In a past life, Fresh and the Qualifier used to get paid to write about music. For years they toiled through a tag-team article called Counterbalance, going head to head, hashing out the relative merits of new releases for the local Chicken Dinner Newspaper. But that was a long time ago - before the economy crashed, sending their frivolous Arts & Entertainment section down in flames.
After wandering in the wilderness, lost and directionless, Fresh and the Qualifier have returned to take on their most challenging assignment: the Greatest Albums of All-Time. Do these critics' darlings hold up, or are they just hyped up?
Bob Dylan makes a return appearance on the Big List with 1965's Highway 61 Revisited. Bob's second LP since going electric, the album features his best-known tune "Like a Rolling Stone" and has been a hallmark of college English classes for 45 years. But are those tweedy eggheads introducing young people to the Lord Byron of our time or polluting students' minds with a lot of liberal claptrap? There is, of course, no middle ground. But our intrepid Counterbalancers will do their best to navigate their way along Highway 61 Revisited.
Qualifier: Well, well, well... look who's back, Fresh. It's your old arch-nemesis Bob Dylan! This time, though, I think you'll find that the tables have turned. This isn't the logy, substance-addled Bob that you summarily dismissed a few weeks ago. This is the lyrically focused, razor-sharp, other-substance-addled Bob you're dealing with. And I challenge you to find fault with this LP, my friend.
Fresh: I'm not even going to try to pretend to find fault. I like this album mostly because I like this version of Bob - the rest of them, not so much. Also, there is a whole lot less of Bob on Highway 61, which makes loving Bob that much easier. The one thing I will say: I still have no idea what he's talking about. That's not necessarily a bad thing but . . .
"And Ezra Pound and T.S. Elliot are fighting in the captain's tower, while Calypso singers laugh at them and fishermen hold flowers."
Seriously, Bob? WTF?!
After wandering in the wilderness, lost and directionless, Fresh and the Qualifier have returned to take on their most challenging assignment: the Greatest Albums of All-Time. Do these critics' darlings hold up, or are they just hyped up?
Bob Dylan makes a return appearance on the Big List with 1965's Highway 61 Revisited. Bob's second LP since going electric, the album features his best-known tune "Like a Rolling Stone" and has been a hallmark of college English classes for 45 years. But are those tweedy eggheads introducing young people to the Lord Byron of our time or polluting students' minds with a lot of liberal claptrap? There is, of course, no middle ground. But our intrepid Counterbalancers will do their best to navigate their way along Highway 61 Revisited.
Qualifier: Well, well, well... look who's back, Fresh. It's your old arch-nemesis Bob Dylan! This time, though, I think you'll find that the tables have turned. This isn't the logy, substance-addled Bob that you summarily dismissed a few weeks ago. This is the lyrically focused, razor-sharp, other-substance-addled Bob you're dealing with. And I challenge you to find fault with this LP, my friend.
Fresh: I'm not even going to try to pretend to find fault. I like this album mostly because I like this version of Bob - the rest of them, not so much. Also, there is a whole lot less of Bob on Highway 61, which makes loving Bob that much easier. The one thing I will say: I still have no idea what he's talking about. That's not necessarily a bad thing but . . .
"And Ezra Pound and T.S. Elliot are fighting in the captain's tower, while Calypso singers laugh at them and fishermen hold flowers."
Seriously, Bob? WTF?!
Q: Oh, honestly Fresh - it's like you're not even trying. Obviously Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot are Dean Rusk and Robert MacNamara, the Calypso singers represent the Viet Cong and the fishermen are the Catholic Worker Movement. Any schoolchild can tell you that.
I'm not sure what you mean by a lot less Bob. You're pretty much carpet bombed by Bob's lyrics throughout this record, and even when you're not sure what exactly he's talking about, it's still a lot of fun listening to him go. I had forgotten how much fun Highway 61 really is.
F: Rusk, MacNamara and Cong? That's what that means? Suddenly the veil has been pulled back. I feel like I'm seeing the world clearly for the very first time. Also, at the next Counterbalance board meeting we need to establish a sarcasm font. I don't feel like I'm getting my point across with plain old Arial.
Comparatively, Highway 61 is a full half-hour shorter than Blonde On Blonde. And despite the fact that Highway 61 is one fun album, and it is, I can only take about an hour of Bob before his lyrical riddles turn from amusing to annoying.
