Marcus Review (long and maybe not worth it)
Wolfds
By GREIL MARCUS
Bob Dylan: `Love and Theft'
Columbia 85975; to be released on Sept. 11
There's an old man who lives in your neighborhood, drinking away his days as if
they were bottles. He lives by himself in a small house, though others are
known to disappear into it: "Samantha Brown, lived in my house for about four
or five . . . months," he announces one day on the street, his voice tearing
like cloth. "I never slept with her eeeeeven once." As if anyone cares.
An odd character, in his funny way of nodding as you walk by, in the cadence of
his speech when he stops to pass the time — one moment he might be whispering
a confidence, the next giving a speech — but also ordinary. He does nod, he
does pass the time. On occasion he asks you in, you and your spouse or another
neighbor, asks you into his parlor — which really is a parlor. A few old,
comfortable chairs, shelves of books. There's a spinet piano with a collection
of sheet music in the compartment in the piano bench, some of it handwritten:
his own songs.
Not everything is old-fashioned. The '65 Mustang in the garage and the '59
Cadillac at the curb seem to promise a future that merely hasn't arrived yet.
Along with the floral lampshades and throw rugs there's a CD player and
hundreds of CD's, though most are of blues and country tunes recorded in the
1920's and 1930's. "See if there's anything you want to hear," he always says,
without taking his eyes off you as you choose.
He's an explainer. One of the songs he sings at the piano, one of his own, is
called "Po' Boy," though the tune sounds like the folk song "Cocaine." With a
wry couplet ("Call down to room service, say send up the room") and a
knock-knock joke, it tells a story about the Prodigal Son. Seeing you pick a
Bukka White CD with his version of the song, or anyway the title — recorded
at Parchman State Penitentiary in Mississippi in 1939, the man points out —
he leans back and lets the burst of guitar notes that seem to send this "poor
boy long way from home" straight to heaven wash over him like rain, then shows
you Ramblin' Thomas's 1929 "Poor Boy Blues" ("A Dallas street singer," he
says), then Chuck Berry's 1964 "Promised Land," about the odyssey of "the Po'
Boy" from his hometown, Norfolk, Va., to Los Angeles.
The song was written when Berry was in federal prison in Springfield, Mo., the
man tells you ("When he wanted an atlas to get the route right, they thought he
was planning an escape!"), but he's just warming up. "See, what the song is
really about is the civil rights movement, the Freedom Riders, the way he plans
the Po' Boy's bus route to avoid Rock Hill, that's in North Carolina, a Klan
town, then the bus breaks down in Birmingham, where the Klan blew up a church
and killed four little girls, that was in 1963, `turned into a struggle,' see?
It's all in this book by a professor named W. T. Lhamon, `Deliberate Speed.' "
Nobody has any idea what he's talking about, but the story is romantic,
somehow.
The man's own songs have pleasant names like "Bye and Bye" or "Moonlight." The
way he sings and plays them, with a phony-looking toothpaste smile, suggests
how he once tried to sell them. In moments they sound ridiculously corny —
less like Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust" than Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson
Eddy's "Indian Love Call" — or it's a parlor from the 19th century that comes
into view, and you almost hear the old sentimental songs of home and courtship,
family, death and renewal, even though the songs are off. They're not as slick
as the published tunes that keep them company in the piano bench — though you
can tell they were meant to be. Often they end with a sourness, a sting, even a
violence, that parlors were made to banish from their doors.
The man takes midnight walks, tramping the streets even to the edge of town,
muttering about all he hates, about everything he wants to destroy, preaching
or telling dirty stories, gesturing wildly, his hair flying. One night you
heard him going on about a woman, it seemed, but then he turned into a general
on his horse as quickly as the horse then turned into a pulpit and the general
into a prophet. "I'm going to spare the defeated, I'm going to speak to the
crowd," he said, whoever he really was. "I'm going to teach peace to the
conquered, IIIIII'm going to tame the proud."
Sometimes he sounds crazy, but the same sound can be seductive, especially in
his seeming disdain for all those he wants dead, banished, out of his world.
You catch something strange and glamorous in his voice: how you might feel if
you had the nerve to talk like this. And it can happen right in his house.
Suddenly he is speaking with such intensity that you hear his rants as songs
and imagine a band behind them. He begins to speak loudly, angrily, hitting
random blues riffs on his piano, then slamming down hard and turning to you to
speak of the fun he's had and that he might — and here he is weirdly
threatening — have again. "You say my eyes are pretty and my smile is nice,"
he says, though you haven't said a word. "I sell it to you at a reduced price."
Once he told a story about a flood, then began to sing it, without the piano:
"You have to hear a banjo now," he'd said. What followed felt more mystical
than real. It was the great 1927 Mississippi flood, it was Noah's flood, it was
Iowa just last spring, it was the entire last century as a giant mistake,
crying out for its own cleansing, asking to be washed away before it was too
late. "Made it to Kansas City," he says of someone called Big Joe Turner: in
his mouth the words seem to name as well Davy Crockett, Jesse James, John
Henry, Stagger Lee, Railroad Bill, each bestriding the continent. He plays with
old songs inside the story — the mountain ballad "The Coo Coo," say, turning
the benign lyrics inside out, or revealing their true menace.
"The coo coo, she's a pretty bird, she warbles as she flies," he says with easy
pleasure, then changing into Robert Mitchum's preacher in "The Night of the
Hunter," still smiling: "I'm preaching the word of God, I'm putting out your
eyes." Then he goes back to the piano and sings about how he hopes she'll meet
him in the moonlight. Then he passes out, and everyone leaves.
The stories people tell of the nights they've spent with the man have long
since become local legend. But the legend that sticks hardest comes from what
people will call "Sugar Baby": the message the man leaves on his answering
machine when he leaves town. Given what people have heard before, as they
listen they can almost spin the slow, deliberate words of the message into
singing, and the singing into an elegant orchestration of slow, deliberate
chords — something that years from now they won't be able to get out of their
heads. "Sugar Baby," they'll still say to each other, probably long after the
man himself is dead; it's become a saying, meaning "That's life" or "There's
nothing we can do about it."
Some people will remember how the man used to take out an album by a
stone-faced character named Dock Boggs, a singer from the Virginia mountains,
who first recorded in 1927, the man would carefully explain; he'd play a song
called "Sugar Baby." That was real killer-inside-me stuff; "Sugar Baby" was
what Boggs called his lover, who you weren't sure would survive the song. On
the message the man leaves, "Sugar Baby" — the words leading off every
refrain — seems to be the name of a horse. The feeling, though — the sense
of a life used up, wasted as every life is finally wasted, leaving the earth as
if one's life had never been — is the same. The feeling is that there is all
the time in the world to take stock, if only in the ledger you keep in your
heart to settle accounts, to tell jokes you half hope no one will get. "I'm
staying with Aunt Sally," the man says on the machine, "but you know she not
really my aunt." You laugh, and then something in his tone pulls you down into
the emptiness he's speaking from. As in the parlor, he has led you to relax
into his exile.
THAT is just a story. But "Love and Theft," Bob Dylan's first collection of new
songs in four years, is an album of stories, some told to the end, some of the
most remarkable only hinted at. "High Water Everywhere (For Charley Patton)" is
both.
Born perhaps as early as 1887 or as late as 1901, Patton, a founder of the
Mississippi Delta blues, recorded from 1929 until his death in 1934. "His
vowels were stretched out, inflated from within; they expanded until they were
all but unrecognizable," Tom Piazza wrote recently about how hard it can be to
hear him — but in the teasing murk of his sound, Piazza said, "he opened a
window in time for himself." It's that window Dylan walks through as if it were
a door. While you can find a transcription of the lyrics of Patton's "High
Water Everywhere" in John Fahey's 1970 book "Charley Patton," which is
reprinted as part of "Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues: The Worlds of Charley
Patton," a seven-CD boxed set due in October from Revenant Records, Patton's
singing could hardly be more underwater: "I firmly believe, and have believed
for years," a friend says, "that Charley Patton is not singing in English on
`High Water.' " Compared with the dirt in Patton's voice, the rubble in Dylan's
may sound as smooth as glass, but the impenetrability of Patton's song is there
in Dylan's: in riddles and parables.
