One more, Bob.

Yesterday, I published a write-up about catching Bob Dylan live for the first time at the Timbre Rock & Roots Festival on my other blog. I thought it would be a good idea to republish it here as well. Enjoy.

[1]

A few years ago, I read an interview with Thom Yorke. I think it was in a copy of Rolling Stone that I found in the bookstore. In it, Thom made one fact very clear: Bob Dylan can really sing. I believed that too. I believed that from the moment I heard–believe it or not–his set on MTV Unplugged. It’s one of my earliest memories of listening to Bob Dylan. It was released in 1995; I was all of nine years old then. I don’t know exactly why I got my hands on it, but I did. Bob’s scratchy voice didn’t make much sense to me at first, and the fact that I was nine was of no help because the lyrics probably flew right past me. But when I got to what I still think of as the climax of the album–”Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” followed by “Like A Rolling Stone”–and it all clicked.

Part of what made “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” work for me was that I could understand it. Here was a man waiting to die, bleeding, gun in his hand, and crying out for Ma. In my melodramatic nine year old mind, that made the most sense out of all the songs on an album that included “Dignity” (one brilliant rendition of it, I might add) and “Desolation Row”. It was performed with masterful clarity, delicate melancholy, and an honest sense of desperation. Every now and then, Bob’s voice went into a primal whine, the sound of a man who really could see death over his shoulder. To think about it now, it wasn’t the simplistic melodramatic fear or sadness that I had had in mind. It was far more complex, and far more evocative, far more… well, mature. My discovery excited me.

The version of “Like A Rolling Stone” may not have been the greatest performance of it ever, but I adored it then. I still love it today, for the simple reason that when I first heard it, it was magical to me. It was the first time I had ever heard such a song, both mean and uplifting at the same time. I didn’t even think that was possible. When he asked, How does it feel?, it felt as if I had asked it. When he castigated this ambivalent figure with, You never understood that it ain’t no good/You should never let other people get your kicks for you, it felt like those words were mine. And when his voice soared going into one of the choruses, I knew that Bob Dylan could sing, and that became a secret that I would keep with me as I proceeded to dig out as many of his old records as I possibly could.

[2]

I went to the Timbre Rock & Roots Festival last night with a deep sense of paranoid uncertainty. I was going to see one of the great artists of my canon: Was I going to regret it when I found the man never quite matching up to the myth? Everyone had been having a go at him since his performances in China: Had he lost it? There was always a faint sense that something could collapse, that an illusion was going to be dismantled, or that time and politics had robbed even the greatest of men.

[3]

My parents never thought that Dylan could sing. How could this sometimes death-drawl belong to a singer? Why does he sound like he’s talking in long stretches? Is he a nascent rap star whose style was a form of droning lyricism?

My mom didn’t have any idea who he was; she speaks primarily Chinese and that was a main factor in her quite different cultural exposure. My dad had heard of him, but this was and still is a far cry from his world. Whatever it was, Bob made no sense to either of them. I was disappointed then, but not quite as disheartened to realise that it wasn’t just my parents. Most people around me, friends and family, seemed to think the same way. You have to remember two things: I didn’t have the people who had any reason to be interested in him, and I was young and didn’t know how to pursue these passions as effectively or aggressively as I can now.

That’s why Bob had to stay my secret for so long. I was something of an impressionable adolescent (who wasn’t?), too fragile to get into a fight, and yet too eager to shatter. Over the years, however, I had to defend my love of the likes of David Lynch (“His pictures just don’t make sense.”), Grant Morrison (“Comic books?! You can’t be serious!”), José Saramago (“Too fabulist, too humanistic, and too unliterary.”), and Dhalgren (“Science fiction?! You can’t be serious!” and “This isn’t proper science fiction!”). Oddly enough, I discovered that it was comparatively easy to defend Bob Dylan. Blame it on the Internet. There was such a huge community out there that I didn’t find it hard to do so anymore. In fact, in a way, Bob Dylan became one of the few I would no longer have to defend.

