New Bob Dylan song: Huck's Theme

Newer Bob Dylan song, about JFK, previously unreleased:

https://bobdylan.lnk.to/MurderMostFoulTA

Sounds like Oh Mercy era, maybe(?)

Tweet from Bob himself:

Greetings to my fans and followers with gratitude for all your support and loyalty across the years.
This is an unreleased song we recorded a while back that you might find interesting.
Stay safe, stay observant and may God be with you.
Bob Dylanhttps://t.co/uJnE4X64Bb

— bobdylan.com (@bobdylan) March 27, 2020

sounds newer than oh mercy

Yeah I agree

Ok, there’s a line that goes, “The last 50 years, they’ve been searching for that” — which places the song around 2013.

whoah...some of the things Bobby says "to play" in the 2nd half ot this song:

What's New Pussycat
What'd I Say
Wolfman Jack
Tom Dooley
Saint James Infirmary
John Lee Hooker
Guitar Slim
Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood
Don Henley and Glen Frey (!!!)
Another One Bites the Dust
Mysery Train
Oscar Perteson
Stan Getz
Dickie Betts
Art Pepper
Thelonius Monk
Charlie Parker
Lindsey and Stevie Nicks
Nat King Cole
Nature Boy
Jelly Roll Morton
Lucille
Moonlight Sonata in F#
Love Me or Leave Me by the Great Bud Powell

Definitely sounds like Tempest-era to me.

Reminiscent of "Set 'em up Joe, play "Walkin' the Floor,"/play it for my flat-chested junkie whore" from "Scarlet Town."

loved this though it got to me & i started crying for no reason

this is great

Bobby

"livin' in a nightmare on ELM STREET!" LOLOLOLOL!!1!11!!11!!!!!!

absolutely fuckin great

"I'm just a Patsy, like Patsy Cline"

This has more lumpy couplets than good ones, can't stop thinking about We Didn't Start the Fire.

nah, the difference is that he doesn't "mean" anything. He's been moving into the space for 20+ years now—on the one hand he's deadly serious, on the other daring you to take him seriously

He's not pulling "ideas" down, he's not "inspired," he's not a conduit for anything, he's refining "late period" by going practically vaporous, letting it all pass right through him. Authenticity, sincerity, intentions, even lyricism—it's all moot. He's not there! The best way to go out imo

I fucking love this song

anyway this is a dated outtake, new material (I don't think we're gonna get any) would probably be a straight read of a Friends script or something

I find it fascinating that in 1962 he wrote a song about the new, young (alive) president calling him up on the telephone, and here 50+ years later we get his meditation on the man's killing.

Play me a song, Mr. Wolfman Jack / Play it for me in my long Cadillac

I would believe it if you told me this was written by a Dylan AI

Glad to hear his take on JFK tho, been a pretty slow year so far, nothing really worthy of his great pen

all that junk and all that jazz
play one for the birdman of alcatraz

He's not pulling "ideas" down, he's not "inspired," he's not a conduit for anything, he's refining "late period" by going practically vaporous, letting it all pass right through him. Authenticity, sincerity, intentions, even lyricism—it's all moot. He's not there! The best way to go out imo

I would argue that this has been the case since 1964-65, if not earlier. He is the least authentic artist ever.

sure I think he's always been an "antenna" or whatever, I guess what I'm saying is that in the last couple decades it seems like he's done away with all of the mediating measures, all of the signal processing. These litanies are enough, they have all of the meaning he requires, he's really gotten entirely out of his own way

like instead of writing a song about Lenny Bruce or Reuben Carter or whatever he can recite their names, there's nothing more to be derived from his perspective on things, he's self-aware enough to know that ppl are just by reflex going to project their own Dylan onto whatever he writes anyway, so he just doesn't bother. It's like this weird thing where he's actually earned that prerogative and for me at least it's not better or worse than anything else. Anyway he's got whiskey or wrought iron gates or whatever to make.

A friend recently expressed disappointment that he had writers for Theme Time Radio Hour—wanting to believe Dylan is just a pure unceasing stream of wit and wisdom, but pesonally idgaf, it's Dylan!

Not sure if it is a great Dylan song exactly, it is certainly though the best Don Delillo novel in a minute

Something very Street Hassle-y about the music & instrumentation

the arrangement of this is fucking remarkable

yes

Apparently it’s his longest song ever, surpassing the runtime of “Highlands.”

> doesn't "mean" anything

I get the opposite, it feels incredibly literal for Dylan, and literally sentimental. I totally agree with the idea of a vaporous late Dylan, but this hits me as a cake of incense, not the smoulder.

Apparently it’s his longest song ever, surpassing the runtime of “Highlands.”

"Murder Most Foul" b/w "Murder Most Foul (extended dub mix)"

i'm just thinking of phil ochs' song, i'm thinking of jozo karamatic's "smrt u dallasu" (dylan knows about that one, i'm sure he does)... about armand schaubroeck's "god made the blues to kill me"... i mean, a lot of people wrote songs about the assassination, at the time, and this sounds like he's taking the piss out of all of them. dylan is a phantom and has been all kinds of people... in this song he's the elderly llewyn davis!

it is sad, though. he did write propaganda songs. his songs did used to mean something. and if he was too much of an "artist" for that, fair enough, but what sort of nihilism is this? be a ghost, sure, but why make fun of the earnest young man for ever having believed? what he did back in '63 helped, not as much as he may have imagined but it did. by making fun of himself he's making fun of everyone who is still trying to do the work he abandoned, which isn't, i don't think, fair.

last songs? lee hazlewood was better at that sort of thing.

