Instant Karma

Click on the orange link below to read a review of Corn Flakes with John Lennon & Other Tales From a Rock 'n Roll Life by Robert Hilburn.

No Direction Home

Click on the orange link below to read a review of The Ballad of Bob Dylan: A Portrait by Daniel Mark Epstein.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/no-direction-home/

Mr. Tambourine Man

Click on the orange link below to read a review of Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968-2010.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2011/05/07/mr-tambourine-man/

One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)

Click on the orange link below to read a review of The Ballad of Bob Dylan: A Profile by Daniel Mark Epstein.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/one-of-us-must-know-sooner-or-later/

On the Road Again

Click on the orange link below to read a review of the rock memoir, Corn Flakes with John Lennon by Robert Hilburn.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/glory-days-2/

I Still Miss Someone

Click on the orange link below to read a review of Composed: A Memoir by Roseanne Cash (Viking).

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2010/09/12/i-still-miss-someone/

We're giving away Life and Life Only!

Click on the orange link below to see how you can win one of 2 copies of Life and Life Only, a novel by Dave Moyer.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2010/01/22/another-book-giveaway-2/

Read the review now, buy the book in May!

Click on the orange link below to read a review of The Singer's Gun, the forthcoming novel by Emily St. John Mandel (Last Night in Montreal).

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/break-on-through/

A story of Bob Dylan and baseball...

Click on the orange link below to read a review of Life and Life Only, a novel by Dave Moyer.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/tangled-up-in-blue/

If you like Bright Eyes...

If you like - or love - the band Bright Eyes, you may well be interested in this review of the new CD Outer South by Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band. Written by Chris Holehouse of The Epic Times.

Conor Oberst knows how to tell a story. The Midwest native and front man for the band Bright Eyes, also has quite the knack for casting his poetic hymns across a great melody. Enlisting the help of the Mystic Valley Band, Oberst and friends venture into some interesting musical territory on "Outer South," a soothing ride through an acoustic countryside, brimmed with ample twang and polish.

"Potential, you're a loaded line," opens the 29-year-old indie songwriter in "Slowly (Oh So Slowly)," a rock-enthused number that mixes rowdy with playful and features Oberst's patented metaphor-doused reflection.

Potential may seem like a dismissible idea to Oberst, who's 10-plus years ascent to stardom has been seemless, granting him showers of praise and Bob Dylan comparisons, and winning him Rolling Stone's Top Songwriter award in 2008. But on "Outer South," we see Oberst sidestepping the reigns and letting band mates Nik Freitas, Taylor Hollingsworth, and Jason Boesel sew their vocal seed.

"Big Black Nothing" features a haunted Freitas sporting his Tom Petty camouflage in a tension-mounting groove that seeps into Hollingsworth's tongue in cheek, "Air Mattress," an innocent plea with spunky synths that Elvis Costello could call his own.

Still, the tracks where Oberst does take the vocal lead tend to dwarf his collaborators throughout the disc. While it's not totally apparent who wrote which songs, Oberst's magical ability to transcend intimacy and sing as if he was in the flesh and not echoing through a speaker ("White Shoes," "Ten Women") is what truly brings weight to all the Dylan comparisons and makes "Outer South" memorable.

"To All the Lights in the Windows" takes props from R.E.M.'s "Bang and Blame," but it's not a bad thing.

Outside of just a few different cuts, "Outer South" actually keeps Oberst's usual plaintive melodies on the down low and marches toward a more optimistic appeal. With a blend of different vocalists and six contributing members, The Mystic Valley Band sit well next to Oberst and help him chisel another accomplished notch on his songwriting belt.

Bob Dylan Warms Our Lives...

We earlier posted three separate reviews of Bob Dylan's latest album, Together Through Life, and expected that this would be the end of our highlighted reviews... Until we came across this review by Bob Lines - abridged here - published in the UCLA Daily Bruin on Tuesday, May 12, 2009.

From the Daily Bruin to Troy Bear:

Bob Dylan achieved his fifth Billboard No. 1 last week. His 33rd studio album, "Together Through Life," beat the soundtrack from "Hannah Montana" to claim the top spot.

Excuse me while I briefly celebrate. It's not that I have anything against Hannah Montana per se (I'm sure the soundtrack's great), but it's a moment for small jubilation when, in the age of Miley Cyrus, the music of Bob Dylan reaches a large audience.

