Sunday Open Thread

 

"We are Alive" - Bruce Springsteen

I am trying to work on a couple of different posts, but in the meantime, let me recommend this fantastic piece on Springsteen in the New Yorker by David Merrick.  It's a great read, filled with interesting stuff.

Talk about whatever is on your minds -- the Olympics, Romneyshambles, the incredible bullshit of the Sunday shows, etc.

Be back soon.

 

Comments

[Linkmeister]

Re: site loading speed or lack thereof

It's taking a long time to get to sitemeter. Once it gets that connection the site opens as per usual.

[janinsanfran]

Sitting in John Wayne Airport near Anaheim where the California Democratic Party just endorsed replacing the death penalty with life without parole by way of Prop. 34 in November. The State Labor Fed did the same last week. We're on our way.

100 days til we vote ...

[Joe S]

The odd thing about Springsteen is that he seems to have taken the exact opposite track of Bob Dylan. Springsteen started out less overtly political. His best songs were introspective and very personal. The songs painted personal pictures of the results of injustice. Even Born in the USA was much more a personal song painting the picture of one veteran rather than an overtly antiwar song. Springsteen then became more overtly and straightforwardly political with the Ghost of Tom Joad and now this album. Dylan started out as more overtly political with his first albums and especially, "The Times, they are A changin'), and became more poetic, introspective, and personal later in his career.

[Lex]

I have read many a profile of Springsteen in the past 30+ years and had begun to conclude that he was never again going to open up to any writer enough for me to learn a lot of stuff I didn't already know. This profile proved me wrong.

The New Yorker is the only print publication besides my local daily to which I still subscribe, and stuff like this is why. The serendipity factor is extremely high: I never know from one week to the next what it will be, but I know that in all but a few issues a year, there will be at least one piece that will be worth what I paid for the issue. Not many publications I can say that about anymore.

Now if they'd just create an Android-tablet-friendly version, I'd be completely happy with them. But they ain't done that yet, and complaints have gone unanswered.

[Sir Charles]

Linkmeister,

It loaded much faster on my iPhone. Not sure what the deal is.

janinsanfran,

That is really encouraging news. There was a time -- post Rose Bird -- that the Dems would not have touched this.

Joe,

I think that's a good observation. The article makes the point that up through "Darkness" Bruce was pre-ideological. One gets the sense that Brandeis alum Jon Landau had a fair amount of influence on him.

[beckya57]

Lex, I have a New Yorker app on my Kindle Fire, which uses Android apps; maybe that would work? That's how I subscribe to it.

Joe, that's a very spot-on and interesting comparison between Springsteen and Dylan. I was talking with an also music-obsessed friend recently about those two and also Neil Young, all 3 of whom we agreed are iconic figures. We agreed that Springsteen is very concerned with his place in music history (which doesn't detract at all from his greatness), Dylan wants to give everyone the finger, and Young doesn't care what people think one way or another.

[nancy]

Yesterday when loading stopped, I'd just copied and pasted the New Yorker piece so's to drop it in to the previous comment thread. I would have stepped on your post Sir C -- Typepad 'time out' neatly scheduled. :) Once in a while, when the NYr issues pile up in my household, I regret the subscription. Then this kind of article appears.

Jan, that's great news. I follow the site "Solitary Watch." Hope that's the next effort in California to gain traction. The numbers are startling.

Re #RomneyShambles on twitter -- about to get deluged again no doubt, after Newsweek's "Wimp" cover story. If one were 100% sure of him losing in November, it might be tempting to feel a bit of pity. Then again...as morialekafa phrased it recently, there's now the "spit on you party" and the "party of turn the other cheek." Must unfortunately keep that in mind.

[Lex]

@beckya57: I do not own Kindle hardware, and when I've tried to load the New Yorker app through the Android Kindle app as the instructions appear to suggest, it hasn't worked. Much as I love the mag, I'm not buying another piece of hardware just to read it online.

