Workin' On Danny's Farm

No, I wasn't out plowing the back 40 (square feet) today. And yes I swore I was finished with the whole LeBron thing, but silly me, I neglected to take into account that Jesse Jackson hadn't yet chimed in on the whole unfortunate episode. Until now, that is. Read here Jackson's comments about Cavs' owner Dan Gilbert's owner-slave mentality regarding James. As if this whole thing couldn't get more absurd. But I must say, Gilbert's comments made me wince, and I have to admit Jackson's got a point when he talks about Gilbert having to back up his claims about LeBron quitting in those playoff games. I guess LeBron's been too busy dancing in Miami and getting booed at Melo's wedding in NYC to respond to Gilbert's assertions. Infantile, all of it. Or maybe I just wanted an excuse to offer you this killer cover of Dylan's "Maggie's Farm" by Solomon Burke.

Solomon Burke-Maggie's Farm

Emily and Josh

All the best on your wedding day, Emily and Josh. Can't wait for the party.

Mick McAuley and Winifred Horan-Make You Feel My Love

Happy Elvis Eve

Yes, tomorrow's the big day--Elvis Presley's 75th birthday! And wasn't he such a cute little boy?

Some of my favorite Elvis arcana from Peter Guralnick's great two volume bio, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love: In 1957, when Elvis was first making movies in Hollywood, he invited legendary Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips to visit him. Phillips had been the first one to play Elvis on the radio. In Hollywood, Elvis took Dewey around the soundstages and introduced him to Yul Brynner. Dewey said to Yul, "You're a short little mother, aren't you?"

In the mid-60s (while "the Jester" was "stealing his thorny crown"), Elvis was fond of saying, "My mouth feels like Bob Dylan's been sleeping in it." Though listen below to how Elvis concludes his impromtu version of Bob's "I Shall Be Released," by saying, "Dylan," with what I hear as respect and maybe even some awe or jealousy.

While Elvis was preparing his famous "comeback" TV special in 1968, the producer, Steve Binder stood with him outside the studio on Sunset strip. Supposedly none of the passersby took any notice of Elvis. Maybe that was when he decided to don the leather suit.

More Elvis tomorrow.

Elvis Presley-I Shall Be Released (informal recording)

His Name Was Leon, Or Barlow

The mind moves in weird ways. One minute I was thinking about how I'm getting old, based on the evidence that the most spam I get is from the AARP and that today, unironically, I actually used the phrase, "the proof is in the pudding." Next thing I know my mind is all over the movie Big Bad Love. Didn't see it? Most people didn't, I'm afraid, but it's wonderful. Right now it's my favorite movie of the decade, and seeing that I'm not in the mood to join the blog horde and start listing my favorite movies, CDs, books, etc. of the decade, this spontaneous shout-out to the great Arliss Howard (writer, director, star) will have to suffice for my decade's summing up of the movie scene. In an hour, I might remember another gem I enjoyed as much as this one, but right now I'm sticking with this. It's surreal, dark, funny, twisted--but most of all, pretty genuine. But you'll have to watch it for yourself to decide; the proof is in the viewing.



R.L. Burnside-Everything Is Broken

Paraskevidekatriaphobia, anyone?

Yes, not to be confused with triskaidekaphobia (the fear of the number 13), paraskevidekatriaphobia is the fear of Friday the 13th (although it seems to me by the time you manage to pronounce the word correctly, it will probably be Saturday the 14th or maybe even Sunday the 15th). I've only met one person in my life who suffered from paraskevidekatriaphobia, so I thought I'd take the opportunity of the date to tell you the story.

Coincidentally, the story takes place on this very date, November 13, in the year 1998, which also happened to be a Friday. I was settling down for my usual patty melt in Daffy's Bar & Grill, on the outskirts of Cleveland, waiting for the night's entertainment, Seether, a punk tribute band to the music of Pete Seeger, to take the stage when a disheveled guy walks in wearing black jeans and a dark gray anorak. He sits down unassumingly at the bar a few stools away from me and orders a chocolate milk and wheat toast. Nothing seemed odd until he called after Duffy (Daffy's twin brother who was minding the B&G because it was Friday evening and Daffy, who had converted to Judaism a few years prior, was home observing Shabbat), "And burn that toast good."

