This Year's on Fire: How Bob Dylan Burned My 2015
So after the countdown to New Year's, and after the champagne, and after I'd played the usual New Year songs with Professor Andy Anda, we were talking to our host Tullio Proni about the new book he's got.
Tullio really, really likes Bob Dylan's songs. I mean, I like Dylan's songs pretty well, but have nothing like the passion Tullio shows. These songs hit him pretty hard, at a tender age, when little else in our culture spoke to him-- all in a context lost in the past, Miami in the late 1960s.
We've sat in the House of Isher living room in the past, and gone through some books of Dylan songs on the uke and/or mandolin. But I wasn't prepared when Tullio hauled out his newest book.
It is comically large.
It contains lyrics to every Dylan song ever recorded.
Plus apocrypha.
By this I mean that if Bob recorded different lyrics on different performances of the same song, the book transcribes the alternate lyrics and mentions where the alternate recording may be found.
Tullio began paging though the book, starting with Mr. Dylan's earliest recorded songs. When he reached a song I knew how to play, or could plausibly fake, we played it.
Sometimes we sang the whole song. Sometimes we just did a verse or two. "Desolation Row" is immensely long, and I maintain that nobody wants to hear a guy perform the whole thing while strumming ukulele chords. But we did a verse from the beginning, a verse from the middle, and the verse at the end.
We talked about what drew us to various songs and how we felt when we first encountered them. We found songs I barely remembered. Naturally we passed up a vast number of songs I didn't know.
I didn't look at a clock. People drifted away from the party.
Since he was to depart in the morning, this would be my last chance in many months to play with Prof. &y &a & his m&olin. Was a chance well worth trading for some amount of sleep.
By the time we reached the late 1970s-- when I sort of stopped paying attention to new Dylan albums, so that none of the remaining songs were familiar enough to play-- it was very, very late.
I lost the first hours of 2015 to The Lyrics: Since 1962.
I'm very tired.
But I don't regret it.
Neither does Tullio. Nor Andy.
Tullio really, really likes Bob Dylan's songs. I mean, I like Dylan's songs pretty well, but have nothing like the passion Tullio shows. These songs hit him pretty hard, at a tender age, when little else in our culture spoke to him-- all in a context lost in the past, Miami in the late 1960s.
We've sat in the House of Isher living room in the past, and gone through some books of Dylan songs on the uke and/or mandolin. But I wasn't prepared when Tullio hauled out his newest book.
It is comically large.
It contains lyrics to every Dylan song ever recorded.
Plus apocrypha.
By this I mean that if Bob recorded different lyrics on different performances of the same song, the book transcribes the alternate lyrics and mentions where the alternate recording may be found.
Tullio began paging though the book, starting with Mr. Dylan's earliest recorded songs. When he reached a song I knew how to play, or could plausibly fake, we played it.
Sometimes we sang the whole song. Sometimes we just did a verse or two. "Desolation Row" is immensely long, and I maintain that nobody wants to hear a guy perform the whole thing while strumming ukulele chords. But we did a verse from the beginning, a verse from the middle, and the verse at the end.
We talked about what drew us to various songs and how we felt when we first encountered them. We found songs I barely remembered. Naturally we passed up a vast number of songs I didn't know.
I didn't look at a clock. People drifted away from the party.
Since he was to depart in the morning, this would be my last chance in many months to play with Prof. &y &a & his m&olin. Was a chance well worth trading for some amount of sleep.
By the time we reached the late 1970s-- when I sort of stopped paying attention to new Dylan albums, so that none of the remaining songs were familiar enough to play-- it was very, very late.
I lost the first hours of 2015 to The Lyrics: Since 1962.
I'm very tired.
But I don't regret it.
Neither does Tullio. Nor Andy.