Bob Dylan – “Another Self Portrait (1969-1971): The Bootleg Series Vol. 10” (2013)
This comes from the Aug. 29th and latest issue of Rolling Stone, written by the great David Fricke…
Dylan Repaints Self Portrait
What is this great shit? With brilliant box set, Dylan reclaims his weirdest record.
This two-CD set of previously unissued demos, alternate takes, scrapped arrangements and discarded songs from more than 40 years ago is one of the most important, coherent and fulfilling Bob Dylan albums ever released. The performances are immediate and invigorating, often in spare, buoyant arrangements with clear, virile singing. Despite the vintage, or maybe because it’s all been hidden for so long, everything here feels like new music, busy being born and put to tape with crisp impatience. “Let’s just take this one,” Dylan says before a take of the traditional ballad “Little Sadie,” one of 17 raw, magnetic tracks from a single three-day sprint with guitarist David Bromberg and pianist Al Kooper in March 1970. Dylan was, in fact, on the verge of a crossroads: the widely scorned double LP Self Portrait, issued three months later. He sounds eager to get there.
That album is still tough going: a frank, confrontational likeness of the artist at 29 and loose ends, crooning folk tunes, pure corn and odd, plaintive originals, mostly through thick Nashville syrup. There may be no better description of Dylan at the close of his first, whirlwind decade, exhausted and uncertain of his way into the next, than Self Portrait‘s opening mantra, sung in his place by a group of country-gospel angels: “All the tired horses in the sun/How’m I supposed to get any ridin’ done?”
Self Portrait and the country-folk assurance of its late-’70 follow-up, New Morning, were actually part of a long, connected act of self-examination and re-ignition. Most of Another Self Portrait comes from those sessions, highlighting Dylan’s breadth of drive at a time when many thought he had no direction forward. The horns on this set’s “New Morning” are busy in the verses but a delightful Stax-like reveille in the chorus, while a pre-overdub version of Self Portrait‘s ghost story “Days of ’49” has more room for the haunting in Dylan’s voice. “I contemplated every move, or at least I tried,” he sings in a moving take of “Went to See the Gypsy,” effectively summing up this period in a line he then cut from the song on New Morning.
Dylan was no writing engine that year. The few previously unissued originals here are quirky pleasures (the shaggy-dog dada of “Tattle O’Day”). But the music is consistently alive and astonishingly modern. The honky-tonk walk “Alberta #3” could have been cut for last year’s Tempest. The exploration of different roads in the same song; the restorative power Dylan draws from traditional sources like “House Carpenter,” a song in this set that he first cut in 1962: Dylan still makes his best work that way. The difference here: He did it, then gave us something else.
A deluxe edition of this set has Dylan’s 1969 Isle of Wight concert with the Band, a romping affair (excerpted on Self Portrait) that, except for the mileage on Dylan’s voice now, doesn’t sound that distant from his shows of the past 20 years. There is also a remastered Self Portrait, an instructive bonus if you’ve never heard it. But you won’t go back to it that often. There will be no need.
David Fricke
Paul McCartney – “New” (2013)
From his forthcoming album of the same name… out October 15th…
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – “I Have a Dream” (1963)
The 50th year anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered Aug. 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C. …
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: “For Whites Only.” We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest — quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification” — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day — this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning:
My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
Glen Campbell – “See You There” (2013)
This review of Glen’s likely-final album comes from The Telegraph, dated Aug. 15th, and written by Helen Brown…
Back in 1967, Glen Campbell was struggling to make a career for himself as a solo artist when he heard John Hartford’s “Gentle on My Mind” on the radio. He connected to the song of lost love immediately, and rounded up members of his old Wrecking Crew band with whom he’d played on hits for Elvis, the Beach Boys and Frank Sinatra. They knocked out a rough version to pitch to Capitol Records, with Campbell yelling instructions to his band mates between verses. His producer fell in love with both the song and the impromptu recording, stripped Campbell’s shouting from the tape and turned the soulful demo into a hit.
Following his diagnosis with Alzheimer’s in 2011, the song’s lyrics about “forgotten words and bonds” and the tricky backroads and rivers of memory have a different poignancy. But in interviews given at the time, Campbell’s wife said that while he was prone to anxiety and forgot where the bathroom was, he was still connected to his old songs. Music was indeed proving gentle on his mind.
While he was recording his final album of new material – 2011’s Ghost on the Canvas – Campbell looked again at some of his signature songs and laid down new vocals. It is these raw reimaginings of his greatest hits that form the basis of See You There.
Producers Dave Kaplan and Dave Darling have sanded the new arrangements of smooth oldies such as “Gentle on My Mind” down to the rough grain. The result is a deeply moving record – a warm, valedictory squeeze of the listener’s hand from the cowboy hunk.
His versions of Jimmy Webb’s songs stand out. “Wichita Lineman” may well be the best pop song ever written. It’s certainly one of the most haunting and mysterious. Here the intensity of Campbell’s original recording is replaced by a feeling of weathered nostalgia. It’s slower, easier. The evident age in his new vocal invites you to imagine the lineman as a widower, listening for a ghost in the wire, smiling regretfully up at the electric sky. “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” is set against the slack, steel strings of a slide guitar and a steady, muffled drum drives “Galveston.”