Can't be, I thought. Never in a million years. But that voice. I tried to look over nonchalantly and get a look at what just could be that famous profile, but the hood obscured even the nose. Well, I believe, I said to myself, and if nothing else I can tell the story for the rest of my life about how I sat three stools away from the man himself and quietly ate my patty melt as he drank chocolate milk and ate burnt wheat toast. And the toast, when it arrived, was very burnt. Smoking, even. "Hey man, you're an artist." Bingo. The way he said the word artist, the first syllable aggressive like a pistol shot, the second abandoned--it could be nobody else. Bob Dylan.

I'd rehearsed this moment in my dreams for years. I'd simply say, no introduction or anything, "Hey Bob, how important is finding the appropriate hat?"

Well, my courage was at best half-mustered when all of a sudden he turned to me, chocolate mustache beneath that nose and a well-gnawed burnt crust in his hands (it was Bob Dylan all right) and said, "Hey man, are you from around here?"

"Yes, Bob, I am." I felt there was no need to pretend I didn't know him.

"Man I been walking around all day, trying to find the place Alan Freed lived in when he lived here. Not my lucky day." He shook his head and gulped the last of the chocolate milk.

"Friday the thirteenth, what did you expect, Bob?" I had no clue where Alan Freed had lived when he lived here, but I had Bob Dylan, for the moment, hanging on my answer, so I wasn't going to make it easy for him.

"No," dragging the word out and running his crumb-laden fingers into the hood and through his famous hair, "shit." He burped then. "No wonder. I thought maybe it was Wednesday the 15th or something. Paraskevidekatriaphobia, man. I got it bad. Hey man," calling to Duffy, "get me something, anything, with alcohol in it."

"Tell me about it, Bob," I said, moving over to the stool next to him (not an "I know exactly what you mean" tell me about it, but an "I'm here, I will listen, unburden yourself" tell me all about it; hell, Blood On The Tracks alone had gotten me through at least 113 dark nights of the soul by then, I owed it to the man).

"In the wee hours of Friday morning, December 13th, 1963, I drifted off to sleep, and maybe it was the Beaujolais, but I had a helluva dream, my thirteenth, don't you know. A flat out nightmare. I was in a parlor somewhere in upstate New York, 1800s, and who was talking to me but Millard Fillmore, the former president of the United States. The thirteenth president, only because the twelfth, Zachary Taylor, had died of gastroenteritis. I mean, who doesn't get gastroenteritis just listening to the Eagles, but you don't die from it, man. Anyway, old Millard was retired by then, married an heiress, nothing to do but find Buffalo University, and he's bald, talking to me. Telling me all about his times with the Know-Nothing Party. Well, he wasn't all bald, he had a few hairs combed over across his head, you know? Like a bar code. Anyway, all of a sudden, one of the hairs, the thirteenth from the front, of course, stands up from his head and kind of points at me, like it's pointing a finger, and then the hair turns into some Texas lawyer named Wade from the present day, 1963, and he's pointing fingers and telling me I'm too young to know anything. Tells me I don't know shit. Man, I woke up sweating and I don't think I slept again for two nights. And, well, you know, that night, Tom Paine and all. Paraskevidekatriaphobia."

He hung his head over the bar, buried his hands deep into the anorak, and just shook his head. Feeling buoyed by the trust he showed in me for knowing the arcana of his life, I took my left arm, patted him gently on the back and said, "Midnight's approaching, Bob. Saturday the fourteenth is nigh."

"Thanks, man."

And so we drank away the rest of the night knocking back Chocolate Russians, ignoring Seether, and telling each other knock-knock jokes. Just after midnight Bob turned to me and said, "Man I ain't stupid. I know it's not Wednesday the fifteenth. But that's the only way, one, two, three times a year, whatever, I can cope."

"I understand, Bob."

"And goddamnit, you know who Wade was?"

"Tell me, Bob."

"The guy who prosecuted Jack Ruby for killing Oswald. And the Wade in Roe versus. Put a couple innocent people in jail, I think, too."

"It's a small world, Bob."

"Yeah, screw Alan Freed." With that he pulled out a crumpled c-note from his jeans, put it on the bar and said, "The night's on me. I owe you so much more, though." Then he stood up.

