tUmp #4
the Wailers – Rolling Stone
one of themusicologists favourite early Wailers cuts…a TOP ranking interpretation of Bob Dylan’s ‘Rolling Stone’ from the time when Ska was slowing down and making the transition into the Rocksteady (1965/66)….I’m getting bored of saying “yet another example of the Downbeat sound” but it is…
CoversWeek2 #3
(Solomon Burke – Maggies Farm)
bit later than expected on yesterday’s George Benson cut so I’m laying today’s slice of the covers pie down early…before I get sidetracked with my load. Cat still has my tongue a piece so without further delay hold Solomon Burke’s Rhythm & Blues version of Bob Dylan’s protest song. Especially poignant in the 21st Century as ‘Maggie’s Farm’ is well on the way to selling us into a desolate future full of debt, fear and loathing. Watch the ride, make sure you wear your seatbelt and brace yourself for the crash…heading our way sometime over the next 2/3 years.
SongsOfProtest&Freedom#2
(Max Romeo – Blowing In The Wind)
Generally speaking protest&freedom springs from the well of first hand experience concerning the trials and tribulations in question. Although, I hasten to add, not always as there is also a concept known as empathy whereby others can feel/appreciate the anguish and frustrations? I’ll be honest with you up until a few months ago this was a concept that I couldn’t accept but then it was explained to me in language I understood and subsequently I felt it.
Today’s cut is, for me, an example of this. A tune that many people know, (or at least have heard), that concerns a human’s right to freedom. The human beings in question are still judged in many ways by the colour of their skin and not the love in their hearts. It might not be as blatant these days but as with all discrimination it is rife. The point I am making here is that Bob Dylan, (the songwriter and original singer of this cut), was empathising.
It wasn’t his personal experience but still he ‘felt’ it and wanted to do what he could to highlight and make comment on the situation. Sam Cooke loved it and was almost upset that it wasn’t written by him.Accordingly ‘The Lion’ was inspired though and wrote one of THE most passionate ‘songs of freedom’ ‘A Change Is Going To Come’ which, if it hadn’t already been thrown down on themusicologist would most certainly have been in this theme.
This 1969 version is by Jamaica’s own Max Romeo who unfortunately is perhaps best known, (outside of Reggae circles), for the forgettable but, at least in the UK, popular early ‘Skinhead’ cut ‘Wet Dream’. He is MUCH better than that as witnessed by his output over the years.
Listen Tune
Live&Direct #6
(Jimi Hendrix Experience – Like A Rolling Stone Live)
Today’s cut features one of the best known and most talked about Cats in recorded musical history…Johnny Allen, (Jimi), Hendrix about whom much has been written and said. No need for themusicologist to bore you with facts and details about his life and times so I’m just going to lay his version of Bob Dylan’s famous song, (about Edie Sedgwick i do believe?), on you. Recorded live at Monterey in 1967. In a word…magic.
“Once upon a time you dressed so fine,
Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didnt you?,
People call, say, beware doll, youre bound to fall,
You thought they all were kiddin you,
You used to haha laugh about,
Everybody that was hangin out,
Look atcha, but now you dont talk so loud,
Now you dont seem so proud,
‘Bout having to be scrounging yeah your last meal,
How does it feel,
Oh how does it feel baby,
To be on your own,
??????????????????
Look atcha a complete unknown,
Like a rolling stone?,
Gone to the finest school all right, hahah miss lonely,
But you know you only used to get juiced in it,
Nobody here to taught you how to live out the streets,
And now you just gonna have to get used to it,
You say you never you never compromise,
With the mystery tramp, but now you got to realize,
He’s not selling any alibis,
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes,
And he says hey baby would you like ta to make a deal?
How does it feel baby,
How does it feel,
To be on your own,
No direction home,
A complete unknown,
Look atcha like a rolling stone,
Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people,
They all laugh and drinkin, thinkin that they huh got it made yeah
Exchanging all precious gifts and things but ah,
But you’d better take your diamond ring, I think you’d better,
you better pawn it babe,
Yes I know I missed a verse, don’t worry,
You used to be so amused,
At napoleon in rags and the sweet talk that he used,
Go to him now, he calls you, you cant refuse,
When you aint got nothing, you got nothing to lose,
Youre invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal,
How does it feel,
Oh how does it feel baby,
To be on your own,
With no direction home,
A complete unknown,
Look at ya like a rolling stone”.
