Ron Jacobs : 'Another Self Portrait' of Bob Dylan

Another Self Portrait:
Dylan’s take revisited

Dylan's voice here is the voice of an earnest troubadour. There is little of the smoky raspiness present in his mid-sixties material or the world-weary gruffness of Dylan's current persona.

By Ron Jacobs / The Rag Blog / September 18, 2013

When I lived there in the early 1970s, the main shopping area in Frankfurt am Main revolved around the Hauptwache U-Bahn stop.

Part old-world cobblestone streets and alleyways filled with small shops and part modern multifloor department stores, including the Kaufhof firebombed by the Andreas Baader (the future Rote Armee Fraktion leader) and others in an action against capitalism and war, the area covered several city blocks.

It served as a crossroads for several streetcars, a subway (U-Bahn) station that included a large shopping area, the American Express office, and lots of action. A few blocks away was the Opernplatz, site of the then bombed-out Frankfurt Opera House and the site of most major political rallies in the city.

One of my favorite stores to hang out in was in the underground shopping area at the Hauptwache. It was a fairly large store that sold records, books, and periodicals. The first time I walked around the Hauptwache and found the store, it was the enlarged cover of the Evergreen Review featuring a picture of Che Guevara that attracted me. The date was in early March 1970.

I wandered around the store, looking at the treasures therein. New Left books from around the world, mostly translated into German but some in English, leftist newspapers, a small English language book section, underground newspapers from Britain and the East Coast of the United States, and hundreds of rock, blues, and classical records.

I had no money. I fingered the records in the bins, determined to get some money and buy a couple of them. The next time I visited the store a clerk showed me the turntables in the back where I could listen to albums before purchasing. She sat me down with Jethro Tull's second album and I gave it a listen.

The next time I went to the store, I had 30 Deutsch Marks in my pocket. It was enough to buy a record and a couple undergrounds. The first record I saw in the window, and the reason I'm writing about this store, was Bob Dylan's Self Portrait. I had already read a good deal about the record, most of it negative. I didn't care. I loved Bob Dylan. I bought it without a listen. It cost 30 DM. No underground newspapers for me that time.

After getting on the streetcar home I opened the bag, unwrapped the cellophane from the album and studied the package. The songs were mostly traditional tunes with a couple live recordings of Dylan and the Band from the previous year’s Isle of Wight festival. The front was a primitivist style painting of Dylan by Dylan. A self-portrait obviously.

When I got home, I put it on the turntable. I was immediately taken, even with some of what seemed to be overproduction on some of the tracks. Besides the two tracks from Isle of Wight ("Quinn the Eskimo" and "Like a Rolling Stone"), my favorite tunes were “Days of ‘49” and “Blue Moon.”

Fast forward to 2013. A new Self Portrait disc is in my player. It’s titled Another Self Portrait and includes the tracks from the first album with that name and a few others from the same period, including a demo version of “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” a couple early takes on tunes that were on 1969’s Nashville Skyline, and some songs that appeared on the New Morning disc.

The tracks are almost all completely stripped down. Just Bob and guitar on quite a few of them. It’s even better than the original. The innocence present in this collection makes me wish it was still here. Since it isn't, this helps me pretend otherwise. Dylan's voice here is the voice of an earnest troubadour. There is little of the smoky raspiness present in his mid-sixties material or the world-weary gruffness of Dylan's current persona.

The music is as close to pure as anything ever released by Dylan. The guitar is clear and clean, his picking and strumming reflecting a casual and comfortable relationship with the instrument. The songs that include other players remind one of a very talented and friendly jam session. The songs range from outlaw ballads to songs of love; from pop standards to Dylan compositions. Arrangements are modified and time signatures changed, creating an element of surprise for the listener and lending a different understanding to the lyrics.

Bob Dylan was living in Woodstock, New York, just prior to when these songs were recorded. He was a married man making music and raising kids in the country. Some of his fans were also moving to the country, eager to leave the cops and the dealers of the city behind.

The war in Vietnam continued to rage, while the antiwar movement was taking desperate turns, wondering how in the hell it could stop the killing. Cops in all sorts of uniforms (and many not in uniform) were doing their best to disrupt and destroy the positive changes the counterculture was trying to establish. Music might have been the only salvation.

The guitar playing on these songs is superb and technically superior to anything Dylan recorded before. In addition, the musicians that appear on these songs are topnotch and include David Bromberg, The Band, Al Kooper, Norman Blake, Charlie McCoy, Charlie Daniels, and a myriad of other top players, many then working in Nashville.

The musical interaction between Dylan and his fellows creates a performance ranking among the best Dylan has ever put together. This is somewhat remarkable given the mostly negative response the first Self Portrait album received. In part, that reception can be blamed on the strings that were laid on top of many of the original tracks. To put it simply, the overdubs hid most of the folk instrumentation actually played during the recording sessions.

Another reason for the poor reception had to do with the expectations so many people had for Dylan in 1971. Despite his recent attempts to step back from the role of generational spokesman and all-around revolutionary so many had placed on him (and, to be honest, he encouraged in some ways), all too many of his listeners wanted him to lead the charge. However, it turned out Dylan did not even want to be in the battle.

There is one song in this collection that I first heard on the bootleg (unauthorized release) known as the Great White Wonder. This song has always intrigued me with the simple manner it emotionally stirs the listener to consider the grimy, lost men that sit on sidewalks around the world. Titled “Only a Hobo,” it’s the first Dylan song I ever learned to play on guitar.

That’s not why I like it, though. It’s because of the song’s unadorned musical approach to its subject matter. Bob Dylan sings a tale of a broken man whose heroism goes unnoticed because his heroic act is just that of being alive in spite of the fact that his life has gone “from a drop in the bucket to a hole in the ground.”

The version on this CD has a banjo playing clearly in the background, plucking away the minutes of a dying hobo’s life. That banjo extracts the melancholy present in this story of capitalism’s castoffs. Together with Bob Dylan’s singing, the melancholy of a hobo’s life is forged into the beauty that is the other side of this life.

Another Self Portrait revives a part of Dylan’s catalog that has been unjustly ridiculed. This two-CD set forces a reconsideration of Dylan’s intentions and his artistry during the period these recordings cover. Indeed, critic Greil Marcus does exactly that in his set of liner notes accompanying the CD. (It was Marcus who wrote the infamous Rolling Stone review that asked of the original Self-Portrait, “What is this shit?” -- more in response to the album’s reception than to the music therein.)

Suffice it to say, it is worthy of reconsideration.

[Rag Blog contributor Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. He recently released a collection of essays and musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His novel, The Co-Conspirator's Tale, was published in 2013, along with the third novel in the series All the Sinners Saints. Ron Jacobs can be reached at ronj1955@gmail.com. Find more articles by Ron Jacobs on The Rag Blog.]

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Lamar W. Hankins : 'Masters of War' Target Syria

"Masters of War." Art from Society of Wood Engravers.

U.S. foreign policy:
The 'Masters of War'
are firmly in control

Diplomacy and fairly negotiated economic agreements have taken a back seat to violent military action as the primary way to deal with the world.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / September 5, 2013

You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
-- Bob Dylan, from "Masters of War"

The news this past week seems to confirm that “Masters of War,” the phrase from Bob Dylan’s 1963 song of that title, are firmly in control of U.S. foreign policy. Diplomacy and fairly negotiated economic agreements have taken a back seat to violent military action as the primary way to deal with the world.

At the age of 22, Dylan understood U.S. foreign policy more clearly than most politicians in my lifetime. I am not suggesting with regard to attacking Syria, for instance, that there are not some people genuinely concerned about the welfare of the Syrian people, who were likely gassed recently by President Assad. But I consider most of their comments hollow, hiding motives other than the humanitarian ones they espouse.

Sen. John McCain, for example, says,

For us to sit by, and watch these people being massacred, raped, tortured in the most terrible fashion, meanwhile, the Russians are all in, Hezbollah is all in, and we’re talking about giving them more light weapons? It’s insane.

John McCain has never seen a conflict that couldn’t be improved with a little war-making. He’s been a friend of the “Masters of War” his entire career, and has been richly rewarded. McCain is so pro-war that he made a trip to Syria last May and wound up having a photo-op with terrorists who were involved in a high-profile kidnapping case. The terrorists’ virtue was that they opposed Assad.

President Barack Obama is hardly any better than McCain:

It's important for us to recognize that when over 1,000 people are killed, including hundreds of innocent children, through the use of a weapon that 98 or 99 percent of humanity says should not be used even in war, and there is no action, then we're sending a signal that that international norm doesn't mean much. And that is a danger to our national security.

Obama apparently opposed the Iraq war 10 years ago against just as brutal a dictator as Assad and one who killed more people with chemical weapons than has Assad. Of course, some of Saddam’s gassings were done with U.S. approval and aid, when Iraq was fighting against Iran, our long-time enemy that does not bend to our will. And the U.S. gave Saddam a pass for killing between 3,000 and 5,000 Kurds in Halabja in 1988.

Secretary of State John Kerry’s comments on the subject are even more jingoistic than McCain’s and Obama’s:

Our sense of basic humanity is offended, not only by this cowardly crime but also by the cynical attempt to cover it up. What we saw in Syria last week should shock the conscience of the world. It defies any code of morality. The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons, is a moral obscenity. By any standards, it is inexcusable, and despite the excuses and equivocations that some have manufactured, it is undeniable.