Verse by verse, the flood spreads, takes in and upends more lives, making
everyone understand that your freedoms under the Constitution are nothing
compared to what God wants from you this night. "You dancing with whom they
tell you to," Dylan has one Bertha Mason say, "or you don't dance at all."
"It's bad out there," a verse ends. "It's tough out there." "Things are
breaking up out there." But then in the midst of the disaster, a fable stands
out as if clearing its own space in the maelstrom. "Well," Dylan says, "George
Lewes told the Englishman, the Italian and the Jew" (who just walked into a
bar):
You can't open up your minds, boys, to every conceivable point of view
They got Charles Darwin trapped out there on Highway 5
Judge says to the High Sheriff, I want him dead or alive
Either one, I don't . . . care
Dissolving into mystery as soon as it seems clear, the story will be there as
long as any in Dylan's signature "Highway 61 Revisited," from 1965; this could
be a verse from it. But the heart of "Love and Theft" — the window Dylan's
new music itself opens up in time — is in that final "care," dropping off its
line like a body falling out of a window, with the same thud. A whole world of
rejection, of nothingness, of the humor shared by dead men walking because the
graveyard is full — a whole way of being in the world, and a whole way of
talking about it, opens up out of that single word, out of the way it's thrown
away, and what it throws away with it. As Raymond Chandler had his detective
Philip Marlowe say in 1953 in "The Long Goodbye," in the same voice: "It all
depends on where you sit and what your private score is. I didn't have one. I
didn't care." Then Marlowe went out and solved the case.
Greil Marcus is the author of ``The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob
Dylan's Basement Tapes,'' a new edition of his``Invisible Republic,'' which
will be published this month by Picador USA.
Ze 39steps
Check out my goddamn website:
www.mp3.com/montgomerycleft
Delia
"Call down to room service, say send up the room"
I wonder if the cd comes with a full set of lyrics.
Delia
"Ze 39steps" <ze39...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010901224050...@mb-ch.aol.com...
Tobias Levander
Delia wrote:
>
> I wonder if the cd comes with a full set of lyrics.
>
> Delia
>
I hope not.
/Tobias.
Chris Lee
You have to give Marcus credit for having the guts to write this sentence,
considering the big set-up it gives to us smart-alecks.
Christopher L.
http://members.aol.com/ezclee4050/spareroom/home.htm
"If nobody makes you do it, it counts as fun"-Hobbes (Calvin's tiger, not
Thomas)
Thomas Favata
"send up the broom."
"Delia" <hanse...@mediaone.net> wrote in message
news:qGhk7.4459$Fb.10...@typhoon.we.rr.com...
Dave
Dave
"Thomas Favata" <tbu...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
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Jmm5074
Mike M
EdFF444
Linn Carpenter
Linn
Zuke
I found the review quite interesting. Having read 4 or 5 reviews of
this album I don't envy the reviewer's task. I wouldn't know how
to approach it and am glad I don't have the job.
It's interesting to think of Dylan as the old man in the wierd house
in the neighborhood. Brings to mind tales of H.P. Lovecraft taking
late night walks around his neighborhood. As with most of Marcus's
views though, total fiction but that's what most of us are left with
anyway. Isn't the truth too terrible to bear?
Zuke
--
You are in control until you are out of control.
Linn Carpenter
Linn
Peter Stone Brown
"Zuke" <joh...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:9mtill$fo4$1...@news.ececs.uc.edu...
Anyone who has read this group for a long time knows I am no Marcus
defender, and my initial reaction on reading the review was along the lines
of many of the comments posted here so far.
And, there are things I don't like about the review. He misses a lot,
particularly in what Dylan and his band are doing with the music and certain
things they have achieved on this recording, the way they nailed each genre,
the sound of the guitars, the sound in general, and other things relating to
the recording itself which he could have gone into.
But, late last night, when the review was posted here, I read the review
again (read it in the real paper earlier in the day). Now, keeping in mind
that most people who read the NY Times probably are going to read that
review only once and say to themselves, "What the hell is he talking about?"
and keeping in mind that there are a lot of things that he could have put in
the review that he didn't, I suggest that people here press the refresh
buttons in their mind's memory cache, and read that review again. And while
it most definitely is on a certain kind of out there level, if you take the
time to follow where he is going, you may just find out that Marcus has
"gotten" the album.
--
"The game is the same, it's just up on another level." --Bob Dylan
Peter Stone Brown
e-mail: ps...@earthlink.net
http://store.yahoo.com/tangible-music/petstonbrowi.html
tom .
Peter Stone Brown wrote:
> I suggest that people here press the refresh buttons in their mind's memory
> cache, and read that review again. And while it most definitely is on a
> certain kind of out there level, if you take the time to follow where he is
> going, you may just find out that Marcus has "gotten" the album.
finally, a non-knee jerk reaction to the article. i don't think what marcus was
trying to do really was an album review anyway. it was something different. i
could not believe the horrible things said about mr. marcus in this forum over
the last twenty-four hours. i surely could empathize with the man and felt the
attacks were quite vicious. you lesser dylanalogists should really have more
respect for those of us whose game is up on another level. you really should.
it seems to me that marcus just took what this fellow from the observer noticed
-- "It's as if by adopting the voice of a backwoods teller of tall tales, he's
liberated himself to confront the demons of his advancing years and of his own
celebrity." -- and ran with it. jesus, you know? all your linear thinking can
really be a drag sometimes, man.
Kenneth Wilson
> And he says so little.
That was my first reaction, but after rereading it (and on paper this time),
I really enjoy it for what it is -- not a review, of course, but a fantasy
about the kind of guy who might write those songs, and the kind of world he
might live in. Anyone can write a straight review, but Marcus wrote from his
strength, this kind of musicological/historical contextualization. My wild
guess is that Dylan, skittish as he is about his work being defined and
interpreted, will nonetheless enjoy this playful, indirect attempt. (Looks
like I need to give "Invisible Republic" another chance).
Ken
Zuke
Kenneth Wilson <kfw...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>Linn Carpenter wrote:
>> And he says so little.
>
>That was my first reaction, but after rereading it (and on paper this time),
>I really enjoy it for what it is -- not a review, of course, but a fantasy
>about the kind of guy who might write those songs, and the kind of world he
>might live in. Anyone can write a straight review, but Marcus wrote from his
Like I said, it's fiction but there's a place for it. As for Dylanoligist
and Marcus, let's not give Marcus too much credit. I'll let anybody
say his piece but Marcus still is batting below 300 in my book but he's
worth trying to read anyway because he touches so many places. You can
put him on the opposite end of the scale from people who try to
interpret every Dylan line ad naseum. As the old saying goes "I'm
just the same as everybody else when it comes to scratching for my
meat". I really get that impression when reading Marcus, he's trying
to make a living, more power to him. Are we illuminated after reading
his take on things? Somewhat but it's not a knockout blow like
you get with Randall Jarrell writing about Robert Frost.
Any fan of Dylan should realize it's all fiction and we can take the
fiction and make more fiction. Did Robert Johnson meet the devil
at the Crossroads? Probably not but a lot of music has come out
of this supposed meeting.
Later,
Zuke
>strength, this kind of musicological/historical contextualization. My wild
>guess is that Dylan, skittish as he is about his work being defined and
>interpreted, will nonetheless enjoy this playful, indirect attempt. (Looks
>like I need to give "Invisible Republic" another chance).
>
>Ken
PGPearson1954
>it most definitely is on a certain kind of out there level, if you take the
>time to follow where he is going, you may just find out that Marcus has
>"gotten" the album.
Still, a bit too much for a mainstream newspaper. I don't think the typical
reader will get to the point of questioning---they will give up and move on
quickly.
I don't think the NYT did a service to their readers by having such an esoteric
(I'm being kind here) tome for this review.
I did reread the review---more than once.
Most people still will not know if Marcus is giving thumbs up or thumbs down or
no conclusion. Dylan comes off sounding like a directionless crank.
