[R. S. Gwynn]

Eric, there's no shame in a guitarist's using a capo.

As long as we let people like Mr. Berlin immigrate we'll be ok. And Rep. Omar, as well.

[Mark McDonnell]

If you have any doubts about Dylan's genius as a singer/performer, watch the new Scorsese film on the Rolling Thunder Revue.

I've been watching it Roger, I'm about halfway through. It is incredible. Stripped of his guitar, Dylan really theatrically performs those songs. I love that mid 70s period.

Tenuous Bob Dylan link to Irving Berlin: apparently Woody Guthrie wrote 'This Land is Your Land' in 1940 as a sort of socialist response to the jingoism with which 'God Bless America' had become associated.

I always loved the way GBA is used at the end of The Deer Hunter, sung by the emotionally exhausted characters after the wake: both quietly ironic and sincere at the same time.

The recording of the Emma Lazarus poem is amazing, Sam, thanks for posting it. There's something very haunting about that thin reed of a voice lost in the hiss and crackle...

[Roger Slater]

Mark, you may already know this, but just in case you don't, be aware that the interviews are all made-up stuff. Some of the people interviewed are actors, and some are the actual people telling entirely concocted stories, the ultimate mask. I found it fun, but it's the performances that make the film so wonderful. (For some reason, I had never noticed or paid attention to his song "Isis," so his performance was a wonderful discovery. How I could have overlooked such a great song is a mystery to me).

[John Isbell]

"I married Isis on the fifth day of May ..." What a tremendous opening line. Not everyone gets to marry an Egyptian or Near Eastern fertility goddess.

Cheers,
John

[Roger Slater]

And I love the way the date is repeated at the very end (and the "insane" line is perfect):

Isis, oh, Isis, you mystical child
What drives me to you is what drives me insane
I still can remember the way that you smiled
On the fifth day of May in the drizzlin' rain

[John Isbell]

Yes, the insane circle completes its revolution, the futile quest has ended and he’s back to the lodestar that drives him mad. “I came in from the East with the sun in my eyes ...”
In general, the album Desire deserves more credit.

Cheers,
John

[Mark McDonnell]

Roger and John,

I want to join in! An amazing song. I love the dialogue bit towards the the end, the jubilance in the final 'Yeess'

She said, 'where ya been?' I said, 'no place special'
She said, 'you look different'. I said, 'well, I guess'
She said, 'you been gone'. I said, 'that's only natural'
She said, 'you gonna stay?' I said, 'if you want me to, YES!'

Blood on the Tracks and Desire are as good as the mid 60s stuff.

[John Isbell]

The song “Black Diamond Bay” stopped me in my tracks at age thirteen:

“She knocked at the door that the Greek had locked,
But the Greek just yelled ‘Go away!’ And kicked the chair to the floor.
He hung there from the chandelier; she cried ‘Help, there’s danger near!
Please open up at the door ...’”

And then the final dagger:
“I was sitting home alone one night
In L.A., watching old Cronkite
On the seven o’clock news ...

Didn’t seem like much was happening,
So I turned it off and went to grab another beer;
Seems like every time you turn around,
There’s another hard luck story that you’re gonna hear ...”

Dylan does that return out of the narrative better than anyone I know, for instance, in”Blind Willie McTell” -

"I'm gazing out the window
Of the St. James Hotel"

or in “Tweeter and the Monkey Man” -

"Now the town of Jersey City is quieting down again
I'm sitting in a gambling club called the Lion's Den"

I'd post links, but good Dylan Youtube links are hard to come by.

Cheers,
John

[James Brancheau]

Re post 12~ Hey Mark, one of my best friends who teaches at the same university did a conference presentation on This Land Is Your Land (and brought his instrument and sang for a portion of it). The conference was on Forgotten Books and the best I've ever been to. Actually, I believe, the only conference I've ever liked. He was presenting on other (two I think are commonly known) "lost" versions. It's a brilliant song. Later adopted (and changed) by schools as a patriotic anthem, it was of course originally a protest song. The title connects with an important idea in that original, and other versions, which, if I remember correctly, had to do with the seizure of property during the great depression.

[John Isbell]

When i was a kid, we had a version which went like this:

This land is my land, this land is my land,
From California, to New York Island,
I got a shotgun, and you don't got one,
This land is made for only me.

Very American.

Cheers,
John