[4]

On the night, Bob emerged on stage wearing a subdued suit and a hat. His voice was just like it was on the recent records, only even less mellifluous (if that’s possible), yet richer, more resonant, and as the night would prove, more versatile than it seemed to be allowed to be on the albums.

The band opened with a mixture of newer songs–including a remarkable rendition of “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’”–and classics–even if they were comprehensively reworked, such as a version of “It Ain’t Me, Babe” that took me by surprise. This pattern would continue through the night. To put it in a procedural fashion, it was a rootsy, groovy band that trusted in its ability to dive into a blues shuffle, American folk, and tuneful pop with effortless brilliance and genuine relish.

I only have scattered memories of the night. Music-wise, I remember an excellent performance of “Tangled Up In Blue”. And I actually believe that the rocking variation of “Highway 61 Revisited” is better than the one found on the album. Through the night, the band entertained, surprised, and charmed with its sincerity and technical mastery. Bob himself led the charge with his quite unique charisma. He felt his way into the concert quickly and bit into each song with gusto. The audience bought it with equal readiness.

Behind him, his silhouette was projected onto an enormous black banner. And night fell.

[4]

Cigarette smoke, dancing, and lots of beer–I remember thinking, I don’t even drink.

Perhaps one day this will prove to be a Proustian moment of some sort for me.

[5]

One of the two main highlights of the night for me (on a night full of highlights) was a complete reinvention of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna’ Fall”. As with all his complete reinventions, this surprised me at first. It wasn’t quite the folk-styled protest song of the Sixties. It was melodic and soulful rearrangment that seemed to allow Bob a lot more performative space. I believe that it wooed me–and the rest of the audience, I should think–in a way that wouldn’t quite have been possible with the original arrangment. It was subtler, richer, and had more breadth for emotional complexity. Whether or not he was our prophet, he certainly was our poet. That is, there is more to poetry than words on a sheet. There is poetry to be found in music, and in performance, and the debates about whether or not Dylan is truly a poet in the traditional sense of the word for all I care–last night affirmed that he was a poet nonetheless to me.

The other big highlight was the finale of the set before the encore. “Ballad Of A Thin Man” ran the whole gamut of the emotions; Bob evoked righteousness, bitter condescension, fragile anger, and a deep world weariness with probably his most outstanding performance of the night. His voice was alternately an evocative growl, a measured wheeze, a deep bellow, and a explosive bark. It was a performance that will certainly stay in my mind for a long time to come.

[6]

He left the stage after that. It went dark. It took a while but the band returned to the chants of, One more, Bob. There seemed to be little doubt about what they would play then.

I never quite would have thought I’d hear supposedly five thousand Singaporeans spontaneously singing, How does it feel?/To be without a home/Like a complete unknown/Like a rolling stone, at the top of their voices. This doesn’t even happen at the National Day Parade.

[7]

I’d like to think that Bob hasn’t changed–or perhaps, given that the whole idea of “Bob Dylan” has always been about change, it might be more accurate to say that I’d like to think that he hasn’t changed in a way to become the antithesis of what he seemed to be in the Sixties. I have to admit that the mostly rather scathing reports of his performances in China were always at the back of my mind. Would I have been happier if he didn’t perform “Like A Rolling Stone”? Have I become so cynical as to be unable to view a performance of it as anything but a crowd-pleaser?

[8]

Was he any less of a conformist for resisting our labels of “voice of a generation” and “prophet” and “poet”?

[9]

For the record, I was one of the first to shout along when the song hit the chorus. I couldn’t resist.

Maybe it was the fanboy in me, all too glad to be in the presence of one of his heroes. Maybe I remembered what it was like when I got to this song on the MTV Unplugged album and finally understanding something that I would treasure thenceforth. Maybe I saw the preciousness of human connection, that we were all in his tall shadow, under the sound of his voice, and with words that we shared. Maybe it was because I’d also like to think that having watched people I know and love slowly seem to turn a bit bitter and a bit cynical over the past few years, I knew I had to trust what I felt. Or maybe it was the rush of blood that tends to accompany the recognition of genuine art.

Maybe it was all of these things, and not just.