Paul Pearson
Silvio
> What the hell is this Marcus talking about?Ed
Greil Marcus piece is a very, very interesting, smart and illuminating
one, as usual with him. As always, he takes you down into the real
meaning of Bob Dylan music. Try another read, Ed, is not that hard
Ps: from what I can understand from Love And Theft lyrics, seems like
one of the main character in this album is somebody livin' during the
American Civil War
IA
Oh God. Am I the only person on Earth who can read through a Greil
Marcus article and not complain about it's supossed difficulty? This
is not impenetrable or difficult reading folks.
The idea that this review is "long and maybe not worth it" expalins a
lot of the reactions toward it. People apparently want nice little
blurbs telling them whether or not the critic liked the piece or not.
Beyond that their eyes get tired--all they want is judgment, not
insight. Imaginative criticism, like that of Oscar Wilde's critical
essays or Ruskin and Pater's essays, is not so welcome: people
apparently don't have the time..
I think the Marcus review is one of the best we'll get of "Love and
Theft." Rather than say how much he liked it, Marcus dives into the
persona of the album's creator(which not neccesarily the persona of
the actual Bob Dylan) and creates a portrait. Out of that portrait
comes a better understanding of teh album's motivations, outlook, and
composition. The odd old man created by Marcus is the persona Dylan
used in crafting the album as a unified piece. The portrait is so
detailed that Marcus can even see the oldman's cars and parlor: the
old man's rapture with the past and its legends. It matters little if
this isn't a real portrait of anyone and not truly conceted with
Dylan, just as it matters little if you don't agree with Pater's
assertion that the Mona Lisa sits like a vampire. The old eecentric
who's crafted "Love and Theft" is an eccentric (as Marcus so vividly
details in his midnight walks), enraged by the present with an
intensity that makes songs unsettling and seductive. And finally there
is sense of collosal waste and decay expressed in the old man's
songs--"a whole world of rejection, of nothingness, of the humor
shared by the dead men walking because the graveyard is full." That is
a marvelous way of putting it, an compact way of acknowledging the
humor of the album alongside its chilling undertone.
You may say Marcus' article really doesn't represent Dylan's
intentions and that
the fictional portrait Marcus creates is beside the point.
Here is Wilde:
"[This critcism] is critcism of the highest kind. It treats the work
of art simply as a starting poiint for a new creation. It does not
confine itself...to discovering the real intention of the artist and
accepting that as final. And in this it is right, for the meaning of
any beautiful created thing is, at least, as much in the soul of him
who looks at it, as it was in his soul who wrought it. Nay, it is the
beholder who lends to the beautiful thing its myraid meanings...and
sets it in some new relation to the age, so that it becomes a vital
portion of our lives...For when the work is finished it has, as it
were,
an independent life of its own, and may deliver a message far other
than that which was put into its lips to say...To the critic the work
of art is simply a suggestion for a new work of his own, that need not
bear any obvious resemblance to the thing it criticises. The one
characteristic of a beautiful form is that one can put into it
whatever one wishes, and see in it whatever one chooses to see; and
the beauty...makes critic a creator in his own turn.
Ze 39steps
stand his writing style, his awful metaphors, especially when describing
someone's voice (he does it with Dylan, he does it with Boggs--in fact, I don't
think I've ever seen a goddamn Marcus piece that doesn't mention Boggs AND
Dylan). Anyhow, I don't find his esoteric (for lack of a better word) writing
style natural, it seems to me that his sole purpose is to be abstruse and match
Dylan. But under all the garbage, I can find nothing insightful. Maybe other
reviews are simple-minded and stupid, but Marcus' reviews are stupid and
pretentious. I mean, fuck, this isn't Proust.
President_dudley
Wolfds wrote in message <20010901223717...@mb-cu.aol.com>...
>Bob Dylan: Sometimes He Talks Crazy, Crazy Like a Song
>By GREIL MARCUS
>
>
>On occasion he asks you in, you and your spouse or another
>neighbor, asks you into his parlor — which really is a parlor. A few old,
>comfortable chairs, shelves of books. There's a spinet piano with a
collection
>of sheet music in the compartment in the piano bench, some of it
handwritten:
>his own songs.
>
I was immediately prepared to join in the greilbashing hereabouts (hell,I'm
as likely to follow the pack as any other oddfellow) until that "parlour"
bit.
I immediately recognised the room, the piano, and the hinged seat of the
bench that revealed the sheet music... no handwritten songs there, but the
seat was rarely lifted as the tunes the people in that parlour wanted both
to hear and to sing along with were known by heart.
It was there that I first heard "K-K-K-Katy" &
"with someone like you
a pal good and true
i'd like to leave it all behind
and go and find
someplace that's known
to god alone"
& various WWI-vintage & prior popular tunes... as were customary in these
parlours.
In retrospect this piece by marcus may be revealed as his consummate moment,
if not the best Professional Rock Journalist (a suspect profession at best)
Review of a dylna work.
I need here to underscore that it was common practice in elder times for
people to come together and join in voice, rather than waiting to be
entertained.
Let us all turn now to the singing of Old 238:
Well, my ship's been split to splinters and it's sinking fast.
I'm drowning in the poison, got no future, got no past.
But my heart is not weary, it's light and it’s free.
I got nothing but affection for those who’ve sailed with me.
Vaya con dios
dudley
___
I was a young man back in the 1960s.
Yes, you made your own amusements then,
For going to the pictures;
Well, the travel was hard, and I mean
We still used the wheel.
But you could sit down at your table
And eat a real food meal.
But hey, you young people, well I just do not know,
And I can't even understand you
When you try to talk slow.
There was one fellow singing in those days,
And he was quite good, and I mean to say that
His name was Bob Dylan
--R. Williamson
A1pump
>that most people who read the NY Times probably are going to read that
>review only once and say to themselves, "What the hell is he talking about?"
>and keeping in mind that there are a lot of things that he could have put in
>the review that he didn't, I suggest that people here press the refresh
>buttons in their mind's memory cache, and read that review again. And while
>it most definitely is on a certain kind of out there level, if you take the
>time to follow where he is going, you may just find out that Marcus has
>"gotten" the album.
>
review) but felt it was close to worthless. Referencing lyrics of an unreleased
album without identifying them as such, arcane music references that only us
nuts would know and implying but not stating your views of the album will not
serve as much of a worthwhile review to the general public it was written for.
My brother in law emailed me and said neither he or my sister(who he thinks is
intelligent but that's another debate) and he advised her to contact me as
Greil Marcus sounded like " a fellow traveller."
Seth Kulick
: Dylan). Anyhow, I don't find his esoteric (for lack of a better word) writing
: style natural, it seems to me that his sole purpose is to be abstruse and match
: Dylan. But under all the garbage, I can find nothing insightful. Maybe other
: reviews are simple-minded and stupid, but Marcus' reviews are stupid and
: pretentious. I mean, fuck, this isn't Proust.
These are some of the most beautiful words I've ever read on rmd.
And once again: He didn't even mention the guitars! What @#$%@#$% is wrong
with him? It's a goddamn album, not another chapter in his worthless
book!
Lloyd Fonvielle
upon us. And he's right, of course -- as usual. But as others have said, it's
Peter's review that I'm really looking forward to.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Most people still will not know if Marcus is giving thumbs up or thumbs down or
> no conclusion. Dylan comes off sounding like a directionless crank.
Yes -- but in the end he solves the case.
raven
IA wrote:
> > What the hell is this Marcus talking about?Ed
> <snip>
> Here is Wilde:
>
> <snip>
> The one characteristic of a beautiful form is that one can put into it
> whatever one wishes, and see in it whatever one chooses to see; and
> the beauty...makes critic a creator in his own turn.
That may be true, but it's down on another level.
Steve Oldham
into the atmosphere of L&T. Much more interesting than a song by song
linear breakdown. To his credit, he tries to take you into the milieu
of Dylan's mind. I'm not sure what people are upset about. Marcus
seems to like the album.
Steve
Mike and Karen Bagdes-Canning
like Bob's latest.
Mike
Steve Oldham <stev...@rocsoft.net> wrote in message
news:eee5ptkq5as1m5olh...@4ax.com...
Delia
Dylan as the village eccentric on Main Street in the Old Weird America. He
drinks a bit and rambles on and invites you into his parlor where you're
expected to pick out a cd to play from his esoteric collection. Hell, I'd be
afraid to choose.
