Friday Music Day

FMD: Dylan’s Literature

22 Comments

This got some pretty good play yesterday, but I was very pleased to hear about Bob's Nobel. I'm an admitted fan of his music, but he's one of the few artists who I go out of my way to listen to the lyrics.

Provided you view this as a "musician" receiving the Nobel for Literature, which author do you think would (or does) make a great lyricist? If you're feeling ambitious, offer a sample of their work and maybe a hint to the genre/sound you imagine they'd be set to.

In the key of What Is And What Should Never Be - Led Zeppelin:

They crossed before the sun and vanished one by one
and reappeared again and they were black in the sun
and they rode out of that vanished sea like burnt phantoms
with the legs of the animals kicking up the spume that was not real

and they were lost in the sun and lost in the lake
and they shimmered and slurred together and separated again
and they augmented by planes in lurid avatars...
An Ambuscado by The Blood Meridians

22 thoughts on “FMD: Dylan’s Literature”

  1. You know, I'm going to do this all day.

    Robert Pollard
    I go outside and it's cold
    I walk downtown and it's cold
    I do everything that I'm told
    The people I meet, so hooked on defeat
    And if it's not one thing then it's ten
    I shouldn't have to be told
    So I just keep moving around
    'Cause I'm cold

    I picked up the pieces that break
    And try not to make a mistake
    and sometimes I'm sick when I wake
    I jump in my car and go to a bar
    Because it's so much warmer in there
    For my decrepit soul
    Then I get back to moving around
    'Cause I'm cold

    All wound up
    All broken down
    Animal person
    Carnival clown
    The only thing that hurts
    Is knowing it gets worse
    As it goes

    I work every day 'til I'm tired
    Emotionally uninspired
    And some think I'll maybe get fired
    But what else is new
    You do what you do
    Because you're told to
    It's something of which I'm really not yet quite sold
    But it must just be a problem with me
    'Cause I'm cold

    1. It definitely works, but flip the script

      ...which author do you think would (or does) make a great lyricist?

  2. 1. Ryoji Ikeda “-” +/-
    2. BJörk “Desired Constellation” Medúlla
    3. BJörk “Pleasure Is All Mine” Medúlla
        a. Northern Shrike “'Enk', 'Bzeek', 'Tu-lip', and 'Aak, aak, aak' Calls” (Cornell Master List)
    4. Enor feat. Natasja “Calabria 2007 (Radio Mix)” Calabria 2007
    5. Maurice Ravel and Modest Mussorgsky “Movement 1” ReComposed by Carl Craig & Moritz Von Oswald

    6. Bad Bad Hats “Things We Never Say” Psychic Reader
    7. Ha Ha Tonka “Thoreau in the Woods”* Novel Sounds of the Nouveau South
    8. The Breeders “Flipside”* Last Splash
        b. Eastern Wood-Pewee and Ring-necked Pheasant “Calls” (John Feith: Who Cooks for Poor Sam Peabody?)
    9. Ryoji Ikdea “0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0”* Matrix
        c. House Finch “Songs” (Dan Gibson: Wildlife Identification by Sound)
    T. Beyoncé “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” I Am ... Sasha Fierce (Platinum Edition)

    *Notes:
    7. "Oh my God we were part of that mob. Oh my God we got caught up in it all."
    8. At the conclusion of this little instrumental surf-rock ride, I just want to hear "I Just Wanna Get Along".
    9. Track 6 of Matrix [For Rooms], which makes up the first disc of the album:
    "matrix [for rooms] forms an invisible pattern which fills the listening space.
    the listener's movement transforms the phenomenon into his±her intrapersonal music."

    1. I have somehow managed to get the peperoncino (age 3) into the Bad Bad Hats, and I'm pretty sure their name is part of the appeal. He likes to ask, "Is this the Bad Bad Hats music?"

      1. If he also likes the sound, you could check out BROODS. I played "Free" for Kernel on the way home from gymnastics last night and, when it was done, she asked me to play it again.

        httpv://youtu.be/LDsxtBVLyss

    1. Pretty good. Not as loud as previous shows. Played a good selection of old and new. Start Choppin' is one of my all time faves do heating it live is always a treat.

      New album is pretty good, btw.

      1. Not as loud as previous shows.
        Occam's Razor: You're deafer than at previous shows. Because previous shows.

  4. 1. Lucille – Kenny Rogers
    2. Melt – Monster Magnet
    3. Saturday Night – Kaiser Chiefs
    4. Fall Of ‘82 – The Shins
    5. Gin & Juice – Snoop Dogg

    6. Dollar Signs – Animal Kingdom
    7. Santa Monica – Savage Garden
    8. Rosemary – The Grateful Dead
    9. Money Don’t Make U Rich – Hi-Tek*
    10. Blue Orchid – The White Stripes

    B1. The Mollusk – Ween

    * I was introduced to Hi-Tek while leading a security team onboard a USNS ocean-going tug. After mid-rats (‘lunch’ served at 12:00 a.m. for those working overnight shifts), the cook – a youngish black guy from New York – would put on a mixed CD and turn it up while cleaning. Three or four times, when I’d ask what a song was, he’d tell me, “Man, this is Hi-Tek. You don’t know Hi-Tek!?” I didn’t. Just before we rotated off, the guy unexpectedly handed me a copy of the album High Teknology 2 – The Chip. One of the nicest gestures I can recall.