I get the opposite, it feels incredibly literal for Dylan, and literally sentimental. I totally agree with the idea of a vaporous late Dylan, but this hits me as a cake of incense, not the smoulder.

― Julius Caesar Memento Hoodie (bendy)

if it's sincere his mind has gone. i mean, is he back to being the voice of his generation? deranged, meaningless rambles, namechecking like it's a fucking episode of Family Guy?

why make fun of the earnest young man for ever having believed? what he did back in '63 helped, not as much as he may have imagined but it did. by making fun of himself he's making fun of everyone who is still trying to do the work he abandoned, which isn't, i don't think, fair.

How is he “making fun of himself”?

Also, he wrote "protest songs," not "propaganda songs" (they're sort of opposites, aren't they?)

if it's sincere his mind has gone. i mean, is he back to being the voice of his generation? deranged, meaningless rambles, namechecking like it's a fucking episode of Family Guy?

Explain to me the difference between what he is doing on this song and what he is doing on Desolation Row?

I think Desolation Row is packed with meaning and I will happily give you my take on it if you want.

amazing how close a lot of this song is to being full-on Grocery Bag:

I'm just a patsy -- CLINE!

Living in a nightmare -- ELM STREET!

xp Be my guest, but I don't see how that makes it different than this song.

In case not everyone is aware, Kennedy’s motorcade was on Elm Street when he was shot — so there’s a double meaning there.

I think the “name checking” parts of this song are very meaningful; it’s like an elegy for the 20th Century, as evoked through cultural references that also stretch back farther (all the way to, you know, “Hamlet”).

Also, he wrote "protest songs," not "propaganda songs" (they're sort of opposites, aren't they?)

― morrisp

in best bob dylan style, i stole that line from someone who's been dead since around 1986 and am not super qualified to debate the point

I think the “name checking” parts of this song are very meaningful; it’s like an elegy for the 20th Century, as evoked through cultural references that also stretch back farther (all the way to, you know, “Hamlet”).

― morrisp

but how does it stack up to

JFK
Blown away
What else do I have to say?

this is Dylan's "Junior Dad"

I only make it all the way through once last night before bed. I went from loving it to kind of hating it and back to loving it again. I really like the dirge-like arrangement and the instrumentation, but the lyrics kept throwing me.

And while some of the couplets are indeed clunky, I think there may be a deliberate strategy to discuss Kennedy’s murder in very matter-of-fact, even clichéd terms (similar to how Lennon’s death was addressed in “Roll on John”) — to leave “breathing room” for evoking its heavy cultural weight in the other parts of the song, and tying in the Kennedy mythos with all those other aspects of Americana, both fictional and real. (I dunno, I’ve also only listened to it once all the way thru so far!)

xp You know, I think you're right. Maybe one of these days I'll wander over to the Dylan: classic or dud thread and post my take on Desolation Row, but it doesn't really have anything to do with what I think of this song. I like it a lot but can't articulate what I think of it yet, I'll have to let it percolate.

music reminds me of Dirty Three

In case not everyone is aware, Kennedy’s motorcade was on Elm Street when he was shot — so there’s a double meaning there.

they are both streets that something bad happened on, i would put the meaning multiplier at 1.25, maybe lower

Jimmy Wapo reference

Dylan's entire studio protest output is basically about 13 songs off his first four albums, and that is only if you include stuff like "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall".

Dumb comma.

You can also probably remove "Song to Woody" and "I Shall be Free" from the list.

@ums otm re Dirty Three

the music is really gorgeous, very eerie too. and the far-off rumble of drums when he repeats the “murder most foul” semi chorus is cool

they are both streets that something bad happened on, i would put the meaning multiplier at 1.25, maybe lower

Ok, it’s a “double reference” — however you prefer to phrase it.

Friend just pointed out the arrangement sounds like Ghosteen, kinda.

xp for more insights check out my new podcast where i go through dylan line by line and rate the precise amount of meaning in each lyric

It seems to me that part of the whole premise of the song's construction is that lines are there because they rhyme. And needing rhymes, you allow things in. But I'm not convinced of their vacuousness.

Hey, and Billy Joel's in there, too. In fact, it's the first song he asks Wolfman to play. I admire the inclusivity.

Friend just pointed out the arrangement sounds like Ghosteen, kinda.

― Julius Caesar Memento Hoodie (bendy), Friday, March 27, 2020 11:53 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah there's a strong cave feeling. i was reminded of higgs boson blues, mostly cause of all the references.