Best, though, is the intimate new cut of “Rhinestone Cowboy.” Accompanied by just one scuzzy electric guitar, it sounds like Campbell’s alone in an empty auditorium. The old yodel in the voice is there as he sings of the “load of compromisin’ on the road to my horizon”. But the bright lights this devout Jew is gazing towards are no longer facing the stage. They’re much higher up.
Helen Brown
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/cdreviews/10245645/Glen-Campbell-See-You-There-review.html
(Various Artists) – “Mutazione: Italian Electronic & New Wave Underground 1980-1988” (2013)
This review by Miles Raymer comes from the Pitchfork Media website, dated Aug. 14th…
Really good comprehensive, scene-focused reissue compilations can have the effect of making you nostalgic for a very specific time and place that you were never a part of – for instance, Nuggets’ mythopoeic postwar suburban ur-garage, or New York Noise’s rawkus downtown disco-punk-hip-hop soundclash. Strut’s new Mutazione: Italian Electronic & New Wave Underground 1980-1988 offers a unique location in space, time, and aesthetics to daydream about, namely a too-good-to-be-true music scene in 1980s Italy where Suicide and Throbbing Gristle made the same impact that the Ramones and Sex Pistols had elsewhere, and Foucault and Sartre were considered rock stars on the same level as David Bowie and Iggy Pop.
As appealing as Mutazione makes this particular place seem, it was actually fairly grim at the time. The 1968 student uprising that rocked society and politics across Europe reverberated in Italy longer than in other countries, and the nation was “on a war footing,” according to an essay in the compilation’s liner notes by Italian music journalist Alberto Campo: “on one side there is the extreme right wing and secret security’s degenerated fringes; on the other, the extreme left movements that had chosen the armed struggle.” In 1978 the leader of the country’s Christian Democratic party was kidnapped and assassinated by members of the Marxist-Leninist terrorist group Red Brigade; two years later the bombing of a rail station in Bologna that killed 85 people and wounded over 200 was attributed to the neo-fascist Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari. In Italy this period was known as the Years of Lead.
According to recent interviews by journalist Andrea Pomini (who records electronic music under the name Repeater) with the members of the groups – collected in an illuminating essay in the liner notes – their music was a direct reaction to the hostile political atmosphere it was made in. The words “New Wave” and “electronic” might imply a certain brightly colored escapism, possibly with the Moroder-isms and discomania that defined most synth-based music being made in Europe at the time, but the material collected here is relentlessly dark, paranoid, and for the most part well out of bounds of even the most generously broad definitions of pop at the time.
The compilation begins the blurry, overdriven drum machine that introduces Die Form’s “Are You Before”, which is quickly joined by reggae-esque guitar and bass lines, a squealing free jazz saxophone, and vocalist F. White sinisterly stage-whispering second-person lyrics – “You are strange […] you dislike everything” – that implicate the listener in some sort of vague aesthetic thoughtcrime in between stridently barking the titular question. Listening to it on headphones feels like being in the center of a brainwashing session from a 70s political paranoia thriller.
Not every track on the collection is as harrowing of a listen. Neon, Carmody, and Pale TV are among the acts who contribute relatively upbeat cuts that you can actually dance to. But even the poppiest songs here are still deeply strange. Some of the musicians who played on the material collected here went on to mainstream pop success, but the most common musical references cited in Pomini’s interviews are such uncompromisingly harsh experimentalists as Suicide, Throbbing Gristle, the Residents, and Wire, and artists like Andy Warhol who are considered equally influential. It says a lot about how darkly intellectual the whole scene was that one of the members of Carmody, whose affably bleeping “Vulcani” is one of the most accessibly pop tracks on the compilation, says that the group as a whole was, “fascinated by the sensation of falling down deep into an abyss, a bottomless pit, an endless fall.”
The material collected on Mutazione was never meant for mass consumption. Not only was that built into the most basic elements of the music itself, which was as antagonistic towards mainstream tastes as the British crust punk of the time, much of it was originally released on cassette, a throwaway medium even during its heyday, and many of the members collaborated via tapes sent through the mail on projects that were never even intended for release. On top of that there was a whole multimedia facet to what many of these bands were up to – visual art, performance art, video art – that even the niche audience who digs up Mutazione isn’t going to get.
But even though the stuff on Mutazione never spread far out of its original territory, its creators offer a sometimes haunting prescience for musical ideas that popped up independently in other communities around the world, and which still have resonance today. They devised weird signal chains running through gear that was never meant for that kind of thing. They took personal computers meant for geeky hobbyist programmers and used them to make music. They used cheap, disposable media to transmit subversive ideas encased in something that closely resembled pop.
This isolated community of radical freaks in the 1980s predicted everything from power electronics to Tumblr’s avant garde fringe. Grappling with new technology by figuring out interesting ways to break it? A pervasive feeling that some kind of terrible new totalitarianism is lurking just offstage? Blood in the air and on our broadcast media? Mutazione might be the most right-now sounding record out there.
Miles Raymer
The Beat Patrol 