Let it die a natural death, instead of subjecting it to the firing squad. I'm glad it veered off into Dylan, even if it's the umpteenth Dylan thread.

I heard Paul Muldoon read at the Poetry Center in Chicago, and he talked about his collaboration with Warren Zevon. He said that on "Macgillycuddy's Reeks,' they wrote the first verse right away, but then it took them another month to get the second one right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tE-aZ1k-Oc

Here's a good essay on Muldoon.

https://www.nodepression.com/paul-muldoon-goes-rogue/

What the hell, man, let the thread go where it may.

Aside from "Macgillycuddy's Reeks", the other song Muldoon co-wrote with Warren Zevon was the beautiful "My Ride's Here" - truly one of Zevon's great moments, with references to Shelley, Keats, Byron, Jesus and John Wayne, just to name a few. There's also a song on the same album called "Lord Byron's Luggage". I love how Zevon wove popular culture references into his songs - I've already mentioned the Einstein/Charlie Sheen line - on the same album there's a song called "Sacfricial Lambs" where he mentions Smokey and the Bandit, Saddam Hussein and Russell Crowe in the very same verse.

Sorry Jim, if we're talking about Zevon, I can't control my keyboard tapping.

Fwiw, here's "My Ride's Here". A beautiful song, written with Muldoon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRkcBcyB7v4

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OK I’ll come back — for Warren Zevon...

In his short life Warren Zevon produced some amazingly powerful lyrics and music. I was going to give a link to his last appearance on the David Letterman Show (they were good friends — "“Dave is the best friend my music ever had”) but then I came across this documentary of his final months. It doesn’t get much better than this. (The gallows humor embedded in the Letterman interview is quintessential Zevon — “Don’t be fooled by cosmetics”)

If you don't have the time to watch the whole documentary (but you should find the time) here are two clips of his last appearance on the Letterman Show:

https://youtu.be/z7Mirkd3CT4

https://youtu.be/MqWqyjUsCAw

https://youtu.be/dIC4j6Rn9s4

https://youtu.be/I53v5HY3SHM
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I'm looking forward to the documentary, which I'll watch today, but first let me serve up the new Dylan song, "Murder Most Foul," an apocalyptic, kaleidoscopic, 17-minute epic that even has a subtle reference to Warren Zevon. It is a most timely gift for all the Dylanologists here.

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/27/82241...rder-most-foul

l have mixed feelings about Zevon. He tried so very hard, imo. I didn't believe him, I guess. Head over heart, maybe. My bias. But do like a handful of songs. I was sad about his passing and saw that Letterman interview when it happened.

Simon, you don't like Neil Young? My god, if it weren't for Trump, craziest thing I've heard today. I love the vulnerability in his voice. Tough, memorable guitar. I believe him.

Neil Young is fine, just not my cup of meat. I never liked any of his other songs the way I liked "Helpless."

I know what you mean about believability, and I'll say this about Zevon. He is best known for his arch, funny songs like "Werewolves," "Excitable Boy," "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me," etc. And I LOVE those.

But seek out the sad love songs--"Mutineer" comes to mind just now, but there are many. He's even better in that mode and, to me, utterly believable--heart-breakingly so.

Cup of meat? That's a lost opportunity for The Pixies, ha. I'll listen to Mutineer. Helpless is Neil Young, so I'm surprised you don't like more. Hurricane, another defining song. (Southern Man, and on...) I'm blown away by both. Then, I'm not absolutely sure I'm right, but this had to be his doing

https://youtu.be/TRE9vMBBe10

So do we like that new Dylan song? I think it's great that he released it for free and gave us all 20 minutes' diversion in our captivity, but it doesn't seem like a great one to me--musically stodgy and lyrically clunky. I liked "Highlands" in 97 or so, which was about as long, but I haven't returned to "Tempest" after hearing it once (the song I mean, not the album, but "Duquesne Whistle" is the only song I can really remember off the album). I can't imagine choosing to play "Murder Most Foul" again when the option exists of listening to "Visions of Johanna" twice instead, but then it isn't fair to hold Dylan to the standard of his best songs.

Never mind.

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Simon: So do we like that new Dylan song?

Listening to it is like panning for gold. And there are some nuggets in it. The melody is sombre and I could listen to that piano all night long. The lyrics are a rambling, disjointed compendium of musical history and influences and his couplets rat-a-tat-tat like buckshot for 17 minutes.