Play Oscar Peterson, play Stan Getz
Play "Blue Sky," play Dickie Betts

I found this pretty lovely. The lyrics idk I heard less than half of them but found them pretty disarming, laughed a few times. Definitely felt like it could be a matter of faith whether I took them as poignant or just daft but I’m not sure what I would have to gain from being a sceptic

I’m not a Dylan person really but desolation row is one of my all time faves so that might explain it

Don’t really care about Kennedy at all don’t @ me

"play Don Henley
play Glenn Frey"

well, yeah

I love this

On the Waterfront reference?

Play Nat King Cole, play "Nature Boy"
Play "Down in the Boondocks" for Terry Malloy

i enjoyed the rhymes & the references he grabbed to complete them were idk, just enjoyable from a writing standpoint either for silliness or outthereness etc

Dylan's entire studio protest output is basically about 13 songs off his first four albums, and that is only if you include stuff like "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall".

― Why, I would make a fantastic Nero! (PBKR)

some of those songs are pretty decent tho

This is an obvious reference but it's making me think of (70s) Waits if anything. I love the arrangement.

Who am I kidding - these are weird times and this is destroying me.

Listening for the first time, haven't read anything above.

Very striking...It's not "Desolation Row," but I know how silly it is to even say that; it's not the same person who made "Desolation Row," so why would it be? The music's beautiful, and I'm more comfortable with the vocal than most of what I've dipped into the past couple of decades. Putting out a Kennedy song right now is perversely vintage.

Dylan has spent so much time just referring to the musicians before him that it is totally disarming to hear him reference those who came after him. Like that 70s interview where he praised Alice Cooper felt odd (and true) enough.

Bob was friends with Kurtis Blow

The Beatles thing is interesting because it sounds like a putdown, yet Dylan is the author of my favourite Beatles-love quote ever, the one about driving through Colorado in 1964.

xxp Or the Alicia Keys verse in "Thunder on the Mountain."

For anyone who's never read it...

Then, when we were driving through Colorado we had the radio on and eight of the ten top songs were Beatles songs. In Colorado! ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand,’ all those early ones.

They were doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous, just outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid. You could only do that with other musicians. Even if you’re playing your own chords you had to have other people playing with you. That was obvious. And it started me thinking about other people.

But I just kept it to myself that I really dug them. Everybody else thought they were for the teenyboppers, that they were gonna pass right away. But it was obvious to me that they had staying power. I knew they were pointing the direction of where music had to go. I was not about to put up with other musicians, but in my head the Beatles were it. In Colorado, I started thinking it was so far out that I couldn’t deal with it — eight in the Top Ten. It seemed to me a definite line was being drawn. This was something that never happened before. It was outrageous, and I kept it in my mind. You see, there was a lot of hypocrisy all around, people saying it had to be either folk or rock. But I knew it didn’t have to be like that. I dug what the Beatles were doing, and I always kept it in mind from back then.

Greatest use of the word "outrageous" ever.

that is cool, thx for posting clemenza

"In Colorado!" That kills me every time.

Bob was friends with Kurtis Blow

they used to throw horses off of cliffs together iirc

I also dig the reference to Paula Abdul while in New Orleans recording Oh Mercy.

re:Chronicles and others---fits current discussion, and I've always found it disturbing. Keeps coming back into my head uninvited (as does "Desolation Row," but don't mind that one): https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2005/03/10/i-is-someone-else/

My computer has probs posting YouTubes here, but check for his track w Kurtis Blow.

Dickie Betts?

"oh you like Ozzy? What about Ratt? You like Ratt?"

https://youtu.be/cntGcbU3nM8

Probably super uncool and unhelpfully obvious but this makes me think of "Rave on John Donne"

that 80s street interview is one of my favorite Bob artifacts

That clip is priceless.

I experienced that once in an autograph lineup for Bobby Hull: famous old males are very receptive to getting their picture taken with younger females.

Dylan's entire studio protest output is basically about 13 songs off his first four albums

this is unfair to "George Jackson" and "Hurricane" imo, but point taken

I love in one of those AJ Weberman calls when Bob turns his nose up at just abt every living songwriter except Gordon Lightfoot. "Yeah...he's alright" (or something to that effect)

^see: Scorsese's movie about Dylan

Beatles bit didn't strike me as a putdown. (And their chords WERE outrageous.)

They hadn't even gotten to "A Hard Day's Night" yet.

But in some sense some of those early Beatlemania smashes like "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "She Loves You" were the most outrageous.

"oh you like Ozzy? What about Ratt? You like Ratt?"

https://youtu.be/cntGcbU3nM8

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, March 27, 2020 4:42 PM (thirty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

OMG, I have seen just about every clip of Dylan known to man, but never seen this. Thanks for posting it. That might be the most generous I've ever seen Bob with anyone.

the whole doc is fantastic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pS8rM_MsIY

new song rules

whoah there's MORE?!?

Anyway, Murder Most Foul is something else. The overall feel is excellent; it's funny and sad at the same time. The music really sets the mood. There are a bunch of great individual lines and a few magical moments where he leans into a phrase.