    1. YAY MONSTER MAGNET!!!
      Go get Dopes to Infinity and Powertrip unless you have them, especially the first.
      Superjudge sounds exactly like the bad-idea, poor-producer-choice major-label debut that it could have been, only Wyndorf self-produced.
      I lost track after God Says No. Given the album titles, they must still be doing the same thing, but I've assumed with diminishing results. (Because Powertrip seems to be the Platonic form, even if I prefer Dopes.)
      If you want a 32-minute Wyndorf-flavored Dub-metal epic, check out 25...Tab. It's like Dopes' "Ego, the Living Planet" expanded to a full side.

      I first saw them as an early act at Edgefest 1995. Got the "Negasonic Teenage Warhead" promo cassingle they were throwing into the crowd. I was hooked.
      I saw them in spring 1999* touring Powertrip. I don't remember enough of that show (and not for intoxication reasons either: I may have been entirely sober). I know they had played "Tab" in full a few times around then but they did not this time. I know they played "Space Lord", "Negasonic", "Tractor", "Powertrip", "See You in Hell" and "Crop Circle".

      * with Kid Rock opening. "Bawitdaba" had just hit MTV's TRL** and it seemed half of the audience was there for him and Joe C.
      ** I called in to TRL once in my life. I was 22, and it was for Whitney Houston's "My Love Is Your Love". I didn't make the to 10, but did get shown as some sort of "Also Receiving Votes"/"Heatseekers" thing.

      1. Melt is off the only album of theirs I own: God Says No, but I certainly enjoyed it when I first picked it up. Probably bought it for Heads Explode.
        I made it to three or four "93.7 ____Fest" in Somerset, but I don't think my first was until X-Fest in '97.

    2. I miss mid-rats. Best chow I ate when I was in was mid-rats made by the South Asian TCNs working a chow hall at Al Asad. They invited me to a few of their family meals: always some kind of hot curry that was a gustatory oasis in a wasteland of T-rats & MREs. Leaving them behind when we rotated out to FOBs was a particular emotional casualty. After the move we eventually started getting food from a local truck stop against orders. Amazing flatbread (khubz or taboon?) & mutton or goat, surprisingly fresh tomatoes & cucumbers.

      1. "khubz or taboon" (and most frequently naan) - were revelations. While stationed on ABOT, the Iraqi Marine and terminal workers would occasionally share their meals with us - large platters of biryani and tashrib.* We'd give them any fish we caught, though I don't recall ever having any prepared on-site. Probably for the best ... the northern Arabian Gulf was (is) a filthy cesspool, barely fit to swim in (though we did - used 70' mooring lines to rope swing under the catwalks).

        *I'll admit, I had to look up the names of these as 2004's probably the last time I've had 'em.

  5. Turning numbers low and high
    The accountant and his wife
    Hunger for their prize

    In the slumber of night
    Wrap around a sheet of fallen sky
    Gone from countless calculator eyes

    You might wonder someday
    You will go under one day
    When the eagle flies

    Lies won't change a friend so wise
    Tradewinds blow where maggots turn to flies
    What a better life!

    1. Just after the tin can laughter dies down
      I will hoist my vulgar flag
      Everywhere you are
      Don't blame me
      Don't maim me, oh
      Like a leopard leaping out
      Into your life
      Crashing your nerve
      Who will protect you?
      You'd better stand tall
      Always on call
      I want a quick taste
      Look at your face changing
      Ideas exchanging
      The world is oblivious so far
      And it's timeless around me
      And nothing at all
      The world will be better when you fall
      You will recall...

  6. I've always like this Marc Jordan tune:

    I heard a voice deep inside me like it was coming from a well, my voice so small and so deep in the ground.
    This is how men cry.

    A small ray of sun shines down from the sky and I shiver in the light Shirtless men who once dreamed of becoming baseball players now hang out from tenement windows like strong men in some weird urban circus
    …
    Nina hasn’t called today.

    Still the girls work the corners wilting like crazy bouquets, so beautiful, so past their diva glory days. Some have been picked, some already dried and hanging upside down. Their roots exposed, they dream of the cool loving earth they will never touch again

    I think I see Nina’s face in a cafe, almost but not quite the color of her hair. And so I walk on my muttering way and wipe a piece of dust from my eye.

    This is how men cry.
    This is how we cry.

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