These words come from an anti-Vietnam War veteran who nevertheless had few problems with agreeing to invade Iraq in 2003, making his talk of morality unpersuasive. War itself should be enough to shock the conscience, especially of someone who has participated in it.

Maybe these three U.S. leaders forgot that the U.S. has used the same excuses and equivocations to justify its use of depleted uranium against innocent Iraqis several times over a 20-year period, leading to vastly increased incidences of cancer (especially leukemia) and birth defects in Iraqi children.

As Marjorie Cohn and Jeanne Mirer, both associated with human rights organizations, have reported, the U.S. also used white phosphorous gas, which melts the skin and burns tissue down to the bone, in both Afghanistan and Iraq. A third weapon used by the U.S. in both those countries is cluster bombs, which contain tiny bomblets that spread over a vast area and can kill or maim long after being deployed if civilians, often children, disturb them.

Cohn and Mirer write, “The Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in time of War (Geneva IV) classifies ‘willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health’ as a grave breach, which constitutes a war crime.” Our leaders can always be counted on to lament the loss of civilian lives, but they do little else to prevent such losses.

Kerry’s comments about Assad’s use of gas, that it “defies any code of morality” and should “shock the conscience of the world,” apply equally to America’s conduct in its wars. But the U.S. has not been held to account for the “use (of) the world’s most heinous weapons against the world’s most vulnerable people."

And neither McCain, Obama, nor Kerry is calling for America to be held accountable. Their claimed moral outrage at the use of Assad’s weapons is mere hypocrisy until they take responsibility for our own human rights violations.

While I agree that Assad’s use of gas is an affront to civilization, it is time to acknowledge that the U.S. has committed similar atrocities that also affront humanity. What disturbs me even more, however, is that over 100,000 people have been killed so far in the Syrian civil war. This fact should be even more alarming than the deaths of 1,500 by unconventional methods.

I have tried to understand why unconventional weapons -- chlorine, phosgene, mustard, and sarin gas, along with phosphorous gas, depleted uranium, and cluster bombs, and atomic bombs and their successors -- are viewed as being in a special class of war-making weapons that various people see as so exceptional that they should be banned. I understand that a gas attack can be very painful and leave people in agony for days before they die, but conventional weapons often have the same result.

When it comes to atomic and hydrogen bombs, I understand that their widespread use would likely end life as we know it on the earth. But this is not true of the other weapons, including the sarin gas that Assad is likely to have used recently against his foes in Syria. Ninety-eight percent of the world’s countries oppose chemical weapons. This figure would impress me more if the same number of countries opposed all military weapons that kill and maim indiscriminately.

If the purpose of war is to kill the enemy until it surrenders, it is unclear to me why any weapon should be considered more horrendous than another. War has always meant indiscriminate death. The best solution to indiscriminate death is negotiation, preferably through the UN or other international bodies.

The U.S. has not pressed negotiation aggressively in Syria because its perceived interests are best served by prolonging that civil war. Syria’s allies include Iran and Hezbollah. Tying up Iran and Hezbollah in helping Assad diverts their attention from other mischief, such as bothering Israel, America’s closest ally in the Middle East.

In addition, the U.S. doesn’t know whom to support among groups that oppose Assad. All of the groups could become bitter enemies of the U.S. should they prevail and come to power in Syria. This is what happened in Egypt. The U.S. supported the ouster of Mubarak (after many years of supporting him), only to see a democratic election put the Muslim Brotherhood’s choice in power, making necessary (from the U.S. perspective) the ouster of President Morsi by the Egyptian military.

But the U.S. government won’t call that a coup by the military because we don’t have any good options there to bring someone to power who will do our bidding. The Egyptian military, supported by $1.5 billion in annual U.S. aid, is not a reliable friend. And why should it be, when $12 billion has been pledged by Arab sources?

For all those too young to remember Bob Dylan’s words, the lyrics to “Masters of War,” which I find useful to read occasionally as a reminder of what drives the American war machine, can be found here. Dylan identifies the “masters of war” as those who build weapons, from which they become wealthy, thus giving them an incentive to push for war whenever possible.

By implication, Dylan suggests we should “follow the money,” to see who benefits from war. He sees these people (and their minions in Congress) as indifferent to human life. He references their lies and deception, the fear they generate, and the immorality of their actions.

President Obama now wants to punish Syria for its use of sarin gas, but he wants the approval of Congress to do so. It is beginning to sound as if Obama will attack Syria, with or without congressional approval, but finds it politically advantageous to get its approval, if that doesn’t take too long.

Considering the forces arrayed in favor of attacking Syria -- the Pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, the neoconservative pundits who took us into Iraq, policy institutes (think tanks) that have produced such people as National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice, the entire arms industry, and most of the oil industry -- there is little doubt that the U.S. will attack Syria. Only the duration and extent of that involvement seem in question.

Dylan’s words remain relevant 50 years later, and will probably remain so as long as human beings exist. If it is possible to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice and freedom, we could do worse than pay more attention to what Dylan had to say.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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Ron Jacobs : Bob Dylan's Biography of American Racism

Bob Dylan visits Rubin "Hurricane" Carter in prison, 1975. Image from Tumblr.

Bob Dylan’s biography of American racism

“Sometimes I think this whole world / is one big prison yard / Some of us are prisoners / and some of us are guards.” -- Bob Dylan, "George Jackson"

By Ron Jacobs / The Rag Blog / March 4, 2013

When people think of Bob Dylan, it's unlikely very many consider him a biographer. Yet, he does write songs about people. I don’t mean that in a general sense, either. I mean he literally writes songs about people. Some of those songs are about people that only Dylan knows or at least only Dylan knows who they are about. Others are about people most of us have heard of or heard of because of a song Dylan wrote.

Recently, I was choosing some images from the web for a display concerning the Emancipation Proclamation and the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Justice. As I clicked my way in and out of websites I came across a grainy photo of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, and other musicians on the stage at the aforementioned march.

This got me to thinking about Bob Dylan and his songs concerning the racism that is part of the definition of these United States. Then I got to thinking about those Dylan songs that name people; even more specifically, the songs that named people that were famous in their own right. “Joey” came to mind. Upon examination, though, this song stands out as an anomaly in the Dylan catalog. Not only is Joey Gallo an ambiguous hero at best, Dylan’s lyrics do not really attempt to make a point, unlike the other songs in this rather loose set.

Then I narrowed the whole process down to songs that are tributes to individuals as opposed to songs which portray an incident featuring an individual who is either acting or being "acted upon." A song in the former category would be the dark tale Dylan tells in “The Ballad of Hollis Brown.” This song is a tale of a farmer driven to the simultaneously horrendous and protective act of murdering his family because of economic ruin.

Songs that fall in the latter category include “The Death of Emmett Till” and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.” Both tunes describe an incident of racist injustice that not only goes virtually unpunished but, in Dylan's telling, is symptomatic of an evil at home in these United States. Indeed, it is not just at home, but is one of the darkest elements in the myths that describe the nation.

Emmett Till was more than just a boy who looked the “wrong” way at a white woman down South. He was a threat to white supremacy and its falsehood. Millions of men and women paid a price quite similar to Till’s in slavery, lynchings, and prisons. Hattie Carroll lost her life when a rich white man carelessly and callously killed her with his cane. Her killer’s punishment was inconsequential: six months for murder.

Recorded 1983 for Infidels; Released
1991 in Bootleg Series.

Blind Willie McTell is perhaps most famous nowadays for his song “Statesboro Blues,” most likely titled after the city he grew up in. Although McTell was somewhat well-known on the blues circuit during the 1920s and 1930s, most folks who know this song today know it because of the Allman Brothers. Their version is electric and extended. McTell played a fluid twelve-string and the occasional slide. He lived for 60 years and played throughout the southern United States in a style of picking known as Piedmont -- named after the region of the Carolinas it originated in.

While Bob Dylan was recording songs for the album eventually known as Infidels, he recorded his song “Blind Willie McTell.” A masterpiece of a song from a man who has many such songs to his name, Dylan’s work is about much more than the blues singer Willie McTell. It is an angry message transmitted through Dylan from an angry god. Even more, it is about a people and a nation that continue to suffer what Abraham Lincoln correctly identified as “the woe due to those by whom the offense came.”

Just as Mr. Lincoln told the nation in his Second Inaugural Address that perhaps “every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword,” so does Dylan close his song with a parallel observation and warning: “Well, God is in His heaven/And we all want what’s His/But power and greed and corruptible seed/Seem to be all that there is.”

The entire song is written in the minor with the piano the dominant instrument. One sees images of slave auctions, tenant shacks, Ishmael Reed’s Arthur Swille and Raven Quickskill, and Neil Young’s southern man; Christopher Dorner and Barney Fife; Richard Wright’s Bigger Thomas and the past and future Imperial Wizards of the Ku Klux Klan; Huey Newton, Oscar Grant, and Nina Simone. The cries of the whipped and the sound of the lashes become as real as the silence of solitary in today’s supermax prisons.

I remember hearing George Jackson had been killed a few hours after it occurred. The news reports coming in from the AP over Armed Forces Radio were sketchy and most notable for the information they did not provide. European broadcasts were somewhat more complete but all of the reports echoed the official line that Jackson had been trying to escape prior to his murder.