"No problem, Bob. Sweet dreams."

"The best kind, man. I'm up to four thousand something umpteen by now."


Behind the Curtain:

I swear this is how it happened. I'm puttering around this afternoon, trying to think up something to write for Friday the 13th. For whatever reasons, my brain fixates on the story of a man's thirteenth strand of combed-over hair. And I get the notion of finding out who the Wade in Roe v. Wade is and working him into the story. I also think of telling the story of Bob Dylan's 13th dream (of course there are the songs "Bob Dylan's Dream" [1962] and "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" [1965], so I figure there's got to be a 13th dream, somewhere in 1963). Then I start the research, find out Millard Fillmore was the 13th president (and Zach Taylor did die of gastroenteritis), there's actually a word for fear of Friday the 13th, and all about Henry Wade. Now I've got the ingredients. My last thought is to see if I can find out what Fridays in 1963 fell on the 13th. Two seconds later on Google I'm looking at a calendar for 1963. I see a Friday the 13th in December, and then, oh my God, I'm thinking. Could that have been the date? Run upstairs to find my Bob Dylan day-by-day book (you mean your house doesn't own one?) and hot damn, there it is, the very day!

Long story short: On December 13, 1963, Dylan received the Tom Paine award given by the Emergency Civil Liberties Committe at its annual Bill of Rights dinner. As Clinton Heylin tells it, Dylan, 22 at the time, was a bit uncomfortable and supposedly drank heavily. In his speech, he insulted the audience, among other things for their lack of hair, and infamously said he could sympathize with Lee Harvey Oswald, who of course three weeks earlier had killed JFK. Well, there was a bit of an uproar, and Dylan, "profoundly embarrassed by his behavior" (in Heylin's words), later wrote an apology and offered to reimburse the committee for any loss in donations they suffered.

Mesmerized by finding out all this happened on a Friday the 13th, and somehow connecting (a wee bit only, perhaps) with baldness and Wade, I Googled a bit more and found this amazing page, with a transcript of Dylan's remarks that night (I think Heylin is right; drink seems to have gotten the best of Bob that night), a letter from the committee's head defending the choice of Bob as recipient of the award, and--new to my eyes--Bob's typescript of the rather fascinating letter of explanation/apology. Great reading.

Finally, I recall watching the Dylan documentary No Direction Home a few years ago and being somewhat amazed, even a bit disappointed, that years later, Bob seems to have dismissed his own embarrassment (which is pretty obvious to me in his letter) and now regards the incident as a kind of proud, standing up to the establishment moment. Alas, I searched in vain for the clip from the documentary that talks about the episode, but I couldn't find one. Anyway, more lattice of coincidence stuff. Happy 13th.

Marley's Ghost-Bob Dylan's Dream

Crock Me Up

The other night my landlord, out of the blue, asked me, "Can I have some of your country crock?" I hesitated, thinking he had mistaken me for some backwoods bumpkin full of bunk. I tried desperately to come up with some pithy yarn, like, "Oh I've been milking pure chocolate milk from my cow Henry for seventeen years now." But then it dawned on me: we share a refrigerator and, speaking of things dairy, he just wanted some of my Country Crock vegetable oil spread (I call it butter, whether or not I believe it is).

Got me thinking about the word crock, though. While I'm sure some of my acquaintances would say I'm completely familiar with the word crock, it isn't a word I use much in everyday speech. Balderdash or the less pedantic bullshit being my preferred nomenclature for something that doesn't smell right. But I have a good friend who's always using the phrase, "that's a crock of baloney," most of the time not directed at me (I can't stand baloney/b-o-l-o-g-n-a, though come to think of it, it might be more tolerable to my taste buds with a healthy Country Crock lathering). Anyway, thanks to her, I have developed a fondness for the word crock.

Until the other night, though, I always thought of crock in very general, certainly not geographic, terms. I have spent precious little time of my life in a country/rural setting, so the chocolate milk cow is the best country crock I can come up with, but I'm a child of and life-long denizen of suburbia, so I think I'm extremely qualified to expound on suburban crock. And so, here are just a few of the more blatant instances of suburban crock I have overheard in my lifetime. See how many you're guilty of.