[10]

Over the years, I’ve had something of–lack of a better term and all that–a love-hate relationship with art. Art of various sorts. I invested a lot of effort and time into an intellectual understanding of art. In the past few years, however, these endeavours have tended towards the anaemic for me. The more I’ve tried to identify and define, the more I’ve tried to put things into any systematic or interrogative understanding, the higher the risk that I will feel removed from it all. Of course, I have none of the insightfulness of Sontag, the eloquence of Barthes, or the intelligence of Bazin, and that arguably accounts for a good part of the my failures to properly examine art successfully in this mode. It has always been a struggle for me to hang onto things that matter to me against the tools that are available to me.

Recently, however–that is, these past few years–I’ve negotiated this better. I find myself being far more of an intuitive than an intellectual person where this is involved. Art that engages me, art that matters to me, art that leaves me with a voice with which to speak or without a desire to, tends to resist easy labels such as technical brilliance, beauty, and artistic accomplishment. All my attempts to describe what I look for in art have ended up in failure. (Being quite averse to embarrassment, I tend to ignore the possibility of an impaired linguistic aptitude and to blame the insufficiencies of language instead.) Therefore, and unfortunately, the best I can offer are the vague and ever-ballooning terms of heart and soul.

For example, the writing of Cortázar matters to me not (mainly) because of its inventiveness, his structural innovation, and his linguistic brilliance, but rather because it possesses facets of a culture, captures the human soul like no other, and is best described as a pulse, perhaps the pulse of living. The music of Radiohead speaks to me not purely on melodic sense, or catchiness, or guitar solos and riffs, but on the stark soundscapes and emotional spectra conjured. Art Spiegelman is a mighty fine artist and a master of the form, but his work resonates on levels so far removed from those that I barely ever have the time to talk about the technical details.

The point is, it’s not always been easy living with this vague, unscientific, and non-institutional love of art. But sometimes, some people make it so easy. Last night, in an hour and a half, Bob Dylan brought with him all the technical things you’d expect him to: master showmanship, instrumental wizardry, and a voice both incredibly experienced and performatively gifted. Yet, these are just the bells and whistles. What we truly got last night was music revealing and enabling our persistent search for human connection; songs that spanned eras and emotions alike, from the mean to the beautiful and ever shade in between, recalling memories as they made new ones; and a performance to keep close to the heart for all the years to come.

Things are not necessarily beautiful in their transience, but some transient things certainly are.

[11]

I can still vividly see people holding hands, in embraces, cheering, clapping, waving, as Bob closed the set with a melodic rendition of “Forever Young.”

It was the first time I had seen Bob live. The way these things are, with constraints geographical and temporal, it is with more than a hint of resignation that I admit that it may very well be the last as well. But never say never, as they so optimistically put it.

So instead, I’ll say, One more, Bob. One more.

[source]

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Exciting Things

I am somewhat sad and somewhat stressed these days, but let’s not talk about those things today. Let’s talk about exciting things!

I am, for instance, quite excited by the imminent release of Roland Barthes’s Mourning Diary, which sounds so ridiculously morbid I probably shouldn’t have said it, but the thought of more Barthes to read is always a happy one. Plus, I read a couple of sentences from previews here and there and it seems so completely heartbreaking. So in a sense, it’s a book event that I’m looking forward to on the scale of that which occurred back when 2666 was going to be released.

Station To Station just got re-released, and I’m looking forward to giving it a spin once I get my hands on it. I may also check out the new Eric Clapton album.

On the subject of music re-releases, there’s also the re-release of Dylan’s mono albums. I’m no stickler for mono, but I’m curious as to how they will sound. And on top of that, Dark Horse records is releasing new editions of the Ravi Shankar albums produced by George Harrison.

This week is Nobel week! I’m rooting for Bei Dao, Mario Vargas Llosa, Cormac McCarthy, Javier Marias, or Antonio Tabucchi to take it. I know that’s not very likely, but it would be nice to be right once in a while, you know?

Some new ideas! Thinking on them!

This week, my purchase of Derrida’s Of Grammatology should arrive and grace my shelves in due course. I don’t know why I never thought to add it to my library before, but problem solved.

