Highway 61 Revisited, visited
Yes, this is that article I said I'd write weeks ago. Only...in the interim I've gotten several new Bob Dylan albums. I tried to hold off on listening to them until I'd gotten done with this article, because part of the fun is sharing my reactions with the big wide Internet (and both the people who actually read this), but a couple of weeks ago...I gave in, and started listening to Blood on the Tracks. I'll do another article about it, but in a few words: I've never heard anything like it, and it's wonderful. It seems like a wild departure from the albums I've heard so far, even by the standards of Bob Dylan, whose sound can change pretty wildly, it seems, from album to album.
So. Highway 61 Revisited. Balls-out '60s rock with a spicy zest of blues. It's delicious stuff. My inner fourteen-year-old is swooning, and wants a picture of him suitable for hanging in her locker. (His knack for vibrant, surreal imagery is liek sooooo dreamy you guys. Oh em gee.)
So, track-by-track because it's easier for me:
"Like A Rolling Stone": So this is Bob Dylan's Famous Song About...um. Okay, the hell of writing something like this is that I am in serious danger of saying absolutely nothing original or insightful about it, because everything else has already been said. And what's the point in saying something that everyone else has said already? Like if I said it appears to be a song about a sort of homelessness and rootlessness, of trying to live without a support system (insofar as one of Bob Dylan's songs is about any one subject), or if I said I wasn't sure his words are motivated by compassion or scorn or varying degrees of both? (The "How does it feel?" chorus sounds almost callous, but the verses paint such a vivid and harrowing picture that they seem to invite the listener to pity his subject.) I 'd be willing to guess that these are some of the first conclusions just about anyone comes to when they listen to this song. I'm not quite sure why I find that slightly irritating, but I do.
"Tombstone Blues": Possibly this is the fastest tempo I've heard in a Bob Dylan song ever. I love that. The brief vignettes in each verse also seem, to me at any rate, to be particularly dazzling and memorable. I love that even more. This and several other tracks on this album are practically Bob Dylan You Can Dance To, which thought tickles me no end. One minor thing, however:
Now I wish I could write you a melody so plain
That could hold you dear lady from going insane
That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain
Of your useless and pointless knowledge
But...but...I'm a nerd! There's no such thing as "useless and pointless knowledge"! A bit more on this in a few tracks, however.
"It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry": Ooh, a slower, bluesier one. Now, all my knowledge of blues could safely be stored in a matchbox with enough room left over for all the matter in the rest of the universe, but I'm told the lyrics:
Don't the moon look good, mama, shinin' through the trees?
Don't the brakeman look good, mama, flagging down the "Double E"?
Don't the sun look good goin' down over the sea?
Don't my gal look fine when she's comin' after me?
represent a significant and progressive departure from the traditional gender dynamic of the standard blues song. But that sounds a bit wanky, so I'll just say that I really like the words "Well, I wanna be your lover, baby, I don't wanna be your boss." (Well, I'd go after him.)
"From A Buick 6": I'm going to put on my Lyrical Criticism hat and declare that this is obviously Bob Dylan's Famous Song About The Zombie Apocalypse. After all:
Well, you know I need a steam shovel mama to
keep away the dead
I mean, it's obvious, isn't it? See also:
She keeps this four-ten
all loaded with lead
See? All about zombie-killin'. (Also, phwoar. That's some fine sexual innuendo there, which is pretty much guaranteed to get a chuckle out of me.) Less frivolously, this is my kind of love song. It's up-tempo, lighthearted, full of slightly surreal imagery ("ready to sew me up with thread", and I really dig "junkyard angel"), and really quite sweet without getting too terribly bogged down in sentimentality. What's more, it certainly sounds like he's having fun singing it. It's one of my favorite songs off this album. The more I listen to it, the more I like it. (At any rate, I'd put a blanket on his bed.)
"Ballad Of A Thin Man": And this one's supposed to be Bob Dylan's Famous Song About...it's The Gays, right? I heard an urban legend-type rumor that that's What This Is About. I'm not so sure I buy into that, not least because your average song from Highway 61 Revisited seems to have a hell of a lot more going on than can be encapsulated in a couple of words--geez, "Tombstone Blues" seems to be about something different in every verse--but I do kind of see something going on in this song. He seems to be rather dismissive of fancy-pants book-larnin':
You've been with the professors, and they've all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have discussed lepers and crooks
You've been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books
You're very well read, it's well known
Because something is happening here, but you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?