Re this site: It seems to be behaving now, and when it wasn't earlier, sitemeter seemed to be what was hanging it up. I've had problems with sitemeter before on my own blog, although not in the past couple of years that I'm aware of.

[Paula B]

Sir C---At Nancy's suggestion, I tweeted typedpad last night and urged them to fix the comment box, then did the same thing this morning, when the whole site wouldn't load. They got right back to me with this:

Are you the owner of the blog? There's an issue with a Sitemeter widget on the blog that's causing the pageload to stall.

I told them, no, but I would contact the owner, then I thought I forwarded that message to you, SC, but maybe you didn't get it. I've been in VT all day or would have gotten back to you sooner. Sometimes I get a little signal on my cell up there, but not enough to write a decent message.

[big bad wolf]

it seems to me that there is a, partial, historical explanation for the different arcs of dylan and bruce. i also think the last third of dylan's career has been philosphical with significant political implications, but, not in a programmatic way. and i think there is a strong argument song on magic---which i judge bruce's best work since at least born in the usa, and probably nebraska---can be heard as a personal song. yes, even last to die.

dylan came to new york to make it in the world. he already showed he was willing to do what it takes to get close to fame: hibbing bob had lied his way into playing piano with fargo's own bobby vee for a few shows. vee was hardly a political artist. bob did what it took. so when he hit nyc and what he could do was play guitar and harmonica, (he wasn't much of a piano player or likely pop star despite the bobby vee gig) and write songs, he wrote political songs. they were valued, in his group and by record labels. now he did so brilliantly: songs like masters of war, hattie carroll, chimes of freedom, john birch blues, times they are a changing, davey moore, and blowin' in the wind are extremely good, extremely smart. yet i can't escape the sense that dylan wrote these and others because he knew they would impress. they weren't paint by numbers, because he saw way more numbers than pete seeger or joan baez (god bless them both, they seem like they are better people than bob, but they can't hold a candle to him, imo), but they were his take on the political song he needed to produced to be accepted and celebrated. that doesn't mean he didn't mean them; i assume he did. it means only that he could do them in his sleep and did them, in part, to succeed. one hears more of him in a hard rain or hollis brown (and when you hear that hillis brown came from poor man, listen to them back to back: poor man is a good social folk song; hollis brown is existenital, personalized, and haunting.)

cont'd as prup would say

[big bad wolf]

so bob arrived in a time in which the political song was a currency that could get one ahead, and he used that. he wanted more, though, and we soon saw it, starting with things like hard rain and hollis brown. and eventually he couldn't do it anymore; he had to have a larger voice than the one allotted to him by the folk scene and its defined views. i think there are two wonderfully illustrative examples. the first is percy's song. baez sings it in "don't look back" (a movie in which dylan is hard to like). she sings it high and clear and as a case of injustice and it is boring as hell. dylan's version has more nuance and tragedy and more recognition of how things affected everyone. the other is his performance of "i don't believe her" on the 64 and 66 live albums. the 64 performance is just what a folk crowd at carneige hall came to hear. the 66, in which he says (approximately) "this song used to go like this (strum) now it sounds like this" explodes the song and renders it far deeper.

bruce came looking for a record contract in the era of the singer songwriter, an era ushered in by dylan, though somewhat ironically. bruce, jon landau, says the new james taylor. damn, that had to hurt (and i'm not unalterable opposed to james taylor, but by 73 that was not a compliment in many circles). so if bruce was introspective maybe it's because the times wanted him to be introspective to succeed, just as they wanted bob to be political, a decade or so before. i think too that, however, out of it bruce felt, it was probably a different feeling from having been jewish in northern minnesota. dylan came, perhaps, with a sensitivity to political and social implications that bruce had to develop a (brandeis-influenced) understanding of. again the market intervened: the songs bruce recorded but didn't release after born to run are not what we got on darkness on the edge of town.a lot of them are poppy and look back to the music he loved as a teenager. a couple---the early racing in the street and the promise (a dong so good it almost defies belief) touched on the themes darkness would. but punk happened before bruce could release an album and he released an album with a very different tone, an album i think is his best. but maybe this great album doesn't happen if punk doesn't.

