Kicking Your Monday Off On A Mellow Note

A well-worn cliche in music is that what's not said or heard in a song can be as important as what's heard. A textbook version of this is Dylan's "Most of the Time."

I initially heard this one from one of the scores of Dylan "bootleg" releases (the excellent bootleg series that included his Oh Mercy/Time Out of Mind/Love and Theft period). But the song was familiar enough for some reason, and it was only after a bit of research that I discovered it was featured in a pivotal scene in High Fidelity, a movie that all music geeks should have in their collection.

Pay no mind to the slightly glossy video and production. The song itself is among Dylan's best, and unfortunately buried in one of his lesser albums (Oh Mercy). It's pure late-era Dylan. A woman wronged him. And you're hearing the voice of a man with a scarred heart.

Of course, according to the song, things are going OK.

"Most of the time I'm clear and focused all around

Most of the time I can keep both feet on the ground"

His resilience continues....

"I can handle I stumble upon / I don't even notice she gone

Most of the time"

Of course, the key is "most of the time."

His bitterness grows, but never in a wallowing self-pity tone. He even goes as far as to not give her a name.

"I can survive and I can endure

And I don't even think about her

Most of the time"

The "most of the time" is the stuff that tears you up. It's the reason Dylan spent a bit more time emphasizing "her" - adding a slight growl at the end. For true effect, go to the original recording from "Oh Mercy" - and let the final atmospherics by Daniel Lanois engulf you.

I got my back to the sun 'cause the light is too intense

Honestly, is there a better artist out there than Bob Dylan when it comes to delivering a great kiss-off to an ex, or even to someone you would have hoped to get to a stage that you could call him/her an ex?

Sure, you have the screamo champions out there, yelling at the top of their lungs about how a girl just stomped their heart into the ground. And for an older folk like me, it was Trent Reznor, singing about how he's now a "fading f*%*ing reminder of who I used to be" thanks to a woman in "Something I Can Never Have." And of course, if you're REALLY ticked off, your garden variety gangsta rap song will do for some quick catharsis.

But, to steal the cliche, time does heal wounds. And what would make a woman or man who wronged you angrier: Someone who is yelling and screaming in tears on the phone about how they ruined their life, or someone saying flatly, almost logically "You just kinda wasted my precious time..."

"Sugar Baby" is the second "epic" closer in Bob Dylan's phenomenal one-two punch (Time Out of Mind and Love And Theft) in the late '90s/early '00s. In "Highlands", the character summed up "the sun is beginning to shine on me, but it's not like the sun that used to be." On "Sugar Baby", the character has his back to the sun because "the light is too intense."

True, if they were sung by a lesser artist, critics wouldn't give a pass to a chorus like "Sugar baby get on down the road / you ain't got no brains nohow / you went years without me / 'might as well keep going now." But Dylan's grizzled, haunted voice, which sounds like wind whistling through the floorboards, packs a whallop.

Dylan's got bigger themes to tackle than just a breakup. Even if you're not a Dylan fan, I challenge anyone not to nod in agreement after a horrible day in their life when he says "every moment of existence seems like some dirty trick." He holds on to "dirty", giving it a bit of a growl. Then he flatly says "Happiness can come suddenly then leave just as quick."

Had a crap day? This song's for you.

Yes, he has a licence for that mustache

Tell Me A Story, Bob

No YouTube video for this one. Just a link to a girl reading "Highlands" like a poetry reading, and no offense to her, it doesn't do the song justice.

It's probably for the best. If you're a casual fan, you probably won't be clicking the link and listening to a boggling 16-minute epic. It's Bob Dylan's longest song. And if you are in any way a Bob Dylan fan, you can vouch that the 16-minutes flies by.

It does this by constantly looping a blues riff, which is done by an organ. The pacing's at a funeral pall pace. Like Nick Cave's "More News From Nowhere," the song is seen through the eyes of one person in a day where not much happens at all, and you can't stop listening to it - partly because of Dylan's masterful control of the song, and partly because the riff is so hypnotic.

In my AP class in high school, we dissected a poem by either T.S. Eliot or William Butler Yeats. It doesn't matter. The poem was seen through the eyes of someone who appeared to be at the sunset of his life, but our teacher challenged us to question whether it was an old man, or a twentysomething who is an "old soul."

No such ambiguity exists on "Highlands". The character is alone, and unfortunately, probably confined to a crappy apartment.

"I'm listening to Neil Young, I gotta turn up the sound / Someone's always yelling 'Turn it down.'"

After making a few musings on his life, he summons up the energy to go outside. And he is so detached, he can't tell if it's a holiday or not. Then he saunters down to a restaurant where he has one of the most memorable encounters with a waitress in rock. Once again, not much happens, but the delivery is absolutely arresting.

The waitress recognizes him as an artist and demands to have her picture drawn. The man makes a few sketches and hands it back. She throws it back at him, saying it doesn't look a thing like her. He responds "He wished it didn't look like her either." Finally, it ends with the waitress challenging the old man if he's ever read women authors.

“Well,” she says, “you just don’t seem like you do!”
I said, “You’re way wrong”
She says, “Which ones have you read then?” I say, “I read Erica Jong!”
She goes away for a minute
And I slide up out of my chair
I step outside back to the busy street but nobody’s going anywhere

The ending of the song is slightly cryptic "The sun is beginning to shine on me, but it's not like sun that used to be." He then says "The party's over / and there's less and less to say." But he resigns himself to the future ("I'll figure it out somehow").

If there was a time where I wish LaLa were back in business, it would be now. Just take my word for it. Track down this song by all means.

And then I'll be back with something much shorter. I need to get some Wire into the fold to bring my average song length back down to the five-minute range.

It's Getting Strange In Here...It Gets Stranger Every Year

As Scott has pointed out with his Lady Gaga selection, just because you may not like the artist, doesn't mean that artist can't do a good song. And what constitutes a good song? For me, I'll give a ton of leeway if the song has a great beat. And I'll also give a ton of slack if the song tells a story that's engaging (see Miranda Lambert).

Today's pick has both a great story and a great hook. Much like Bob Dylan's "Highlands," Nick Cave's "More News From Nowhere" seems like a modern odyssey, following a man's path that involves women who have broken his heart as well as the growing sense that the world has started to outpace him.

Throughout this journey, one mantra is repeated...

"And it's getting stranger here / It gets stranger every year..."

It wouldn't be a Nick Cave song unless some weirdness was involved. And weirdness abounds with an odd play on mythology midway through. As the shiftless wanderer makes his way through the women of his life, things get druggy.

"I turn another corner, I go down a corridor and I see this guy

Me must be about 100 foot tall and he only has one eye

He asks me for my autograph, I write nobody and then

I wrap myself in my woolly coat and blind him with my pen

'Cause someone must have put something in my drink

Everything's getting strange looking

Half the people have turned into squealing pigs / the other half are cooking"

The macabre humor continues later on -

"Here comes Alina with two black eyes /she's given herself a transfusion

She's filled herself with panda blood to avoid all the confusion."

Time is the one constant we can't escape. On "More News From Nowhere," time turns into a mythological beast. The song's ambition is huge, but Cave makes it work.

By the end of the song when Cave says "goodbye," you feel like you've been on an exhausting journey. Where exactly you were is anybody's guess, but the journey itself was an exhilarating one.