The French movie Le Petit Nicolas, based on the children’s book series, is coming to Singapore, and this excites me for reasons I cannot really mention. I’m quite sure this won’t stay a source of excitement for very long.

I’m quite sure there are a few other little things, very little things, but that’s as much as I can ask for nowadays. Right, back to work.

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Happy Gloomsday!

Yeah, an oxymoron, I know. Indulged in a little Photoshop just to entertain myself and made these poster things with two of my favourite colour schemes just for the heck of it. I made four, actually, but two were really bad so I guillotine’d them.

Meanwhile, Happy Gloomsday!

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Stuffing Stockers

2009 is practically over, but before it’s done with, we’ve got Christmas to take care of! I thought to list down some books and music that I’ve enjoyed in the past year just as a quick sort of summary, but also as a source of last-minute gift suggestions. Five each (plus bonuses), and I tried to keep them to recent releases, which is much easier for music than it is for books, considering my reading patterns.

This is also by no means a best-of list, especially considering how my tastes can sometimes be rather esoteric. It’s more of a review of things that I’ve enjoyed in the past year. I hope that you and yours can too.

So, if you’re running short of ideas and running short on time, consider giving these a shot. Alternatively, give yourself a little Christmas treat after a long year.

Books

2666
Roberto Bolaño

For a period of time after reading 2666, I couldn’t read anything else without feeling underwhelmed. Bolaño’s opus is a towering achievement, at turns absurdly funny and hopelessly dark, at once irreverent, unabashed, sprawling and intense. While it is true that one’s mileage may vary with regards to certain portions of the text, the quality of Bolaño’s prose never slips, which ought to be a remarkable achievement except for how it is overshadowed by the book’s immense ambition and spectacular beauty. It is works like these that inspire the very sort of hope that we should have in art, where imagination is vested with powers incomparable and the written word has the ability to intone, inspire, crush and create. It is works like these that remind you the importance of art, as well as its limitless nature.

[You can get this in a couple of humongous hardcover editions, a new one-volume paperback, or the box set that split it up into three books. I liked the one I have the best, which is the three-book edition.]

All-Star Superman
Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely with Jamie Grant

Grant Morrison is my favourite comic book writer, and sometimes one of my favourite living writers. I say sometimes because in the multitude of his ambitions, he quite frequently (if I dare say) falls somewhat short. But on the good days, when it all comes together, Morrison is able to take the comic book medium to quite incredible heights. All-Star Superman sees Morrison in some of his best form, reimagining the Superman story in a manner both bold and brilliant. It all comes together (with Quitely’s art and Grant’s inks) in a package that makes you realise the things that all things are possible in the comic medium.

[You can get the collected edition in two volumes, which are available in hardcover and (I think) paperback. I'm not sure if you'll have too much luck hunting down the individual issues.]

Death At Intervals
José Saramago

Of Saramago’s many otherworldly talents, one of them appears to be the ability to make the most absurd plots function. In Death At Intervals, he tells the fable of a country in which everyone, one day, just stops dying. At the hands of a lesser writer, this would probably have drowned in some unspectacular, but Saramago somehow manages to pull it off. What emerges is (as one would expect from a Saramago novel) a bleak exploration of human nature. Every celebration is simply a secret waiting to reveal its cost.

What I didn’t expect, however, was just how humorous the whole thing was. In these pages, Saramago finds the perfect balance between the more piercing perspectives into human beahaviour and the somewhat irreverent and unexpected jokes. It’s a brilliant thing to see. (He wryly lampoons everything from the government, the mob, and even the editors.)

The second half of the novel takes an even more unexpected turn and I am well aware that this will probably not succeed as well as the first half of it. Within it, Saramago decides to personify death, and his characterisation of her is arguably less likely to be as convincing as the remarkable first half of the novel. Nevertheless, I liked it, because it surprised me how it had a certain type of sweetness that I wouldn’t have expected to see outside of the very best children’s fiction.

