass-whupping from D'Angelo Bailey was actually worse than described in the song.  It led to a concussion and hospitalization where the 12-year old Marshall Mathers fell into a 5-day coma! "Everything in the song is true.  He beat the shit out of me.  Came running from across the yard and hit me so hard into this snowbank that I blacked out."   Rolling Stone tracked down the adult Bailey who noted  "We was having fun.  Sometimes he'd fight back -- depend on what mood he'd be in.  Yeah we flipped him right on his head at recess.  When we didn't see him moving we took off running."

The biography has some nice early photos:   

Marshall Bruce Mathers II,
Marshall Bruce Mathers III, and
Debbie Briggs.

Eminem, Age 14, sporting an Alf T-Shirt.

And the childhood home, 8427 Timken Street in Warren, Mich.

Just Funnin'

Craziest song heard today:  Ginger Rogers singing We're In the Money.  It's old, corny, scratchy -- and then mind-blowing when it slips into, one, two, three entire verses SUNG IN PIG LATIN.   W.T.S.??  I could only assume Screaming Jay had suddenly possessed Ginger's brain or something.   
You can find it at iTunes by song title.  I am mentally filing it away next to Download elvislaughing.mp3 .

4/5 a Journalist

I can't bring myself to misuse the word 'meme' here (out of loyalty to its coiner, Richard Dawkins).  I will tag a few friends with this game, though:  consider the 5 classic questions of journalism, who, what, when, where, why and see how many of these questions are asked by the songs on your mp3 player.   Thanks to my iPod, here are the questions I seem to walk around listening to and thinging about:

What's Going On?
What Else is New.
What Have You Done?
What's my mission now?
What Deaner Was Talking About.
What is this thing called love?
Whatever You Want
What we Want is Free.
What We All Want
Whatsername.
Whatever.

Who's to Say?

When You Know
When You're Young
When the Sun Goes Down
When You Dance I Can Really Love.
When the Light Appears Boy
When I Was a Young Girl
When It Rains It Snows

Where Do I Begin?
Where Do the Children Play?
Where Did you Sleep Last Night?
Where Have All the Good Times Gone?
Where I End and You Begin
Where Your Eyes Don't Go
Where's Captain Kirk?
Where is My Mind?

I'm embarrassed to say I'm not sure exactly who does a few of these songs.
Can you guess any of the artists?
Can you post your own journalistic questioning songs on your site and then link from here to yours?

iPods Scroll Lyrics

I just discovered that you can put the lyrics to songs onto your iPod.  That way you can read the lyrics while you sing along [to music noone can hear but you].
The lyrics will appear in the window that usually displays the album artwork.

To add lyrics to  any song in your iTunes desktop, just right click on the song, hit Get Info, and paste in whatever lyric you want -- lyrics are easily google-able by searching one line in quotation marks.

I want to sing to exactly two songs.  Maybe you can guess the song or artists...

1.
" God save donald duck, vaudeville and variety
We are the desperate dan appreciation society

We are the custard pie appreciation consortium
God save the george cross and all those who were awarded them
We are the sherlock holmes english speaking vernacular
Help save fu manchu, moriarty and dracula"

2. 
"In eighteen hundred and forty five
When Daniel OConnell he was alive
I
was
wearing
Corduroybritchesdiggingditchespullingswitchesdodging hitchers:
I was working on the railway"