This section is great:

I hate to tell you, mister, but only dead men are free
Send me some lovin', then tell me no lie
Throw the gun in the gutter and walk on by
Wake up, little Susie, let's go for a drive
Cross the Trinity River, let's keep hope alive
Turn the radio on, don't touch the dials
Parkland hospital, only six more miles
You got me dizzy, Miss Lizzy, you filled me with lead
That magic bullet of yours has gone to my head
I'm just a patsy like Patsy Cline
Never shot anyone from in front or behind
I've blood in my eye, got blood in my ear
I'm never gonna make it to the new frontier

This song belongs in the long tradition of Dylan songs, like Tangled Up in Blue, with a radically shifting narrative viewpoint. In the case of Murder Most Foul, it shifts among a third person almost historical viewpoint, a 1963 viewpoint, the perpetrators' viewpoint, and Kennedy's own viewpoint. I love this shit.

It strikes me as something in his younger days he might have been able to wrestle into a more formidable, devastating form. Like there is an A+ 10 minute song lurking in this monstrosity.

It could've been "Brownsville Girl."

Beatles bit didn't strike me as a putdown.
― timellison

I'm listening again and you might be right. I may have been influenced by a review I skimmed.

Hope someone makes an epic video for it. Something other than Kennedy footage...I don't know what. I thought the "Like a Rolling Stone" video with all the TV stations was incredible--something out of left field like that.

xpost yeah PKBT I love it, he's so chill and accommodating....also just Bob Dylan talking about Ratt makes my day every time

he's the opposite of chill in the rest of that doc, haha

oh yeah? that's all I've seen but I can imagine

posted upthread — Getting To Dylan. It's mostly an extremely irritated interview with Bob during the filming of Hearts Of Fire.

Dylan is like Pynchon in that he likes people and hates systems.

New song is great and his voice hasn’t sounded this good in, what, 40 years ? I really wonder from which session this was culled

people seem pretty convinced it's a Tempest outtake, I'm not so sure, could be from the Sinatra era ... For a couple tours now, he's been doing spare, piano-led versions of "Girl From North Country" and "Boots of Spanish Leather" that this kind of recalls.

The "for the last 50 years" line would place it in 2013 if you're being strict, but uhhh I think that's a mistake when we're talking about Bob Dylan.

Altho I'm not a fan of Great American Songbook moves (World Gone Wrong and Good As I Been To You notwithstanding) his voice on the recent records has been markedly better. Post quitting smoking, I'm told.

I get a sense of Olympian timelessness from this new song - spectral Bob sifting through the wreckage of the past five decades, picking up a thread here, a fragment there, ruminating.

Very comparable to Neil's "Drifin' Back" in that way.

The main reason I originally mistook it for an Oh, Mercy outtake was that his voice sounded so good.

This is super inarticulate but:

My first thought about this is that it fits so well, thematically, with Tempest. Tempest already has the historical focus, the 50-year intervals, the collective traumas, the whole elegiac vibe, and this sort of slots in next to all that and makes it even stronger.

Like, we've already got "Roll on John," which I always think of as Odysseus visiting Achilles in the underworld - the guy who always survives, who always pays in somebody else's blood, visiting an old acquaintance who wasn't so lucky. It's less a tribute than an acknowledgment of what you lose when you die young in a cloud of glory - you cease to be yourself and become other people's mythic vision of you. I love "Roll on John," it's such a gorgeous stylized lament, and yet it's obviously about an idea rather than a person, and I think that's meant to be the saddest thing about it.

And here we have another elegy, for a death that happened at the very beginning of Dylan's career. And there's something about that flood of musical and cultural references at the end that suggests a long, slow mourning procession. But this isn't Dylan doing American Pie - he's not claiming that JFK's death is when Everything Changed, because this sits alongside the song about the Titanic and the song about John Lennon's death - other moments of collective grief that are just as meaningful. It's like he's showing us that you can put your finger anywhere on the timeline and find a defining trauma, and all the art we make is a way for us to mourn.

Ugh, I now realize that came across super pretentious.

But leaving aside when it's from and what it all means, I'm really charmed and touched that Bob Dylan took the time to think, "Hey, everybody's locked down and scared, what can I do to cheer them?" and I find it super endearing that what he landed on was "release a 17-minute song about the death of JFK."

^^quality posts

Yes, though I would say this is how Dylan does American Pie in a way.

It's like he's showing us that you can put your finger anywhere on the timeline and find a defining trauma, and all the art we make is a way for us to mourn.

this is well said and closer to what I was trying to get at upthread about "meaning"...that increasingly on later records the function of these references seems less denotative and more toward the end of flattening (?) everything—experiences, memories, histories—onto a single plane, in a single category, allowing him the necessary separation from it, the distance from which to eulogize

and to that extent this song isn't really about JFK, its just the lowest common denominator for "loss" and an easy 20th c anchor for the rest, each next thing as sad and as gone as the next, incl. Alicia Keys and the Eagles or whatever

each next thing as sad and as gone as the next

as sad and gone but also as enshrined in myth - which I guess is the "single plane?"

maybe yeah but I think the references are cultural because that makes them common/relatable...like he could write this same song as earnestly but lesser efect w/ private references to friendships, family etc

ten again he has long clearly seen himself in the lineage of e.g. Guitar Slim or Jelly Roll Moton and I guess in that regard those are very personal references too

