Patti Smith is known as the “godmother of punk,” but she always had higher goals than trying to make rock sound dangerous as the hippy era came to an end. I once almost lost a friendship because I suggested that her voice was not strong enough to sustain the passion of her angrier songs. “She’s too frail to be a punk Janis Joplin,” I said. “And too New Jersey.” Maybe that wasn’t fair, especially the part about New Jersey, but I do think she sounds better when, like Bob Dylan, she works with her vocal weaknesses, not against them. She’s sometimes called the female Bob Dylan, but Dylan is a songster whose lyrics are poetic, while Smith is a poet who also sings rock and roll. Because she’s not a natural singer, melancholy fits her tonal range, and when she goes for pretty, without erasing the edginess of her tone, she sounds downright sublime. Continue Reading »
Bob Dylan has a lot in common with Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet. Don’t take my word on that: Listen to the man himself. He made the comparison in a 2012 interview with Mikal Gilmore that was published by Rolling Stone, one I discussed last week. Continue Reading »
Journalists have always been puzzled by Bob Dylan, but the confusion is of their own making. The pattern of treating him as a trickster whose words cannot be taken at face value was established in the sixties, when the rock intelligentsia wanted Dylan to be a political as well as musical revolutionary. He was neither, of course. His radicalness came from a deeply conservative understanding of musical history: He was reading Civil War era newspapers while everyone else was reading Norman O. Brown and listening to Gospel and Blues when music was becoming “pop” in the fifties. Continue Reading »
1) This is another odds n’ ends sort of post. Let’s begin with Dylan and the most music-heady of the bloggers over at an interesting Christian site called Mockingbird, David Zahl. Zahl takes the recent Rolling Stone interview and highlights some of Dylan’s more religious language . . . . . Continue Reading »
The last Songbook post considered rock Fame and its relations to Celebrity and Honorable Ambition with plenty of help from political philosophy, and a little from ALMOST FAMOUS, too; moving back to the film (which is proving rich enough for, look out, two more parts after this!), this part will be . . . . Continue Reading »
Keep the Louisiana parishes in your prayers this week . . . looks as if Isaac didn’t hurt NOLA so much, but out in bayou and Cajun country, tough times. And since, alas, our Louisiana trip has been delayed, I can only musically travel there via you-tube. Unlike some, taken in as per usual by . . . . Continue Reading »
Terry Teachout says it wasn’t 1968 that began the big cultural shift, but 1962. ’62 is a good year to zero in on indeed—Cuban Missile Crisis, early SDS days, right before Philip Larkin’s beginning date for “sexual intercourse,” Dylan’s Freewheelin’ gestating . . . . Continue Reading »
Here’s the basic schema I laid out in #26 : 1) quasi-modernity –approximately 1776 to 1918 2) intermediate modernity –approximately 1919 to 1965 3) full modernity –approximately 1966 to the present. Now, for some flesh upon these analytic bones. Everyone knows WWI and the 20s . . . . Continue Reading »
Great Paintings shouldn’t be in museums. . . . Museums are cemeteries. Paintings should be on the walls of restaurants, in dime stores, in gas stations, in men’s rooms. Great paintings should be where people hang out. The only thing where it’s happening is on the radio and records, . . . . Continue Reading »
Marilynne Robinson is not Rock, and this is not a song. Rather, it is simply a three-word sentence dropped by the acclaimed novelist last fall, when I heard her speak at Skidmore College. But the following was initially provoked by another writer, Bill Kaufmann. Kaufmann is a hard one to . . . . Continue Reading »