cont'd :)

[big bad wolf]

darkness was real. i have no doubt of that. i saw him on the 78 tour, twice. i have never seen anything like it. that man believed he could redeem the world and was bent on trying. it was glorious. the one thing i dislike about the new yorker article is bruce's suggestion that it was always a show. nope. it had some scripts but that guy beleived it, even if his older self doesn't. but darkness probably doesn't occur if punk doesn't. bruce would have tried to convert the world with pop songs, and would have tried just as hard.

i think it is probably accurate that reagan changed bruce and made him more political. both the 80 election---bruce's first real political statement occurs right after that election---and the 84 election. in a way, the effect of 84 was not helpful, imo. bruce didn't like that born in the usa could be misinterpreted. well, it happens. you have to be kinda dumb or disingenuous, but it happens. and enetually bruce became more overtly political, but also, i think, less interesting. he started playing born in the usa slowly, so we could understand the words and the pain. but so played it seemed obvious and didactic, not aware and empathetic. the ghost of tom joad album was more of the same---smart lyrics delivered in a way in which we could not miss their importance. i think getting back with his band was good for springsteen and that they breathed life into songs that one admired more than liked (joad, youngstown). 41 shots debuted in nyc was brave, even for an established star. magic was too, i think. the new one i am less sure of. i love his politics, but it sounds programmatic, vetted, and correct. often fun, but often deadly (wake me when jack of all trades is over; please not before).

so bruce is an admirable guy who is maybe not quite the interesting artist he used to be. it may be more important to be the former rather than the latter. and live, except for his canned interactions (not the political ones, those i think good), he is still a great thing to hear.

[big bad wolf]

dylan went off in a weird way. unlike bruce he doesn't want to be a consciously major figure, i agree with that, but i don't think he just wants to give people the finger. he pulled back decades ago from overt engagement. yet, john wesley harding is a very thoughtful meditation on community. and, as christgau said long ago, self-portrait was a fascinating, if not very listenable, attempt to explain what makes up a self, all by showing influences, even unfashionable ones. the divorce albums came next; the first (planet waves) has some songs that put every personal singer-songwriter or the era to shame (dirge, something there is about you), though bob being difficult insists they are just songs. blood on the tracks stands with anything anyone had done. and then bob lost his way, for a really long time. there are moments that are great, but it's pretty grim until 1997. he started to turn it around though in 92 or 93 with his cover album of folk songs. and then he did another one. and then he had a muse again. his albums beginning with time out of mind are brilliant. he's resolved his discomfort with being bob dylan by writing as everyman. joe is not wrong that these are poetic and introspective, but they are not introspective about bob dylan. they are introspective about the existential condition and how the individual, limited and finite, lives with himself and those around him. they are not heavy-handed; no pilgrims progress, no pete seeger, no jack-of-all-trades, and they are, i think, wonderful and far more affecting because of that. they don't tell us how to be or which side we should be on, but they tease out where we must end up. robert zimmerman found bob dylan unsustainable, and, i think, unworthy of being sustained. i find a wisdom in the late dylan that exceeds anything in those, political and individual, artists that he helped bring about. for me, he is the preeminent artist of the rock era (and even my quibbles about lanois barely affect that). bruce is my favorite still. no one has given me more joy. no one made me think it mattered more. but bruce became larger than life and sort of believed it; i think a lot of that is in the new yorker article. he was better when he knew he was an everyman from nowhere whose need to communicate was never sure of being fulfilled than as an iconic orchestrator of our thoughts in the arena.

i agree neil young just don't give a damn. neil is a savant. and sometimes an idiot (i ain't forgotten who he supported in 84) (yes, it matters, but in the end art does too)

[Joe S]

I don't know if I agree with you that Reagan politicized Bruce, bbw. The reason is my favorite Springsteen album after 1980 (and, to the best of my knowledge, I'm alone in this assessment). Tunnel of Love in 1987 was completely apolitical (except maybe Spare Parts, which is a pretty good feminist tune). Even by the end of the Reagan years, Springsteen was still capable of and working on writing very, very good songs about love and relationships. Springsteen's overt politicization came after Reagan. Even by the end of the Eighties, Springsteen was still concentrating on describing the lives of everyday people through music. Even though most people disagree with me, I'll stand up and say Springsteen was doing it very well in Tunnel of Love.