"Your gravity fails and your negativity don't pull you through, don't put on any airs when your down on Rue Morgue Avenue."
Again, WTF?
Q: Ah, see now here, "gravity" is Barry Goldwater, while "negativity" refers to his running mate, Representative William E. Miller (R, N.Y.), whose Catholicism (the yin to Dylan's Judaic yang) was expected to help the Republican campaign in the post-Kennedy 1964. But Main Street America (the "Rue Morgue Avenue," as Dylan calls it in a delightful bit of mordant wordplay) wasn't having it. Their "hungry women really made a mess out of" the ticket. Sheesh - did you fall asleep in Dylanology 101, Fresh?
Seriously, though, I love the way Dylan toys with words, especially on this album. Was he trying to say something in some sort of code? Maybe at times, but I suspect that he was often just digging the way the language was flowing, and what that language could evoke.
Of course, when he's focused in his attack, he can be devastating, like on "Like a Rolling Stone" and especially "Ballad of a Thin Man." Yikes. I wouldn't want to be that guy.
F: Dylan definitely knows how to cut with his lyrics. And when its obvious, its very obvious. I think that's what gives the rest of his nonsensical lyrics so much weight. We spend a lot of time trying to decipher them because we know how pointed he can be, but all Bob has really done is performed an end-around on his listeners so that he could sneak off and do what ever it is Bob Dylan did in his free time. Meanwhile, our minds are stuck in a Chinese finger trap.
"Mailboxes drip like lampposts in the twisted birth canal of the coliseum."
C'mon, Bob! Really? Double WTF?!
Q: OK, this one's actually a little tricky. Here, the mailboxes are a clear reference to napalm, which soldiers would call "Lamppost Molly," for reasons that are sadly lost to the mists of time. And of course the twisted birth canal of the coliseum suggests the attempts to bring democracy to Southeast Asia. Condoleezza Rice was in fact slyly referencing the line when she described the 2006 anti-Hizballah campaign as the "birth pangs of the new Middle East." It's all out there, man . . .
Dylan has always messed with people's heads, to the point where even his simplest statements come across as hidden in plain sight. How many people have dedicated countless hours to studying "Ballad of a Thin Man," parsing each line for meanings and references, when it might well be little more than a gay panic dig at some guy who gave him the stink-eye in a restaurant?
Of course, the fact that Dylan's songs get people asking the questions in the first place is what keeps records like this alive, and it why he's ranked so highly in the pantheon.
F: Do you think he did it on purpose? Or was it just some serendipitous coincidence that people thought his lyrics meant something but he was just too stoned to set them straight? I imagine he slipped a few veiled references in here and there (I do it in Counterbalance all the time. Spread the purple jelly on the frisky biscuit), but do you think he stayed up at night thinking about ways to twist his words just to mess with our heads?
Q: What was in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction? What's with all the Esperanto in the OK Computer artwork? Young people love looking for hidden meanings and the 1960s were a perfect storm of artists stretching the boundaries of pop music and a vast audience of eager (and possibly high) young people. Some of the "clues" may have been accidental and some of them may be an intentional misdirection. A MacGuffin, if you will.
But I don't think Bob was ever especially interested in setting people straight, stoned or not. It's the post-Dylan singer-songwriters, your James Taylors and Joni Mitchells, who made the songs so inherently personal and specific. We may be trying to retrofit Dylan's lyrics into that template, and especially in this mid-'60s incarnation, that's really not going to work out so well.
F: The briefcase in Pulp Fiction contained the diamonds that were originally stolen in Reservoir Dogs. The diamonds were most likely cursed and resulted in the death of whoever looked at them, including, coincidentally, the brothers Vic and Vincent Vega, played by Michael Madsen and John Travolta, respectively. And if I had to wager an educated guess, I'd say that Radiohead speak Esperanto because they seem like the kind of egg-headed nerds who would do something like that. These I can easily explain away. However, I have a harder time parsing Dylan . . .
"When all of your advisers heave their plastic, at your feet to convince you of your pain. Trying to prove your conclusions should be more drastic."
What the WTF?
Q: False. Ringo wouldn't have said "Is that what I think it is?" He knows what a big pile of diamonds is when he sees one. He also wouldn't have said "It's beautiful" if he were looking at a quantity of diamonds. He would have said "they're beautiful." Also he doesn't get killed. Fact: the briefcase contained Marcellus Wallace's soul, which had been sucked out of the back of his head (hence the bandage in the scene with Butch). Everyone knows that, and to disagree is folly.