That said, "Together" is probably the weakest of Dylan's albums since his stellar comeback in 1997 with "Time Out of Mind" - but this is hardly a criticism. It's just that the sound of the latter-day Dylan is fairly familiar to his fans, and here Dylan doesn't do much new. He sings with the same grit and wheeze and employs the same mix of jazz, spiritual and blues, just without as many good songs.

At its worst, "Together Through Life" feels humdrum and turgid. The finger-picked electric guitar and staccato organ work well on the good tracks but feel bland on the weak ones. The album's opener, "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'," a low-key blues turn almost slides into pastiche, heavily influenced by the songs of Chuck Berry and Little Richard.

"If You Ever Go to Houston" could have been cut from the final track list: the song feels like a cut-and-paste of the blues ballads of the '50s that Dylan plays so regularly on "Theme Time Radio Hour." The lyrics, co-written by former Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, are similarly lackluster.

Nevertheless, the album is a welcome addition to the Dylan catalogue. "Life is Hard" is a sweet melancholy ballad, originally written for Olivier Dahan's upcoming film "My Own Love Song." The gentle slide guitar accompanies Dylan's straining voice. As Dylan stretches his vocals to (the) breaking point, he sounds more vulnerable than ever.

The penultimate track, "I Feel a Change Coming On," is both a nod to the presidency of Barack Obama and a mischievous and wistful ode to an old lover. Add into the mix a cheeky reference to James Joyce, and you're left with Dylan at his best on "Together..." Here, David Hidalgo's organ-playing alongside Dylan's affectionate vocals is a welcome addition.

While the album doesn't reach the heights of "Love and Theft" or "Modern Times," it's still a pretty good effort from the nonstop touring 67-year-old. Dylan could have easily not released anything for the last 20 years. If he had died sometime after "Blood on the Tracks," his reputation would have been firmly cemented with Lennon, Hendrix and the other members of rock royalty who have sadly passed on.

Dylan was never one to spend retirement pottering around the garden. Now the challenge for both Dylan and his fellow rock elder statesmen is how to mellow into old age without declining into parody or Starbucks-promoted cheese.

Dylan has done neither, but then we wouldn't have expected him to. His late career return to form has been more than we could ever have hoped for. As such, every record he gives us should be savored like the final days of a wonderful summer - it will be cold when he's gone.

How to Search This Blog... (or any blogspot site)

Friends have asked me how to search for particular articles - such as book or music reviews - within this blog. I had no idea until about a week ago when a fellow blogger explained it to me.

In the upper left corner of this sample blog page, you'll see a blank white rectangular box. This is where you can enter a search term phrase or keywords such as: bob dylan, dave mason, small faces, jenny dalton, green day, great central government, munchy, peet's, starbucks, bold coffee or some other topic and then click on Search Blog (earlier Search This Blog). The multiple results for these topics will then appear as one long web page. Pretty cool.

I feel like I should keep writing except there is nothing more to say, it's as simple as this.

A Preview of Coming Attractions...

If things work out as planned, we'll have a two-part exclusive interview with singer-songwriter Jenny Dalton on this site on Friday, May 8th and Saturday, May 9th. Stay tuned...

Also, the book A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties by Suze Rotolo - Bob Dylan's first girlfriend - will be released in paperback next week. She was the then 17 year old young woman who, 45 years ago, was pictured with Bob on the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. We plan to post a review as soon as is humanly possible.

Shelter From the Storm: Another Review of Bob Dylan's Together Through Life...

This review by Scott Mervis - abridged here - was originally published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on April 30, 2009. (Third in a series of three reviews.)

BOB DYLAN 'Together Through Life' (Columbia)
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 4 (Very good)

David Fricke, writing one of the first reviews of Together Through Life, described Dylan's voice as "a deep, exhausted rasp that sounds like the singer has been beaten to a pulp, then left for dead at the side of the road."

Dylan's voice has never been considered a pretty thing, but it's taken a lot of mileage, whiskey and cigarettes for it to reach the "left for dead..." stage. Some folks like American Idols with clear, pitch-perfect voices. Some like more grit. And then some like their singers sounding just slightly beyond half-dead. (Dylan's is) certainly the voice you want to sing a line like, "The sun is sinking low/I guess it's time to go/I feel a chilly breeze/in place of memories" from Life is Hard.

