Radio Free Mike

a berlin blog

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

OK, I'm Back

I survived a gruelling Maennerwoche in Switzerland, where we slept on bunk beds and made fart jokes and drank like sailors and skiied a glacier without eating properly. Now I'm paying for it with some kind of disease. But this review of an underappreciated Dylan album, Street Legal, reminded me of long and cryptic songs I haven't listened to since college and convinced me to download them all from iTunes. The album's still brilliant. One formula for finding good new stuff is to think of an artist you like and look up the work that was panned or ignored at the time by most critics. This method will also lead you to Mr. Sammler's Planet, by Saul Bellow (if you like Bellow), and convince you to leave Ravelstein on the shelf, where it belongs.

Anyway, the Dylan album is full of songs that don't make sense. But they roam with incredible force through a country that by turns feels like America, ancient Palestine, and a Jungian tarot deck. What, for example, is anyone supposed to make of "Where Are You Tonight (Journey Through Dark Heat)"?

I left town at dawn
With Marcel and St. John,
Strong men belittled by doubt.
I couldn't tell her
What my private thoughts were
But she had some way of finding them out ...

There's a lion in the road, there's a demon escaped,
There's a million dreams gone, there's a landscape being raped,
As her beauty fades and I watch her undrape,
I won't, but then again, maybe I might.
Oh, if I could just find you tonight.

I fought with my twin
That enemy within
Til both of us fell by the way.
Horseplay and disease
Is killin me by degrees
While the law looks the other way.

Your partners in crime
Hit me up for nickels and dimes,
The guy you were lovin' couldn't stay clean.
It felt outa place,
My foot in his face
But he shoulda stayed where his money was green.

... There's a white diamond gloom
On the dark side of this room
And a pathway that leads up to the stars.
If you don't believe there's a price
For this sweet paradise,
Just remind me to show you the scars.

No idea. But it rocks.

posted by Michael Scott Moore | 11:46 PM

Comments:

"Horseplay and disease
Is killin me by degrees"

That'll be your Maennerwoche talkin'...
;)

# posted by

Bowleserised : 9:41 AM

Hey Ya - thanks for the tip on looking for discs and things that are panned... glad I'm not the only soul out there who likes "Street Legal" but you'll have to troll over the annotated Bob Dylan page to get any info about this track... no matter, it does rock, strangely so does the whole disc. The remaster is sweet as well, cleaned it up good.

# posted by

mahasamatman333 : 5:13 AM

Zeppelinstraße in Berlin is not named after Led Zeppelin ;-)
It is named after Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, the man who invented airships. He is a famous european person, like Johann Sebastian Bach.

# posted by

motleywolf : 7:28 PM

... Are you saying Led Zeppelin did _not_ consist of famous European people?

# posted by

Michael Scott Moore : 8:36 PM