But you can't trick me with "Queen Jane Approximately." When everyone else turns their back on you because you weren't what they thought you should be, and when everyone's talking about you and second-guessing your motives, you can always come see Bob because he'd understand. Pretty self-explanatory and actually kind of sweet
At least that's my take. Your interpretation might be different, and I get the impression Dylan's OK with that.
F: Yeah, yeah - whatever you say about Dylan. Good stuff. But you are completely off base about Pulp Fiction.
1. How would Ringo know what a soul looked like?
2. You can say "It's beautiful," if you are looking at a quantity of diamonds. A pile of diamonds can be referred to in the singular especially if the you are referring to the group's beauty, not just the beauty of the individual diamonds making up the group. Also, said diamonds may or may not have been hot-glued into the shape of a woman in a semi erotic pose, therefore also satisfying Ringo's previous comments.
3. Jules decides not to kill Ringo and Honey Bunny because Jules, after his religious epiphany, has become an instrument of God there by nullifying the curse, allowing Ringo to view the diamonds and walk off unscathed to start a new life with Honey Bunny or star in a sub-par TV show on Fox.
Q: Ah, but Vince is killed by Butch after Jules quits and after he "nullifies" the curse. The soul in the briefcase is absolutely the only story that makes any sense, although I'm intrigued by your semi-erotic hot-glue jewelry pile. Please supply crude drawings on the back of a cocktail napkin. Also, "sub-par" and "Fox" is basically redundant.
But there you have it. Sweet, sweet misdirection. That's just how Dylan gets us every time, from going electric to releasing a Christmas album. The MacGuffin strikes again, and the Jokerman lives to fight another day. We'll be seeing him again real soon, too...
I'm not sure what you mean by a lot less Bob. You're pretty much carpet bombed by Bob's lyrics throughout this record, and even when you're not sure what exactly he's talking about, it's still a lot of fun listening to him go. I had forgotten how much fun Highway 61 really is.
F: Rusk, MacNamara and Cong? That's what that means? Suddenly the veil has been pulled back. I feel like I'm seeing the world clearly for the very first time. Also, at the next Counterbalance board meeting we need to establish a sarcasm font. I don't feel like I'm getting my point across with plain old Arial.
Comparatively, Highway 61 is a full half-hour shorter than Blonde On Blonde. And despite the fact that Highway 61 is one fun album, and it is, I can only take about an hour of Bob before his lyrical riddles turn from amusing to annoying.
"Your gravity fails and your negativity don't pull you through, don't put on any airs when your down on Rue Morgue Avenue."
Again, WTF?
Q: Ah, see now here, "gravity" is Barry Goldwater, while "negativity" refers to his running mate, Representative William E. Miller (R, N.Y.), whose Catholicism (the yin to Dylan's Judaic yang) was expected to help the Republican campaign in the post-Kennedy 1964. But Main Street America (the "Rue Morgue Avenue," as Dylan calls it in a delightful bit of mordant wordplay) wasn't having it. Their "hungry women really made a mess out of" the ticket. Sheesh - did you fall asleep in Dylanology 101, Fresh?
Seriously, though, I love the way Dylan toys with words, especially on this album. Was he trying to say something in some sort of code? Maybe at times, but I suspect that he was often just digging the way the language was flowing, and what that language could evoke.
Of course, when he's focused in his attack, he can be devastating, like on "Like a Rolling Stone" and especially "Ballad of a Thin Man." Yikes. I wouldn't want to be that guy.
F: Dylan definitely knows how to cut with his lyrics. And when its obvious, its very obvious. I think that's what gives the rest of his nonsensical lyrics so much weight. We spend a lot of time trying to decipher them because we know how pointed he can be, but all Bob has really done is performed an end-around on his listeners so that he could sneak off and do what ever it is Bob Dylan did in his free time. Meanwhile, our minds are stuck in a Chinese finger trap.
"Mailboxes drip like lampposts in the twisted birth canal of the coliseum."
C'mon, Bob! Really? Double WTF?!
Q: OK, this one's actually a little tricky. Here, the mailboxes are a clear reference to napalm, which soldiers would call "Lamppost Molly," for reasons that are sadly lost to the mists of time. And of course the twisted birth canal of the coliseum suggests the attempts to bring democracy to Southeast Asia. Condoleezza Rice was in fact slyly referencing the line when she described the 2006 anti-Hizballah campaign as the "birth pangs of the new Middle East." It's all out there, man . . .
