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Stoney Mansion

As I started work this morning I was alerted via email that some of the live recordings from the recent all-Indiana convocation of independent musicians of the past three generations known as Musical Family Tree Fest had been posted to the Musical Family Tree site.

Browsing the site I happily discovered that my old pal John Terrill‘s mid-nineties four-track wonder “Frowny Frown” has been made available in full, a treat for me as I had never had a chance to sample this incarnation of John’s sonic madness.

Of special interest and appreciation for me were a reworked, county-tinged version of my favorite of John’s songs, Angeline, the new to me and quite amusing Chuch Bus Blues, the agreeably downbeat Blind, and the deliciously psychedelic Stoney Mansions.

UPDATE:

Terrill appears to have also contributed the Rosebloods records, Dragon in the Field and Under the Apple Tree, which saves me the trouble of digitizing them myself, by God! Huzzah!

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Eat the Document preview at Siffblog

Over on Siffblog, E. Steven Fried notes that the EMP will be showing D. A. Pennebaker’s Eat the Document shortly.

I saw the post title and subject and mistakenly took it for a review of No Direction Home; I had been mulling a review of the film myself but think I said I what I had to say, more about the subject than the film, last week as the film aired. Any film by Scorsese is going to offer some critical fodder that relates specifically to Scorsese’s themes and work; in this case, I think the theme is Scorsese’s greatest theme, that of self-invention. I recall realizing with disappointment that the director was not going to tie Dylan’s youthful interest in Civel War-era New York City to his own.

(God! I must be asleep at the wheel! In my correction I misidentified the venue for the film as the NWFF!)

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What We Did Is Public

Incredibly, word has belatedly reached me of the wrap on a Darby Crash biopic, which will apparently lead to a Germs reunion tour. Don Bolles, later of Nirvana and in between his Germs time and that with Kurt, was the original drummer for 45 Grave, who also recently were slated for a revenant tour, but have apparently dropped out.

Bolles stayed with me for several days in my freshman dorm room circa 1984 when he was separated from his 45 Grave bandmates. He was reunited with his cadaverous colleagues shortly before my floor’s residential advisor approached me about the discarded needles that had unexpectedly begun to appear in the men’s restroom facilities. Despite this, I recall my week with Don fondly, as he slept a great deal and embellished my copy of “GI” in black marker before autographing it in behalf of the long-departed Darby.

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Dye Land

As I noted yesterday, I first really became a serious appreciator of Bob Dylan about ten years ago, when I first picked up a cutout copy of Good As I Been to You, the first of two stripped down, scratchy-voice-and-guitar records of mostly old-time songs. The other record, World Gone Wrong, is entirely comparable.

The records were the occasion of much headscratching in the press at the time they were released, 1992 and 1993. For me, they arrived well after their initial release date and just as I had nearly worn out my copy of the great CD re-release of the legendary Smithsonian Folkways Anthology of Folk Music, which I picked up on release in 1997. Whoops, that makes it under ten years ago. Whatever.

On vinyl, I think I had The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde, and one other record, possibly Highway 61 Revisited. Of these, Freewheelin‘ was my clear favorite, as I largely eschewed the shaggy-dog compositional techniques seen on the other records.

However, Good As I Been To You‘s spare, affectionate, and utilitarian renditions of old songs both familiar and new to me struck my ears with the weight of an archetype. It was a record I had been wanting to hear since my enthusiasm for Billy Bragg first prompted me to look into Dylan’s early work. The record remains my favorite recording by Dylan. Curious where the old man had gone since recording these songs, I picked up Time out of Mind, and loved it. I also really like Love and Theft, but Time out of Mind is something different, like listening to someone’s dreams after a night of listening to really old folksongs. Amused by the shambolic bounce of the record, I started looking back at the earlier works, including the late-sixties period so beloved by so many. To my surprise, I found I now understood some of the enthusiasm, as I wrote here a while ago.