*to* lesser efect

I've still only listened twice. I'd like to make a list, I'll call it the Gorgeous George List in honor of Memoirs, of the references ordered by how unlikely/bizarre they are. So Lady Macbeth is down near the bottom, Nightmare on Elm Street up near the top.

people seem pretty convinced it's a Tempest outtake, I'm not so sure, could be from the Sinatra era

I'm more and and more convinced it's not from the Tempest sessions, that album was definitely the nadir of his voice, listen to the ballads in that and even in the gentlest moments he's pretty raspy

also something about this song's production doesn't sound like it's from those sessions

agreed it sounds like there's more space and separation than anything on Tempest

each next thing as sad and as gone as the next, incl. Alicia Keys and the Eagles or whatever

But those things live on, don’t they? He’s imploring you to “play” them, that’s how we get through life...

 “This is an unreleased song we recorded a while back that you might find interesting. Stay safe, stay observant and may God be with you.”

there's been rumors he's been doing new music.... Triplicate came out 3 years ago, he didn't say "outtake" necessarily

His voice does sound better here, I agree. It just sounds to me like it comes from the same creative place as Tempest, like it's a companion volume to Tempest even if it was recorded later.

“A while back” sounds older than the past 3 years, but who knows. Has Rolling Stone talked to Jeff Rosen or somebody about it yet?

(xpost) Agree. And in that way, it feels very different than "Driftin' Back," where Neil cataloged various things he remembered with disdain. "Murder Most Foul"--the part of it where he's rambling on about all these songs and artists--feels like a sweeping embrace.

xxxp morrisp yeah I totally think that's true, but what I also hear sewn into "play" is raise a glass, pour one out

being in time music is always disappearing as you listen to it :(

If you've been playing the official clip, like I have, there's another one up now with lyrics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rkr6TVnGtAM

For the next few minutes, anyway--I think Dylan's organization is one of those with acute copyright radar.

xpost, Triplicate was released March 2017, so probably recorded 2016, I guess I think that could qualify as a "while back"

also could be that they cut original songs during the sessions for the covers records?

xp they are hawks!

this channel always seems somehow to fly under the radar and re-up stuff http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaOZO0lQahdMsROidW4RIZA/videos

I think with Dylan, especially in recent years, there's a real tension between honoring these mythic figures and trying to resist becoming one himself; that's what I was trying to get at with the thing about John Lennon as legend vs. John Lennon as real person who Dylan knew. Like, every artist eventually ends up entombed in the mausoleum of their work, and I think Dylan can see the beauty in that while also being terrified at the sight of those walls rising around him.

But then the sprawl of artists he catalogues at the end of this song, the mix of genres, the high and low culture, suggests something different, a sharing of the burden. Like he's just one of many pallbearers.

You're really insightful when it comes to this song! I've been thinking about posting on Facebook about it--I might quote you, if that's okay.

Thank you! Please do!

It's also weird writing about "John Lennon" as figure when he's been dead longer than he knew him; Lennon can't help but be a statue in the park.

Wasn't "Roll On, John" written in the '80s?

I remembered hearing that, too — but when I went looking for verification the other day, I found this discussion of an even earlier precedent: https://bob-dylan.org.uk/archives/4595

this song reminds me that dylan once had a (really good!) radio show. dude knows how to tell a story through a playlist.

I put up a post on Facebook, including some of Lily Dale's comments (and repeating stuff I've said here--I do repeat myself).

http://www.facebook.com/phil.dellio/posts/10156574950051534

I prefer concision:

https://youtu.be/o6YWpujfqIg

That's good, I like that. Didn't like Lou Reed's Kennedy song at all (haven't heard it since it came out).

I love the Lou Reed song. How about this one?:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ggtyT1TwL8

I love Negativland's "Richard Nixon Died Today." Which is a whole other thing.

So many evocative posts---these
t's like he's showing us that you can put your finger anywhere on the timeline and find a defining trauma, and all the art we make is a way for us to mourn.

this is well said and closer to what I was trying to get at upthread about "meaning"...that increasingly on later records the function of these references seems less denotative and more toward the end of flattening (?) everything—experiences, memories, histories—onto a single plane, in a single category, allowing him the necessary separation from it, the distance from which to eulogize

― Yanni Xenakis (Hadrian VIII) just now (right after waking up) made me think of this----from bobdylan.com:

I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine
WRITTEN BY: BOB DYLAN

I dreamed I saw St. Augustine

Alive as you or me

Tearing through these quarters

In the utmost misery

With a blanket underneath his arm

And a coat of solid gold

Searching for the very souls

Whom already have been sold

“Arise, arise,” he cried so loud

In a voice without restraint

“Come out, ye gifted kings and queens

And hear my sad complaint

No martyr is among ye now

Whom you can call your own

So go on your way accordingly

But know you’re not alone”

I dreamed I saw St. Augustine

Alive with fiery breath

And I dreamed I was amongst the ones

That put him out to death

Oh, I awoke in anger

So alone and terrified

I put my fingers against the glass

And bowed my head and cried
Copyright © 1968 by Dwarf Music; renewed 1996 by Dwarf Music

Believe it or not, the first Dylan song I fell in love with, in 1995, aged 25.