The thing is, this is a music review in a major national newspaper. Marcus'
image makes sense mainly to the sort of people who follow this ng, almost
all of whom have listened to the album, and have already preordered it, or
have staked out the store where they're going to buy it. Most people read a
music review in order to gain information to guide them in making a decision
about purchasing the item under consideration. I don't think they get that
from this review. What Marcus is doing is not so much a review as
commentary and there's a place for that. But to do a proper commentary he
needs to develop it in a lot more depth. I certainly felt I wanted him to
explain more if that's what he was up to. But if you're doing a review
you've got certain constraints on space and so you end up with something
that's not fully satisfactory as one or the other.
Delia
"Peter Stone Brown" <ps...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:W5tk7.1864$ln4.1...@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
Chuckles
>Anyone who has read this group for a long time knows I am no Marcus
>defender, and my initial reaction on reading the review was along the
>lines of many of the comments posted here so far...I suggest that people
>here press the refresh buttons in their mind's memory cache, and read
>that review again. And while it most definitely is on a certain kind of
>out there level, if you take the time to follow where he is going, you
>may just find out that Marcus has "gotten" the album.
Thank you. An astonishing review.
Steve Oldham
<mba...@csonline.net> wrote:
>I hope we're above getting upset / elated because someone likes / doesn't
>like Bob's latest.
Shirley you jest.
Steve
A1pump
And would you have understood that if you hadn't already heard the album?
Steve Oldham
I wouldn't have known if he had 'successfully' captured the atmosphere
of the work but I would have been curious to find out.
Steve
Wolfds
>The thing is, this is a music review in a major national newspaper. Marcus'
>image makes sense mainly to the sort of people who follow this ng, almost
>all of whom have listened to the album,
I think that's right. It's not nearly as bad as I had expected, and Marcus
does offer some insights (and goes off on a few unnecessary tangents), captures
the milieu of the album (he sees the violence or threat of violence that
pervades this album, there's a darkness through all the light), recognizes that
Sugar Baby is a classic, and has some interesting things to say about High
Water, too.
A bit too much in parts, though, and if you haven't heard the album you would
have no idea where he's coming from, and that's probably not a good thing for a
"review," which this ostensibly was. Marcus's commentary on LaT would have
been better placed in a fanzine.
Dave
Linn Carpenter
think Marcus has done that very well at all in this review.
Linn
Steve Oldham
wrote:
>Exactly. It's the reviewer's job to make the readers "get it". I don't
>think Marcus has done that very well at all in this review.
Get what? It's the reviewer's job to be honest with himself and his
readers as to what a work meant to him. This idea of "getting it" is a
way of channeling everyone into the same corral.
Steve
Jmm5074
>Marcus article and not complain about it's supossed difficulty?
Not really. Greil just seems to be a frustrated artist trapped inside a very
wordy critic's body. The difficulty is with his trying to be a 'creative
critic,' a contradiction in terms. Criticism does not/ can not imitate art.
MM
Linn Carpenter
>
> > Get what?
The essence of the album. What Bob's trying to do here.
>It's the reviewer's job to be honest with himself and his
> readers as to what a work meant to him.
I agree. But doing so in such a convoluted manner that few people
outside of this newsgroup can relate to what he's talking about is not
my idea of a good review. In my opinion, Marcus writes more for himself
than his readers.
>This idea of "getting it" is a
> way of channeling everyone into the same corral.
I disagree, Steve. To me, it just means having a sense of what the
artist is conveying. This album has been judged and criticized on Bob's
voice quality (which is nothing new), the various musical types
involved, etc., but I think it all comes down to Bob trying to hold
tight to his musical roots and give the listeners a deeper appreciation
of those roots.
Linn
>
robertandrews
>Criticism does not/ can not imitate art.
Why can't criticism be artistic? And can't we have critical art? To me,
there isn't such a perfect separation.
RWSURF
Just like Columbo
Rick
frinjdwelr
"A1pump" <a1p...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010902205125...@mb-cl.aol.com...
No. If I were even an above average music listener who read this review
cold, I'd think he was saying Dylan is a crazy old man, and I'd pass on
buying the album.
That said, I don't necessarily believe the public should be written down to,
or underestimated by only being given a standard style review. I just wish
Marcus would move his schtick on to the next step. He's so fond of his own
idea of Bob as Boggs and the old weird whatever, that he's stayed stuck on
it for years now, and ignores far more interesting aspects of this album.
Eric Schoneveld
Review (long and maybe not worth it) :
LOL :-).
Eric
--
Visit the Bob Dylan starting point:
http://bobdylan.playhear.com
PGPearson1954
>Marcus article and not complain about it's supossed difficulty? This
>is not impenetrable or difficult reading folks.
I agree to the point when a Marcus piece is targeted correctly. This was
placed in a mainstream publication.
The only people who read that article more than once are rmders or Dylan fans.
I thought MYSTERY TRAIN was a great ride. I thought INVISIBLE REPUBLIC veered
so far off course that the printer must have bound in another book within.
Paul Pearson
PGPearson1954
>there isn't such a perfect separation.
It helps to be lucid.
Paul Pearson
PGPearson1954
"Room" it is----as pointed out before, an old Groucho Marx line.
Paul Pearson
Creme121
scientific part of art. What colors do I use? Does this line work well? Is my
subject intriguing?
Nyy7
should attempt to answer 3 questions:
1. Does it have a good beat.
2. Can you dance to it.
3. Where can you buy it.
I can't figure out if Ms. Marcus ( Gail), answered these questions!
Bruce in Belle Harbor
tom .
Nyy7 wrote:
while all that may be true, the question remains --
did you and mrs. bruce nyy7 ever dance to moonlight?
enquiring minds want to know.
Steve Oldham
wrote:
>Steve Oldham wrote:
I guess where we differ is that I'm more interested in a reviewer's
personal take on a piece of art than I am in what the reviewer thinks
the artist is trying to convey. Whether or not an artist has
successfully gotten across what he wanted to can be determined after
all the dust has settled.
Marcus's review gave me an idea what images L&T invoked in him. That's
more valuable information to me than hearing someone gush over one of
Bob's vocal inflections.
When people accuse others of not "getting it" it usually means that a
large group of folks have gotten together and decided what "it" is and
they are going to hang tough and defend "it" to the end. Much better,
to me, that we all decide what "it" is to us individually. Later, the
artist and the pundits can decide if the work was received as it was
intended to be.
"It's" just more fun that way, I think.
Steve
A1pump
>cold, I'd think he was saying Dylan is a crazy old man, and I'd pass on
>buying the album.
>
>That said, I don't necessarily believe the public should be written down to,
>or underestimated by only being given a standard style review. I just wish
>Marcus would move his schtick on to the next step. He's so fond of his own
>idea of Bob as Boggs and the old weird whatever, that he's stayed stuck on
>it for years now, and ignores far more interesting aspects of this album.
>
has heard the album and everyone has a deep knowledge of "roots" music and/or
has read Invisible Republic. The fact remains that I know many intelligent
people who didn't understand the review. The only people I know who did
understand it are on this newsgroup. Considering the infuence of the Sunday
Times, Marcus has done a great disservice to one of Dylan's most accessible and
enjoyable alblums.
jem@seesig
tom ." <blin...@hotmail.com> was prompted to remark:
>Nyy7 wrote:
>
>> A review fails if the discussion centers around reviewing the review. A review
>> should attempt to answer 3 questions:
>>
>> 1. Does it have a good beat.
>> 2. Can you dance to it.
>> 3. Where can you buy it.
>>
>> I can't figure out if Ms. Marcus ( Gail), answered these questions!
>>
>> Bruce in Belle Harbor
>
>while all that may be true, the question remains --
>did you and mrs. bruce nyy7 ever dance to moonlight?
>enquiring minds want to know.
And how about the title track from that album The Times They Are
A-changin' ?
np: [on the wireless] BBC Worldservice News... news about Britain.
--------------------------------------------------------
MY ADDRESS IS: jem (a+t) iohk d/o/t com
WHERE: on a little island in the South China Sea
DELETE spam: http://combat.uxn.com/tracing.html
--------------------------------------------------------
Kenneth Wilson
> .......I think it all comes down to Bob trying to hold
> tight to his musical roots and give the listeners a deeper appreciation
> of those roots.