[big bad wolf]

one last thing: the meanest thing i can say about bruce's intentional relevance since tom joad is that, all too often he sounds like (the harvard-educated) tom morello's idea of what bruce springsteen should be (yes, i am a horrible anti-ivy-leaguer; it comes from growing up in the shadow of the overly revered instutition and having to read in the globe about how smart they all are).

that said, morello is a great guitarist and he and bruce live are often wonderful together

[Sir Charles]

bbw,

Well I got you going!

So many thoughts to which to respond -- let me start with Darkness:

I think Darkness was A) fantastic; B) definitely influenced by punk and the anger it exalted; and C) political without being overtly political -- it is filled with sort of seething class anger, anger over circumstances into which one is born, and the first glimmer of recognition that one's father was equally stuck in such circumstances. It's the gateway to the bigger, more political worlds of Nebraska, The River, and Born in the USA, although these too are largely personal. Johnny 99 and The River and My Hometown, for instance, are all in their way political, but deeply personal, illustrative rather than ideological.

(I did not know that Morello went to Harvard. That's kind of amusing.)

[big bad wolf]

joe, i don't think tunnel of love means that springsteen hadn't been politicized. it didn't take over his albums for a few yeas, but the process started with reagan (the famous tempe show in 80 and the will dustup).

i certainly did not mean to say that he can't write non-political tunes; that's what i was trying to get at with my comment on magic. i really do think every song on that album can be read either way (devil's arcade is the one that is a relationship song that just includes politics). i think that the personal nature of tunnel of love (a backtrack in terms of political content, if personal political content, from everything since born to run) showed that, like dylan on planet waves and blood on the tracks, when he was rent to his core (he got married and it clearly wasn't working, in large part because of him it seems) springsteen wrote about it. spectacularly in many instances. i'd put the songs tunnel of love and brilliant disguise in his top 15. that said, i hate the drum sound on that album. still i routinely defend the album overall and i have a friend who agrees with you that it is his best post-80 album.

my favorite part of the new yorker article is steve van zandt telling bruce after tunnel of love that the audience doesn't want to hear about bruce, they want to hear about themselves. i think steve was not wrong, but i also fear bruce took that too much too heart and it, as well as age and wealth (love the pilgrim line in brilliant disguise), distanced him from his characters. they began to appear and sound more constructed and less organic. he was trying to hard to be about us.

notice how i just ignore lucky town and human touch, albums only dave marsh could love, and maybe not even him if it wasn't his job. all in all i think they can be called personal albums too, but they are so relatively shallow that i judge them an aberration.

[Sir Charles]

Joe,

I do think Reagan politicized Bruce -- or at least gave him a politics to oppose. I saw him on the Born in the USA Tour and although he didn't make a lot of overt comments, he was quite clear he was not a fan of the right wing vision for America.

The 1980 election really changed the world and Bruce chose his side -- and God bless him, he chose the losing side.

bbw,

I think you are probably right about Dylan and his politics as career move. In fact, I am guessing that Bruce feels his late acquired politics a great deal more than young Dylan felt his.

I remember hearing John Irving -- a bit of a wanker I would agree -- express his admiration for both Dylan and Neil Young, noting that the were absolutely fearless as artists, completely willing to be seen as foolish in pursuit of whatever moved them at the moment.

[nancy]

Heh. My astute, erudite and hip comment gobbled between bbw pt.1 and 2. Glad to have not interrupted.