"I clean my garage once a month."

"George constructed our deck out of the kids' used Popsicle sticks."

"Billy's upstairs doing his homework."

"I've never seen that Little League ump make a bad call."

"We love hosting our book club almost as much as we love reading everyone else's selections."

"These fake-wood-sided station wagons will never go out of style."

"I didn't go near that keg at the block party, dad, I swear."

"My fifty-five minute one-way commute is the perfect time to do some meditating."

"Really? My gosh, I thought it was a real Christmas tree."

"I love what you've done with the yard."

"Our daughter Alicia's terrified of needles. You'll never see a tattoo on her."

"With that Sears pre-fab shed in the backyard, I feel like we're living in the country."

"Country Crock? No, but you can have some of this butter I churned myself down in my workroom."

Joe Cocker-Dear Landlord

Tonight: Follow The Music

Tonight: Follow the music. That's how my horoscope concluded today. Well...all right. Outside of bagpipes, which I tend to go in the opposite direction of, and anyone walking out of the 1980s with a boombox and an "awesome" Dead tape he wants to play for me, I'll come following the music, any jingle jangle time of day or night (especially if you've got an "E" harmonica, Any-body).

About a year or so ago I had a great idea for a poem bringing together some of the many magical, mystical, mythical places in popular songs. Coupled with one of my favorite lines from Melville's Moby-Dick, the poem had epic written all over it. Well, this ain't no epic. I never really liked how this came out, but it's a start, maybe. If nothing more, all you musical trainspotters can tally up all the allusions and direct references; best answer/comment will receive a musical gift from yours truly. Anyway, you could do a lot worse than following the music.

How to Get to the Truest Places in Popular Song Without a Map

It’s not on any map; the truest places never are.
Herman Melville

Put your cat clothes on
And ride the summer wind west
On Thunder Road out of town
But don’t count the cars on
The New Jersey turnpike
Rather
Catch the number 12 bus
In the parking lot of the tree museum and
Fall asleep in Brooklyn
And don’t wake until you reach
The Tecumseh Valley between
The Sugar and Big Rock Candy Mountains.
Once there, wade across Cripple Creek
To the banks of the Ohio
Walk a mile in somebody else’s shoes
Then hop the Friendship Train
Riding the blinds past Folsom Prison
Parchman Farm, Maggie’s Farm, Tupelo, Ipanema
Through the eternal echoes of whippoorwills
And steel hammers
Chat with the three admirable men
Until you reach the coast
Then ride a pony onto a yacht
And Sail Away all the way to Ta hi ti
Where you’ll catch a wave to Caledonia.
Refresh yourself at the Dew Drop Inn
Before mounting a white bicycle
Acoustic variety,
And peddle your way past all
The fat-bottomed girls
Till you reach Fujiyama
(though do call ahead to tell
your Big Mama you’ll be rollin’ in).
After tossin’ and turnin’ and
Rockin’ and rollin’
On her big brass bed
Slip away at dawn
And in the early morning rain
Leave on a jet plane
Bound to some rain grey town
Where, upon disembarking,
Dis Harry in his taxi
And settle into a long black limousine and
Tell the driver the name of the place is
I Like It Like That
Adding that if he combs his hair right
And wears tighter pants, he could be a star.
Once in da club doff your hat
To the gin-soaked barroom queen
And imbibe your Coca-Cola flavored champagne
And when you eventually get bounced like a red rubber ball
Run up the nearest hill and flag a ride
On a magic carpet to the sea
Where you’ll take the plunge
Way down below the ocean
And come out the other side stomping wet in Bron-Yr-Aur.
Now you’re making progress.
Across the Village Green and just over Muswell Hill
You’ll spy a cathouse:
Put on some new blue jeans and hi-heel sneakers
And knock three times and ask for
Madam Roux.
She’ll tell you to take a hike
Down country roads to the crossroads
Just past the hedgerow with a bustle
Take a left (not a right, you don’t want to
Go to Chelsea) a left on Highway 61
And start crawling past the mansion on the hill
And the chicken shack with the pink Cadillacs out back
And the shotgun shack and the house of blue lights and
The Surf Ballroom, Belzoni’s sawmill,
The Piss Factory, Lodi, Hammersmith Palais,
The charred pyre at Joshua Tree,
Trenchtown and Rockaway Beach.
When you can finally see the Las Vegas Hilton
In the misty mountain fog,
Take the next right onto Cyprus Avenue
Where, at the dark end of the street,
`Neath the lone apple suckling tree,
You’ll find me lazing,
Waiting for you,
My I-Pod on random eternally.