Dylan's third (studio album of) this decade... is another roll and tumble through old time Willie Dixon-style blues, this time with co-writing credits for Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. Dylan's minstrels - including Heartbreaker guitarist Mike Campbell and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos on accordion - give the record an otherworldly barroom swagger. They open it up sounding like Satan's cabaret band on Beyond Here Lies Nothin', the singer at his most menacing as he bellows, "just as long as you stay with me/the whole world is my throne/beyond here lies nothing/nothing we can call our own."

Together Through Life has the touches of gloom and doom we've come to expect from the old troubadour - Life is Hard is a ponderously slow after-hours shuffle and Forgetful Heart is a lover's dirge - but as he growls on Shake Shake Mama, "come back here, we can have some real fun." And Dylan does. More than (on) the last record, you can picture (a) young Dylan taking on these songs.

You have to go back to Desire to find a Dylan ballad with the smoky Latin flavor of This Dream of You. I Feel A Change Comin' On bounces like Dylan and the Band on Planet Waves, and Jolene and Shake Shake Mama are playful, lusty blues romps that rollick down Highway 61.

The crowning gem is the finale of It's All Good, where, as Hidalgo wraps his accordion around the guitar, Dylan takes a piece of slang and twists it around in a piece of apocalyptic blues: "Coldblooded killer stalkin' the town/Cop cars blinkin', something bad going down/Buildings are crumbling in the neighborhood/but there's nothing to worry about, cause it's all good."

Moral of the story: Even a Dylan left for dead at the side of the road has plenty of life in him.

Image: Amazon.

Love Minus Zero/No Limit: the Daily Cal Bear Examines Dylan's New Album...

According to Billboard and Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan's new CD Together Through Life is currently number one in U.S. sales. Because of this, we're taking not just one or two but three looks at the album this week (and do not assume that the three reviews are in agreement). Click on the orange link below to read the review from the Daily Californian, which is the second in our series of three posted reviews.

The Daily Californian :: Bob Dylan Plays It Safe With New 'Together Through Life'

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Hands in Pocket...

I keep my hands in my pocket,
I'm moving along,
People think they know,
But they're all wrong...

Bob Dylan

In my pocket I found some lint
and as I pondered it in hand
and knew my coin was all spent
a feelin' within me grew to grand.
For empty though my pocket be,
I rejoiced in being free!

Leo Free

Bob Dylan keeps his hands in his pocket on Together Through Life...

Click on the orange link below to read this record review from the Boston Globe.

Dylan finds the rhythms of love - The Boston Globe

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Photo: Amazon

The Question of Favorite Music... (Part II)

The second test or rule involves emotion. When you hear a favorite piece of music you tend to feel a basic emotion such as happiness, sadness, sorrow, joy or anger. This may manifest itself in wanting to get up and dance, or simply smiling or laughing. The key is that no thought is required... Music is not an intellectual exercise. You either connect with a piece of music or you don't.

Recently I was driving into work, late, on a highly stress-filled morning, and turned on an oldies station by habit. I drove on automatic pilot and wasn't really hearing the songs being played until... I heard the hand claps and bright guitar notes opening I'm Into Something Good by Herman's Hermits. Suddenly, I was smiling and happy, feeling the youthful optimism of so many years ago. Why this happiness and sense of contentment is tied to this particular song is a mystery to me, but it is.

The Power of One

When Elvis' second greatest hits album was released in the late 1950's it bore the subtitle/headline: 500,000 fans can't be wrong! Conversely, a half-million critics can be wrong. It's true... If today's most respected critics write that the Jonas Brothers are producing the best music on the planet and you do not agree, then you are right. And if the critics label someone as a musical genius, and you do not see it, then you can - in the words of Dave Mason - say that we just disagree.

One of my late uncles bought a minimal amount of music during his lifetime. But he went out and paid good money for every one of Ray Charles' singles and albums the moment they were released. Did I, then, grow up loving the music of Ray Charles? Honestly, no. I can respect it but I never quite "got" what one was supposed to get from it.

The same holds true, for me, with the music of The Righteous Brothers. I don't dislike it, but when I hear a song like You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling I kind of tolerate my way through it... and I have no desire to hear it again.

Emotions...