I've got to find out more about it.
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Well what a pleasant surprise. Maybe Bob’s been reading this blog? You never know. And a reference to Warren Zevon (Gower Street) as Tim mentioned. This one will keep the Dylanologists busy for a long long time. A hypnotic piece of work with a million allusions to ...well just about everything under the sun.

"Tempest" is my favorite song on the album. A bright, brisk waltz in triple time, the upbeat music provides a nice counterpoint to the downbeat lyrics.

And Quincy Lehr lay dreaming,
His whole world now in flux,
He dreamed the Titanic was sinking,
And he said 'It fucking sucks.'

"A day that will live on in infamy...
Led to the slaughter like a sacrificial lamb...
Shot down like a dog...
We're gonna kill you with hatred, without any respect"

All that in the first verse. That last line was as far I got.

But then, what could the first songwriter given a Novel possibly write that wouldn't make some frickin' nobody complain?

He's not trying to justify his Nobel with every couplet he writes.

Dylan often writes in a folk, blues, jazz cat voice.

Also, as Tim and I discussed earlier in this thread, almost everything Dylan has written since '97 is a collage of other peoples words. Lyrically, there's a lot more going on in this song than meets the ear.

But if you want me to justify his Nobel, I reckon he deserves it alone for the final verse of Mr. Tambourine Man.

In "Murder Most Fowl," Dylan gives us a free-wheeling tour of many of the cultural touchstones of the last hundred years, including popular music and, most prominently, the Kennedy assassination. However, the assassination is just a hook for Dylan to hang his coat of many colors on. He is free associating here, a technique he uses frequently, and the song's scaffolding or spine--it's organizing principle--is rhyme. By my count, the song has 82 couplets, or 82 rhyming opportunities, and in 80 of them the rhymes are exact. That works out to a little more than 97 percent, a good percentage even for Dylan, no slouch in the rhyme department, as Damian appreciates. Besides referring to rock, jazz and blues, he also mentions Shakespeare and the "Moonlight Sonata," although he gets the key signature of the sonata wrong. "The Moonlight" is written in C-sharp minor, not F-sharp as Dylan says, although the key does include an F-sharp note. You'd think that Dylan would know such things, and he probably does. As always, it's hard to fathom his intentions.

I haven't asked for a justification of his Nobel prize. I am curious about what anyone sees in the line "We're gonna kill you with hatred, without any respect."

Fair call Max. It's a rough as guts line and to say you don't respect someone after you've killed them probably goes without saying. But I think Dylan is using the idiom of the folk/blues/jazz cat tongue. It's not what he's saying, it's the way he's saying it. To my ear, he pulls it off. There's probably a thousand worse Dylan lines that don't cut the mustard on the page e.g. He sings "Whenever someone around him died and was dead" in Red River Shore. Now to my knowledge, it goes without saying that someone who dies is dead, but strangely this line works.

Interesting observation Tim about Moonlight Sonata. That's not my area of expertise, but maybe Dylan's hinting at something with that line. On the subject of the music in "Murder Most Foul", I hear the violin almost mimicking the violin in Van Morrison's "Madame George" threatening to burst out of the shadows. But it never does.

The way he's saying it is what grates on my ear. He's using cliches and other empty words so he can hit his rhymes. But I appreciate knowing that others hear it differently. Thanks.

Some listeners find other kinds of rhymes more interesting. And even those who agree that exact rhyme is always best (as this calculation implies), cringe when they hear a line as baldly rhyme-driven.

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It's hard swallow John Prine's death to coronavirus. His wife is sick too.

Here's him performing "Hello In There".
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John Prine dead? Are you sure?
I thought he was serious, but had improved.

I have seen no reports at all of his death on his own site, Wikipedia, or anywhere else. I think Jim jumped the gun on this one. At least I hope he did.

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Oh man, sorry! I could have sworn I had read it that day.

Strangely, I had just now come back to the thread, still under the false impression he had died (only to discover he had not) to post another video of John Prine I had come across... It almost seems now like the thread was meant to come around to being about John Prine from the very beginning.

What an amazing storyteller. Here is a brilliant set of songs he performed in a perfect setting for storytelling — with his songwriting hero Gordon Lightfoot listening in the front row. Beautiful storytelling, plain and simple.

https://youtu.be/w5Rkm_dqm7A
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Esmeralda and the Hunchback of Notre Dame,
They humped each other like they had no shame.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/enter...ml#nt=screamer

And Gordon Lightfoot won immortality for rhyming 'Fitzgerald' with 'imperiled.'

It seems you were right, Jim.

https://amp.theguardian.com/music/20...r-dies-aged-73

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strange days indeed.
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