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04/12/2005 Archived Entry: "Blood II"
Blood on the Tracks II
Some of us secretly wish to be music writers. I remember reading Greil Marcus for the first time (Mystery Train) and being fascinated with how he could weave his personal life through a series of fragmented entries on Sly Stone, The Band, and Elvis. Later, he juxtaposed the Sex Pistols with the Avant-Garde in a mammoth text of wandering, cut and pasted moments, made up history, and story-telling.
However hyperbolic and wonder-lust Marcus may get at times, he demonstrates voice. You recognize a piece of writing as Marcus' because of his voice, his specific tone, the mood he establishes that no other writer approaches. That mood is meant to represent our cultural habits; it succeeds, but not always.
Voice, a taught ideal in many first year writing textbooks as well as in creative writing, is the trait most obviously associated with Dylan. The roughness of voice was what made his career remarkable for many: a gritty Woody Guthrie trash compacted nasally sound. "Yeah, I like Dylan," some folks say to me. "But he can't sing." A song like “Rainy Day Women #12 & #35” emphasizes that nasally sound: “Well I would not feeeeeeeel so allllll alonnnnnnne….EVERYBODY must get stoned.” Nashville Skyline messed this image up. Dylan's voice is too clear on this album, his duet with Johnny Cash sounds like its coming through a hotel elevator’s speakers. I bought a tape of Nashville Skyline when I was 14 or 15 in one of those bargain bins, went home, put it on the deck, and thought: Who the F is that? That's not Dylan!
Blood on the Tracks is neither too rough nor too clear. It is voice. Appealing voice. Calling out voice. The kind of voice you want to use when you are caught in a tough situation, when you want to call for someone to come back, when you want to just think to yourself.
'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you
Shelter from the storm."
Think of those voices which call out to you: Howling Wolf, Screaming Jay Hawkins, Son House. The anger. The hostility. The passion. Think of Howling Wolf's "Evil":
If you're a long way from home,
Can't sleep at night.
Grab your telephone,
Something just ain't right.
That's evil,
Evil is goin on wrong.
I am warnin ya brother,
You better watch your happy home.
The voice here argues that nothing ever is right. Think of Dylan hammering out the pre-hip hop lyrics of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and how he fits neatly within that tradition. The staccato driven beat generates an energy of emotional and cultural restlessness (this ain't no Dave Brubeck!). This is a song which showed how weak the British invasion’s restlessness was, how a song like The Animals’ “We’ve Got to Get Out of This Place” is useless when confronted with Dylan’s vision of cultural despair.
Don't steal, don't lift
Twenty years of schoolin'
And they put you on the day shift
And just when you feel that Dylan is the so-called generational prophet, just when you feel you have American rock history all figured out, take a breath, relax, and then listen to the calm, yet emotionally charged voice of “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go”:
Flowers on the hillside blooming crazy
Crickets talking back and forth in rhyme
Blue river running slow and lazy
I could stay with you forever
And never realize the time.
I take the Blood on the Tracks voice over all the others. It’s the voice of mood, not lounge lizard mood. Cultural mood of longing.
Replies: 1 Comment
Molto grazie, Jeff. I have all the lyrics to all the songs on this album memorized. It's Dylan's best, and Dylan is the best; c'est ça.
Posted by senioritis @ 04/13/2005 04:00 PM EST