A few days ago we played an honest-to-god arena.
I know this because it was called the NIA and the ‘A’ stood for - arena. I also figured it out when we showed up and it was fucking huge. Like 11,000 people huge. Like “we have major sporting events here on the regular” huge.
Paul Simon - I never get sick of the guy. (more…)
From the NY Times, July 18, 2007.
Don’t know the photographer, but I wish I did.
In the leadup to the new Rambo movie, I’ve gone back and watched the three original films. Almost anyone I’ve told this to thinks it’s an entirely ironic exercise. Yeah - I’m not saying it’s not. But it’s not solely that. I grew up with Rambo. Me and my best friend would suit up in our camouflage jackets, war paint daubed under our eyes, fake grenades strapped to our kiddie chests (bought in Chinatown - you could, probably still can, get anything there) and head up to Central Park to discover the days mission. The enemy was all around and, in fact, the enemy was often quite alarmed to spot two 9 year old mercenaries staking out positions on the rocky outcroppings behind them. At least once my mom had to intercede when a couple cops were alerted to our disconcerting presence. (more…)
On the heels of Todd Haynes’ very odd and affecting Dylan film, we find another example of rock with the volume turned way down.
“Idiot Wind” is the most brutal song on Dylan’s famously rough “divorce record,” Blood On The Tracks. As an album, I’m not sure there’s a more concise example of the pathetic mourning, rose-tinted nostalgia and bitter anger that goes along with (per Pete Hamill’s liner notes) the “inevitable farewell.”
The “Idiot Wind” on Blood is paranoid, ugly, and unrelenting. On a relatively subdued and mournful album, it is a gigantic, neon exclamation point. Dylan’s voice sounds more pinched and nasal than usual - it shakes and cracks, often on the verge of shouting. (The live take on Hard Rain, befitting that records fever pitch, is even more hardcore.)
What I only learned last year, though, is that Dylan’s originally recording of the song (half of the album was re-recorded just before its release) was as a mournful, hushed ballad that virtually upends the songs received interpretation as the biggest fuck-off in history. A few lines were changed by the time of the louder recording, in a uniformly angrier direction, but otherwise it’s the exact same song, albeit rendered with as different an emotion as possible for a lyric which repeated envisions the bloody death of its female lead.
The songs famously harsh barbs sound provisional here, as if he’s trying them on for size but would take them back in an instant if given a reason. One key line jettisoned from the final version finds him surprised and oddly hurt that he’d “have to come up with some excuse” just to speak with the unnamed “idiot” anymore, a perfect encapsulation of the back and forth of romantic dissolution: I need you, I don’t need you, etc.
In great contrast to the toxic final version, here he sounds full of regret - angry as hell and probably ready to take it some more. By the final, louder version, vulnerability had been replaced by a seething, righteous anger (”I can’t feel you anymore / I can’t even touch the books you’ve read”). It’s a testament to the mighty B.D. that the song works just as well either way.
On account of being a bit of an idiot myself, I can’t figure out how to upload a song this big to our server, so check out one of the two “acoustic” versions here.
Barry Stone.
Simple as hell.
Robert Plant is rightfully known for many grand talents but subtlety isn’t one of them.
I admit that I lost track of Plant after Led Zeppelin imploded, but apparently in the interim Mr Hey Hey Ma got older and wiser and made some world music-ish records and sampled himself on a weird 1988 hit and got enough sleep and didn’t destroy his voice and recently decided to do an adult-contemporary record with a mainstream bluegrass singer. Confusing.
More confusing still, on Raising Sand he and Alison Krauss cover a song by Chris Isaak’s bass player called “Killing The Blues” that is the most beautiful thing you’ve heard in a long time, I promise. This is Robert Plant - he who needeth his lemon squeezed, who required a piece of your custard pie and was working from 7 to 11 every night. He’ll be 60 next year and sounds like he’s fronting a narcoticized Everly Brothers at the gates of heaven - apparently he survived his long seasons of rock and roll just fine.The song is slower and softer than anything I’ve ever heard, like it was produced by the most comfortable pillow known to man. Imagine Mr. Pillow at the mixing desk at 4 A.M. with a cigar and jelly donut and crushed top hat - Alright boys, lets try another take… but this time EVEN SOFTER. (more…)