We still don’t know exactly what happened. The theory that makes the most sense to me is that he was planning to escape and had been working out the details with a section of the Bay Area Black Panthers, their mutual allies, and a probable police agent who tipped off the authorities and thereby ensured Jackson’s murder.

Two-sided single, 1971.

It’s difficult to explain the power George Jackson’s words and life story had when his first book Soledad Brother was published. In a world hungry for men and women who had lived a life of wretchedness and risen from those roots, Jackson’s was a life that indicted the evils rooted in slavery and U.S. capitalism while providing hope that this world could be changed. His brother’s heroically futile attempt to free him from the prison George had been exiled to only enhanced his revolutionary and ultimately tragic mystique. So, too, did the arrest and imprisonment of Jackson’s lover and comrade, Angela Davis.

My thoughts upon hearing Bob Dylan’s tribute to Jackson, simply titled “George Jackson,” were that even Bob Dylan, the rock superstar and (by then) recluse was not immune to the meaning of Jackson’s life and death. A poet, after all, lives to discover a meaning in the world that he exists in. For a poet like Dylan, the story of George Jackson confirmed his growing understanding that the scourge of racism was the defining condition of the country he lived in. Indeed, as he explained in a 2012 Rolling Stone interview:

This country is just too fucked up about color. It's a distraction. People at each other's throats just because they are of a different color. It's the height of insanity, and it will hold any nation back -- or any neighborhood back. Or any anything back. Blacks know that some whites didn't want to give up slavery -- that if they had their way, they would still be under the yoke, and they can't pretend they don't know that. If you got a slave master or Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that.

In other words, as far as Dylan is concerned, there is very little hope. Perhaps the most memorable lines in “George Jackson” are contained in this quatrain, “Sometimes I think this whole world/is one big prison yard/Some of us are prisoners /and some of us are guards.” These lines describe the nation’s dilemma better than any treatise might. Until the guards are willing to accept the fact they are as imprisoned by the legacy of racism as the prisoners they guard, beat, and kill, none of us will be free to leave the prison that is these United States.

Those that try, especially African-Americans, all too often find themselves put away behind bars even more real than the figurative ones that we know as racism. That is the story of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a black man who fought his way out of the prison of poverty and the urban ghetto only to be charged with a crime “that he never done.”

Rolling Thunder Revue, 1976.

Like Jackson, Hurricane Carter spent a good portion of his life in prison. Also, like Jackson (and millions of others), Carter’s fate was determined by men and a system that cared little for the truth. Dylan’s lyrics tell the story of dirty cops, lying witnesses, and a prosecution determined to put Carter in prison, if not for the crime he was charged with, then because he had too much pride in his person and his race; traits not just hated by the white power structure, but seen as serious threats. Carter, like Jackson, came to understand his position, a fact which led to his undoing almost as much as the perversions of justice existent in the cases of both men.

When Bob Dylan released his song “Hurricane,” most people had not heard of Carter or his case. As I recall, the demand for a new trial was primarily popular among left organizations like the Revolutionary Union, its student group the Attica Brigades/Revolutionary Student Brigades and various radical anti-racist organizations on the East Coast of the United States.

When Dylan recorded his song and released it as a two-sided single (because of its length), many radio stations did not know what to do with it. The more cutting-edge stations that played non-formula album cuts and regional artists (WHFS-FM in Maryland, WNEW-FM in New York, for example) played the song in its entirety, flipping the single mid-song or having it cued on two turntables. Other, more commercial stations didn’t play it much at all until it reached the Top 40. Stations that traditionally catered to Black audiences were also slow to play the song at first, with the exception of a few college and community-owned stations.

Meanwhile, Dylan and his cohorts were organizing what would be known as the Rolling Thunder Tour. This tour would champion Hurricane’s case and was perhaps one of the last great “Sixties” tours (with the possible exception of the continuing road trip of the Grateful Dead.) Hurricane did get a new trial. He was convicted again, thanks to continued prosecutorial misconduct. He was finally freed in 1985 after a federal judge determined that Carter’s arrest and prosecution was "predicated upon an appeal to racism rather than reason...”

To put it simply, the song itself rocks. There is no other word that describes its appeal. There is probably no other rock song that features a gypsy violin as lead instrument where that can be said. Sharing imagery with the New Jersey street songs of Bruce Springsteen and borrowing rhythms and melody from Ashkenazi and Romano folk songs, “Hurricane” maintains a level of emotion appropriate to its subject matter.

After all, we were trying to save a man’s life. It was already too late for Blind Willie McTell and George Jackson.

This article was first published in Red Wedge Magazine.

[Rag Blog contributor Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. He recently released a collection of essays and musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His novels, The Co-Conspirator's Tale, and Short Order Frame Up will be republished by Fomite in April 2013 along with the third novel in the series All the Sinners Saints. Ron Jacobs can be reached at ronj1955@gmail.com. Find more articles by Ron Jacobs on The Rag Blog.]

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Liam Clancy : Putting the Irish in Folk

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Above, Liam Clancey. Below, The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem.
The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem:
Irish music and the American folk scene

By Carl R. Hultberg / The Rag Blog / December 17, 2009

In the beginning it was William Clancy, Liam being still too Celtic and “Irish” for Ireland in the early 1950s.

His older brothers, big burly lads, had already gone to America and eventually to New York City to find jobs as Irishmen in various stage productions. William longed to go as well but the chance didn’t come until he met New York City based ethno-musicologist Dianne Hamilton Guggenheim, a protégé of Alan Lomax.

In his autobiography, Liam Clancy tries to deal with his relationship with Ms. Hamilton, an older woman. Whatever personal struggles he might have had with his patroness, the fact remained that she got him to New York City and even tried to set him up as a folksinger. Although Clancy landed a few acting jobs as a stock Irishman, he didn’t really see the future until he met Josh White.

Josh White in the early 1950s was a towering figure in the miniscule folk music scene. Unique among his black blues contemporaries, Josh had found a way to present field hand music in a posh night club setting, more akin to Billie Holiday than to, say, Leadbelly. As Liam marveled in his autobiography, The Mountain of the Women, Josh White was the consummate professional. He would pick up his guitar, throw it into tune and be on stage in minutes with the audience eating out of his hand. Liam wondered how he could ever achieve that level of taste, talent and sophistication.

Singing with his big bruiser brothers he knew the act still lacked something. What would it take to transform them from your average Irish singing family to say, something like Josh White? His mind turned to someone who had also been “discovered” by Dianne Hamilton on her Irish trip. Young Tommy Makem, the son of Ireland’s well known folksinger Sarah Makem.

Sure enough, Tommy had already come to America, was living in New Hampshire, and was ready to sing with the Clancy's. The model for the modern Irish folksinging unit was now set. With Tommy Makem in the lead singing role, the "Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem" were now an entertainment reality. Although Tommy forever chaffed against being most of the group’s talent, but restricted to a set of virtual parentheses, Tommy Makem's and Liam Clancy’s fates were now sealed.

The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem did indeed remake the entire image of an Irish folksinging group. Although they did do Irish sentimental favorites, they were no “cry in your beer sad memories of the past” comiseraters. They also did some Irish Republican anthems from the days of the struggles, but were not overly consumed by that passion. What they presented was a broad spectrum of Irish songs, new and old, with something for all types and ages. Not unlike Josh White.

When they did have a politically oriented hit, it was, interestingly, with the bitter "Patriot Game," which equivocated in its support for armed struggle while still championing the cause. A very sophisticated song which Bob Dylan, who hung around the Clancy's all he could in his salad days, transformed into "With God On Our Side."

Liam Clancey at the 2005 Milwaukee Irish Fest. Photo by Stacina / Flickr.
That was the wonderful thing about this ancient Irish music. Like the tunes, the themes have been around forever. Irish music made the big time on the Ed Sullivan Show and other top American venues thanks to the Clancy's and Tommy Makem. But mostly they hung around the White Horse Tavern, a well known watering hole on the West Side of New York’s Greenwich Village. In this setting they would bend their elbows with anyone.

Their solid proletarian comradeship was not necessarily political, it was just Irish and it was infectious. Much of the good energy (and a lot of the good tunes) that later enchanted the USA Folk scene in the 1960s came out of the family atmosphere created by the Clancys and Tommy Makem. If this was folk music, these guys from Ireland were surely the folk. Lift your glass to friendship, mates, the music from the distant blessed archaic past is once again being played by young men of charm and influence. All is not lost.

So Liam Clancy wasn’t necessarily the big talent in the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. Although, unlike his brothers who just sang in the ensemble, he did sing lead on some songs, his soft voice could never carry the group the way Tommy Makem could. Tommy also wrote songs and played the tin whistle. But it was Liam Clancy who set the whole thing up, who’d had the vision and got to see his creation become a big success.

Many decades and albums later it was easy to look back on how Irish music came back to life in the 1950s. Once considered, like black music in the days of the minstrels, a kind of ethnic joke, no one would ever think to disparage this rich heritage again. You can thank the Clancy's and Tommy Makem for that, especially Liam. One of the reasons young people were able to be so successful as a force for cultural transformation in the 1960s was that they had the historical precedents rightly in place. Black blues, jazz, ragtime, and also Irish music, were finally being understood for what they really were, not just stupid stereotypes.

