The story is told in My Back Pages. "Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."
Category: Music
How Joan Baez Got Politicized
David Hajdu, Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina, 2001, p. 147:
Dylan nestled his guitar on his lap and began strumming a C chord in three-quarter time. He repeated it until the small room hushed, then he slid into the opening of "With God on Our Side." By the end of the song's nine verses, Joan Baez was no longer indifferent to Bob Dylan or irked by his crush on her sister Mimi. She was startled by the music she heard and fascinated with the fact that the enigma in the filthy jeans had created it. "When I heard him sing 'With God on Our Side,' I took him seriously," said Joan. "I was bowled over. I never thought anything so powerful could come out of that little toad. It was devastating. 'With God on Our Side' is a very mature song. It's a beautiful song. When I hear that, it changed the way I thought of Bob. I realize that he was more mature than I thought. He even looked a little better." Social consciousness as an aphrodisiac? [. . .]
Dylan played a few more of his topical songs, including "The Death of Emmett Till," "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," and "Masters of War." They astounded Spoelstra, who had not kept up with his old Village cohort's development as a songwriter, and they seemed to overwhelm Baez. (In one interview, Baez recalled "The Death of Emmett Till," not "With God on Our Side," as the Dylan song that changed her view of him and prompted her to take up protest music; "I was basically a traditional folksinger," she said. "I was not 'political' at that time. When I heard 'Emmett Till' I was knocked out. It was my first political song. That song turned me into a political folksinger."
Saturday Night at the Oldies: There But For Fortune
Tonight's episode is in memory of my grade school classmate Vincent Regan who languishes in prison for his part in a brutal rape and murder. He belongs in prison for the rest of his life, and I don't believe that "there but for fortune go you or I." But fortune, genetics, and environment have some imponderable roles to play in our behavior. Thus the liberal point of view represented in tonight's selection deserves consideration.
Phil Ochs (1940-1976) was a major player in the '60s folk scene who died by his own hand in 1976. Nowadays he is perhaps best remembered as the author of "There But For Fortune." The haunting beauty of the song comes out best in this Joan Baez rendition. Here is a live clip of Ochs singing his song in 1967 at The Bitter End.
Show me the prison, show me the jail
Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale
And I'll show you young land with so many reasons why
That there but for fortune, go you or I
Show me the alley, show me the train
Show me the hobo who sleeps out in the rain
And I'll show you young man with so many reasons why
There but for fortune, go you or I — you or I.
Show me the whiskey stains on the floor
Show me the drunkard as he stumbles out the door
And I'll show you young land with so many reasons why
There but for fortune, go you or I — you or I.
Show me the country where the bombs had to fall
Show me the ruins of the buildings once so tall
And I'll show you young land with so many reasons why
That there but for fortune, go you and I – you and I.
What’s Wrong with Kitsch and Sentimentality?
April Stevens' and Nino Tempo's version of Deep Purple became a number one hit in 1963. I liked it when it first came out, and I've enjoyed it ever since. A while back I happened to hear it via Sirius satellite radio and was drawn into it like never before. But its lyrics, penned by Mitchell Parish, are pure sweet kitsch:
When the deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls
And the stars begin to twinkle in the night
Through the mist of a memory you wander back to me
Breathing my name with a sigh.In the still of the night once again I hold you tight
Though you're gone, your love lives on when moonlight beams
And as long as my heart will beat, sweet lover we'll always meet
Here in my deep purple dreams.
Kitsch is bad art, but what is the essence of kitsch, and why is it bad? Presumably it is sentimentality that makes kitsch kitsch, and it is this sentimentality that makes kitsch aesthetically and perhaps even morally dubious. One self-indulgently 'wallows' in a song like this, giving into its 'cheap' emotions. The emotions are 'false' and 'faked.' The melody and lyrics are formulaic and predictable, 'catchy.' The listener allows himself to be manipulated by the songwriter who is out to 'push the listener's buttons.' The aesthetic experience is not authentic but vicarious. And so on. Adorno would not approve.
There is great art and there is kitsch. I partake of both, enjoy both, and know the difference. What is wrong with a little kitsch in moderation? No, I don't collect Hummel figurines and my stoa is not carpeted with astroturf. What is sentimentality and what is wrong with it? There is a literature on this, but I've read almost none of it. Who has time? No job, no kids, no social entanglements — and still no time.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Some Christmas Tunes
Elvis Presley and Martina McBride, Blue Christmas. And can we call it Christmas until we've heard Porky Pig's version at least once? Or Cheech and Chong's Santa Claus and His Old Lady? Must Be Santa but can it be Dylan? Santa Claus is Coming to Town by the best of the YouTube amateurs, the amazing Fretkillr. Leon Redbone and Dr. John's Frosty the Snowman.
