Chronicles

I read a bunch of books on vacation.  They are listed on the right column of this blog.

One of the books was Bob Dylan’s Chronicles.

I can’t recommend it really.  It seems like he sat down one day and starting writing and when he was done, he published it.  Total stream of consciousness.  The Gotham Gal called it “one long run-on sentence”.

But there was some great stuff in there.  Jackson will dig the stuff about the work Bob did with Daniel Lanois in New Orleans making Oh Mercy.  It was a great illustration of the tension that exists between the producer and the artist.

The part I liked was where he stitched together all of his influences.  Music is like open source.  Whose code did Bob take and extend to create his own code?

Well it was Woody Guthrie first and foremost.  The stuff about Bob going out to the convalescent home in NJ where Woody was dying and play Woody his old songs was really touching. I am going to get some Woody Guthrie recordings.  I have always loved his songs and I don’t own any of them.

But there was also Robert Johnson.  And Dave Von Ronk.  And Jack Elliott.  Even Bertolt Brecht.

And from that came Bob Dylan.  An original.  And a genius.  Who has inspired a ton of musicians in turn.

Comments

[Tony Alva]

I've been really diggin' on Mississippi John Hurt lately thanks to Jason Chervokas and have been alternately playing both his most popular greatest hits package (a must have), and a John Hurt tribute album that my favorite folk artist Peter Case produced called Avolon Blues (I have two discs coming your way of Pete's music. Look for them when you get home). I was really liking a tune called Frankie & Albert. I was playing it on guitar a lot the last couple of nights and went down stairs to find the lyrics out on the web. The first Google hit I got was for a version that Bob Dylan played (different key to the original). I'm not a Dylan expert and have not heard it. Has anyone else heard this version of this song by Bob?

[Steve]

My guess is that only a Dylan fan would pick this up anyway. Despite it being a long run-on sentence there is some terrific material there. The trouble is that it's a book, not an album. If it were a CD you'd give it a few listens before making a judgement. As a book, you read it once and that's it. If you haven't listened to them in a while, try Street Legal and Desire. Blood on the Tracks is impossible to follow, but these are still great LPs.

[Jason Chervokas]

I loved the Dylan book, not only because I'm a Dylan fan and I liked finding out things that were in his head, but as a writer I liked it.

I think Dylan is the most influential writer in English in the last 30 years--not songwriter, but writer. I think his eliptical condensing of language, his manner of injecting the rhythm of poetry into prose, and his borrowings from the deep wellspring of American folk (I don't just mean folk music) imagery have created an expressive language that is uniquely American and profoundly influential.

The book has an accidental feel--in part becuase it started as liner notes for reissue of Oh Mercy and New Morning but became something else--and in part because accidental discovery perhaps even through improvisation is central to Dylan's writing style. It's a borrowing from Jack Kerouac--the notion of spontaneous bop prosody.

And that long line thing has been a long standing trad. in American lit at least back to Whitman and down through Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Kerouac, all of whom I hear in Dylan.

But I find the accidental, or seemingly accidental, jumbling of time and place--not just of language--in the book one of the unusual things that give it an exciting quality.

Oh, and Tony-- that Dylan Frankie & Albert must be on one of those two records of old songs Dylan cut in the late 80s/early 90s/ I only have one of 'em here and F&A isn't on it. Dylan always talks about the direct transmission of tradition, the fact that as a kid, because of the blues/folk revival he got to actually watch/play with/learn from the likes of Hurt, Lonnie Johnson, Josh White, directly. Now that's something.

[jackson]

I'm totally diggin' it, Bob is a gas, I think too many people expect some sort of life changing experience from him, something he goes on and on about in his book, it's what he's been running from since 68. If you take it at face value, it's a very entertaining book. Quite funny in his way.

[Tom W.]

I also think the book is brilliantly written and that its "accidental" feel is entirely constructed and created with great art.