If we had to pick one song to represent the Clancy Brothers and with Tommy Makem, it would probably be impossible. But one that comes to mind is actually a tune off an album Liam Clancy made with Tommy Makem after the Clancy's had disbanded. Recorded in 1976, the song by Alan Bell, celebrates the history of wind power in Europe. It seems particularly appropriate to present this song as a sample, especially after having spent some time bemoaning the lack of spiritual energy in the USA regarding alternative energy. Here is that supposedly missing sacred prayer:

Windmills

In days gone by, when the world was much younger
Men harnessed the wind to work for mankind
Seamen built tall ships to sail on the ocean
While landsmen built wheels the corn for to grind

And around and around and around went the big sail
Turning the shaft and the great wooden wheel
Creaking and groaning, the millstones kept turning
Grinding to flour the good corn from the field

In Flanders and Spain and the lowlands of Holland
And the kingdoms of England and Scotland and Wales
Windmills sprang up all along the wild coastline
Ships of the land with their high canvas sails

In Lancashire, lads work hard at the good earth
Ploughing and sowing as the seasons declare
Waiting to reap all the rich, golden harvest
While the miller is idle, his mill to repair

Windmills of wood all blackened by weather
Windmills of stone, glaring white in the sun
Windmills like giants all ready for tilting
Windmills that died in the gales and the sun

Liam Clancy passed away Friday, December 4. Thanks for bringing us The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, a group that changed the course of modern folk music. And thanks also for staying such a simple honest man. That’s actually not an easy act to pull off.

[Carl R. Hultberg's grandfather, Rudi Blesh, was a noted jazz critic and music historian, and Carl was raised in that tradition. After spending many years as a music archivist and social activist in New York's Greenwich Village, he now lives in an old abandoned foundry in Danbury, New Hampshire, where he runs the Ragtime Society.]

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Greg Moses : The Dylan Show Plays Corpus Christi

The Geometries of the Bob Dylan Show in South Texas

Instantly the night is dark. Orchestra music plays from hanging speakers. Time to cheer and squint into the black box that has become the stage. There is a man in white hat moving into center position.

By Greg Moses / The Rag Blog / August 17, 2009

CORPUS CHRISTI -- The Bob Dylan Show this summer reaches its south-most destination at 27 degrees 48 minutes north latitude, half past four degrees into the Tropic of Cancer where fat velocities of rotation spin hysterical contradictions between centrifugal ups and centripetal downs.

Or if it’s not about cosmic number tonight why does this latitude trace eastward to Qalandul where southbound priests of Egypt would disembark from lotus-flower boats for a three mile walk to the moon temple of Khmounoun named for the number eight? If mathematics is beside the point why does the latitude of Corpus Christi -- named after the body of Christ -- line up with that place in Egypt identified by the Catholic Encyclopedia as the residence of the boy Jesus when his family carried him into exile?

Nor is any of this geometry too heavy for tonight’s three stars: Dylan, Willie Nelson, or John Cougar Mellencamp, whose converging chords have capacities to re-curve time and space for our drought and debt saturated landscapes. If ticket-holders hadn’t already calculated the likelihood of some momentary resurrection in cosmic geometries why would any of us have put up dollars to broil under this August sun?

Of course, for the most part, the dollars in question will be advanced courtesy of MasterCard – Visa and reallocated as a leveraged put toward one last long play on the possibilities of a harmonic salvation against the dissonance and entropy of all things coming undone. De-leverage and stay home? That would be like losing faith in daily bread.

Why these three stars chose the first week of August to play five Texas concerts outdoors says something about their heroic confidence, their leather skins, and their complete indifference to the pain of making a living. July Fourth is hard enough down here -- that day in mid-summer when Willie Nelson and his good man Poodie (God rest his soul) gathered head-popping tribes of rednecks and hippies at open-sky picnics across Texas, year after year -- where you might have exhaled on David Carradine floating by in a long white cloak or kicked over a cow patty passing David Allen Coe in an oasis of grinning mesquite, a blonde on one arm and a brunette on the other.

But August Fifth! Jesus, what a date to pick for playing Corpus Christi outdoors. To the west of Whataburger Field there will be nothing very tall to stand up against the sun as it takes its ever loving time going down. These are the Dog Days for Christ's sake, named since the beginning of time by those very priests who studied the high heavens at 8-Town until they figured out that when Sirius, the Dog star, came out from behind the sun, it was a visible promise that the river was fixin' to rise again, thank God.

And so the boys have chosen a dog day to put down for the evening in Corpus Christi harbor, up against the south bank of Tule Lake Channel, a mainline canal for barges of the planetary chemical coast, toting eastward past Whataburger Field and then northward past Dagger Island and Ransom Island as they cut eastward again thru Aransas Pass into the Gulf of Mexico all kinds of fluids drawn up from the arteries of Mother Earth and alchemized into kerosene or feed stocks for Naugahyde, depending. Along this third coast, clear up to Texas City, is where better living thru chemistry begins.

Sales by the chemical giants are down twenty to thirty percent or more and, like other industries these days, chemical profits are being sustained through layoffs. Investors were kind in July to chemco stock prices, but the cost of that form of prosperity means that the labor market around here is a bear, with unemployment on the rise.

Likewise with the other four stops on this tour, whether you’re looking at the energy companies who built the Woodlands, the tech sector that built Dell Diamond, the bankers who anchored Dallas as a regional center for the Federal Reserve just 13 miles from Quick Trip Park in Grand Prairie, or the cotton and cattle enterprises that undergird the stadium facilities at Texas Tech’s Jones AT&T stadium.

Interestingly enough, if you look at some of the breakout hits for tonight’s three stars, such as Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” Mellencamp’s “Hurts so Good,” or Nelson’s “Shotgun Willie” album -- they all soared into our hearts at well-defined market lows. Riding a three-wave bounce thru Texas, therefore, is a trio of bear-market bards. When the chips are down, these are the fellas we want to hear most.


5pm August 5 at the crossroads of federal highway 37 and state highway 59 -- there is no way to be at Whataburger Field on time to catch the warm-up act by the Wiyo’s who say they are from Brooklyn but look like they should be from Kentucky or some Hollywood movie show. Up there on stage with their washboard and dusty clothes you wouldn’t be surprised if they started pitching you some all-purpose elixir to fix everything from charley horse to heartache. They have the perfect attitude for a band that’s prepping for today’s top billers, pitching nothing too heavy to weigh down a grin.

Maybe some day the Wiyo’s will return triumphant as top bills and contribute a poster to the wall of fame that’s collected here at the crossroads Burger King – signed posters from Linda Escobar, D.J. Kane, Kevin Fowler, Ruben Ramos, and other troubadours who have crossed here going in one of four directions, maybe even Southbound on federal 37 toward Whataburger Field.

But since this is mostly an arithmetic excursion so far, the fifth at five thing reminds me that the classic Mayans named the daystar God-5 in honor perhaps of the fifth direction you could always hope to go at any crossroads. In first people rituals on this very continent 5-God is dressed in pants with yellow stripes, the emblematic color of the sun and the third age back when grandmothers -- not their grandsons -- were in charge.

Yes we are driving toward the beach as they say, but on this coastline your playtime scenery has an industrial backdrop. Signs say Seafood and Scrap Metal. Redbird Lane turns into Railroad Ave. And right over the tracks, Five Points Road turns into Leopard, a Mayan math trick for sure. By the time I get to Whataburger Field the clock over the entrance is a perfect straight-up six, but I’m too busy to do the math right now. There is no music coming out of the place, which means Willie’s roadies are setting up. I do not want to miss those first chords of Whiskey River.

Bottled water first. The layout of this stadium is very similar to last night’s venue at the Dell Diamond, probably because the same designer landed both jobs. So it’s not difficult to find a well-staffed concession stand upon the mezzanine before turning toward the stage. From about first base over to the left field bleachers there is shade thrown down by the stadium. And just like yesterday afternoon, all the shaded seats have been filled up first. The sunny seats over along right field are nearly completely empty.

The infield has been blocked off with some temporary barriers made of plastics that didn’t fall too far from the chemical towers that rise up all around these parts. Just outside second base is a white pyramid-topped canopy for equipment and cameras. Between the canopy and the stage they have laid down some heavy white rubber mats that protect the outfield Astroturf and hide some hefty electrical wires underfoot.

Upon the white mats in center field is the temple of the sun, where worshippers are dedicated and few. It would be easy to get very close to the stage, but like most folks this afternoon I hang back in the shade. What does 98 degrees in the full sun feel like when you’re standing on a rubber mat? At yesterday’s concert I ran into an old, old friend who had a twenty-something son, and we followed the kid right down there onto a quilt in the midst of the sun worshipping crowd, which was larger last night. It turned out not to be as fatal as it sounds although the official temperature was 101.


This evening at short-stop position I take my stand just about the time the sun worshippers start cheering to let everyone know that Willie has stepped into view. Then those chords. Of course the last thing you think about is how Willie’s spotlight right now is the third coast sun. Just like last night he takes the sun shift full in the face and it seems to bother him not a bit.

Something is different tonight about Willie. Usually he plays with a guitar backup. Last night the honor was done by the legendary Ray Benson. Tonight Willie has other familiar members of the family on stage, and a bass player, but there is only one guitar. You’ve probably seen it. It sounds great. My ears are telling me the ticket price has already been returned with interest.