Dylan has always messed with people's heads, to the point where even his simplest statements come across as hidden in plain sight. How many people have dedicated countless hours to studying "Ballad of a Thin Man," parsing each line for meanings and references, when it might well be little more than a gay panic dig at some guy who gave him the stink-eye in a restaurant?
Of course, the fact that Dylan's songs get people asking the questions in the first place is what keeps records like this alive, and it why he's ranked so highly in the pantheon.
F: Do you think he did it on purpose? Or was it just some serendipitous coincidence that people thought his lyrics meant something but he was just too stoned to set them straight? I imagine he slipped a few veiled references in here and there (I do it in Counterbalance all the time. Spread the purple jelly on the frisky biscuit), but do you think he stayed up at night thinking about ways to twist his words just to mess with our heads?
Q: What was in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction? What's with all the Esperanto in the OK Computer artwork? Young people love looking for hidden meanings and the 1960s were a perfect storm of artists stretching the boundaries of pop music and a vast audience of eager (and possibly high) young people. Some of the "clues" may have been accidental and some of them may be an intentional misdirection. A MacGuffin, if you will.
But I don't think Bob was ever especially interested in setting people straight, stoned or not. It's the post-Dylan singer-songwriters, your James Taylors and Joni Mitchells, who made the songs so inherently personal and specific. We may be trying to retrofit Dylan's lyrics into that template, and especially in this mid-'60s incarnation, that's really not going to work out so well.
F: The briefcase in Pulp Fiction contained the diamonds that were originally stolen in Reservoir Dogs. The diamonds were most likely cursed and resulted in the death of whoever looked at them, including, coincidentally, the brothers Vic and Vincent Vega, played by Michael Madsen and John Travolta, respectively. And if I had to wager an educated guess, I'd say that Radiohead speak Esperanto because they seem like the kind of egg-headed nerds who would do something like that. These I can easily explain away. However, I have a harder time parsing Dylan . . .
"When all of your advisers heave their plastic, at your feet to convince you of your pain. Trying to prove your conclusions should be more drastic."
What the WTF?
Q: False. Ringo wouldn't have said "Is that what I think it is?" He knows what a big pile of diamonds is when he sees one. He also wouldn't have said "It's beautiful" if he were looking at a quantity of diamonds. He would have said "they're beautiful." Also he doesn't get killed. Fact: the briefcase contained Marcellus Wallace's soul, which had been sucked out of the back of his head (hence the bandage in the scene with Butch). Everyone knows that, and to disagree is folly.
But you can't trick me with "Queen Jane Approximately." When everyone else turns their back on you because you weren't what they thought you should be, and when everyone's talking about you and second-guessing your motives, you can always come see Bob because he'd understand. Pretty self-explanatory and actually kind of sweet
At least that's my take. Your interpretation might be different, and I get the impression Dylan's OK with that.
F: Yeah, yeah - whatever you say about Dylan. Good stuff. But you are completely off base about Pulp Fiction.
1. How would Ringo know what a soul looked like?
2. You can say "It's beautiful," if you are looking at a quantity of diamonds. A pile of diamonds can be referred to in the singular especially if the you are referring to the group's beauty, not just the beauty of the individual diamonds making up the group. Also, said diamonds may or may not have been hot-glued into the shape of a woman in a semi erotic pose, therefore also satisfying Ringo's previous comments.
3. Jules decides not to kill Ringo and Honey Bunny because Jules, after his religious epiphany, has become an instrument of God there by nullifying the curse, allowing Ringo to view the diamonds and walk off unscathed to start a new life with Honey Bunny or star in a sub-par TV show on Fox.
Q: Ah, but Vince is killed by Butch after Jules quits and after he "nullifies" the curse. The soul in the briefcase is absolutely the only story that makes any sense, although I'm intrigued by your semi-erotic hot-glue jewelry pile. Please supply crude drawings on the back of a cocktail napkin. Also, "sub-par" and "Fox" is basically redundant.
But there you have it. Sweet, sweet misdirection. That's just how Dylan gets us every time, from going electric to releasing a Christmas album. The MacGuffin strikes again, and the Jokerman lives to fight another day. We'll be seeing him again real soon, too...
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