Guyworld talking music. Nothing quite like it. Carry on please. :)

[Joe S]

SIr C, When Morello opens his shows, he tells people that, like the current president, he had an African father and a White, American mother, and that they are both Harvard graduates. He also says that, unlike the current president, he would have prosecuted the Bush team and locked them up while forcing them to listen to Rage Against the Machine at high volume for hours at a time. I saw Morello open for the Hold Steady a couple of years ago.

[Joe S]

nancy, We haven't got to top ten lists for months or years here at Cogblog.

[Sir Charles]

Hey nancy -- please join in the fray. You know it's never a boy's club here at the Cogblog.

Joe,

That's a funny anecdote about Morello.

How were the Hold Steady? I like quite a bit of their stuff.

Morello is one of those guys who I find admirable, but whose politics are a little too overt for best artistic effect.

[big bad wolf]

i resisted top ten lists forever. i love to talk about the music and what might be behind it and what i think i hear in it and how it affects me. springsteen, it's fair to say, damn near saved my life in the late 70s. you can be overly intense and overly sensitive and connect, not just be turned away? that's a good thing, which other bands have repeated for many younger than i. if it is guys that do this sort of thing with music, it may be that other emotional avenues are often closed off to them. i think that has changed and continues to change, which is a good thing.

what kind of broke me down on lists was time. i still couldn't list ten if you held a gun to my head, but time made me say that astral weeks, exile on main street, and london calling would be there. the other seven are unwritten, the complete list is unknown. similarly, in terms of artistry dylan's late phase has overwhelmed me. joined with his great early phase (through 68) listening made me think him the preeminent artist of the rock era. after that i have no idea. likely the stones. after that i am completely adrift.

[Joe S]

Sir C, the Hold Steady is a pretty amazing experience live. The only way to really describe them is boisterous. They're better live than their albums would suggest- and three of their albums are really good (Separation Sunday, Boys and Girls in America, and Stay Positive).

[nancy]

Hey, thanks for the invite. Husband and I have had this exchange for years. There is no way to create and maintain a top-ten list in my mind. Mine would shiver from day to day. Ten?

Nuh-uh. Maybe (just) a two-hundred list. Or four, five or so. Or more.

God bless music of all sort. bbw, what you said about some of it saving your life is the deal. So true.

[oddjob]

I do think Reagan politicized Bruce -- or at least gave him a politics to oppose.

I've never been much of a Springsteen fan, but one of the memories I've taken from the '84 election was the knowledge that Springsteen was quite pissed with the Reagan campaign for helping itself to the use of Born in the USA (not unlike Bobby McFerrin's pique four years later at learning that candidate George H. W. Bush loved Don't Worry, Be Happy & listened to it a lot while traveling from one campaign stop to another even as he proposed almost nothing that would address the problems the song described).

[oddjob]

This is a huge development in biology.

This idea of this as a fully up and running technology for multi-cellular organisms was used in the recently released Spider Man movie.

[oddjob]

Romney went there. Promises to move US embassy to Jerusalem.

[Sir Charles]

bbw,

I think that even in his less impressive phases Dylan continued to produce moments that were great. I saw him on the "Shot of Love" tour, which many people view as a low point for him, and I was really impressed. The whole gospel sound worked well for him and the band was terrific.

I think Neil Young is not always the most analytical guy in the world, hence his temporary affection for Reagan, based, it seems to me, on a kind of atmospherics. Interestingly, he was much harsher with the more benign G.H.W. Bush, spewing vitriol against him in Rockin' in the Free World.

As for lists, I think you just have to view them as a form of fun rather than a serious exercise in aesthetics. They are kind of the equivalent of sitting in a dorm room listening to something, getting stoned and bullshitting about it.

I miss listening to music that way.

nancy,

I think bbw is probably correct that there is among a certain subset of men a tendency to invest an extraordinary amount of emotion into their enthusiasm for music. And yes, sometimes it is a little bit like dealing with religious fanatics -- they are ever on the look for heresy.