Ken Boothe-Mr. Tambourine Man

Rolf Ableiter & Band-Shelter From The Storm

Spit Out Your Gum

"Did you just spit?"

"Yeah, I love to spit."

She was the most beautiful tomboy I've ever known, and she had just expectorated a rather throaty gob on the sidewalk right next to the main doors of the venerable all-girls private school where I taught and she learned. Hundreds of girls in requisite plaid skirts were jamming the narrow entrance-way after a routine fire drill when I first heard then saw the spit.

It truly was "the spit" of my time at that school. After years of teaching at a similarly venerable all-boys school where there was "a spit" about every 90 seconds (so much so that the head maintenance guy would inform faculty meetings about the astronomical costs of spit removal around campus), including the rite of passage attempt to spit down six flights of steps and hit bottom rather than a banister (oh the demerits meted out for such salivary, phlegmatic infractions), my time at the girls school was happily spit-free, until that glorious moment when that particular girl let go.

Her spit shocked me, but her response delighted me. Instead of some blatant quick lie, "No, I didn't just spit," or some long-winded excuse about asthma, bronchitis, or accidentally inhaling a mosquito, the girl's no-shame, matter-of-fact, nearly proud declaration or her love of spitting just made me chuckle, and maybe shake my head a bit (no demerit was issued).

Shaking not in any "kids these days" impotent dismissal, but shaking in an almost awed respect for her honesty and, most important, her wisdom. Because really, who doesn't love to spit? I had thought it was just a guy thing, but as in so many other ways at that school, the girls--in this case, the girl--taught me a thing or two about the ways of the world. Yes, hopefully we all do move on from the twelve-year-old boy "I spit, therefore I am" ethos, but still, a good spit when needed, or in the right situation, just for the hell of it, is wholly satisfying.

But yes, gum. The girls might not have spit spit, but they sure chewed a helluva lot of gum, which under my vigilant watch entailed a lot of spitting out of gum. I'm sure by the time I taught girls, the boys had taught me the conniving trick of walking to the wastebasket and very demonstratively pulling out a long string of gum, snapping it off, then loudly dropping the gum into the trash--all the better to distract the teacher from the fact that there was still a good-sized hunk of gum in the offender's mouth. "All of it, Sara or Maya or Sarah or Eva or Marcella or whoever."

Some of them were armed with statistics about chewing gum and burning calories, others pleaded the age-old girls-school lament about being "so stressed out." Others just smiled, disposed of the gum, and I'm sure were chewing a fresh piece thirty seconds later.

When chaperoning a dance, it was easy to tell the kids you had to keep an eye on: the ones sloppily chewing a wad of gum.

One of my childhood friends, Tom, and I developed a ritual around the age of ten, when bubblegum chewing was a quasi-religious experience. After an hour or two of gnashing gum and replenishing the wad with fresh pieces every so often, one of us would pull out the well-masticated slab of whitened gunk and announce proudly, "Man, I chewed the HECK out of that gum." To this day, I can't get rid of a piece of gum without looking at it and saying softly, "Man, I chewed the HECK out of that gum."

But mainly for the great line in Bob (Uncle Bob) Dylan's "4th Time Around," his devastating parody of John Lennon's "Norwegian Wood." "Your words are not clear/You better spit out your gum."



Bob Dylan-4th Time Around

Robyn Hitchcock-4th Time Around

Chris Whitley-4th Time Around

Little Bit Of Rain

It's raining a bit this morning, a slow chilly rain. Is this the chilliest it's been in the daylight in three months? It feels good, though, and looks better. Autumn good-naturedly punching us in the upper arm. Hello, it's me. A day to get back to reading, over-nap, pick your fantasy football team, shed some tears in empathy. Or just a day to sit on the roof-protected porch and watch and listen.

If I were a true Dylan fanatic I could tell you precisely how many of Bob's songs mention rain in some way. The best I can guesstimate, though, is lots.