This past spring, Greg and Stacey gave me a copy of Chronicles, Dylan’s autobio, and to my surprise, devoured it, chuckling. The first section, a generous memoir of Dylan’s arrival in Greenwich Village in the early sixties, seemed to me to be based directly on Desolation Row. I recall thinking that he had reused sections of the lyric throughout; I don’t recall if I was ever able to establish this as a fact or not. Even if he did not, he engaged with his recollections to tie his experience of the Village to the deep past. When the below-grade Villlage clubs are described as firelit rooms from another era, Dylan deliberately riffs on Martin Scorsese’s vision of Old Five Points in Gangs of New York. Dylan recalls the clubs as a kind of magic cave whereupon entering he gained access to the America of all past times and was granted the mystical power to return from that time to our own bearing visions and dreams of souls long gone.

Whether or not Dylan actually believes this is simply not germane. He wants the reader to believe he does, I think, the better to fulfill his role as a performer. In “Masters of War,” he wrote ” I want you to know that I can see through your masks.” As Scorsese seems to be helping his old friend to say in the film I’m watching tonight, for Dylan, there may only be the masks.

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die LAN

I should write a few words on Dylan, I suppose.

I have always been puzzled, and not a little put off, by the hulking, derelict infrastructure of the boomer adoration for Bob Dylan, incarnations 2 (folkie/activist) and 3 (imperial achitect of late-sixties rockism).

However, even as a youngster, i always had an appreciation for the well-crafted song, and in any of Dylan’s many manifestations, he has been able to do this. The song that first overcame my punkish rejection of the long-haired flapdoodle whiner was “Masters of War,” a song whose sentiments I still embrace. However, the structure and technique of the song impresses me less, today, than Ozzy Osbourne’s bastard reinterpretation, “War Pigs.” Which song accords the addressed members of society the proper respect? The choice, it seems, is clear.

Nonetheless, Dylan’s raw, confrontational energy appealed to me very much. It struck me that it was important to learn about what one finds distasteful, yet holds in ignorance. Why, I wondered, did my elders hold the author of “Leopardskin Pillbox Hat,” “Everybody Must Get Stoned,” and “Mr Tambourine Man” in such esteem? I could see no distinction between these songs and any other pop–radio AOR pap polluting my eardrum, ten years past its’ prime.

“Everybody Must Get Stoned,” in particular, while not without its’ charms, had well overstayed its’ welcome in my ears by the time I was, oh, ten. Honestly, this song, still a mainstay of classic rock radio as a consequence of its’ ponderous length, simplicity, and frat-boy, groupthink chanting chorus (cf. the title, any Martians reading this note), is charming only insofar as your personal friends, individuals you know and love and forgive their drunken moments, may have recorded it. To wit, not to you, and also not to me.

I found the celebrated works of Dylan’s youth occasionally brilliant, but I did not generally locate his brilliance in the same works that persons of his initial consumer base chose to. In fact, his work was really something that primarily appealed to me on a scholarly basis. This changed for me about ten years ago, when I picked up a cutout, clearly used copy of “Good as I Been to You” for about five bucks.

More to come.

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Velvet

The Velvet Underground Web Page. Helpful to me today as I began to assemble a list of the Velvets records I have or once had on vinyl in an attempt to plan for obtaining the missing material in digital format. The most challenging aspect will doubtless be locating the initial, un-remastered CD releases of these records. Why do people gotta fuck with a good thing?

For the record, here’s what I’m digging for:

Title Original Release Date
The Velvet Underground and Nico 1967
White Light/White Heat 1968
The Velvet Underground 1969
Loaded 1970
Live at Max’s Kansas City 1972
1969 Velvet Underground Live 1974
VU 1985
Another VU 1986

I currently have White Light/White Heat, the Loaded 2-disc remastered version, and Another VU on CD. I had thought I had The Velvet Underground and Nico, but I appear to have lost it. On vinyl, I think I have all of these, with the possible exception of the 1969 live record. On CD, I also have the recently-released Quine tapes.