12AngryMen #4 (alternativesoundtrack #3)
(Chuck Berry – Too Much Monkey Business)
today’s dialogue hears some of the jurors laying out the reasoning behind arriving at their guilty verdict and begins to give us an insight into them as people. One thing’s for sure, with the amount of top quality dialogue in this film it could turn into a long musical journey..not sure I have enough 1957 cuts in the vaults to cope so might have to throw a few from previous years.
the slice of musicology is from, some say, the King of Rock & Roll…none other than Charles Edward Anderson Berry. About whom John Lennon was quoted to have said
“If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.”
Taken from his first LP ‘After School Sessions’, (a favourite down Circus Street), released in, yep you guessed it, 1957. The song has been covered by Elvis Presley, The Beatles, The Yardbirds and The Kinks such was Chuck’s stature among musicians. If you listen to Bob Dylan’s ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ it’s almost the same song but with different lyrics.
nowordsjustmusic #1
(Will Greer Reading Woody Guthrie/Woody Guthrie – Do-Re-Mi)
(Bob Dylan – It’s Alright Ma I’m only bleeding)
house full of kids today, (easter holidays), so it’s an evening post..
hardcore social commentary from the man who needs no introduction.
must confess that themusicologist’s relationship to Mr Dylan had two periods..the early, (as a young child via my dad), and the second time round as an experimental 21 year old on the ‘bottom lips’. during that part of the journey this one in particular expanded my mind.
a lyrical and emotional tour de force that almost transports me back to me days wandering in a ‘diamond sky’
taken from the 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home..
Darkness at the break of noon,
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.
Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying.
Temptation’s page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover that you’d just be One more
person crying.
So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing.
As some warn victory some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred.
Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-coloured Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much Is really sacred.
While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have To stand naked.
An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it.
Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.
You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks
They really found you.
A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.
but though the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.
For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.
While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him.
While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in.
But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him.
Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn’t talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony.
While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer’s pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death’s honesty
Won’t fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes Must get lonely.
My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me?
And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only.
Lyrics by Bob Dylan 1965 Warner Bros. Inc Renewed 1993 Special Rider Music
coversweek .. day #4 (I Shall Be Released – Heptones)
“I see the light come shining from the west up to the east … anyday now, anyday now… I shall be released”
top ranking piece of Studio1 ‘ sufferers’ action from one of the great Jamaican vocal groups. Leroy Sibbles was also musical director, arranger, bass player, producer, (along with Sylvan Morris) and all round musicologist for the Brentford Road powerhouse after Jackie Mittoo had packed his bags for Canada in 1971.
the lyrics are courtesy of Bob Dylan who may or may not have been aware of this cover due to the non existent copyright laws on the island … but i’m sure he would have approved as the group certainly brought something new to the song.
coversweek .. day1
(Randy Crawford – Knocking On Heaven’s Door)
due to the popularity of themusicologists recent thematics, (ladiesweek/mansweek/duets/vocalgroups), as well as the personal pleasure gained by sharing such music it’s time to jump back into the saddle and throwdown a new theme.
coversweek .. alternative renditions of well known tunes …
most of the time I favour the original but on occasion an artist brings out something different in the tune and reaches new ground, as is the, (subjective), case with the seven pieces this week.
first up is a female vocalist who has already featured on themusicologist, (musicology #26 ), with a pucker rendition of a Bob Dylan song, (first of two Dylan covers), from the movie Pat Garret & Billy The Kid. themusicologist is a BIG fan of Dylan having grown up listening to the cat from ‘early out’ and I place him high up the learning tree as one o me ‘learning facilitators’ along with father Curtis, the Modfather, the Poet, Van Morrison and a few others so, without further delay ..
themusicologist 