Category: Americana
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Not Dark Yet: Bob Dylan Turns 79 Today
He has been called "rock's greatest songwriter." A better description is "America's greatest writer of popular songs." Bar none. We can discuss the criteria later, and consider counterexamples. His earliest four or five albums are not in the rock genre. I'll permit quibbling about #5, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), but Bob Dylan (1962),…
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Thomas Merton on Henry Thoreau
Journals, vol. 4, p. 235, 8 August 1962: Thoreau's idleness was an incomparable gift and its fruits were blessings that America has unfortunately never learned to appreciate. Yet he made his gift, though it was not asked for. And he went his way. If he had followed the advice of his neighbors in Concord, America…
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Political Hatred: A Look Back at Nixon
Has any president of the United States been the object of deeper hatred than Donald Trump? Abraham Lincoln perhaps. But in recent decades only Richard Nixon comes close. Both Nixon and Trump elicit mindless rage, and for similar reasons. The elites hate both because they have no class. That's the short answer. For nuance we…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Kerouac Goes Home in October
Jack Kerouac quit the mortal coil 49 years ago tomorrow, securing his release from the samsaric wheel of the quivering meat conception, and the granting of his wish: The wheel of the quivering meat conception . . . . . . I wish I was free of that slaving meat wheel and safe in heaven…
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Happy Birthday, Bob
Bob Dylan turns 77 today. Scott Johnson offers two fine columns in celebration. Not Dark Yet Not Dark Yet, Cont'd Thanks, Bob, for all the music and all the memories, and for your wonderfully individual and self-reliant appropriation and celebration of Americana. It wouldn't have been the long strange trip it's been without you. May…
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Bob Dylan and the Devil at the Crossroads
Make of it what you will. Did Dylan sell his soul to the devil for name and fame? As a Dylan aficionado since the early '60s, I can tell you that Dylan is never quite straight in an interview. He is a story-teller and shape-shifter. He is a legend in his own mind, but unlike…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Kerouac Goes Home in October
Jack Kerouac quit the mortal coil 48 years ago today, securing his release from the samsaric wheel of the quivering meat conception, and the granting of his wish: The wheel of the quivering meat conception . . . . . . I wish I was free of that slaving meat wheel and safe in heaven…
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Camille Paglia on Hugh Hefner
Here: Hugh Hefner absolutely revolutionized the persona of the American male. In the post-World War II era, men's magazines were about hunting and fishing or the military, or they were like Esquire, erotic magazines with a kind of European flair. Hefner reimagined the American male as a connoisseur in the continental manner, a man who enjoyed…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Water High, Wide, Dirty, Troubled, and Moody
In Dispatch from Houston, our friend Patrick Kurp of Anecdotal Evidence reports: Power out. Car flooded. Books dry. So all is well. But I don't reckon Dean Martin will be returning to Houston for a spell even if he could, he being dead and all. Not to make light of the suffering of those sorely…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: ‘The King’ Dead Forty Years
Elvis Presley died on 16 August 1977, 40 years ago. We can't let this weekend pass without a few tunes in commemoration. First a couple of 'Italian' numbers modeled, respectively, on O Sole Mio and Torna a Surriento: It's Now or Never Surrender Continuing in the romantic vein: Can't Help Falling in Love. A version…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Monterey Pop Festival, June 16-18, 1967
It transpired 50 summers ago, this June, the grand daddy of rock festivals, two years before Woodstock, in what became known as the Summer of Love. Your humble correspondent was on the scene. Some high school friends and I drove up from Los Angeles along Pacific Coast Highway. I can still call up olfactory memories of…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: ‘Spengler’ on Dylan
In mid-October, I wrote, This brings me to Bob Dylan who was recently awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature. Now I've been a Dylan fan from the early '60s. In the '60s I was more than a fan; I was a fanatic who would brook no criticism of his hero. And I still maintain…
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Bob Dylan on Moby Dick
Bob Dylan finally gave his Nobel Prize for Literature lecture. I'm impressed. Besides his musical he mentions his literary influences. He cites many of the books I read as assigned readings in high school, books he claims to have read as assigned readings in grammar school! I'm talking about some serious tomes: Moby Dick, Ivanhoe,…
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Not Dark Yet: Bob Dylan Turns 76 Today
He has been called "rock's greatest songwriter." A better description is "America's greatest writer of popular songs." Bar none. We can discuss the criteria later, and consider counterexamples. Maybe this Saturday night. His earliest four or five albums are not in the rock genre. I'll permit quibbling about #5, Bringing It All Back Home…
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Stickin’ it to the Man
Check out this Harley-Davidson promotional video. A celebration of individuality by people who dress the same, ride the same make of motorcycle, and chant in unison. "Some of us believe in the Man Upstairs, but all of us believe in stickin' it to the Man Down Here." But without the Man Down Here there would…