When I hear one of my very favorite albums - like Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, Beatles VI, Straight Up by Badfinger, Blood On The Tracks by Bob Dylan, or The Rising by Bruce Springsteen (the Boss) - I tend to go through the entire range... I'll smile, laugh, feel like celebrating or dancing, and I'll feel like crying. That's because, for me, these collections represent the reality of life, from good to bad, bad to good.

Anger...

One thing that has surprised me is that I'll find that some music that I actively disliked or disdained as a younger person is now music that I understand and/or appreciate. That which may have seemed threatening earlier - like teen angst or alienation - is now understood. (The years supply context.)

Of course, the point is that the anger or dislike means that the music had an impact on me even back then, back in the day.

It's the music that you ignored back then - to which you felt no emotional connection - that will be ignored today and into the future.

(To be continued... part of a series.)

Photo: flickr

A Retro-Review of Brian Wilson's Smile...

Note: I originally wrote this record review in early 2004, when the long-delayed Smile was released. However, at that time I had no place to post it; now I do.

"God is not subtle." Albert Einstein. But could God have a sense of humor?

A REVIEW OF SMILE

OK, so first of all, forget everything you've read or heard about this being Brian Wilson's Sgt. Pepper's album. This is not Sgt. Pepper's - Pet Sounds was that and more - but another Abbey Road, side two.

Side two of the Beatles' Abbey Road was basically a collection of unfinished songs, ideas for songs that Paul McCartney called "bites." Brian Wilson called his song ideas "bits" and today, in the age of digital recording, they might appropriately be called "bytes," but that's another story. (The idea of playing song pieces derives from the English music hall and American burlesque halls, where musicians who ran out of sheet music to play filled in with their ideas for future songs.)

Smile is a collection of bites and bits and more; and like Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper's the work is more than the sum of its parts. It is a collection of musical ideas intended - like the Who's Tommy or Chicago II - to be experienced by the listener as one piece, from start to finish, for better or worse.

Let me get the worst out of the way right now. The biggest flaw with Smile is Brian's need, then and now, to show us what a comprehensive student of music he is. The pivotal and repeating "Heroes and Villains" theme borrows from Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf." Further, as we listen we hear the influences of Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copeland, Gershwin, Erik Satie, Mozart, Dvorak, movie soundtracks such as How the West Was Won, casino crooners, Spike Jones and his City Slickers, and the colored vinyl children's records that Brian first digested. Some also hear Bach and/or Schubert.

It is all, at first, a bit too much, a kitchen sink approach to music. Just like the 23 tracks on the symphony-like Chicago II was at first too much, especially with the producer's note: "This endeavor should be experienced sequentially." But the more you listened, the more the whole effort made sense and eventually you couldn't consider re-arranging the track order.

This is what happens with Smile. Initially, it seems too cute, too bloated and busy. But then you remember the very appropriate title of this collection, and the original album art that looked very much like the cover of a children's book.

Oh... This isn't meant to be SERIOUS, this is for fun, deliberately childlike and childish in a deliberately non-grown up way.

Come to think of it, too much of our music is far too serious. From Springsteen's post-9/11 The Rising, to Sinatra's aging album September of Our Years ("Tonight is not for fun, tonight is for serious..." said the liner notes), to personal and brilliant but troubling confessionals like Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks and Joni Mitchell's Blue, it is all too serious. It is all so tiredly adult.

So, Smile isn't Paul Simon's Graceland nor Peter Gabriel's Us, but it is equally life-affirming when heard with a different ear; a child's ear, before the end of the innocence. (Interestingly, like those two albums, Smile is acceptingly multicultural and not Anglo-Saxon ethno-centric.)

Smile is not one of those hard to absorb albums about the weariness of life or life's losses or heavy lessons. It's not a divorce album or an album about eventual survival or death. It is a simple collection of songs about enjoying life simply ("eat your vegetables") and having fun. Let's play that funny horn and make silly noises! Let's pretend to fly! I'll be Davy Crockett!

Smile is an album dedicated to the enjoyment of music, the enjoyment of life no matter how short - even if your siblings (like two of Brian's) pre-decease you. Enjoy life even if the worst is going to happen, when you grow up someday.

Smile tells us that music is enough. Smile reminds us that life is a miracle and so this music is Brian's prayer, his tribute, a child's contribution to God. A simple prayer, a fun prayer, a prayer meant to make even God smile.

Smile is not a masterpiece, but for human beings it is close enough.

Thank you, Brian.