Expecting Rain

ಠ_ಠ

Well, it's not just Bob. Have you ever heard anyone write a song about Marie Curie-Sklodowska?

Not yet, come to think of it. Somebody wrote a song about Rita May once.
Yet I would like to know why that is.

Yes, you have the odd song about a strong women here and there. Lennon's "She's a Friend of Dorothy's" and "Angela" are such examples. But both are relatively obscure, as is Rita May.

I guess it's the lowest common denominator factor. People identify with their base primal instincts. Especially when it comes to music - melody and rhythm being one of our most primordial methods of expression. A hip hop track debating the feasibility of Rosa Luxemburg's economics would hardly make the Billboard Top 10,000...

I suppose what is striking about Is Your Love In Vain? though is just how bluntly it comes across from Mr Dylan.

I don't think I agree with that as a general statement. Dylan has shown that you can use just about any topic in a song and get it on the charts. You have to nicely package it in sound, though.

Hmmm, briefly glancing through his singles and their charting success, they tend to be generally revolving around fairly general and easily identifiable themes: love, protest, Must Be Santa.

Some of his greatest hits were professional put-downs. Surely not stuff chart successes were previously made of. I think you could put a Marie Curie/Rosa Luxembourg song on the charts if you did it right.

But it's still love. Still relationships. Something everyone knows and breathes. Unless you wrote about Mrs Curie and Ms Luxemburg in love, I doubt it'd be very successful. I mean, Bob Dylan Sings the Periodic Table, coming to you this fall? I'd love it, you'd love it but the vast majority of folk wouldn't...

The vast majority of people, even those sharing the same first language with him, steadfastly claim they cannot understand what he sings. It wouldn't matter much whether he sang the periodic table or the Northumberland phone book. Chart success is a different issue yet again, I know, but still, somebody who professes to playing mathematical music should be able to do it.

I'm rereading it. I've read half of it. Maybe there is some resemblance with Señor... but not with the song as a whole I think

some things
mainly this:

There’s a wicked wind still blowin’ on that upper deck
There’s an iron cross still hangin' down from around her neck
There’s a marchin’ band still playin’ in that vacant lot
Where she held me in her arms one time and said, “Forget me not”

you see the picture?
as if the narrator was dead
or narrating it from a gosht town

Should I ask now... "is the narrator of Señor dead" or "narrating from a gosht town"?

Or take the song about Lenny Bruce as an example, kind of a biographical admirer's reminiscense, or Hurricane.... or George Jackson. Writing about people as people, men and women.

Maybe his mother sticking ribbons in his hair when he was little didn't do him good?

I never thought about it that way. I don't think I'd think of the narrator as actually physically dead, as opposed to the narrator of I Feel A Change Comin' On (though even there it doesn't seem right). The narrator of Senor might be spiritually drained or dead, if you want to call it that. Depressed, you could say. The ghost town image is hard for me to see, since the band is still playing. It might be the band on the sinking Titanic, probably, serenading the doomed.

My take on Senor- "smell the butt of the dragon"

http://youtu.be/GG_zPCrP_oQ

that's why the band is still playing... he is in a ghost (I see I had written it gosht )... in a ghost town where there's nobody... still you can hear the band playing

maybe I'm forcing it to match
but I like to hear shades from other things even when they don't match precisely

The band is playing for a ghost? I'm not sure I understand this.

hahaha
I mean the narrator who is alive (or at least he believes so) is in a ghost town. He sees nobody there (vacant lot) but he hears the band playing

His state of despair might have lead him to hallucinating, that's possible. Much of his writing has a dream-like or nightmarish quality.

other than the hideous sax player I don't hear much "E Street" band influence. Like, where's Landau and his glockenspiel?

Why listen to Dylan then? Billy Joel made lots of records.

Can't stand Billy Joel's melodies, simply put.

looks like someone has to tell him
Said, “Son, this ain’t a dream no more, it’s the real thing”

Rock star? "You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage"

He had a dream life for some time, that's what crosses my mind when reading that line. He had the quiet life with his family, but the desire to go back to his art lead to the destruction of this dream world by temptation. Neither way of life offers total satisfaction, and he cannot combine the two. That is the reality he wakes up to.

I listened to the entire album four times today. I think it's great. I also think he does some really great singing on this album. New Pony is killer. I might listen to the entire thing one more time before bed.

That's the spirit.... I listened twice earlier tonight.