What a great song. Bob had sort of sat out the 2010s, with only one album of original material. But this beats anything on Tempest, in my opinion.

To me the key line is "if you want to remember better write down the names" which he then commences in doing. It's a goodbye to the 20th century, as it fades from view. It reminds me of the last 30 minutes of The Irishman, which touches on the same ideas.

What a strange development. In the midst of a global pandemic, Bob Dylan once again assumes his role at the center of the culture, if only for a day or two.

For what it's worth, Love & Theft was released on 9/11/01, as noted here by monitor Greg Tate:
https://www.villagevoice.com/2001/09/25/intelligence-data/

this is masterful. feels like an entire album's worth of material somehow crammed into one long track. almost too much to take in at once. especially love the violin, which reminds me of astral weeks.

also, i saw someone point out that

Slide down the banister, go get your coat
Ferry 'cross the Mersey and go for the throat

may contain buried references to guy banister and david ferrie, and now i can't unhear it

That's great, missed that.

That's how I appreciate it -- a half-hearted concordance of JFK.

Well...like it or not, I don't hear anything half-hearted there.

Even better, no Kevin Costner.

The only thing half-hearted about it would be a lack of willpower to edit it into something more powerful.

I don't know--I think its length is where so much of its power resides. It's like that 13-hour Rivette film, Out 1. You could edit it down drastically (even he did) and it's not like you'd lose any story, but then it wouldn't be Out 1 anymore.

or editing Akerman

prevailing sense from nerd detectives at expectingrain.com is that while this might have been written around Tempest it is more likely a recent recording, even possibly in the last year

That’s interesting...

exciting if true! maybe still an album of originals left in the tank

that feels like the best explanation. the more I've listened and also listened to Tempest, I'm myself convinced it wasn't recorded during those sessions

i love this song

the litany of references at the end that somehow doesn't seem monotonous. sounsd like nothing i can think of except desolation row.

Also cf. All the friends I ever had are gone.

("Delia")

I wonder what dickie betts he has in mind , the Elizabeth Reed stuff or Jessica etc

I think he says Blue Sky?

https://youtu.be/lZg9MWLQ5_c

throw the gun in the gutter/and walk on by

the litany of references at the end that somehow doesn't seem monotonous. sounds like nothing i can think of except desolation row.

Reminds me a bit of "Chimes of Freedom," and I guess "Ring Them Bells" as well - but where those songs have big sweeping categories - "flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight," "Ring them bells sweet Martha for the poor man's son," this has a seemingly endless list of specific people.

Wait, I think we can go somewhere with this! Chimes of Freedom is his early period, when he was thinking in big sweeping hippie abstractions about freedom and justice. Ring Them Bells is roughly the same idea but in religious terms; the chimes of freedom have turned into bells calling us to worship and be saved. But this is a song that's partly about being at the end of your lifetime, when all those big abstract spaces have been filled in with the real things and people and works of art that you've engaged with in some way over the course of your life. So instead of the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale, we get Lindsey and Stevie Nicks. And in the place of the chimes of freedom, we have every song Bob Dylan has ever heard.

I keep hearing "play it for Dead C and Stevie Nicks"

probably not but

Number one on Billboard's Rock Digital Song Sales list!

The Guardian has dares to do this:

Bob Dylan's 50 greatest songs – ranked!

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/apr/09/bob-dylans-50-greatest-songs-ranked

I didn't get beyond #46: Make You Feel My Love is one of his five worst songs ever.

Yep, lots to disagree with. But that's the nature of lists like that

Sitting though “make you feel” by Adele is pure torture

Number one on Billboard's Rock Digital Song Sales list!

Apparently it’s Dylan’s first song to ever hit #1 on any Billboard chart (“under his own name”)

The Guardian has dares to do this:

Bob Dylan's 50 greatest songs – ranked!

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/apr/09/bob-dylans-50-greatest-songs-ranked

― Duke, Thursday, April 9, 2020 4:17 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

without looking i'm guessing "what can i do for you" didn't make the list which makes it invalid to me

interesting that "slow train" and "groom" did though

#today and #tomorrow,#skeletons and #nudes,#sparkle and #flash,#AnneFrank and #IndianaJones,#fastcars and #fastfood, #bluejeans and #queens,#Beethoven and #Chopin,#life and #death.https://t.co/o5VQKJ0NHx

— bobdylan.com (@bobdylan) April 17, 2020

wtf!

God bless this weird motherfucker

fuck this is a great one

Lol, Bob is the best.

I assume this means a new album is coming.

I paint landscapes
and I paint dudes

I like how "dudes" is there so he can rhyme it with the title yet it still works.

This one is more ehhhh. As in, "Great, Bob, you remember what you read in elementary school English."