Remembering John Lennon
John Lennon was gunned down this night in 1980 by Mark David Chapman. I remember that night well: a student of mine called me in the middle of it to report the slaying. Lennon was my least favorite Beatle due to his silly utopianism, but this tune of his from the 1965 Rubber Soul album is a gem, and more than fit to remember him by.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: My Darling Clementine
Saw this 1946 movie once again last night. A heavily fictionalized version of the shootout at the O. K. Corral, it stars Victor Mature as Doc Holliday, Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp and Walter Brennan as Old Man Clanton. The Mexican cutie's name is 'Chihuahua.' They don't make 'em like this anymore.
Now enjoy the song from 1884 in both of its versions together with the lyrics. The second version features the oft-omitted last verse in which the singer, having lost his Clementine to a drowning, finds solace with her little sister.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: “Let’s Think About Livin'”
I'll buy you a beer if you can remember this 1960 crossover hit from Bob Luman (1937-1978). A period piece offering wry commentary on the music business of the day.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: “Greenback Dollar”
I can't find a YouTube clip of this old Hoyt Axton number by Axton himself, so give a listen to this version by Fret Killer, who gets my vote for King of the YouTube amateurs. Check out his version of "Uncle Pen" while you're at it.
How Roquentin Relieved His Nausea
By listening to this song. Art reveals pure ideality sans existence.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Donovan
I had forgotten how good these old songs from Donovan Leitch's initial folk phase sound, before he went 'psychedelic.' Catch the Wind. Colors. Some have noticed a similarity between Catch the Wind and Dylan's Chimes of Freedom (1964) which antedated it. I just now discovered this version of Chimes which is the best I've heard. It's a duet with a gal named Joan. But is it Baez or Osbourne? And that does sound like Al Kooper on organ.
Zombie Girl: But She’s Not There!
This Halloween Saturday Night at the Oldies features The Zombies, a 1960's British Invasion rock group that had a couple of smash singles before vanishing into the oblivion whence they sprang. Out and about the other day, surfing the FM band, I came across one of their hits, She's Not There. I have heard it countless times, and it is probably playing in your head right now, dear reader. (I apologize for the meme infestation.)
Suddenly, after all these years, the song assumed New Meaning, Deep Meaning. The Zombies were singing about a philosophical zombie! The refrain, "But she's not there" referred to the light (of consciousness) being out in the poor lass.
A Heideggerian can gloss the situation as follows. To be there is to be a case of Dasein, Da-Sein. The girl was vorhanden all right, and perhaps even zuhanden (as a tool for sexual gratification), aber sie war nicht da, nicht ein Fall vom Dasein. She was a Black Forest zombie. There was no 'there' there.
Rock Salt and Nails
Enjoy it before it is pulled. If I may wax pedantic, the jilted lover loads her shotgun with two sorts of stuff, not three: rock salt and nails, not rock, salt, and nails. Pedantry aside, a most haunting tune from the pen of Utah Phillips sung by the angel-voiced Joan Baez.
Oh the nights are so long/Lord sorry runs deep/And nothing is worse than a night without sleep/I walk out alone/I look at the sky/Too lonesome to sing, too empty to cry.
If the ladies was blackbirds and the ladies was thrushes/ I'd lie there for hours in the chilly cold marshes/ If the ladies was squirrels with high bushy tails/ I'd fill up my shotgun with rock salt and nails.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Tom Paxton
Continuing in the folkish vein, here is Tom Paxton's best known tune in a 1966 London performance. The Seekers' version is no slouch either.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Three Greenwich Village Folkies
Remember Dave van Ronk? I haven't heard his version of "Cocaine" in maybe 45 years. Enjoy it before it is pulled. Last Saturday I reminded you of Fred Neil. Here is another delightful tune of his, I've Got a Secret. Based loosely on Elizabeth Cotten's Shake Sugaree. And then there was a young cat who named himself after a Welsh poet, a callow youth who in his early days played guitar and harmonica much better than in later days and sang better too as you can hear in his versions of Cocaine and Rocks and Gravel. But the Zeitgeist chose the unlikely Jewish kid from Hibbing, Minnesota as its avatar, and you know the rest of the story