Marcus mentions Bukka White, Rev. Gary Davis's "Cocaine," Ramblin' Thomas's
"Po' Boy Blues," Chuck Berry's "Promised Land," Hoagy Carmichael's
"Stardust," Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy's "Indian Love Call," Big Joe
Turner, "The Coo Coo," and Dock Boggs. He also gives a few literary
references and in some cases a brief historical context. I think that for
anyone not having heard the album, this would be a very intriguing review. I
also think all the references strongly suggest that Marcus likes what Dylan
has done.
Ken
tom .
they must not be all that intelligent then.
we ain't talking quantum physics here, missy.
once again - don't criticize what you can't understand, man.
what a bunch of morons. all this fuss over a dumb article.
Nyy7
>did you and mrs. bruce nyy7 ever dance to moonlight?
>enquiring minds want to know.
>
Of course not! She came home, said she hated Bob's voice and said she had a
busy day..
Bruce in Belle Harbor
Luke Torn
i believe marcus' description of the guitars on L&T appears here. it's not a
literal description, but one picking up on where dylan is finding his
inspiration for the guitar sound on L&T:
. Seeing you pick a
Bukka White CD with his version of the song, or anyway the title - recorded
at Parchman State Penitentiary in Mississippi in 1939, the man points out -
he leans back and lets the burst of guitar notes that seem to send this
"poor
boy long way from home" straight to heaven wash over him like rain, then
shows
you Ramblin' Thomas's 1929 "Poor Boy Blues" ("A Dallas street singer," he
says), then Chuck Berry's 1964 "Promised Land," about the odyssey of "the
Po'
Boy" from his hometown, Norfolk, Va., to Los Angeles.
Luke
Seth Kulick <sku...@central.cis.upenn.edu> wrote in message
news:9mu81d$egl$1...@netnews.upenn.edu...
> Ze 39steps (ze39...@aol.com) wrote:
> : Dylan). Anyhow, I don't find his esoteric (for lack of a better word)
writing
> : style natural, it seems to me that his sole purpose is to be abstruse
and match
> : Dylan. But under all the garbage, I can find nothing insightful. Maybe
other
> : reviews are simple-minded and stupid, but Marcus' reviews are stupid and
> : pretentious. I mean, fuck, this isn't Proust.
>
> These are some of the most beautiful words I've ever read on rmd.
>
> And once again: He didn't even mention the guitars! What @#$%@#$% is
wrong
> with him? It's a goddamn album, not another chapter in his worthless
> book!
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Seth Kulick
: hello--
: i believe marcus' description of the guitars on L&T appears here. it's not a
: literal description, but one picking up on where dylan is finding his
: inspiration for the guitar sound on L&T:
: . Seeing you pick a
: Bukka White CD with his version of the song, or anyway the title - recorded
: at Parchman State Penitentiary in Mississippi in 1939, the man points out -
: he leans back and lets the burst of guitar notes that seem to send this
: "poor boy long way from home" straight to heaven wash over him like rain, then
But from this could one learn that the guitar work and sound on this album
is somewhat different from, say, World Gone Wrong? Or that Sad and
Lonesome Day is one of the most musically wicked Dylan tracks ever?
Marcus is so impressed by his old weird America stuff that he tries to
shove everything into it, or at least ignore everything that dosn't
quite fit into his mystical shit. He's done a great disservice to the
finest band Dylan has had since The Band.
the musicaner
> "Zuke" <joh...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:9mtill$fo4$1...@news.ececs.uc.edu...
> > In article <20010902105135...@mb-mk.aol.com>,
> > EdFF444 <edf...@aol.com> wrote:
> > >What the hell is this Marcus talking about?Ed
> >
> > I found the review quite interesting. Having read 4 or 5 reviews of
> > this album I don't envy the reviewer's task. I wouldn't know how
> > to approach it and am glad I don't have the job.
> >
> > It's interesting to think of Dylan as the old man in the wierd house
> > in the neighborhood. Brings to mind tales of H.P. Lovecraft taking
> > late night walks around his neighborhood. As with most of Marcus's
> > views though, total fiction but that's what most of us are left with
> > anyway. Isn't the truth too terrible to bear?
> >
> >
>
> Anyone who has read this group for a long time knows I am no Marcus
> defender, and my initial reaction on reading the review was along the lines
> of many of the comments posted here so far.
>
> And, there are things I don't like about the review. He misses a lot,
> particularly in what Dylan and his band are doing with the music and certain
> things they have achieved on this recording, the way they nailed each genre,
> the sound of the guitars, the sound in general, and other things relating to
> the recording itself which he could have gone into.
>
> But, late last night, when the review was posted here, I read the review
> again (read it in the real paper earlier in the day). Now, keeping in mind
> that most people who read the NY Times probably are going to read that
> review only once and say to themselves, "What the hell is he talking about?"
> and keeping in mind that there are a lot of things that he could have put in
> the review that he didn't, I suggest that people here press the refresh
> buttons in their mind's memory cache, and read that review again. And while
> it most definitely is on a certain kind of out there level, if you take the
> time to follow where he is going, you may just find out that Marcus has
> "gotten" the album.
peter, i must say i have read the review several times and cant yet
make heads or tails of it. of course, i didnt excpect otherwise. bob
the old man in the house, thats not fair of greil. it all reads so
utterly fake that it unnerving to read. days that go by like empty
bottles?
it may there is as much mystery in bobs songs as there are in jimmy
buffett songs. it may be that bob lives in a nice spread in malibu
with fireproof floors and guards. it may be that all these songs are
protest songs, about the constitution, the bill of rights and the
declaration of independence.
worse of all is the title, bob talks funny sometimes. sometimes?? did
greil ever listen to under the red sky??? this album reminds me some
of under the red sky, which is one of bob great albums. specifically
it reminds me of handy dandy, lots of crazy talk on that one......and
tv talking song too.
come to think of it bob talks funny on highway 61 too... so maybe
greil has something there after all........i better go now, as i dont
want to slip into greil mode.
Seth Kulick
[...]
: worse of all is the title, bob talks funny sometimes. sometimes?? did
: greil ever listen to under the red sky??? this album reminds me some
: of under the red sky, which is one of bob great albums. specifically
: it reminds me of handy dandy, lots of crazy talk on that one......and
: tv talking song too.
: come to think of it bob talks funny on highway 61 too... so maybe
: greil has something there after all........i better go now, as i dont
: want to slip into greil mode.
I still fail to understand how Marcus can go on and on like this
but then dismiss Oh Mercy in a single sentence, as somebody else on
rmd once said. Street Legal I can sort of understand - it's a pretty
weird album, although it didn't deserve the trashing Marcus gave it.
Same for Empire Burlesque, which if I remember right got an even
nastier review from Marcus in the Village Voice.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Seth Kulick "Some of these bootleggers, they make pretty good stuff"
University of Pennsylvania - Bob Dylan
sku...@linc.cis.upenn.edu http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~skulick/home.html
IA
Marcus piece.
* "I know many people who din't understand this review"
My 14 year old brother, who knows very little about Dylan or roots
music,
e-mailed the piece to me and was intrigued by it. As one poster
said, "this
isn't quantum physics people." and is hardly Derrida or Lacan
either.
If the average reader at the NY Times can't understand it, their
problem.
The public, despite what some here suggest, are not total idiots,
and perhaps
won't always be turned off by refeences to what they haven't yet
listened
to.
* The nature of reviews and criticism: If all you want is a pithy,
consumer-
guide that tells you whether or not a critic liked or disliked
something,
than go elsewhere: LAT will get plenty of those sort of reviews. If
critic
doesn't write for himself, he is not a critic. To ask him to write
for an
imagined "general public" is to presume you understand and know
that public's
character and general make-up. As long as a review can be
understood--and
Marcus' review is perfectly understandable on a first reading
(provided
you're actually reading, and not skimming--which is what most of
the people
on this thread seem to have done), then it is fair game for a
newspaper with
a wide, varied audience. When someone said Marcus didn't "get it,"
and then
defined what "it" was (getting down to musical roots), I was
surprised
because Marcus had already defined "it" in a far more provocative
and
interesting way. Seth Kulick's complaint, that Marcus didn't talk
enough
about the band or mention the guitars, is the lamest critique yet.