I paint landscapes
and I paint dudes

think it's "nudes" haha

lol

it's definitely nudes

nude dudes with 'tude

i paint brosephs
and i paint dudes
plz send multitudes of nudes

https://brooklynrail-web.imgix.net/article_image/image/8738/morgan-web1.jpg?w=1020&q=80&fit=max

I'm sorry Bob but it's dudes now, so much better that way

Bob Dylan: Send Nudes

multitudes of nudes

There is another "dudes" rhyme though.

nude dudes with 'tude

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown),

how'd you know my memoir title?

xp “I relic and I frolic, with all the young dudes”

love this era of Bob

nudes *and* dudes

https://www.nydailynews.com/resizer/a1xlceGyYuU-Bw7U6YgdtlVaN9s=/415x537/top/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tronc.s3.amazonaws.com/public/LMZUEVDP53LPUGA3INSMYBS52Q.jpg

https://www.needsomefun.net/wp-content/gallery/bob-dylan-new-orleans-series-2013/cache/1-bob-dylan-new-orleans-series-1.jpg-nggid03110-ngg0dyn-640x480x100-00f0w010c010r110f110r010t010.jpg

i love his singing on this one (and the last one). delivered with a wink, but he's not joking. well, not entirely joking.

https://www.castlefineart.com/assets/img/resized/standard/grande-c381rvore-beachfront.jpg

No nudes, shoulda used crude? Ciick to enlarge that if you pleeeze.

I initially heard the line in the last verse as "get up off my d"

had to rewind and check

"Will I be lewd to the dude and crude to his prude and to his profession?" --Joel Gibb

I like "I Contain Multitudes" well enough, but it feels like he just dropped some leftover verses from "Murder Most Foul." Either way, Bob in old sap mode feels like comfort food for me at the moment.

Yeah, I’d eat up a whole album of this stuff.

a new bob album would just make my year, even though the year sucks

I'm hoping that he'll release an entire album this year, one song at a time

our old friend greil, who once argued that it was not *entirely* a coincidence that john lydon's name was similar to that of the medieval anabaptist leader john of leyden, is unimpressed by the david ferrie/guy banister theory:

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/real-life-rock-top-10-april-2020/

I really liked that review, though--the fact that it was based on something concrete, the widespread reaction to the song, rather than some impenetrable tangent, that was a good start. I think he made a somewhat significant factual error, though: "Murder Most Foul" made #1 on some specialized chart, digital downloads or something like that, it wasn't the Top 100--that would have been really remarkable.

Looks like another new song may be queued up for tonight:

What are you lookin’ at - there’s nothing to see. pic.twitter.com/TzCBvpIMBo

— Bob Dylan (@bobdylan) May 7, 2020

New album ‘Rough And Rowdy Ways’ coming June 19th.
Pre-order now: https://t.co/SN0XeyNKiN
Listen to “False Prophet” here: https://t.co/05k7HYtPiK pic.twitter.com/raitEZpabe

— Bob Dylan (@bobdylan) May 8, 2020

was just about to create this; beat to it ---> Bob Dylan - My Rough and Rowdy Ways /2020) Anticipation and Discussion Thread

ah just saw it on Twitter

"Huck's Tune" really is great. I wish he put it on Modern Times per Clinton Heylin's suggestion.

I have some reservations about that album, so I tried tweaking it a bit. I took out two of the slow numbers partly because they sound like carbon copies of two best-selling pop records - forgotten today (partly because the original audience has now mostly passed), but they were unique arrangements and what we got here sounds like lazy covers to me. The blues numbers I don't mind, those arrangements have been recycled and rewritten endlessly long before Modern Times, but three feels like one too many so per Heylin's suggestion I used an alternate of "Someday Baby" found on Tell Tale Signs.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the final result - for me, this sequence would live up to the A+ rating Christgau generously bestowed on Modern Times:

1. "Thunder on the Mountain" 5:55
2. "Spirit on the Water" 7:41
3. "Rollin' and Tumblin'" 6:02
4. "Someday Baby" 5:56 [alternate version from Tell Tale Signs]
5. "Workingman's Blues #2" 6:07
6. "Huck's Tune" 4:09
7. "Nettie Moore" 6:53
8. "The Levee's Gonna Break" 5:43
9. "Ain't Talkin'" 8:48

Also brings down the total running time to about 57 1/2 minutes.

I approve!

This has always been an A+ album for me but truth be told I usually skip those two tracks you excised.

Thanks Alfred!

Yeah, this works much better. Thanks, bird!

"Thunder on the Mountain" was his best opening track off an album since "Blood on the Tracks".

! that's quite a take, considering a few of the tracks you're talking about...

"Gotta Serve Somebody" probably #2.

Never been a big fan of "Hurricane".

No love for the openers on Infidels & Empire B? Those are two of his best songs!

"Changing of the Guard"?

That's a great one, too...

I listed them a couple years ago

Good list!

I was never a fan of "Changing of the Guard" until I heard Patti Smith's cover. She basically stripped away most of the instruments, but the most effective change was transposing the saxophone part to the piano - makes an enormous difference.

The beginning of "Political World" is pretty cool, but the song never delivers and goes nowhere. Lanois really pushed Dylan to open Oh Mercy with "Series of Dreams" but to no avail - it's not even on the album. Would've been one of my favorite Dylan openers had it happened.

I mostly agree with Alfred's ranking, but I would swap "Gotta Serve Somebody" with "Jokerman" and "Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum".

into the fiery furnace with you!