[This is available in paperback in a variety of covers. There was a black hardcover a while back, but if you ask me, the purple Vintage edition with the cute comic art cover is probably the best representation of its contents.]

Pandora In The Congo
Albert Sánchez Piñol

At the heart of Pandora In The Congo is a writer who writes the tale of a certain Marcus Garvey. It begins by caricaturising the adventure novel, and then bursts into one of its own in the tradition of Conrad and Rider Haggard.

Piñol seizes you from the get-go with his startling imagination and boundless energy, and leads you through a novel like the architect of a good rollercoaster ride. It has thrills, spills, blood, wit, candour, altruism, hearts of darkness, romance and discourses on human nature. It asks difficult questions! It enthralls and excites! It has murder! It has villains! It has ugly humans doing ugly things! It has frightening underground humanoids! It has romance in the trees! What’s not to like?

[I've only ever seen a paperback edition of this.]

The Way Through Doors
Jesse Ball

Jesse Ball’s book is in essence a variation of The Arabian Nights. It is a scheme of things that appeals to us, I think, because of our inherent desire to believe in the power of stories. In order to prevent Mora Klein from slipping into slumber (and thus causing her dreadful harm), Selah Morse, our wonderfully unreliable narrator, has to tell her stories. It is a celebration of the artform in a manner both earnest and sweet, albeit slightly challenging because of its charming oddness and unusual form.

This was a happy accident for me. I picked it up not knowing what I was getting into. I ended up delighted and rather mesmerised. There is a purity and beauty to this that reminds us that perhaps the best parts of our lives are reserved for those unafraid to dream.

[I got this on paperback. I don't know if it comes in any other form, but that Vintage edition was put together in the most lovely fashion.]

Bonus Mention

Your Inner Fish
Neil Shubin

Here’s one additional book I thought I ought to mention. Unlike the rest of the books here, it’s a non-fiction book that essentially deals with the theory that we’ve all evolved from fish. It’s written with great clarity and much enthusiasm, and I’m sure this will win Natural History more than a few new students.

Music

Abbey Road [2009 Remaster]
The Beatles

The Beatles return with their entire catalogue remastered, and I am of the opinion that they are quite remarkable. Nowhere is this more welcome (well, to me, anyway) than with Abbey Road. The differences between the remaster and the original will probably not be as pronounced on Abbey Road as compared to some of the other albums, but it’s these differences that reinvigorate the album and give it a new dimension. The percussion pulsates in She Came In Through The Bathroom Window. The bass drives The End forwards in a way I could never have dreamed. Like I said, it’s not that the differences are night and day, but what differences they are.

Funny feeling, this. It’s 2009, and the Beatles rock again.

[This is available as a single album release and, if it's a special someone who happens to be a Beatles nut, as part of The Beatles Stereo Box.]

The Hazards Of Love
The Decemberists

The Decemberists returned this year with a gigantic rock suite telling the story of a pair of star-crossed lovers, an evil child-killing fellow, a jealous mother, a forest and a river. I suppose if there was anything characteristically Decemberist, it would be something like this.

The band has probably not sounded better (so far), with top-notch production (just listen to the opener) and some of the best musicianship they’ve yet exhibited (all around, though Chris Funk’s electric guitar and Jenny Conlee’s organ will be the most immediately impressive). And really, who wouldn’t want to see the grand, operatic ambition of telling a story like that with excellent music? The album’s massive ambition is a thing to admire, although it sometimes does end up being the album’s greatest fault. It feels every now and then as if they haven’t got enough material to sustain the suite; and sometimes slips into a sort of Disney phase (the romantic sides of the album, in particular). Nevertheless, there’s plenty of good music here, and it’s a spectacle that you really shouldn’t miss.

[The album is available at the Decemberists store, among other places, but I wanted to note that if you get it there now, you will also get a DVD of the animated feature that they put together to accompany the album.]