Is there
some kind of check-list kept for critics who wish to comment about
a Dylan
album? If people want a detailed discussion of the album's
technique, they
can find it elsewhere. This is a piece concerned with the moods and
associations brought out by the album. If you wanted something
else, it's
not the end of the world, so quit bitching and look elsewhere. As
for
"mystical shit"--I didn't find any. A review is under no obligation
to follow
someone's check-list. If Marcus chooses to focus mostly on effects,
and not
upon how they technically were achieved, that's fine with me--he's
under no
obligation to do opposite, especially since anyone who listens to
the album
can tell how good the guitars are and can recognize the genre
inter-shifts. Also: are we sure this is the Times' actual review
and not
just a commentary? If it is the review, fine, but I'd think a
review
would be published later on, especially if the Times has a regular
music critic.
* Suppositions. Complain all you want about references to Dock Boggs
and the old , weird America--as if Dylan is no longer influenced by
him, and his ghost can be found nowhere to be found on the album(The
opposite--Dylan evens borrows one of Boggs' titles--does that not
merit introducing Boggs into the article?). As for the old, weird
america: considering how heavy its influence truly is on this album,
the references toward its icons are wholly deserved. Perhaps the
farthest out Marcus goes are when he references Chandler and "Night of
the Hunter." Both examples are valid analogies in other mediums. All
his music references are valid and useful in their relation to the
album's make-up. It is impossuble to say they never influenced the
album.
* The role of criticism. Criticism can rival the satisfaction you'd
get from
Proust, though the pleasures may not be identical. Criiticism may
not always
simple to read, because it may reveal complex concepts--in any
case, I don't think Marcus' writing doesn't strike me as abstruse or
difficult, and I don't think it is. Every sentence in that article is
comprehensible. As for supposed wordiness--write out the article in
the English you deem non-wordy and see if it isn't a good deal longer
than the original.
And anyone who says "criticism does not/can not imitate art" is right,
but
criticism can work off of art and create in its own turn. Anyone who
says
otherwise can be referred back to Hazlitt, Pater, Ruskin or Wilde("To
a critic a work of art is simply a suggestion for a new work of his
own.") When criticism excites the imagination, someone always says it
presumes it means the critic is trying to equal the artist. But
criticism at best is evocatory writing that takes a work of art as its
subject, and creates or implies something new out of what it evokes.
This article creates a portrait based upon the music, and the features
of that portrait reflect back upon the music as an expression of what
it evokes upon one listener. The odd old man within his
parlor,listening to ancient records by long-dead artists, is the
animating ghost behind the album, the face formed by what the music
invokes and implies. The supposedly arcane references--all of which
are elaborated on, (It's not as if Marcus doesn't tell you who Dock
Boggs or Charley Patton are) add a context that shades in the past
this man inhabits, which colors the tone of his work. He holds a
legendary position in his own community, a legend amplified by the
dangerous, depressed undertone of the songs. There is world of waste,
of deadness and the humor of realizing the extent of personal
deadness.
That is the unified impression--resolved into a fictional
portrait--that Marcus derives from his own experience with "Love And
Theft." It's low on utility--he doesn't say "I liked this album, go
buy it." He doesn't say how great the guitars are and tell you how the
music differs so much in terms of technique from what has gone before.
The uniqueness of the music is signified by what it evokes for Marcus.
This is totally subjective critcism dependent upon one man's
subjective experience. It's divorced from reporting objective details
that don't intrude upon the subjective experience. I value this sort
of article more than anything else this newsgroup or any other reviews
have so far said about "Love And Theft," most of which have echoed the
same sentiments. Critcism at its most interesting is a window into
another's mind. Some would prefer an information manual or snap
judgment. I enjoy reading those too, but the window is what I return
to. I can't speak for anyone else who will read the article. But I can
speak my views.
Kevin B. O'Reilly
> I still fail to understand how Marcus can go on and on like this
> but then dismiss Oh Mercy in a single sentence, as somebody else on
> rmd once said. Street Legal I can sort of understand - it's a pretty
> weird album, although it didn't deserve the trashing Marcus gave it.
> Same for Empire Burlesque, which if I remember right got an even
> nastier review from Marcus in the Village Voice.
He seems to have put Bob in the "old, weird America" box he's created for
him. So, when Bob sounds like Dock Boggs and Charley Patton and "The
Basement Tapes," suddenly Marcus realizes he's a genius. But if Bob steps
outside that little box, then he's somehow betraying something.
Silvio
> cold, I'd think he was saying Dylan is a crazy old man, and I'd pass on
> buying the album.
That's your problem.
>
> That said, I don't necessarily believe the public should be written down to,
> or underestimated by only being given a standard style review. I just wish
> Marcus would move his schtick on to the next step. He's so fond of his own
> idea of Bob as Boggs and the old weird whatever, that he's stayed stuck on
> it for years now, and ignores far more interesting aspects of this album.
For ex.???
Silvio
Why don't you buy some teenagers magazine (and teenagers recors as well)???
They have the kind of reviews you need to
>
> Bruce in Belle Harbor
tom .
IA, while the morons who inhabit this newsgroup do not deserve your
thoughtful explanation, good job. many of these bozos prefer to think
like math professors most of the time...they like
formulas...proofs...thumbs up!...five stars!...it redeems our
civilization!....the best album since!.... god damn it to hell, people.
come on. what's your major malfunction? i'm sick and tired of this. you
people really need to start thinking out of the box. and stop making such
a fuss over a newspaper article. it's an article. one article. what's
your god damn damage? the article is a "disservice" to dylan and the
album. that's the funniest thing i've ever read. you knuckleheads. it's
one article. so come on, people. god damn it to hell. a little
perspective, please. now, get down and give me fifty. and have
yourselves a great day.
IA wrote:
> I'd like to comment on several reactions on this thread toward the
> Marcus piece.
>
> * "I know many people who din't understand this review"
> My 14 year old brother, who knows very little about Dylan or roots
> music, e-mailed the piece to me and was intrigued by it. As one poster
> said, "this isn't quantum physics, people." and is hardly Derrida or
> Ruskin or Wilde ("To a critic a work of art is simply a suggestion for a
Seth Kulick
: newspaper with
: a wide, varied audience. When someone said Marcus didn't "get it,"
: and then
: defined what "it" was (getting down to musical roots), I was
: surprised
: because Marcus had already defined "it" in a far more provocative
: and
: interesting way.
I don't think "it" can be defined.
Seth Kulick's complaint, that Marcus didn't talk
: enough
: about the band or mention the guitars, is the lamest critique yet.
well, geee, sorry. For the first time in his career Dylan plays with
a bunch of musicians for a long time, and then records with them,working
out great arrangements, with (from what I can hear) flawless
musicianship. I kinda thought it was worth a mention. I guess this sort
of information will have to be left to the lowly reviewers, not those
who create art in their review. No middle ground there.
But you still don't "get" the criticism of Marcus, at least mine. There
are two parts, one Dylan specific, one not. Dylan-wise, he's got this
old weird America thing going and if he can fit what Dylan does into it,
he loves it, and if not, he goes into "What is this shit?" mode, such
as in his comments about/revies of Oh Mercy and Street Legal. And even
if he does like it, the Invisible Republic angle is all he writes about.
Sorry, maybe I'm boring, but I'd like to hear about the album as well,
perhaps things about the playing on the album that I didn't notice, etc.
To some extent, of course, writing about the perspective you find most
interesting is natural and perhaps unavoidable, but Marcus has taken it
way, way, out there.
Two, he loves to free associate madly, making all sorts of bogus
connections. I don't think he has every much to say, so he wraps up his
trivialities in pretentious prose. When he sticks to the music, he
can make all his little connections and all that in a perfectly interesting
and useful way, such as in the appendix to Mystery Train, rather than the
main text, which I hated.
In general, though, if I want to read music criticism/history, I'll
read Peter Guralnick. If I want to read pseudo-Tarantuala ramblings, I'll
read Marcus. To each his or her own.
