Sunday 15 August 2010

EVENSONG: THE TITANIC SAILS AT DAWN, BOB DYLAN WITH CHARLIE McCOY ON GUITAR, RUSS SAVAKUS ON BASS AND AMPHETAMINE IN THE GROOVES, DESOLATION ROW

4 comments:

mongoose said...

The circus is always in town. Same old, same old.

PT Barnum said...

We're all living on Desolation Row now.

They're selling postcards of the hanging
They're painting the passports brown
...
Here comes the blind commissioner
They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they're restless
They need somewhere to go

call me ishmael said...

Between the windows of the Sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much, About Desolation Row...


It may well be eleven minutes of dope-spun, unconnected, surreal lyricism, mr ptb, but that coincidence of imagery, underscored and punctuated by his own metronomic strum, perfectly embellished by McCoy's heavenly doodling, swerving and darting in and out, well....at times I think there are no words but these to tell what's True.

PT Barnum said...

It may be dope-spun and surreal but all too often that's the only way to tell the truth anymore, since simple facts are now beyond parody. I still look at Magritte's bowler-hatted men falling out of the sky and find it to be the clearest statement of how our world has become the domain of bland, faceless bureaucracy, where respectability is the highest virtue and conformity the only way.