I read in the paper yesterday that statistically Sunday is the rainiest day of the week. Could be. We all know Mother Nature can be one ironic shrew. My daily environmental hypotheses go like this: Sunday--the day you're most likely to get your car shat upon by a bird; Monday--the day more leaves fall off trees than any other day; Tuesday--the day most cracks in pavement form; Wednesday--the day more squirrels get hit by cars than any other day; Thursday--skunks are smelliest; Friday--cloud formations look most like ex-lovers; Saturday--the day more people say, "We could use a little rain 'round these parts" than any other day.

Has Tom Waits ever sung "A Little Rain" in New Orleans?

Are umbrellas more trouble than they're worth? How many good downpours does the average umbrella protect you from before it's lost, stolen, broken? My guess is less than a dozen.

Is there a more exuberant weather song than the Meat Puppets' "Look At The Rain"? Has any singer made you feel the rain as acutely as Fred Neil?

Fred Neil-Little Bit of Rain
Meat Puppets-Look At The Rain
The Kennedys-A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

Gotta Serve, Somebody

Forty years ago today, August 29, 1969, the coolest game in the history of tennis took place (at least until September 25, 1977, when a rather mixed up game of mixed doubles was contested between Martina Navratilova, Elton John, Billie Jean King, and Renee Richards, nee Raskind). On that date, in what Clinton Heylin refers to as a “friendly game,” Bob Dylan, John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and members of The Band played some serve and volley at Forelands Farm on the Isle of Wight. Dylan and The Band were there to play the Isle of Wight Festival on the 31st, and four-fifths of the Beatles (Yoko dragged along the racquets) had helicoptered in for the day.

After listening to an acetate of the Beatles' soon-to-be-released Abbey Road album, shorts were donned and the court at Forelands was overtaken by rock royalty (The Band members, sans Levon, who was doing some weeding around the farm, “got next”). Bob chose George as his partner and the two picked the east court. Yoko sat cross-legged on the west court's baseline just beyond the doubles alley. After some erant volleying (it was tacitly made clear that Ringo would fetch any balls hit over the fence), the match commenced, with the losers having to promise to cover a Neil Diamond song on some future recording project. Dylan served first, and despite his new pudginess, proved rather athletic, especially when approaching the net. George didn't move much, but seemed to get to everything hit near him. Ringo surprised all with a smooth backhand, but he was soon winded from chasing after Lennon's terribly erratic ground strokes that often flew high and wide over the fence.

Upon Lennon's turn to serve, he deferred, telling Ringo to handle the heavy lifting. Bob, clinging to a 2-1 advantage and spooked by the thought of having to record “Cherry, Cherry” taunted John by saying, not so playfully, “You might be a Beatle, but you still gotta serve.”

“Who are you, the USLTA?” John spat back and proceeded to forego the overhead method and instead bounced the ball and hit a lame serve over the net to Bob, who pounced with a wicked outside-in shot to Lennon's backhand.

“Out!” Lennon shouted as the ball bounced over the baseline.

“Bullshit!” Bob roared.

“Mommy,” Lennon casually turned to Ono. “In or out?”

“Neither,” Yoko replied definitively.

“Point to server. Fifteen me, all you got is love, luv.”

“What the—“ Bob looked at George, who rolled his eyes slightly and shrugged his shoulders. Instantly, Bob understood the imminent fracturing of the Fab Four. Unnerved, Bob committed a few unforced errors and somehow Lennon held serve, as did everyone until Lennon's turn again when he started jonesing and doubled faulted the game. Dylan, by now hearing Lennon singing “I Am, I Said” a full eighteen months before it would be written, served out the match. George gave his partner a congratulatory bow, modestly downplayed his own skills, and said, “Bob, if not for you, I'd be learning the chords of 'Crunchy Granola Suite' tonight.”

As the players walked off the court and Robbie Robertson was seen to be showing Richard Manuel which side of the racket was top and which bottom, Bob mumbled to no one in particular, “I really dig that 'bang bang hammer' song. I'll have to go to Nashville and put some strings on it and some chick back-up singers.”

John elbowed Ringo, “Nob's off his boggin.”



Aaron Neville-Gotta Serve Somebody