[oddjob]

New species of frog, whose range's epicenter appears to be Yankee Stadium found in metro NYC!

[big bad wolf]

"nothing but blues and elvis and somebody else's favorite song" FM, Steely Dan.

that line, in what i think of as kind of a so-so steely dan song began to soften me up. wow, pretty much every song is somebody's (at least temporary) favorite song.it made me listen a little harder. i still judge(d) lots of stuff not so good, but i began try to hear what they were trying to do, or at least the good bass line. and it made me gentler with civilians; that is those who didn't take music quite so seriously as a way of defining life.

[Sir Charles]

bbw,

I think you have to grade FM on a curve because it was written -- as far as I know -- as a movie theme. And it too seemed to be dealing with a gender divide on the music front: "The girls don't seem to care what's on, as long as they play 'til dawn." (Implied subtext: they were dancing rather than making top ten lists.)

And I kind of like the tagline "No static at all."

My recollection is that Joe Strummer was miffed that he worked his ass off to write the song "Love Kills" and they then changed the name of the movie to "Sid and Nancy."

[Sir Charles]

The above comment may be illustrative of nancy's point.

[oddjob]

some of it saving your life is the deal

I have personal experience of a sort with this.

[Paula B]

I, for one, don't want to live in a world that doesn't include Bob Dylan. That said, I can't point to a single favorite, but many depending on my mood, whatever's going on in my life, the news, whatever. Like you, Sir C, I loved Dylan's gospel period and was surprised at almost universally negative response from fans and reviewers, religious or not. There seems to be no genre the man can't kill.

[Sir Charles]

Paula,

It was interesting to me, being at Brandeis and rooming with a guy who worshipped Dylan when the born again stuff came out. (He ultimately wrote a 270 plus page senior thesis about him.) I think it was slightly discomforting for him at first when Slow Train Coming came out -- I think Dylan's Jewishness was something that really resonated with him -- but he quickly got on board, so to speak.

I thought Mark Knopfler's production work with Dylan was incredibly good on both Slow Train and Infidels.

[Paula B]

I remember a moment of shock when I heard Dylan converted to Christianity but then I realized, no, this was the ultimate rebellion. There wasn't much else he could do to separate himself from his roots and his peers, was there?

[Linkmeister]

When has Mark Knopfler's production work not been excellent? ;) Then if you add in his incredible guitar talents . . .

I was late to the Dire Straits bandwagon, but when I got there I really admired Knopfler's skill.

[Sir Charles]

Linkmeister,

I had the pleasure of seeing Dire Straits first American show at a small club called The Paradise in Boston in 1978. They were really impressive. They opened with "Let's Go Down to the Waterline" which is just a beautiful song.

It was funny because there were some in the punk/new wave milieu who did not like them -- they were considered something of a throw back band by many. But the songwriting was so good and the guitar playing superb. The band's original drummer, Pick Withers, was something special too.

Their third record, Making Movies, which features some great playing by Springsteen pianist Roy Bittan, is one of my favorite records of all time.

[big bad wolf]

SC, i concur fully about making movies.

with FM it is for me not just that it was a soundtrack song but that it was more in the aja/gaucho sound of almost smooth jazz. i like those albums, and deacon blues may be my favorte dan song, but overall i like their sound on katy lied and countdown and pretzel logic more than aja or gaucho.

[Crissa]

I gotta say, I always thought he was a great artist. Not the best and not my fav, but a good one. Unfortunately, the guys who liked him usually weren't ones on my side. Which earned him unearned negative points.

Strangely, my step-dad liked him, but unlike other artists only bought his albums to give to me as opposed to for himself. His collection was far more eclectic than my mom's, tho, with various rock artists down to Kenny G, various hard blues bands, to even REM.

