Hours Of Awesomeness

I have an awesome playlist on my iPod. This playlist is unusual because every song on it predates 1955 - nine years before I was born - and consists of ancient blues, jazz, pop, and country (some of which goes clear back to the 1920s), with some rhythm and blues and early rock and roll thrown in as well. When I listen to the playlist I get to hear greats like Hank Williams, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Charlie “Yardbird” Parker, Louis Armstrong, Robert Johnson, Benny Goodman, Bessie Smith, and Bob Wills, along with more obscure - to most people - artists like T-Bone Walker, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Ben Webster, Lester Young, Rex Allen, The Light Crust Doughboys, and Billy Ward and the Dominoes. If you recognize any of those names, my hat is off to you. I love listening to this playlist, especially this time of year. There's something about autumn that makes me want to break out the good, old stuff.

I’ve written a little bit about it before, but man, I love the old stuff. Music is one of the two greatest gifts God has given us, and music from the first half of the twentieth century is some of the greatest music ever recorded. I realize that commercial music is exactly that - music recorded to make a profit, and there isn't anything wrong with that. But it sure seems like they were able to make music that not only made money sixty years ago, but also had some heart and soul.

Listening to Hank sing “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” Louis Armstrong sing and play “(What Did I Do To Be So) Black And Blue”, or Benny Goodman play “Undercurrent Blues,” makes me happy. I enjoy the old music not only because it takes me back to another era, but also because it sounds relevant to me today. Seriously, I’d rather listen to The Chuck Wagon Gang sing a country/gospel song like “After The Sunrise,” which was recorded in the 1930s, than almost anything modern that I can think of, with the obvious exception of ... Bob Dylan (you knew I was going to work him into this, didn’t you?)

This week I discovered Bob Dylan’s radio show  Theme Time Radio Hour. I realize I’m a little late to the party, because the show was originally broadcast on satellite radio from 2006-09. I’d heard about  "Theme Time", but I never listened to an actual episode until a few days ago. The nice thing is I recently found a website where I could download all one hundred episodes, which I have been busily doing for the past few days. I’m grateful The Wife has been patient, because it has really sucked up the bandwidth.

Theme Time Radio Hour is really a lot of fun to listen to. Dylan chooses a theme for each episode - the first one I listened to was called “Friends and Neighbors” - and plays music related to that theme. Most of the music Dylan plays is ... ancient blues, jazz, pop, and country (some of which goes clear back to the 1920s), with some rhythm and blues and early rock and roll thrown in as well. He also occasionally throws in a little modern stuff, too. Bob Dylan not only plays great old music on his show, he also pontificates, quotes poetry, tells jokes, and relates anecdotes about the artists he plays, which are usually quite funny. Theme Time Radio Hour is now required listening for my morning treadmill jogs, because it is so entertaining it takes my mind off the fact that I’m jogging on a treadmill at 4:30 in the morning.

 Theme Time Radio Hour ... check it out. It’s good stuff.

My Man-Crush

I’m going to see Bob Dylan in concert tomorrow night. He’s playing at Deer Valley in Park City. My wife surprised me with tickets, and I’m going with my buddy Ken. The Wife isn’t a fan, so it was mighty nice of her to stifle her gag reflex and get the tickets for me. I’ve been a Dylan fan since high school – nearly thirty years ago – and I’m as excited for this concert as any concert I’ve ever been to. The man is a living legend  – Dylan, not Ken. Ken is still working on it, but I digress. Bob Dylan is pushing seventy years old, so I’m very happy to finally see him in person. I missed out on seeing Johnny Cash – another big favorite – before he died, and I’ve always regretted it. Not gonna happen with Dylan.

Because of my anticipation of tomorrow night’s concert, I listened to one of the most important (and best) concerts ever recorded – Dylan and the Hawks in Manchester, UK, May 1966 – while I was riding my bike this morning, and I’ve been wandering around the house today singing Dylan songs and extolling his virtues to The Wife. She doesn’t get it, so rather than continue to bore her with my pontifications, I’m going to blog about my man-crush on Bob Dylan. I can sum it up with one incident in the man’s life, and it happened at the concert I listened to this morning.

If this bores you, you don’t have to read it.

Okay, so you’re still with me. Good. Let me set the scene. It’s Tuesday, May 17, 1966, in Manchester, England. Bob Dylan is playing a concert at the Free Trade Hall. Dylan and his greatest backing band, The Hawks (later more famous as simply The Band) have been playing Australia and Europe for six weeks. They are wrapping up their tour in the UK. One of Dylan’s greatest albums, Blonde on Blonde, was just released the day before in the US.

Ever since the switch from being an earnest acoustic folk singer who played protest songs at places like the March on Washington in 1963, where Martin Luther King gave his famous “I have a dream” speech, to going electric at the Newport Folk Festival the summer of 1965 and nearly getting booed off stage, Dylan has been heckled by his former fans. Rock and roll music doesn’t fit in with their folkie, protest singer image of Dylan. The UK fans are especially belligerent. Dylan has taken to performing with a huge American flag as his backdrop, further alienating his already testy European fans.

Dylan’s 1966 concerts are divided between an acoustic set and an electric set. At the beginning of the concert Dylan comes out with just his acoustic guitar and his harmonica and plays acoustic music. Bob Dylan is twenty-five years old with a wild head of hair and some pretty hip clothes for the era. He formerly performed in work shirts and blue jeans, so his appearance has changed quite a bit.

Interestingly, during the acoustic part of the show, Dylan doesn’t play any of the “classic” stuff that the fans want to hear (“Blowin’ In The Wind” or “The Times They Are A-Changin’”). Instead he plays acoustic versions of songs off his last three albums, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde, which are essentially rock and roll albums with a smattering of acoustic material included. Despite the lack of protest music, Dylan’s acoustic set is fairly well received.

However, Dylan then brings out the Hawks and rips into a song called “Tell Me, Momma,” and the audience starts to get agitated. In fact, not realizing that rock and roll history is being made right before their eyes, some of the crowd boos and shouts out rude stuff. A few of his former fans start clapping rhythmically at an inappropriate time, trying to throw Dylan and the band off. Dylan starts to mumble something under his breath until the clapping clods eventually quit so that they can hear what he is saying. Dylan’s electric set continues like this, even though Dylan and the Hawks are playing definitive versions of some of his greatest songs.

The jeering gets worse. Dylan and the band finally come to the last song. While the musicians are tuning up, an idiot in the audience shouts out “Judas!” (that someone would compare him to Christ’s betrayer is a good example of the depth of feeling some fans had about Bob Dylan playing rock and roll instead of folk music). Another genius shouts “I’m never listening to you again!” Dylan turns to the hecklers and says, “I don’t believe you. You’re a liar!” Then Dylan turns his back to the crowd and says to Robbie Robertson, his lead guitarist, “Play it f*cking loud!” And Bob Dylan and the Hawks tear into the greatest version of “Like A Rolling Stone” ever recorded.

So that’s it. I admire the man’s tenacity and audacity. I love the fact that Dylan wouldn’t be daunted or dissuaded by his erstwhile fans. Rather than caving and going back to folk music, Dylan made some of the greatest music of his career, even though it wasn’t appreciated at the time. And, despite a motorcycle accident where he broke his neck a few months after the concert in Manchester, Dylan has continued to make great music. Bob Dylan’s last four albums, Time Out Of Mind, “Love And Theft”, Modern Times, and Together Through Life, are some of his best, most accessible work, and he was sixty plus years old when he recorded them.

And, thanks to my wife, I get to see him in concert tomorrow night.