Marcel
" I have dined with kings, I've been offered wings
And I've never been too impressed"
Marcel
" tom ." wrote:
you lesser dylanalogists should really have more
> respect for those of us whose game is up on another level. you really should.
> it seems to me that marcus just took what this fellow from the observer noticed
> -- "It's as if by adopting the voice of a backwoods teller of tall tales, he's
> liberated himself to confront the demons of his advancing years and of his own
> celebrity." -- and ran with it. jesus, you know? all your linear thinking can
> really be a drag sometimes, man.
PGPearson1954
>come on. what's your major malfunction? i'm sick and tired of this. you
>people really need to start thinking out of the box. and stop making such
>a fuss over a newspaper article.
tom....perhaps a little bran added to your diet my help :)
peace, brother!!
Paul Pearson
Steve Oldham
Steve
the musicaner
> the musicaner (musi...@my-deja.com) wrote:
>
> [...]
> : worse of all is the title, bob talks funny sometimes. sometimes?? did
> : greil ever listen to under the red sky??? this album reminds me some
> : of under the red sky, which is one of bob great albums. specifically
> : it reminds me of handy dandy, lots of crazy talk on that one......and
> : tv talking song too.
> : come to think of it bob talks funny on highway 61 too... so maybe
> : greil has something there after all........i better go now, as i dont
> : want to slip into greil mode.
>
> I still fail to understand how Marcus can go on and on like this
> but then dismiss Oh Mercy in a single sentence, as somebody else on
> rmd once said. Street Legal I can sort of understand - it's a pretty
> weird album, although it didn't deserve the trashing Marcus gave it.
> Same for Empire Burlesque, which if I remember right got an even
> nastier review from Marcus in the Village Voice.
>
not so difficult to understand really, all you have to do is connect the dots.
the musicaner
>
> [...]
> : worse of all is the title, bob talks funny sometimes. sometimes?? did
> : greil ever listen to under the red sky??? this album reminds me some
> : of under the red sky, which is one of bob great albums. specifically
> : it reminds me of handy dandy, lots of crazy talk on that one......and
> : tv talking song too.
> : come to think of it bob talks funny on highway 61 too... so maybe
> : greil has something there after all........i better go now, as i dont
> : want to slip into greil mode.
>
> I still fail to understand how Marcus can go on and on like this
> but then dismiss Oh Mercy in a single sentence, as somebody else on
> rmd once said. Street Legal I can sort of understand - it's a pretty
> weird album, although it didn't deserve the trashing Marcus gave it.
> Same for Empire Burlesque, which if I remember right got an even
> nastier review from Marcus in the Village Voice.
>
ps-greils gothic prose gives me the willies, it is disturbing and
unnecessary, and hes giving an unhealthy aura to bobs work. we cannot
argue with the fact that hes succesfullly become the authority on
bob-after street legal, empire and oh mercy(i still havent got over
greils trashing of that one). who woulda known.......'i wish i was a
magicican, then id wave a wand and tie back the bonds, that weve both
gone beyond". greil has gone and bonded himself back with bob.
Seth Kulick
: >Nobody has any idea what he's talking about
: You have to give Marcus credit for having the guts to write this sentence,
: considering the big set-up it gives to us smart-alecks.
Even better is the comment in his latest Salon column about how
a NY Times editorial about Clinton "collapsed into gibberish".
Although that's not quite as memorable as when he complained that
Springsteen's first two albums were too "wordy".
Nyy7
>
>They have the kind of reviews you need to
>
Silvio,
I do buy teenager magazines( to look at the young girls) and teenager recors (
whatever they are).
And I am 54 years old.
Get a sense of humor, guy!
Bruce in Belle Harbor
chiarot
Jersey.
Delia
But Seth is also right. First, Marcus could easily work the band into this
stream of consciousness old weird America stuff. Second, if he is going to
continue in this vein he really has to take Oh Mercy and Infidels seriously.
Frankly, his image of Dylan here reminds me of one of the more eccentric
characters out of a Walker Percy novel, except that he (Dylan) is musical.
Bob as the slightly mad prophet who drinks a bit. Maybe Marcus should be
locked in a room with copies of Oh Mercy and Infidels until he gets it. He
could be allowed to skip Union Sundown. On the other hand, given the
resonances with Love and Theft, I think Under the Red Sky should be added to
his required listening list.
Delia
tom ." <blin...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3B94BFF2...@hotmail.com...
Debra Lind
most interesting one I've heard yet. But it's just his take on it. I
have not heard the album yet, and what he says or what anyone here says
isnt going to infuence me one way or the other on my opinion of it . In
fact I doubt I'll remember a single word of any of this when I sit down
for my first listen. Just gonna be me, the music and whatever images or
emotions that it happens to stir up. Can't wait!
President_dudley
Lloyd Fonvielle wrote in message <3B92AD28...@compuserve.com>...
>Peter Stone Brown has a kind word for Greil Marcus -- the End of Days is
surely
>upon us. And he's right, of course -- as usual. But as others have said,
it's
>Peter's review that I'm really looking forward to.
>
As usual, yer backing the wrong pony. I've already begun my review of 11-13
(or 13-nov) Syracuse.
Momentarily, I'm stymied; What comes after :
& then the drugs kicked in
?
btw, I do NOT hear SCRAPE
rdd
Lloyd Fonvielle
Nice review of the reviews of the Marcus review. Like him, though, you
failed to mention the guitars.
Dr George Christos
review.
are there any other major reviews of l&t?
Lloyd Fonvielle <navi...@compuserve.com> wrote in message
news:3B95E8BF...@compuserve.com...
Lloyd Fonvielle
This review promises to dig deep and plow through Syracuse like a rake.
Seth Kulick
: Debra Lind wrote:
I think you mean failed to mention the failure to mention the guitars.
If that's what you meant, then you did mention the failure to mention
the failure to mention the guitars, for which I thank you.
--
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Lloyd Fonvielle (navi...@compuserve.com) wrote:
> : Debra Lind wrote:
>
> : > Whats the point of reviewing a review? It's just one guys opinion. The
> : > most interesting one I've heard yet. But it's just his take on it. I
> : > have not heard the album yet, and what he says or what anyone here says
> : > isnt going to infuence me one way or the other on my opinion of it . In
> : > fact I doubt I'll remember a single word of any of this when I sit down
> : > for my first listen. Just gonna be me, the music and whatever images or
> : > emotions that it happens to stir up. Can't wait!
>
> : Nice review of the reviews of the Marcus review. Like him, though, you
> : failed to mention the guitars.
>
> I think you mean failed to mention the failure to mention the guitars.
> If that's what you meant, then you did mention the failure to mention
> the failure to mention the guitars, for which I thank you.
Well, I think we're all relieved that you cleared that one up. Time for a
poll, I guess. Which review of the Marcus review sucked more than the Marcus
review, and made you wish Marcus had never written a review, so you wouldn't
have had to read such a bad review of it?.
Seth Kulick
Howard Mirowitz
"IA" <iamana...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:e2edb19a.01090...@posting.google.com...
<snip>
> I think the Marcus review is one of the best we'll get of "Love and
> Theft." Rather than say how much he liked it, Marcus dives into the
> persona of the album's creator(which not neccesarily the persona of
> the actual Bob Dylan) and creates a portrait. Out of that portrait
> comes a better understanding of teh album's motivations, outlook, and
> composition. The odd old man created by Marcus is the persona Dylan
> used in crafting the album as a unified piece.
I think it was Wayne Booth in _The Rhetoric of Fiction_ who said that it
has seemed to many writers as if they were creating themselves as they
wrote. Booth's point in this book is that an artist inevitably creates such
a persona, in the process of exercising the artistic judgments that
determine what is included in a given work, and how it is constructed; and
it is precisely that persona implied in the resulting work -- not
necessarily the actual person of the artist -- that the audience connects
with in the process of appreciating and understanding that work.