[Sir Charles]

bbw,

Yes, once Steely Dan became fully a studio band, with an assortment of side men fulfilling Fagen and Becker's vision -- down to the minutest detail so it seems -- they lost those visceral moments that occurred on the earlier albums, especially on Countdown, which has some superb moments that I don't think the band was ever able to capture again in its more hermetically sealed format -- I am thinking specifically of the guitar work on Show Biz Kids and My Old School.

Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, the killer guitar on Show Biz Kids is courtesy of Rick Derringer, who was much more of a rock and roller than the guys the band later favored like Larry Carlton.

Their song writing remained superb though. The smooth jazz sound really didn't fit well with the sounds of the punk era.

Crissa,

The Kenny G. to REM spectrum is quite a broad one.

[big bad wolf]

SC, i have a vague memory of an article around the time of guacho in which derringer says he spent a lot of time in the studio with becker and fagan for that album, but they ended up using six seconds of one of his pieces and four of another.

[oddjob]

"U.S. District Court Judge Vanessa Bryant, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled on Tuesday that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in [sic] unconstitutional.

DOMA, Bryant ruled “fails to pass constitutional muster under even the most deferential level of judicial scrutiny.”..."

From the US District Court, District of Connecticut.

[Sir Charles]

bbw,

I think it's fair to say that winging it was not the strong suit of Fagen and Becker.

oddjob,

That's good news. Especially after that bullshit abortion decision in Arizona yesterday.

I am sitting in O'Hare waiting to catch a delayed flight to Jackson Hole, WY where I've got several days of meetings coming up, so unless the plane has wifi I will be laboring under radio silence for a few hours.

Hold down the fort in my absence.

[Joe S]

Sir C, if you're stuck in O'Hare, try Rick Bayless' tortas restaurant. It's pretty good- much better than most airport restaurants.

[nancy]

Sir C, you're getting closer to my stomping grounds. If you've any extra time for meeting some wonderful folks in Jackson Hole area, give me an e-mail.

re Steely Dan. Alone among my crowd, I was a devotee. But as I mentioned sometime earlier, as our house de-clutterer, one year, probably '06 or so, I donated most of my vinyls to an NPR local radio annual fundraiser -- hey, the music library of my youth was simply occupying space and lots of it. Surrendered that physical music collection but not the memories in the process. I thought. Argh. Heartburn. What was I thinking, but then again how was I supposed to know? A return to vinyl and turntables ?

So, my solution later was to rummage around purchasing CDs that were basically "A Decade of... "Greatest Hits of... I'm sure you guys can imagine how that turns out and would have warned me away from such a solution. Deacon Blues and Peg. I have them back now. Though Bodhisattva which I despise hangs between the two.

Mark Knopfler. Gone too in my housekeeping sweep. Thank god for YouTube. Guess there's something to be said for a bit of careful 'warehousing.'

[big bad wolf]

it is amazing how much better vinyl sounds, and in all genres. but vinyl does require time to sit and listen and who has that kind of time? i sure don't. so i am grateful to the (crappy) sound of the ipod for giving me my music back and grateful for the (not-so-great) CDs i can play in the car. and every once in a while, five or six times a year, we pull out the good stuff.

that said, in my younger days, when i was moving about the country with limited funds, i gave away many records i'd like to have back now.

[nancy]

dylan came to new york to make it in the world. he already showed he was willing to do what it takes to get close to fame: hibbing bob had lied his way into playing piano with fargo's own bobby vee for a few shows. vee was hardly a political artist. bob did what it took.

'On Bob Dylan and Jonah Lehrer, Two Fabulists' . I suspect Bob is unaware of the flap but would find it mildly absurd.

[nancy]

Contra Wieseltier on Bruce. Gotta agree.

All this reminds me of a line from the great N+1 essay about TNR's back of the magazine: "It confuses censoriousness with a faculty of judgment that links the aesthetic to the moral sense." That essay was titled "Designated Haters." This ultimately is what Wieseltier finds so detestable about Springsteen; he clings to hope rather than hate. The Boss is earnest.