As Willie switches tunes to “Still is Still Moving” we can see the high backs of trucks flying over his head as they move up and down the steel trussed harbor bridge along the east side of Whataburger Field. “La la la,” sings the singer. When Mickey Raphael steps up to blow the harmonica, Willie lifts his right hand to point toward the sky. Cheers fly up from a commotion of ballcaps and shorts.

At a peace concert a few years back, Willie introduced “Beer for my Horses” as the homeland security song, so that’s the way I’ve thought about it ever since. He stops his own singing to let the audience fill in the title lyric, as they did last night. Mothers in cowboy hats walk to and fro. A snuff dipper wearing a bud cap raises a plastic bottle to his lips. An extra large man walks out of the sun crowd wearing an extra large red t-shirt that reads “Big Frank.”

“Well Hello There,” is the way Willie opens the fourth song to immediate cheers. With Paul English hitting the backbeat and Willie pointing to folks here and there, everyone is enjoying the chance to get reacquainted. We’re thinking about last time and next time. T-shirts walk by texting Dynamo or smiling in the image of Jackson Browne.

“Crazy!” is a song that Willie always seems to begin abruptly, and it always produces an abrupt reply. As Willie hits the four notes down, here comes a mother in pale pink boots. Holding mom’s hand is her waist-tall daughter whose boots are pale green. Here are your green shoots people. Before you have time to figure out what to say about the teen boy in the BIMBO shirt, an image of Hendrix reminds your mind to take a deep breath.

Literally, it’s a little too early for that “Night Life” song, because the sun is still pretty much all up in his face, but Willie is in the mood to give Trigger a good workout. “Listen what the blues are playing.” A Motown insider once assured me that when Willie comes to town, the Motown session musicians get front row seats. That’s the first thing he told me after asking me where I was from.

Coming off the field now is a young tall buck in a big black hat, hefty silver buckle, brand new jeans draping down over calf-brown boots holding hands with a wide-eyed doe in boots, cutoff jeans, and purple top. Are my sunglasses dark enough for this? “Thank y’all very much. I love y’all. How y’all doing out there?” is what Willie says next.

As Little Sister Bobbie hits her “Down Yonder” piano solo, Willie tosses his black hat into the crowd, puts the red bandana over his forehead, and tops it with a wide and flat straw hat that someone has tossed up. After asking Sister Bobbie to give the crowd a wave over top of the grand piano, Willie introduces drummer Paul and plays the song about “Me and Paul.” The lyric about almost getting busted in Laredo draws a response from this South Texas crowd, probably because Laredo is a name they hear all the time.

Buck and doe are easing back toward the sun worshippers now. A silver fuel truck flies down the Harbor Bridge followed by a gleaming red pickup riding high on the back of a tow. Willie introduces Paul’s little brother Bobby and Mickey Raphael. I don’t recall seeing Mickey this tan before. He’s been playing the sun shift beside Willie for a few weeks. Coming out of the crowd now is a serious looking fellow in sunglasses and camo pants. He is followed by a couple with a vast age difference. I take the older man to be a grandfather and the younger woman in the Hooks shirt to be his daughter, but I wonder. The main thing is their smiles.

Willie hits stride with “Money Honey” then slows it down for “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” A young mom has stepped out of the sun into the shaded area where she waltzes with the boy she carries. The boy climbs down to the turf and starts running a diamond of bases, preparing his imagination for the big leagues. A daddy steps into the shade carrying his daughter dressed in a yellow shirt. The sea breeze kicks up the smell of salt. And I’ll be darned if it’s not buck and doe coming this way again.

Tom T. Hall wrote “Shoeshine Man” declares Willie introducing the novelty tune which seems to have replaced “Kiss Big Booty Goodbye” in this year’s lineup. Willie does the video for the shoeshine song by playing with his web cam and, according to the definitive stillisstillmoving blog, Jackass Johnny Knoxville sez it’s the best video of all time (lower case letters inserted). Little Sister Bobbie kicks up a storm on the pinanny as Mickey and Willie hop onto her musical dust devil. Cheers and whistles swirl all around.

As Willie kicks it up one more notch with “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” the little base runner is swept up by mom for more dancing. But there is only so much will a momma can have over the boy who pushes himself back down to run some more diamonds. Walking through this little drama is a high-contrast image of young Dylan’s face carried forward on a purple t-shirt by a proud teen grrrl walking beside her proud gramps. "Thank you very much,” says Willie, because the applause is getting pretty loud.

Tenderness returns to the fading day with “Angel Flying too Close to the Ground.” A big brother and little sister come off the field side-by-side with some serious responsibilities showing in their faces. Probably they have been given a time limit, maybe even some cash. High above the stage, gulls dive after each other, energized by an updraft. A young momma steps confidently under black hat, platoon leader to passing images of Kid Rock, pink sunglasses, and Bob Marley.

At “On the Road Again” a beverage salesman comes striding out of the crowd, slinging an empty blue bucket. As he turns North along the left field foul line his back draws my eyes toward Willie’s bus parked behind the stage with its painted horse always ready to ride. Time to reload that bucket. On a blanket thrown down near second base, a young family claps in unison. Mommy and baby girl dress in matching outfits.

With Sister Bobbie’s piano striking a melancholy mood, Willie eases into an apology song. “Maybe I didn’t love you quite as.” A young Dad with trimmed beard, gator boots, and beaded belt dances. A youngster’s t-shirt advises us to save water. Arms go up in applause.

“I had a carpal tunnel operation and my doctor told me to go home and shut up,” explains Willie as he sets the stage for the next ditty about being Superman Not. “Too many pain pills, too much pot.” Willie has lost his big straw hat. The bandana he wears now looks more like a head wrap for a wounded man. And Sister Bobbie helps to strike the appropriate musical pose. In the lengthening shadows, a personage in chrome boots and white hat is busy talking up something they’ll probably get from someone they probably know.

“How about a little Hank Williams?” asks Willie, which is not really a question so much as a cue to start hoo-ing and whistling and shouting things like hell yeah as he hops right onto the bayou song. Self, sez I to me, I told you this was going to be a mathematical event. There will be three (count ‘em three) Hank songs. “Hey Good Lookin” might be dedicated to more than half the crowd tonight and Willie is still pointing them out. A woman prettier than gold passes by, talking on her cell phone. The kid runs a diamond around her knees. Time for a little riff from Trigger and before you know it the cosmos has been segued into Hank’s “Big Dog” song.

Okay, dear reader, you are thinking how long is this going to go on? Are you going to report on each and every one of these songs and fashions and dramas as if you were responsible for something like memory itself? Yes ma’am, and without commercial interruption.

So while we were finishing up the triangulation of Hank there was this ACDC t-shirt that I forgot to mention just before all hands went up in applause, which is good a time as any to start “City of New Orleans” while an independent woman in plaid top, shorts, and boots keeps her attention split between the ground, the stairs ahead, and the text message she is sending: IYKWIMAITYD. “I Just Want My Noodles” is what it says on the next t-shirt immediately followed by a grrrl in dayglo sunglass frames and a hint of leopard-skin fabric worked in to the waist line.

The beverage salesman who we lost in the direction of Willie’s bus has returned now walking with a bit of a strain against the weight of the filled bucket that he has strapped across a broad shoulder. He’s handling his job with sweat and good cheer as Willie kicks up the melody for “Pipeliner” and sings about a man who’d walk from Corpus to Wichita Falls.

A double-dating foursome probably with fresh memories of the prom is enjoying a stroll around left field as Willie begins to ease his way off stage. “Thank y’all very much. We love y’all. I hope you’ll stay for John and Bob.” But no Willie show is over until the Gospel tune sings, so he and Sister Bobbie and the family treat us all to “I Saw the Light.” Talk about your understatement. More thanks, more love. The man in the black hat blows kisses. The bleacher folks stand up to clap and cheer. Mickey gives a hearty wave. And cut.


Up on the mezzanine a Skol can hits the concrete floor and a big man reaches down to retrieve it. Big red plastic carts on big plastic wheels are rolled into place as drink stations for the surge between acts. Over by the Whataburger counter the plastic coated picnic tables are keeping themselves occupied as diners wait for their numbers, grab their bags, sit and eat, and make room for the next shift. A woman with a long braid holds out her walkie-talkie with one hand as she pushes down trash with the other. It’s beginning to look like evening. The breeze is strong enough that I set my full water bottle on the floor instead of the railing.

By now the empty seats in right field have some shade moving onto them. I sit down behind folks who have traveled some distance to see Mellencamp mostly. A walkway at ground level is guarded gently by a young woman dressed in the lightly printed pattern of the Whataburger Field staff. She either nods to let you pass or shakes her head to stop you. Near the entrance to the walkway a few women stand on the field wearing USO t-shirts. Here comes a couple holding hands. Dad wears a Grand Funk Railroad t-shirt.


A guy big enough and about the right age to be the real thing wears a t-shirt that says Notre Dame Football. On the field a littler kid kneels, tucks his head down and rolls completely over into a sitting position, rolls again, and again, and again. He comes up smiling each time. When he’s finished, he gets up to pull a cell phone from mom’s back pocket. Mom is having a live conversation with friends. Cheers. Spring-loaded fans jump up and walk quickly onto the field. It’s Mellencamp time and here he comes.