Humbug
Arctic Monkeys

Humbug is a carnival with a dark twist, a biting poison and the occasional moment of sweetness. Unlike the first two endeavours of the Arctic Monkeys, it is a quite successful attempt at making an album as a cohesive whole. It definitely feels as if they don’t feel the need to impress so immediately anymore (most notably in the very controlled and cheekily vulgar opener, My Propeller), and that shows in the care that has been taken in crafting some of this music. There are fewer hooks, fewer catchy singles, fewer overt displays of showmanship, but definitely a marked maturity to their musicianship. It’s an excellent album by an excellent band that’s showing signs of moving in the right direction.

[All major record stores, and probably most minor ones too.]

Middle Cyclone
Neko Case

Nature and the need for love frame Neko Case’s latest album, and in this balance we find something pleasant, bittersweet, and ultimately sweeping. There is a cinematic quality to this album as it moves from country to noir to rock and even to the spiritual. The range of it alone is impressive, and is made even more impressive by her incredible voice. And while it is one of the very best voices in the business, demanding your attention at every turn, credit should go too to the band for managing to produce a Walden-esque aesthetic within the confines of the album.

Resembling a midsummer night’s dream of forests and fireflies, of rain on the fields and creaking cicadas in the dark nights, tinged with more than a hint of heartbreak, the album turns out to be a thoughtful endeavour that I found thoroughly enjoyable.

[It's really not anything like the cover.]

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Phoenix

Early Phoenix stuff has always somehow struck me as promising and yet lacking in some way. That wasn’t at all the case with this cleverly titled album. It’s an album that tries to deal with the grandiose themes of love and angst and disappointments and living in frame of their now-mature sense for pop-rock. In doing so, Phoenix abandons their sophisticated and excessive arrangements for something more urgent, something that breathes. It understands loneliness. It understands hurt. It asks that you pull your socks up. It asks that you step on the gas and ride into the sunset. By somehow drawing upon Mozart, Liszt, Brain Eno and Daft Punk, Phoenix has produced a work of youth and hope that burns as brighter than anything I’ve heard this year (and many others).

Bonus Mentions

It’s Blitz!
Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Together Through Life
Bob Dylan

Two more albums that I didn’t have space for. I wanted to say that even not being the biggest fan of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, I really enjoyed It’s Blitz!. Together Through Life, on the other hand, sees Dylan put out music that’s perhaps more… ‘grounded’? I don’t know if that’s the word for it. I have a terrible vocabulary. It certainly has a far less epic feel than the preceding albums in his discography, and doesn’t carry the same sense of importance about it, but it features Dylan in a somewhat more relaxed mood, delivering some very clever lyrics and supported by impeccable performances. Excellent stuff.

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No… Not Friday already…

Crunch Time

Project, tests, impending doom… So many things are taking place in the next couple of weeks that I really kind of wish it isn’t Friday today. Oh well, I suppose the best way to handle it is to charge right at it with my lungs ready to explode from the incredible volume of my battle cry.

I’m not worried about anything in particular. It’s just that sometimes, you’d just prefer some other way of passing the time.

Where The Wild Things Are Trailer

Looks really pretty. Really fun. And I really hope it does the book justice. [via Apple - Movie Trailers]

Reading

I’m now reading a Bob Dylan interview anthology called Dylan On Dylan. I picked it up in a 2-for-10 offer at an HMV. It’s been pretty fun to read so far, though I’ve kind of been skimming through a couple of those I’ve seen before. The television press conference is always a great read, though.

New Music

My Hazards Of Love has still not arrived, though here are the liner notes. [via The Decemberists] In the meantime I’m contemplating the new Springsteen and the new Starsailor, and am just waiting for someone to tell me if either of them are good. Can I get any help here?

Help Tim Schafer

Help Tim Schafer with his hosting duties at the Game Developers Choice Awards with this point-and-click Flash game that makes you look for jokes. [via Double Fine Action News] I really have no time to get to it, but I did find one joke in the short amount of time I spent with it, and I quite enjoyed what little I played of it. I must get back to it soon.

On The Jukebox

Old Springsteen (Jungleland in particular), some Decemberists, some orchestral things, and old songs by The Band. And I think a few days ago I started to go back to Dylan albums I wasn’t too familiar with, and that probably figured into my decision for reading Dylan On Dylan.

Right, have a good weekend, people.

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