My smokin' Dylan hot-take is that omission of "Series of Dreams" from Oh Mercy is actually a bigger deal than the fabled omission of "Blind Willie McTell" from Infidels.

It's that sound: it's a warm shallow ocean

I could get on board with that take. xp

xp perfect description

For whatever reason, it always makes me think of water. Like I've blasted it on many grey, rainy days, and sometimes it brings to mind an old luxury car commercial where said car is driving through crashing waves on the edge of a beach in slow motion.

You could argue that song invented The War on Drugs.

"Thunder on the Mountain" was his best opening track off an album since "Blood on the Tracks".

cosign

lovesick and tweedle dee terrible openers to great albums

For whatever reason, it always makes me think of water. Like I've blasted it on many grey, rainy days, and sometimes it brings to mind an old luxury car commercial where said car is driving through crashing waves on the edge of a beach in slow motion.

It was used during a surfing sequence in the maligned John From Cincinnati

lovesick and tweedle dee terrible openers to great albums

Like both of these better than Thunder on the Mountain, especially the dueling guitars on tweedle dee.

Always assumed that everyone loves Lovesick (which I do)

no

What's the problem with "Lovesick"? "Tangled Up in Blue" is the opener most often in my head.

I feel like it's a minor song, but what grates are the production choices, I don't like the heavy compression/eq'ing on the lead vocal, and I feel like musically not a lot's going on

with Tweedle Dee I feel like every track that follows is an improvement, it's an opener quite different from the rest of the songs... anyway, I tend to skip it

fwiw I also feel that 'Lovesick' is a surprisingly slow-key, undynamic first track for one of the greatest LPs of the decade. The start, with that ... almost reggae? high rhythm guitar part, feels particularly thin. And the end feels quite botched!

'tweedle dee' is musically thrilling, I'd say, not so different from 'political world' but more orchestrated and 'song & dance man' fare.

I meant low-key. Slow-key almost works.

If I had a controversial opinion on the topic it would be that 'like a rolling stone' is one of Dylan's worse LP openers. It's too long for the role, and less exciting, to me, than everyone always seems to have found it.

whereas many others are superb: 'S H Blues', 'changing of the guard', 'if not for you' (but that's basically 'pop single as opener'?), 'tangled up in blue' for sure, 'hurricane' maybe but again too long, 'political world', 'tweedle dee', 'thunder on the mountain' yes - and indeed 'I contain multitudes' !! and even 'young at heart' on a covers LP - marvellous.

Also underrated in the role: 'tight connection to my heart'?

But I'm reminded that the worst Dylan LP opener has to be 'rainy day women' - the most overrated song of his life.

"Tight Connection' is a superb opener.

You folks are crazy, “Lovesick” opens the door to the thick night air perfectly. And the snare crack of “LaRS” is the shot that starts the revolution.

'tweedle dee' is musically thrilling, I'd say, not so different from 'political world'
totally agree, very similar, don't like political world

Tight Connection is the album highlight iirc

here for the tweedle-dee love. such cool, demented lyrics and great drums

"Love Sick" is a fine opener. At the time it felt like, "Hey, Bob's back! And he...doesn't suck! Huh!" (Those who heard "Wiggle Wiggle" on release day will understand.) But all live versions -- especially those with Bob soloing -- surpass it.

"Thunder," though, is easily my fave out of those three openers.

Wiggle Wiggle >>>>> Love Sick

I wouldn't use quite so many ">"s, but I also prefer "Wiggle Wiggle." (I'm not too into Time Out of Mind, tho)

Kenny Aronoff's drum roll in "Wiggle Wiggle" is the real thunder on the mountain

Love Kenny Aronoff! So hope he'll show up on the Never-Ending tour.
he snare crack of “LaRS” is the shot that starts the revolution. Yeah, but after that I'm pretty much with pinefox--got tired of the monotonous, lecture-y delivery long ago (even though he later said, "Every time I say 'you' I mean 'I'"), It's the one track from that LP that doesn't play itself in my head on any given day---nothing necessarily against the song, though; I really like the Hendrix at Monterey Pop rendition.

As a character read, it's more effective for the shrewd, seemingly soft and off-handed phrasing.

That "Wiggle Wiggle" performance was the beginning of the decline of Aronoff's greatness. He was brilliant with Mellencamp -- his re-entrance in "Check It Out" is arguably the greatest moment in Mellencamp's oeuvre. But with Dylan and -- especially -- Fogerty, every snare hit sounds like a sales pitch as aggressive as it is ineffective.

I don't see Aronoff jumping back into Bob's band anytime soon, as Charley Drayton is beyond perfect for what Bob's doing now, and Bob seems to love him ("Boy, Charley's really something on the drums, isn't he?" -- Bob during the band introductions when I saw him a year ago).

I didn't realize it until much later, but when I saw Jerry Lee Lewis at Riot Fest, it was Aronoff on drums. Agree with Tarfumes, he's a loud, aggressive player. I don't think he'd be right for Dylan at this point. He was perfect for Mellencamp though.

got tired of the monotonous, lecture-y delivery long ago

Now there's a controversial take! Not one I can agree with though.