“You guys ready?” asks Mellencamp. “Then someone’s going to have to count to four. One. Two.” His band hits the opening chords for “Little Pink Houses.” Right field is dancing. Hands are high up and clapping. We’re feeling that electric violin. Down on the field grandpa in his yellow shirt tosses grandson two feet to the kid’s father. Catch! The three of them are laughing loud. Dad puts the boy down next to little sister. Dad picks up little sister. And the whole family rocks. All hips are in motion. A surfer cowboy grabs his date for a closer dance. A blonde grrrl and brunette grrrl come strolling hand in hand. “Home of the Free!” Binoculars turn to John.

The violin is smoking hot tonight as it plays the riff for “Paper and Fire.” A young man with light brown dreds strolls out to meet the music. As the violin saws into “Check It Out” hands go up to clap the beat. Mellencamp pitches back pictures of our lives. On the highway of this song we’re all making very similar trips. Check out that Harley Davidson t-shirt passing by. There’s a long message on it that we can’t quite make out at walking speed in fading daylight. Bet it sums something up about living.

Mellencamp’s band leaves him solo with an acoustic guitar explaining how he’s “sicker than a mf*r up here” and how he’d seriously considered canceling tonight’s performance. “But I can’t do it to these people!” Applause and good cheers for that. “Glad you all showed up!” Then he polls the audience for their mood in terms of “old song” or “new.” For the “old song” landslide majority he presents a chorus of “Club Cherry Bomb” a capella - to which they all sing along in remembrance of when “groovin’ was groovin’.”

Having done his best to prepare his fans for something completely new, Mellencamp introduces a dream song that he very recently recorded in a Savannah Georgia Baptist Church. Here come the dredlocks back out. A tall daddy carries his baby girl high up on his shoulders. A pair of toddlers walk unsteadily together, still finding their legs.

Mellencamp begins “Small Town” as an acoustic solo, but the song ends with the band in full electric swing. A man with freshly trimmed gray hair nods and smiles as the Cougar sings about being born and raised in a small town. But when the singer sings about probably dying in a small town, the man emphatically shakes his head not me.

Now it’s the band’s turn to give Mellencamp a little break as they play a violin powered song that haunts the spirit of something Irish, Dixified, and Gospel. A double date of teens walks in formation, smiling and chatting about all kinds of possibilities for this life. A mom strolls hand in hand with her daughter. A big guy with big hands stuffs three empty bottle necks between the fingers of one hand and walks confidently upstairs.

“Scarecrow” pulses through the crowd in the form of chest-thumping full-frontal rock. A woman in pink dress and high heels bounces out along the right foul line, veers into fair play, returns toward first base with a friend. Mellencamp turns around to the drummer and raises his arms. Five cases of beer go rolling toward an ice-cold oasis. From every face a glow of something like I’m proud to be who I am. Nobody who’s not somebody far as you can see.

Power chords for “Troubled Land” introduce Mellencamp’s prayer for peace. Palm trees pose in silhouette against the last horizontal light of the day. Police lead a woman upstairs with a couple of thick deposit bags. In this mood right now, they could probably just ask the audience to pass the cash. A tall thin man with arms outstretched comes floating across the foul line toward the right field steps, lifted up and carried by event staff who sit down with him in the bleachers. Grins and grumbles ripple out.

“If I Die Suddenly” is a resurrection song about leaving it all behind. Even the preacher would be too late to do anything useful. All the necessary arrangements have been taken care of through family and prayer. Stage lights glow purple as twilight darkens the sky into various shades of charcoal blue. Backlit advertisements for K Triple Eye TV and the Gulf Coast Federal Credit Union contribute softening glows. Corpus Christi cops stroll relaxed as five cases of empties get pushed westward for disposal. A fat supply plane passes southbound overhead.

It’s 1-2-3 and all hips are swinging for the crumblin’ wall song. The bass player takes center stage, and he’s just spanking that thing. Then the drummer rolls in with a solo. Lights strobe. There’s hollering all around. Blackberries get lifted up to capture the ecstasy. Whistles. Applause. “This is good!” shouts a Mellencamp fan from the right field bleachers. This is exactly what he came for.

“When I put this band together in the early 70’s it was a garage band,” says Mellencamp after introducing the players. “We went from the garage to the bar and back to the garage. After years of doing that I was surprised to see that you could play on stages where your feet didn’t stick to the floor.” Mellencamp explains how his breakout hit “Hurts So Good” was written as a way to catch the spirit of bars at 5 a.m. But with a voice busted by the August weather in Texas, Mellencamp says that he’d like to throw the vocal part to a fan who has been up front singing along with every note.

“So come on up here. What’s your name?” As Tom Cruise is to Bob Seeger, Mike is to Mellencamp. He grabs the microphone and hits the song like a punching bag, scoring every word. Of course the audience sings the chorus, too, as Mellencamp swoops in for the closing lines. Before Mike leaves the stage, he grabs Mellencamp and lifts him high off his feet! No sticking to the floor tonight.

“Thanks a lot you guys,” says Mellencamp, “good bye,” leaving us Mellen-heads with wide grins. Up on the mezzanine food and drinks are still selling fast. In a kitchen on the south side of Whataburger Field a woman scrubs a pile of steel pans. Nearby a couple of guys open an exhaling cooler and roll out a frosted keg. I grab a fresh bottle of water and get back down to the outfield.


As I take up position in center-left field, the party is in full swing. Under bright ballpark lights, friends gather into a hundred small circles chattering and laughing. Oops, down goes a full cup of beer. Oops, down goes a bottle. Behind the stage three candy red semi trucks rest side by side as their long steel trailers are emptied and refilled by more than a dozen roadies in sportive uniforms who roll cases of equipment one way or the other over a steel plank. After a while the stage empties of workers. A senior operator comes out to check a few final details at the keyboard station.

Instantly the night is dark. Orchestra music plays from hanging speakers. Time to cheer and squint into the black box that has become the stage. There is a man in white hat moving into center position. Time to cheer again. No way to keep up with the rapid intro, a biograph of Dylan that takes us from rock legend, through drug haze, then into Jesus and beyond. But as it (not absolutely) always was, he remains the Columbia recording artist. Cue lights and trilling notes of “Watching the River Flow.”

Dylan holds the fat neck of his guitar up like in the promo pics. Makes me think of the way you hold a shotgun and what Woodie Guthrie wrote on his own guitar. And if you read the reports after every ballpark show you can tell it begins to work pretty quickly. Also, in the context of today’s show, Dylan’s opening guitar work feels like a kind of tribute to Willie Nelson’s guitar style with alternating riffs and hard-scrubbed chords.

“Don’t Think Twice” was the song that pulled me into Dylan way back when I was skinny and lovesick. It’s a nice surprise to hear it as song number two. Magically the electric bass has been replaced with a full-sized acoustic. Down here among the ticketholders a woman with a sweet smile and twinkling eyes holds up two cups of foaming beer, pauses, looks around. Maybe she’s really lost? So many two’s all at once. Time for this party to double down.

With a shot from the drums that startles you into thinking explosion, the band hits the wailing chords of “Till I Fell in Love with You.” Dylan begins at the keyboards downstage right, facing three axemen stage left in black suits and hats. The fifth black-suited player sits upstage right behind a pedal slide. Dylan seems to be getting the feel of the stage, making eye contact with players. Then he turns to grab a well-placed harmonica and walks to center stage for a solo. On his pants, the outseam is covered by a broad yellow stripe that matches his yellow shirt. Could be a ritual Mayan dressing for a ceremony at high noon.

When the song feels done Dylan nods to the bass player and leader of the band -- a familiar face to old fans of Saturday Night Live. The bass player cues the drummer, and the boys bring the thing to a stop. In the song the singer was “Dixie Bound.” Now the song is over, and look who’s here.

It’s a soft-pitch melody up next, with the yellow-breasted poet’s jacket unbuttoned for “a whoppin’ good time.” Last night The Vocalist stressed the lyrics a little more at that “over the hill” allegation. Tonight the emphasis shifts to the keyboard and the tall, acoustic bass. Cellphones are up and streaming rows of tiny screens over ballcaps and beer. Jupiter is chasing the moon up over the harbor bridge leaving plenty of clearance for more chemical trucks to go barreling down westward toward Laguna Madre.

Whistles come flying into the stage from various points. Someone tosses off a light scream. Dylan and the boys reply with a rollickin Muddy Waters takeoff, “and I tumbled, I cried the whole night long.” The gulf breeze offers a gusty supercharge. A southbound airplane blinks high overhead. Drum and bass beat CPR into each and every heart.

For me, Dylan’s “Workingman’s Blues #2” is a reminder of Jody Payne who for years sang the Merle Haggard original during Willie Nelson concerts. The Dylan reply has a sing-song rhythm that the crowd enjoys, hands up, clapping. For his part, The Vocalist is tossing the notes back and forth from guttural to nasal, playing with the range of possibilities. A few popcorn clouds wave at the Sturgeon Moon. A couple giggles together as they hold up a Willie Doll that can’t help but sway to the happy feel of things. I hear Payne is in retirement today enjoying time with his son, Waylon. Still, we missed him this evening at 6:15 or thereabouts.

Before Dylan pitches “Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum” he steps back in the dark, gives his arms a good stretch, and grabs a drink. Another tanker truck comes wheeling down the harbor bridge, shining its stainless steel body back at the moon. At the keyboard, Dylan turns and kicks to one side and then to the other. But don’t let that song and dance act fool you too much, because the serious side of Dylan’s art is just now kickin’ in.