My inner nerd--who weathered her childhood primarily through shoving her nose as deeply as she could into the nearest book and indulging in no small amount of literary escapism--is downright wounded =P . Also, I haven't read any Fitzgerald, but I heard he's boring. So there.
Screw it, I enjoy the song anyway, because it's sort of dark and weird and especially bizarre. (Is it just me or is Bob deliberately endeavoring to be as cryptic as he can with these lyrics? Not that I disapprove.)
"Queen Jane Approximately": Y'know, I'd come see him--okay, I'll stop. The day it stops amazing me that Bob Dylan can make lyrics full of flower ladies and bandits and clowns not just intelligible but quite straightforward and enjoyable is the day I am officially tired of life. In the hands of another artist, I suspect this song would have been a couple of hundred percent more pretentious and incoherent. But when Bob Dylan does it, it's just a lovely song about being tired and lonely and in need of a friend. (And possibly weed. Not that I disapprove.)
"Highway 61 Revisited": Oh, awesome. So he named the album after its most kickass song. (He's grinning through the whole recording. Has to be. I can just feel it.) It also sounds like a perfect song for a road trip. (Naturally.) The thought just occurred to me--no, seriously, it just did as I was writing this--that Highway 61 could be interpreted as a stand-in for America, where you can find the solutions to any problem you have, up to and including being bored by an overabundance of peace and itching to start a war. Highway 61's the place where you can do just about anything--even the very shadiest of shady dealings.
"Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues": This is definitely a good lead-in to the last track on the album. It's a tired, sad sort of song that feels like moping around in a dry, dead, dusty--and rather hostile--wide-spot-in-the-road. The natives will gladly use and discard you, or just mess you up real good; and law enforcement is a sick, malefic joke played on anyone stupid enough to try and enlist its aid. This song describes a place where you can't trust anybody. I think it's actually rather a bitter song, or at least more bitter than "Desolation Row". Speaking of which...
"Desolation Row": I've never heard a more exquisitely illustrated portrait of poverty, misery, cruelty and creeping, omnipresent despair. It's also Long-Form Bob Dylan at his most complex, dense, and allusive, so I'm sure I haven't even understood a tenth of what he really means to say with this song. But I'm pretty sure that Desolation Row is the place for the has-beens, and worse, the never-will-bes; where hope and the human spirit die by inches. Everyone grabs what hollow and fleeting pleasures they can, and even the moon and stars hide their faces. And he really does sing it like he lives there. And do you know, I've actually heard people call Bob Dylan 'overrated'. When I listen to "Desolation Row", I wonder how overrating him would even be possible.
So. Highway 61 Revisited. Balls-out '60s rock with a spicy zest of blues. It's delicious stuff. My inner fourteen-year-old is swooning, and wants a picture of him suitable for hanging in her locker. (His knack for vibrant, surreal imagery is liek sooooo dreamy you guys. Oh em gee.)
So, track-by-track because it's easier for me:
"Like A Rolling Stone": So this is Bob Dylan's Famous Song About...um. Okay, the hell of writing something like this is that I am in serious danger of saying absolutely nothing original or insightful about it, because everything else has already been said. And what's the point in saying something that everyone else has said already? Like if I said it appears to be a song about a sort of homelessness and rootlessness, of trying to live without a support system (insofar as one of Bob Dylan's songs is about any one subject), or if I said I wasn't sure his words are motivated by compassion or scorn or varying degrees of both? (The "How does it feel?" chorus sounds almost callous, but the verses paint such a vivid and harrowing picture that they seem to invite the listener to pity his subject.) I 'd be willing to guess that these are some of the first conclusions just about anyone comes to when they listen to this song. I'm not quite sure why I find that slightly irritating, but I do.
"Tombstone Blues": Possibly this is the fastest tempo I've heard in a Bob Dylan song ever. I love that. The brief vignettes in each verse also seem, to me at any rate, to be particularly dazzling and memorable. I love that even more. This and several other tracks on this album are practically Bob Dylan You Can Dance To, which thought tickles me no end. One minor thing, however:
Now I wish I could write you a melody so plain
That could hold you dear lady from going insane
That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain
Of your useless and pointless knowledge
But...but...I'm a nerd! There's no such thing as "useless and pointless knowledge"! A bit more on this in a few tracks, however.
"It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry": Ooh, a slower, bluesier one. Now, all my knowledge of blues could safely be stored in a matchbox with enough room left over for all the matter in the rest of the universe, but I'm told the lyrics:
Don't the moon look good, mama, shinin' through the trees?
