#0050: Bob Dylan - Bringing It All Back Home [*]

I thought I told you to fuck off.

Okay.  Fair's fair.  If Hitler showed up with a new plan to eliminate poverty, you'd give him a chance to speak, right?  Yes, his solution would be kill the poor but you'd wait for him to say it, right?  Oh you wouldn't?  I suppose he is Hitler after all and you know what you're in for.

You see where I'm going with this?  I know this wasp-eyed whingocrat well enough to predict a bleak sojourn in a wilderness of monotonous nasal straining.

But I'm gonna let my Hitler speak.  And once I've listened to what he has to say, then I'm gonna cut his legs off and feed him to the pigs.

Ah bollocks.  The first track is Subterranean Homesick Blues; one of those songs I've always loved when other people have played it and never knew it was Bob Dylan's work.  This is enjoyable because I know the song but it does just sound like he's doing a shit cover version.  Much nicer production on this album though.  The next track's okay too.  If I concentrate really hard, I can just about make out enough variation in the note he's singing[1] to make what in his terms constitutes a melody.

Bob Dylan's 115th Dream is everything I hate about this torpid, rat-faced sore on the penis of rock n roll.  After a false start, which they left in the take like the self-satisfied arrogant cunts they are, he proceeds to tell a story that goes nowhere and does nothing for too long.  Desperate rhymes on meaningless lines that could've been cut, leaving the track half as long and twice as bearable.

Mr Tambourine Man.  Well fuck me, it's a song.  An actual song, with words that actually mean something.  And a tune!  Oh, wait a third verse straight after the second chorus with no discernible change at all.  Aaand here comes the fucking harmonica a day late and a dollar short.  Oh for god's sake boy, put it down.  Thank you.  No, no, no not another fucking verse!  Jesus.  Why does this song need to be 5 and half minutes long?  Bohemian Rhapsody was only 5:55 and that was 10 years later and even then they were told they'd never have a hit with a 6 minute song.   But you know what?  It had seven harmonically distinct sections and even in the operatic bit when the words made no fucking sense, all those beautiful harmonies provided a more than adequate distraction.  This is just a tautologous mess.  The Byrds made this a hit; a number one hit.  Running time: 2 minutes 16 seconds.   Booyah Bob you self indulgent prick.

I've had a tit full of this cunt now. 

People say, "oh if you only had a time machine, you could go back and see what was happening and experience the impact of his music in context".  No.  If I had a time machine I'd go back and pay for his mum to have an abortion.

[1] and by singing I mean I'd be unable to distinguish that sound from a Yorkshire terrier chewing on a scorpion. 

#0049: The Sonics - Here Are the Sonics [***]

In terms of originality, this is ground breaking stuff and I'd go so far as to say this was the real beginning of punk.  It's brash, rough and thrashes about in your lugholes like an electrocuted octopus.

It is still basically rock and roll though.  The same progressions, the same words and as is irritatingly common for this period, the same actual songs.  Money, for example has appeared on 4 of these albums so far if my count is correct.

The vocal comes in the form of two singers in what I assume is supposed to be unison but who are separated by a quarter tone and 0.0125 of a semi-quaver at every turn.  Punk isn't really my bag and neither is this.  The quality of their voices is not sufficient to be recorded this primitively.

That said, they do some interesting stuff before slouching back into the 12 bar pattern.  Dirty Robber, I liked a lot for example.  Have Love Will Travel, one of the few deviations from the familiar 1-4-5 pattern has a very addictive hook and the distorted guitar and vocal is just the right side of dirty.  The sax that bursts through after the first couple of rounds is a stabbing, spluttering joyride of grungy ecstasy.

It is very much a counter culture album I think.  From the mood and the anti-establishment tone, you can tell these chaps are going for something different and that's great.  I'll come back to a few of these - Psycho I enjoyed and indeed their version of Money benefits greatly from the cheeky little chromatic kink they shove in the first change.  And a song with a title like Strychnine is gonna have to work very hard for me to dislike it.

But those 5 that I really liked don't even make 50% of the content so it's an album to cherry pick, rather than consume whole.

#0048: Jerry Lee Lewis - Live At The Star Club Hamburg [***]

I don't know enough about this guy to comment on whether he was considered a virtuoso piano player.  Certainly from this recording, any competent player would not be daunted to replicate his trademark key smashes and hand-heeled glissando.  The range of roles a piano can play in a band extends from the almost toneless attack that earned it its place in the percussion section of the orchestra all the way to the furthest reaches of harmonic complexity and in this band, the piano is definitely closer to a drum kit than a voice.

As with the other live recordings from this time, the acoustics of the room have been captured and the ambient audience noises provide the subtle details in an aural picture that makes you feel like you were present.

It's a big sound and full of energy, unrelenting and driven.  His presence as a performer is tangible as he stamps, hammers and swoops thru these rock n roll showstoppers.  In the 47 albums preceding this, I have heard nothing like it before and I have to assume that when he emerged in 1954 (according to wikipedia) that nobody else had either.  Of course, my perception is polluted by the more than 50 years of musical influences that followed this so I can't truly imagine what it must've been like for people to be hearing this for the first time.  But I can well understand why its urgent power would be arresting.

I don't think it's something I'm going to come back to that often.  Perhaps a couple of tracks might make it onto an oldy-worldy mix tape but it does all rather blend into one.  It's the sort of music I'd dance to rather than listen to intently.  But it does sound great and is enjoyable for as long as it remains interesting.