“Ballad of a Thin Man” is a song you can lay back and enjoy a little more if it doesn’t catch you live taking notes. People can’t help but grin at you. They even start walking a little closer to you in the moonlight just so you can be sure to see they’re on the side that’s grinning. “With great lawyers and scholars,” sings the man with the thin mustache, pouring a little pepper onto your paranoia. Indeed you miss plenty and most of the time. But you’re no quitter, are you -- dum, dum, dum, dum -- Mr. Jones? When the song is finally over, I give it a four-finger whistle. Sportsmanship.

At last night’s show in Round Rock, “Highway 61” was the apex of the arc as it is tonight, even without the amazing center-stage guitar work of Charlie Sexton or the amusing lyrical antics of the vocalist. There’s just a way the song comes together. Dylan enjoys jamming the song on the keyboard, and the guitars enjoy answering him. Then the guitars start answering each other. Before you know it there is a full blown conversation going on between the drummer and the bass player, too. Everybody has something to say. The lighting crew starts mixing in a few tricks and pretty soon the Bob Dylan Show is taking us all down for a ride.

In the darkness before “Nettie Moore,” Dylan steps back to take a sip. The song is such a sweet and sad thing. The violin sounds perfect for it, and Dylan seems to place special emphasis on the lines, “I loved you then, and ever shall.” Meanwhile, the audience has divided itself in half between those who have inched ever forward and those who have stepped back. In the gap between them a 12-foot ring of rubber mat.

“Thunder on the Mountain” is a wide-ranging plaint. You’ve got the man, the woman, and the world all on the verge of some critical swerve. The beat is ferocious as a freight train. The crew up on stage is stoking the engine hotter than an August night with all the seriousness and concentration they can sustain. It’s like one little cotter pin could spring out of joint and the whole 46-box-car operation would come crushing down upon us all. The front rail audience is completely transfixed. It’s like they are just holding on for dear life. Then the grand conductor gives a quick nod to the leader of the band and the whole damn weight of things is braked to a smooth but quick stop.

When the band goes off-stage I wonder if they’ll come back for an encore. There is a hearty group of folks who are into the show, and they are trying to put up a ruckus, but they’ve been beered and beaten by the heat for about five hours, so it’s not clear they have much left inside to wring out. By rock concert standards, their cries for more would be deniable. But after a polite interlude the band does come back. Dylan’s return gait is loose and lanky. He seems to gesture something merciful with his body before returning to work.

The encore begins with Dylan’s signature song, the one that branded a glorious generation of rolling stones. At the keyboard, Dylan reminds us of Al Kooper’s licks. On the line -- “How does it feel?” -- the stage lights cast a flashing fishnet pattern over the near crowd. On the black backdrop is a lighted image of the new Dylan logo, an eye of Horus crowned as feathered serpent. Mayan math connected to Egyptian is what I say. And the all seeing stagemaster himself seems to signal something significant as his hand flies up from the keyboard to touch cheek, back of neck, and then quickly back down.

The seven-note riff for “Jolene” sashays through the sky. “Baby I’m the King,” declares the triumphant showman, “and you’re the Queen.” Dylan twists sideways for one more flash of that yellow stripe. A final, faint, and seedy whiff of freedom passes through the crowd. “Okay, git,” says a short man to a short woman as they turn toward the parking lot. Wednesday night is coming to a close.

“Thank you, friends,” says Dylan before introducing the four boys in the band. “There must be some kind of way out of here,” is not exactly what we hear next, but we can tell that’s what the song is supposed to be. A moth catches the spotlight, zigs toward Dylan’s white hat, then zooms up offstage. As the band hammers out the notes of this last song, Dylan pulls a hand up, wipes some of that (officially) 82 percent humidity from the back of his neck, pulls the other hand up, wipes the other side. Toward the Green Corn Moon a wispy cloud approaches in sickle form, making a perfect harvest. Cut.

“None of them along the line know what any,” Dylan stops, catches the word “any,” repeats it, punctuates the delivery of the next three words - “of . . . it . . . is” -- and then grinds out a deep growl for all it is “wo-oo-rr-rr-th!” Music slams shut, lights go down. In the dark, Dylan assembles the band into two rows, then takes the front and center position. Lights up, Dylan raises his hands out above his elbows in a gesture that looks like a kind of blessing.

A dedicated pack of stage huggers want to go for one more encore, but it is no use. As the true few cheer and whistle (what good would it do to stomp?) the mostly many turn toward home. Before you know it, the band has disappeared, the crowd is up and out of Whataburger Field, and two dozen yellow-shirted event staffers swarm the brightly-lit outfield, picking up trash, breaking down settings, getting the ballpark ready for Friday night’s game against the Midland RockHounds.

“Bye Bye Bob,” says a mom sadly to no one in particular as she hauls an over-stuffed bag of supplies for her gaggle of grrrls that she leads to the steps.

“I love him!” rejoins one of the grrrls, barely teenaged, as security discreetly herds us out.

Past the blinking ATM machine and a pile of empty beer cartons we step off the field and up to the mezzanine where it’s nothing now but stragglers and cleanup crew.

“Last call for Willie Nelson t-shirts,” hollers a weary hawker. Next door over at the Dylan-Mellencamp booth the last sales of the evening are being resized. A pony-tailed blonde grandmother points to the next size in the Dylan ’63 t-shirt as a mom next to her negotiates with two daughters over which size purple Dylan T the girls are going to get.

Down the front steps, ticket takers stand their posts, retooled now into exit greeters. Three cops joke around in the street until the long black bus is ready to roll outbound with a smooth left turn.

The Rag Blog

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Bob Dylan : Texas Troubadour

More than iconic
Bob Dylan: Texas Troubadour

By Guy Schwartz / The Rag Blog / August 4, 2009

Bob Dylan was more than iconic Sunday night in The Woodlands outside Houston. He rocked and grooved!

It was a concert that I wasn't too interested in, so I stayed home and kept overdubbing my way thru Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp's set times. (Yeah -- I missed Willie. So, sue me!)

But -- Bob Dylan is an icon, one I hadn't seen since 2004 in Amsterdam (and the best thing about that show was watching one of our party, Carolyn Wonderland, go backstage to meet with Bob at intermission), so I saddled up the Blue Scion, and drifted out to the Woodlands after dark.

I'd heard that Bob had taken to saying he was from Texas (in some European interviews). It seemed like more amusing Bobness with the press, but last night I found out that his reasons for making that statement were deeper than they initially appeared!

The band's groove was deep! Musically, the history and home towns didn't matter. On this tour, The Bob Dylan Show featured a great Texas roadhouse band.

Bob's suit was black and his hat was white. The rest of the band wore all black with white sport coats.

And...

Every musician onstage played rhythm! The band's groove was deep, I tell ya!

No solos except for a few from Bob!

Rearranging old classics into mostly Texas shuffles on this tour, the band played those as if they had all grown up on the Texas Gulf Coast. It felt good! Watching those fellas in their matching jackets and hats, I felt like I was 14 in 1966 again, sneaking out of the house and taking the old Dodge Dart to some faraway East Texas dance hall to see some space-aged Ernest Tubb and Texas Troubadours.

Bob's still in Texas for a spell. He's at Round Rock tonight.

Take advantage of it if you can.

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Happy Birthday, Bob D.

Bob Dylan. Born, May 24, 1941.

Thanks to Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog

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Death : 'William Zanzinger Killed Poor Hattie Carroll'

William D. Zantzinger was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to six months in 1963 in the death of Hattie Carroll. [Dylan dropped the "t" in "Zantzinger."] Photo from Baltimore Sun via NYT.
W. D. Zantzinger, subject of Dylan song, dies at 69

As the evening progressed, he hit several hotel employees with the cane and used racial epithets. Time magazine said he pushed his wife to the floor. He later strode to the bar and ordered a drink from Mrs. Carroll, 51. But she was too slow, he said, and began criticizing her. Then he repeatedly struck her with the cane. Fleeing to the kitchen, she told co-workers that she felt “deathly ill.”

By Douglas Martin / January 9, 2009

William Devereux Zantzinger, whose six-month sentence in the fatal caning of a black barmaid named Hattie Carroll at a Baltimore charity ball moved Bob Dylan to write a dramatic, almost journalistic song in 1963 that became a classic of modern American folk music, died on Jan. 3. He was 69.

His death was confirmed by an employee of the Brinsfield-Echols Funeral Home, who said Mr. Zantzinger’s family had prohibited the release of more details.

Mr. Dylan took some liberties with the truth in the song, “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” though there is disagreement over just how many. He recorded it in 1964 for the Columbia album “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” for some reason dropping the letter “t” from Mr. Zantzinger’s name. It begins:

William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll

With a cane he twirled around his diamond ring finger

At a Baltimore hotel society gath’rin’.

The incident occurred on Feb. 8, 1963. Mr. Zantzinger, a 24-year-old Maryland tobacco farmer, and his wife, Jane, had stopped with friends at a restaurant on their way to Baltimore’s annual Spinsters’ Ball, a white-tie affair.

Mr. Zantzinger was wearing a top hat and carrying a toy cane he had picked up at a farm fair. At the restaurant, he became disorderly, hitting employees with the cane, then left with his group after they were refused more drinks.