Don't the brakeman look good, mama, flagging down the "Double E"?
Don't the sun look good goin' down over the sea?
Don't my gal look fine when she's comin' after me?
represent a significant and progressive departure from the traditional gender dynamic of the standard blues song. But that sounds a bit wanky, so I'll just say that I really like the words "Well, I wanna be your lover, baby, I don't wanna be your boss." (Well, I'd go after him.)
"From A Buick 6": I'm going to put on my Lyrical Criticism hat and declare that this is obviously Bob Dylan's Famous Song About The Zombie Apocalypse. After all:
Well, you know I need a steam shovel mama to
keep away the dead
I mean, it's obvious, isn't it? See also:
She keeps this four-ten
all loaded with lead
See? All about zombie-killin'. (Also, phwoar. That's some fine sexual innuendo there, which is pretty much guaranteed to get a chuckle out of me.) Less frivolously, this is my kind of love song. It's up-tempo, lighthearted, full of slightly surreal imagery ("ready to sew me up with thread", and I really dig "junkyard angel"), and really quite sweet without getting too terribly bogged down in sentimentality. What's more, it certainly sounds like he's having fun singing it. It's one of my favorite songs off this album. The more I listen to it, the more I like it. (At any rate, I'd put a blanket on his bed.)
"Ballad Of A Thin Man": And this one's supposed to be Bob Dylan's Famous Song About...it's The Gays, right? I heard an urban legend-type rumor that that's What This Is About. I'm not so sure I buy into that, not least because your average song from Highway 61 Revisited seems to have a hell of a lot more going on than can be encapsulated in a couple of words--geez, "Tombstone Blues" seems to be about something different in every verse--but I do kind of see something going on in this song. He seems to be rather dismissive of fancy-pants book-larnin':
You've been with the professors, and they've all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have discussed lepers and crooks
You've been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books
You're very well read, it's well known
Because something is happening here, but you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?
My inner nerd--who weathered her childhood primarily through shoving her nose as deeply as she could into the nearest book and indulging in no small amount of literary escapism--is downright wounded =P . Also, I haven't read any Fitzgerald, but I heard he's boring. So there.
Screw it, I enjoy the song anyway, because it's sort of dark and weird and especially bizarre. (Is it just me or is Bob deliberately endeavoring to be as cryptic as he can with these lyrics? Not that I disapprove.)
"Queen Jane Approximately": Y'know, I'd come see him--okay, I'll stop. The day it stops amazing me that Bob Dylan can make lyrics full of flower ladies and bandits and clowns not just intelligible but quite straightforward and enjoyable is the day I am officially tired of life. In the hands of another artist, I suspect this song would have been a couple of hundred percent more pretentious and incoherent. But when Bob Dylan does it, it's just a lovely song about being tired and lonely and in need of a friend. (And possibly weed. Not that I disapprove.)
"Highway 61 Revisited": Oh, awesome. So he named the album after its most kickass song. (He's grinning through the whole recording. Has to be. I can just feel it.) It also sounds like a perfect song for a road trip. (Naturally.) The thought just occurred to me--no, seriously, it just did as I was writing this--that Highway 61 could be interpreted as a stand-in for America, where you can find the solutions to any problem you have, up to and including being bored by an overabundance of peace and itching to start a war. Highway 61's the place where you can do just about anything--even the very shadiest of shady dealings.
"Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues": This is definitely a good lead-in to the last track on the album. It's a tired, sad sort of song that feels like moping around in a dry, dead, dusty--and rather hostile--wide-spot-in-the-road. The natives will gladly use and discard you, or just mess you up real good; and law enforcement is a sick, malefic joke played on anyone stupid enough to try and enlist its aid. This song describes a place where you can't trust anybody. I think it's actually rather a bitter song, or at least more bitter than "Desolation Row". Speaking of which...
"Desolation Row": I've never heard a more exquisitely illustrated portrait of poverty, misery, cruelty and creeping, omnipresent despair. It's also Long-Form Bob Dylan at his most complex, dense, and allusive, so I'm sure I haven't even understood a tenth of what he really means to say with this song. But I'm pretty sure that Desolation Row is the place for the has-beens, and worse, the never-will-bes; where hope and the human spirit die by inches. Everyone grabs what hollow and fleeting pleasures they can, and even the moon and stars hide their faces. And he really does sing it like he lives there. And do you know, I've actually heard people call Bob Dylan 'overrated'. When I listen to "Desolation Row", I wonder how overrating him would even be possible.