There's a fascinating self-referential reflexivity in the way that Dylan and
his creations seem to interact with each other. Perhaps the extent to which
Dylan sees himself as creating personas in his work may be another reason
why he decided to put quotes around the title, "Love And Theft". If you
take the whole album, the whole work, as the actual *love and theft*, then
the work's title, "Love And Theft", is constructed by "flattening" all that
depth into a self-symbol, a quotation referring back to the work and the
self Dylan created in the process of constructing it. And -- as we learn
from Wittgenstein, Quine and Godel -- when you make a sentence by preceding
a self-reference by its own quotation, the result is paradoxical. Such
paradoxes can only be transcended; they can never be logically understood.
> The portrait is so
> detailed that Marcus can even see the oldman's cars and parlor: the
> old man's rapture with the past and its legends. It matters little if
> this isn't a real portrait of anyone and not truly conceted with
> Dylan, just as it matters little if you don't agree with Pater's
> assertion that the Mona Lisa sits like a vampire. The old eecentric
> who's crafted "Love and Theft" is an eccentric (as Marcus so vividly
> details in his midnight walks), enraged by the present with an
> intensity that makes songs unsettling and seductive. And finally there
> is sense of collosal waste and decay expressed in the old man's
> songs--"a whole world of rejection, of nothingness, of the humor
> shared by the dead men walking because the graveyard is full." That is
> a marvelous way of putting it, an compact way of acknowledging the
> humor of the album alongside its chilling undertone.
Can't Dylan's real-life evolution as an artist also be viewed as the result
of a constant tension among the personae he creates, his need to transcend
them, to leave them behind and move beyond them -- and the paradox always
lying before him: That he can only achieve that transcendence by creating
new art, and with it, yet more new personae to transcend? Could it be that
"the graveyard is full" because Dylan himself realizes that this is where he
has arrived? Here's a small sample of what Dylan's "L&T" persona has to
say:
From "Highwater":
Well, the cuckoo is a pretty bird, she warbles as she flies
I'm preaching the word of God, I'm putting out your eyes
I asked fat Nancy for something t' eat, she said, "Take it off the shelf
As great as you are, man, you'll never be greater than yourself."
I told her I didn't really care
High water everywhere
In the first line, the cuckoo evokes not only cuckoo clocks -- the feeling
that the bird, and by extension Dylan's persona, is a creature limited by
time -- but also the sense that the persona is entangled in a paradox: The
next line of the traditional song from which this line is borrowed is "But
she never sings 'cuckoo' until the very day she lies"; the bird can't utter
the lyric that defines its existence until the moment of its death. And the
line, "As great as you are, man, you'll never be greater than yourself"
echoes and amplifies that image. It's as if Dylan's persona is writing
about the real Dylan writing so many songs about leaving old selves
behind -- a pervasive theme in his lyrics, from "Don't Think Twice" all the
way up to "Things Have Changed" -- and wondering where and when he will
finally get to sing the song that once and for all sums up that complex,
road-weary life.
From "Sugar Baby":
I got my back to the sun 'cause the light is too intense.
I can see what everybody in the world is up against.
Can't turn back, you can't come back, sometimes we push too far
One day you'll open up your eyes and you'll see where we are
From "Po' Boy":
Workin' late on the main line, working like a devil,
The game is the same, it's just up on another level.
Po' boy, dressed in black,
Police at your back.
Aren't these the words of someone who has spent his entire life heading
away from what he left behind, only to find that he's still caught in a
paradox -- heading for a meta-version of the same conundrum he thought he'd
escaped? "The game is the same, it's just up on another level"?
> You may say Marcus' article really doesn't represent Dylan's
> intentions and that
> the fictional portrait Marcus creates is beside the point.
> Here is Wilde:
>
> "[This critcism] is critcism of the highest kind. It treats the work
> of art simply as a starting poiint for a new creation. It does not
> confine itself...to discovering the real intention of the artist and
> accepting that as final. And in this it is right, for the meaning of
> any beautiful created thing is, at least, as much in the soul of him
> who looks at it, as it was in his soul who wrought it. Nay, it is the
> beholder who lends to the beautiful thing its myraid meanings...and
> sets it in some new relation to the age, so that it becomes a vital
> portion of our lives...For when the work is finished it has, as it
> were,
> an independent life of its own, and may deliver a message far other
> than that which was put into its lips to say..."
In the words of Booth, "The judgments of the 'implied author' (e.g. the
author's persona) are the stuff of which truly great literature is made."
H.
robertandrews
>Can't Dylan's real-life evolution as an artist also be viewed as the result
of a constant tension among the personae he creates, his need to transcend
them, to leave them behind and move beyond them -- and the paradox always
lying before him: That he can only achieve that transcendence by creating
new art, and with it, yet more new personae to transcend?
You can't break the mold.
>In the words of Booth, "The judgments of the 'implied author' (e.g. the
author's persona) are the stuff of which truly great literature is made."
The Maltese Cuckoo?
the musicaner
one ought not read reviews, listen to the music. the music will set
you free, marcus and christagu and the rest will only tie up your mind
into knots. they are getting paid, they know which side of street is
the sunny side, specially old buzzards like marcus, christagu, marsh
and that lot. trust yourself and the music. and peter stone brown too,
hes into the music.
Howard Mirowitz
"robertandrews" <robert...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:lfIl7.4$7G6....@paloalto-snr1.gtei.net...
>
> You can't break the mold.
>
> >In the words of Booth, "The judgments of the 'implied author' (e.g. the
> author's persona) are the stuff of which truly great literature is made."
>
> The Maltese Cuckoo?
>
The stuff that dreams are made of. ;-]
H.
Howard Mirowitz
"robertandrews" <robert...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:lfIl7.4$7G6....@paloalto-snr1.gtei.net...
>
> You can't break the mold.
>
> >In the words of Booth, "The judgments of the 'implied author' (e.g. the
> author's persona) are the stuff of which truly great literature is made."
>
> The Maltese Cuckoo?
>
>
>
>
The stuff that dreams are made of. ;-]
H.
Stephen Walker
Seth Kulick <sku...@central.cis.upenn.edu> wrote in message
news:9n1mtn$r4r$1...@netnews.upenn.edu...
> the musicaner (musi...@my-deja.com) wrote:
>
>
> I still fail to understand how Marcus can go on and on like this
> but then dismiss Oh Mercy in a single sentence, as somebody else on
> rmd once said. Street Legal I can sort of understand - it's a pretty
> weird album, although it didn't deserve the trashing Marcus gave it.
> Same for Empire Burlesque, which if I remember right got an even
> nastier review from Marcus in the Village Voice.
Marcus is not even a Dylan head-from what I've read about him and heard from
him he only really liked the "listener friendly" albums like BOTT , & of
course, the folk/blues stuff/Basement tapes. He got into Bob again because
Bob went back to his roots with the albums GAIBTY and WGW in early 90s.
That's the kind of stuff ole Marcus digs and if Dylan's not playin' it or
alludin' to it Greil won't be likin' it.
Steve
ackme
> I think it's the kind of review that can redeem a county or two in New
> Jersey.
I read it last Sunday more or less by accident. I read the NYT about
five times a year. But there is was. I'm no afficionado, barely a
fan. Maybe more of an ex-lover! The last Dylan album I bought was
"Saved" which was a little scary, although I liked it for writing to.
I also loved Bob's work in "Natural Born Killers," even though someone
had to tell me (with an unbelieving look) that it was him when I
asked. I did see a Bob show at Boston Garden a long, long time ago.
In the mid seventies, I think.
So, imagine! For me, the Marcus review did two things: it got me to
run out and buy TOoM, and it made me want to hear L&T. I did not read
it as a review, I read it as a preview by someone who had already had
a chance to hear it, but who doesn't really know the ending (which, I
guess, will be the public reception), but who is very interested in
seeing where it will lead.
It brought me back. I seriously doubt that there is any naive,
unknowing public out there yearning for something new and interesting
who read the Marcus piece and were turned off to buying the cd. By
now, if you don't know Bob, no review will change that. And it
shouldn't. A great review of the guitar work (and, oh yes, I plowed
through each and every one of these posts) would only lead to a lot of
people being confused and pissed and probably never getting passed
that. Better to talk to us who are wondering what the heck he is up
to these days and where's he's been and what has he done for us
lately. Hell, it even got me to check out RMD! Well, nobody's
perfect.
But, what does it matter? Feed the hungry.