The party moved on to the ball, at the Emerson Hotel. A recapitulation of the evening in The Washington Post Magazine in 1991 said Mr. Zantzinger had entered bellowing: “I just flew in from Texas! Gimme a drink!”

As the evening progressed, he hit several hotel employees with the cane and used racial epithets. Time magazine said he pushed his wife to the floor. He later strode to the bar and ordered a drink from Mrs. Carroll, 51. But she was too slow, he said, and began criticizing her. Then he repeatedly struck her with the cane. Fleeing to the kitchen, she told co-workers that she felt “deathly ill.” An ambulance was called.

Mr. Zantzinger was charged with disorderly conduct and released on $600 bail. But on the morning of Feb. 9, Mrs. Carroll died of a stroke. Now Mr. Zantzinger was charged with murder.

In the trial, Mr. Zantzinger testified that he could not remember hitting anyone. His lawyers said Mrs. Carroll’s stroke could have been caused by the hypertension she was known to have. A three-judge court agreed that the caning alone could not have caused the death and reduced the charge to manslaughter.

Mr. Zantzinger was convicted in June, and in August he was sentenced to six months in prison.

On Aug. 29, The New York Times published a dispatch by United Press International, reporting on the sentencing. A friend of Mr. Dylan showed the singer the article. Some accounts say he wrote the song at an all-night coffee shop on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, others that he wrote it at the singer Joan Baez’s house in Carmel, Calif.

The literary critic Christopher B. Ricks wrote a chapter about the song in his book, “Dylan’s Visions of Sin” (2004), praising Mr. Dylan’s “exact control of each word.”

Clinton Heylin, in his book “Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited” (2001), countered that the song “verges on the libelous” because of “its tenuous grasp of the facts of the case.” One criticism was that Mr. Zantzinger’s “high office relations,” as Mr. Dylan called them, were overstated: his father had been a one-term state legislator and a member of the Maryland planning commission.

The song did not mention that Mrs. Carroll was black, although listeners made that correct assumption. It also did not refer to the reduced charge of manslaughter, only the six-month sentence.

One error of fact in the song was that Mrs. Carroll had 10 children; she had 11. Critics suggested that 11 did not fit the meter.

Time magazine called Mr. Zantzinger “a rural aristocrat,” who enjoyed fox-hunting. He attended Sidwell Friends School in Washington and the University of Maryland. The magazine Mother Jones reported in 2004 that he had worked alongside his farm employees, including blacks.

After prison, Mr. Zantzinger left the farm and went into real estate. He sold antiques, became an auctioneer and owned a night club.

In 1991, The Maryland Independent disclosed that Mr. Zantzinger had been collecting rent from black families living in shanties that he no longer owned; Charles County, Md., had foreclosed on them for unpaid taxes. The shanties lacked running water, toilets or outhouses. Not only had Mr. Zantzinger collected rent for properties he did not own, he also went to court to demand past-due rent, and won.

He pleaded guilty to 50 misdemeanor counts of deceptive trade practices, paid $62,000 in penalties and, under an 18-month sentence, spent only nights in jail.

Information on Mr. Zantzinger’s survivors was unavailable. Though he long refused interviews, he did speak to the author Howard Sounes for his book “Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan” (2001), telling him of his scorn for Mr. Dylan.

“I should have sued him and put him in jail,” he said.

Source / The New York Times

Thanks to Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog

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BOOKS : Bob Dylan’s Poetic Pause in Hollywood on the Way to Folk Music Fame

‘T dare not ask your sculpturer’s name/with glance back hooked, time’s hinges halt.’ BOB DYLAN From a text in “Hollywood Foto-Rhetoric: The Lost Manuscript,” accompanying a photo of Marlene Dietrich at Gary Cooper’s funeral in 1961. Photo by Barry Feinstein / from Simon & Schuster.
New book, 'Hollywood Foto-Rhetoric: The Lost Manuscript' by Barry Feinstein, features recently discovered Bob Dylan prose poems.
By Julie Bosman / August 15, 2008

Barry Feinstein, the rock ’n’ roll photographer, was digging through his archives last year when he came across a long-forgotten bundle of pictures, dozens of dark, moody snapshots of Hollywood in the early 1960s.

And tucked next to the photographs was a set of prose poems, written around the same time by an old friend: Bob Dylan.

“It was the lost manuscript,” Mr. Feinstein recalled in a telephone interview from his home in Woodstock, N.Y. “Everybody forgot about it but me.”

The poems were so lost that Mr. Dylan, when told of the discovery, had forgotten that he had written them. (In his defense, it was the ’60s.)

But after languishing in storage for more than 40 years, the text and photographs will be published in November in a collection titled “Hollywood Foto-Rhetoric: The Lost Manuscript.”

It is the latest installment in Mr. Dylan’s seemingly never-ending body of work, which includes more than 50 albums, a critically acclaimed autobiography and a recently published collection of arty sketches called “Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series.”

The new book, to be published by Simon & Schuster, includes more than 75 of Mr. Feinstein’s photographs and 23 of Mr. Dylan’s prose poems, which are each marked alphabetically to correspond to a photo.

The book was created during a period in the 1960s when Mr. Feinstein was a 20-something “flunky” at a movie studio, he said, having arrived in Hollywood eager to be part of the industry and having landed a job working for Harry Cohn, the legendarily abrasive president of Columbia Pictures.

“I was living in California, in Hollywood, working at the studio, and I thought there was something there journalistically in taking these pictures that were not at all glamorous,” Mr. Feinstein said. “They were really the dark side of glamour.”

He roamed around movie sets, snapping pictures backstage and in dressing rooms, and during off hours he drove around Hollywood with his camera in tow.

The result is a collection of pictures that are sometimes dreary and sometimes tongue-in-cheek, shots of movie props and roadside stands, topless starlets and headless mannequins. In one photo a young woman, visible only from the ankles down, crouches on Sophia Loren’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a hand pressed onto the cement. In another photo a parking lot at 20th Century Fox, marked by a large sign for “Talent,” is completely empty.

After assembling the photographs, Mr. Feinstein thought of Mr. Dylan, whom he had met before on the East Coast. “I asked him as a joke, ‘Wanna come out and maybe write something about these photographs?’ ” Mr. Feinstein said. “So he came out and wrote some text.”

Mr. Dylan, then in his 20s, arrived in Hollywood, examined the photographs and wrote his own prose poems to accompany them.

No one involved in the book can recall exactly when Mr. Dylan wrote the poems, which are by turns sparse, playful, witty and sarcastic. But the words faintly recall “Tarantula,” Mr. Dylan’s book of prose poems (or “Dadaist novel,” as some would call it) that was written in 1966, and they bear a strong resemblance to the “11 Outlined Epitaphs” in the liner notes of “The Times They Are A-Changin,” his 1964 album.

As the “11 Outlined Epitaphs” begin:

“I end up then

in the early evenin’

blindly punchin’ at the blind

breathin’ heavy

stutterin’

an’ blowin’ up

where t’ go?

what is it that’s exactly wrong?

The “Foto-Rhetoric” poems use similar punctuation and style. In the text accompanying a photo of Marlene Dietrich appearing stricken at Gary Cooper’s funeral in 1961, Mr. Dylan wrote: “t dare not ask your sculpturer’s name/with glance back hooked, time’s hinges halt.”

After the photos and text were pulled together into a rough manuscript, Mr. Dylan and Mr. Feinstein took it to a publisher, Macmillan, where executives expressed interest but were afraid that the pictures would bring a lawsuit from the studio.

So the manuscript was put aside, and Mr. Feinstein kept it for more than four decades in his vast collection of photographs, books and other papers.

“I knew it was an important document,” he said. “So I kept it in the back of my head all that time.”

Mr. Feinstein went on to develop a close collaboration with Mr. Dylan. He shot the cover photo for “The Times They Are A-Changin,” and dozens of photos of Mr. Dylan throughout the years.

Through his manager, Jeff Rosen, Mr. Dylan declined to comment on the book, and he is not expected to promote it.

But at 67, Mr. Dylan is just as prolific as ever, writing, touring and releasing albums. Just this week, he performed in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, and in October he is expected to release another collection of songs, “Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8.”

“Hollywood Foto-Rhetoric” is the fourth book that David Rosenthal, the publisher of Simon & Schuster, has worked on with Mr. Dylan, including “Chronicles: Volume One,” his 2004 memoir, which sold nearly 750,000 copies.

“They’re lyrical, they’re funny, they’re singular,” Mr. Rosenthal said of the prose poems. “And everybody looking at them, when we first saw them, knew they could be by no one other than Bob.”

David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, said that this fall the magazine will publish two of the poems and perhaps a photograph or two.

Christopher Ricks, a professor of the humanities at Boston University and the author of “Dylan’s Visions of Sin,” an admiring study of Mr. Dylan, noted the contrast between the Hollywood book, in its black-and-white starkness, and Mr. Dylan’s most recent book, the collection of cheerful, brightly colored paintings.

“From the beginning, he’s been a mixed medium artist,” Mr. Ricks said. “He’s never been a straight linear person. He’s had a whole lot of miscellany.”

Source / New York Times

Preorder Hollywood Foto-Rhetoric: The Lost Manuscript by Barry Feinstein at Amazon.com.

Thanks to Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog

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