at last, from a physicist and mechanical engineer. What you just missed, but can still get, in our last newsletter: Paul Craig Roberts on the Collapse of America.

solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch.

I know that's not possible, but I tried.
when it came out, on a monaural LP (you had a choice in those from folk to rock. I was one of the people his music transformed during the golden era of Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 and Blonde On Blonde.

I suffered when he changed his voice and pretty-much everything else. I found some hope from Blood On the Tracks. I stopped buying Dylan recordings when he found Jesus.

I run from born-again take their mythology seriously, but am uplifted by their spirit. Dylan's religious period didn't uplift me in any way.
Out of Mind until it got famous.

I saw him on the Oscars as an old guy. I was an old guy too and his sad wisdom was attractive. I bought Love and Theft the day it came out.

I liked it, but it didn't cause any fundamental light bulb to go off in my head. What I liked was that he was funny again. It wasn't something I played a lot, but I've come back to it from time to time.

Don't throw your hands up in horror. He tried fitting words where they didn't fit. And I thought he took the easy way out too much.

Some of the jokes were corny in a bad way. Like in not even ironically Mayor of MacDougal Street, a memoir by Dave Van Ronk, who helped Dylan break into the Greenwich Village folk scene. Such sloppiness on Dylan's part, quaint now, is nothing new.

Writing about Dylan's lyrics in the mid-sixties, Van Ronk wrote, (Woody Guthrie) had created this wonderful, Will Rogers-style persona, appeared out of the air-that he did not have to sweat over them, and rewrite, and polish. Bobby bought the myth lock, stock, and barrel, and that was always a problem with his work. He would write an incredible line, then follow it with a line that was utterly meaningless, and he never felt the need to go back and work it through.

He always seemed to think that it was easier to write a new song than to fix an old one. Later in the book, he pointed out that one cannot go along a watchtower, as an example.
in Modern Times?

Of course he did and I appreciated every insight. But did it sit and listen over and over, trying to figure out everything? Nah.

Bob Dylan's work has become like a lot of people's, mine included, hit and miss. (No, I'm not comparing myself to him.)
Times should be called, Hit and Miss.

It's like an old dog-eared pillow. The writing is even sloppier than on Love and Theft. Don't matter if it is intentionally so.

You know what they say about good intentions.
Am I happy I bought it? Sure.

Am I happy he got to #1? Absolutely. Am I creeping myself out to Modern Times.

When I tried to listen to it as though I had no history with his work, I started to feel conned. wearing a blue running suit and a yellow visor. I felt like he get away with.

that's ok, he's earned it.
p.s.

When I went back to finish I had not gone back and listened again. I think maybe I just wanted to write a glib closer. I have not felt the need to go back and listen.

Maybe some other time.
of Dave Van Ronk Sings Ballads, Blues and A Spiritual (1959) See, one thing leads to another. While I've been recuperating from surgery, my friend Art Levine Chronicles.

It paints the picture of what Van Ronk the Village folk/blues music scene was being born.
when Dylan arrived, and helped Dylan get started. Van Ronk's wife even managed Dylan for a bit, and Bobby as Van Ronk likes to call him, slept many nights on the Van Ronk family couch.

Of course, the hill Van Ronk was king of was not very large at the time. Folk music was divided into pop and purist camps, and Van Ronk was squarely in the purist camp, ridiculing the suit-wearing Kingston Trio, et al.
loud more times than I can count.

It's sweet, it's tough, it's passion. Van Ronk led the life many of us dreamt of, the fun-loving literate intellectual who got the girls, who ran the table in the coffeehouses of Greenwich Village, who shipped out as a Merchant Marine, who knew everybody and whom everybody knew.
that, although Van Ronk's version is grimier, more political and more outwardly focused than Dylan's version.

The book led me to my LP shelves, where I pulled out Songs for Ageing Children, which most Van Ronk purists detest, but which I've always loved. Even he didn't think it was all that hot. He sings with a band, and spurs Van Ronk to greater gruffiness.

Also, the strings on Song sweetness only a gravel voice in love can supply.
Blues and with a little digging, discovered that this was a reissue of Van Ronk's first solo album, released in 1959 on Folkways Records. The passages in the book about Moe Asch, who ran Folkways and was very tight with a buck, are hilarious.

Van Ronk could never seem to get any money out of Asch, even though the album was selling. He resorted to a set of raggedy clothes he would wear to visit Asch and make Moe give some up.
man's voice on this.

He is not what he would become, but you can tell he was a force to be reckoned with.
the other, and for that the purists like it better. I like it too, but it's less playful and risk taking.

Sides of Fred Neil 2CD set. EMI Music
and Van Ronk's books, and when one thing leads to another, the nother leads to another nother. Fred was another presence on the streets of the Village.

Street. He wasn't gruff. Van Ronk was blatant but Neil was subtle and quiet.

His voice smooth and sonorous and deep. He didn't sing Delta Blues. He sang Percy Mayfield and he sang his own and got into the pop music scene, working in the Brill Building, and on Paul Anka's Diana.

He performed live on the the Village. In 1961 he was booking folk acts at Village Clubs, including Bob Dylan who he introduced to Dave Van Ronk. In 1966 he began moving back and forth between New York and Coconut Grove, Fred Neil which is included in this two CD set.

It the theme for Midnight Cowboy. I was a huge Fred Neil fan at that time, and knew the song well. When I went to see the movie and the first few bars started, I thought, Man!

the song, badly. It was Harry Nilsson. I never forgave whoever made the decision to re-record it for the movie.

Life, also a favorite of mine.
and then, and devoted a lot of his time to an organization he helped form to help save dolphins. He died in 2001.

Three men, all linked by the Village and their times, all very different, but very connected. And only one left alive. Pondering mortality while involved in surgery is morbid.

This music and that book helped make it better.
The Roots of Bob Dylan Various artists. MOJO CD
was released, MOJO Magazine got on the bandwagon with what could here are all fine but they left out: Dave Van Ronk, Fred Neil, Ramblin' Jack Elliott and, can you believe it WOODY GUTHRIE!

and while everybody loves them, they don't fit here.
infections being morose, both chunk-a-chunk-a-chunking in lockstep on their guitars.
Liv is not one of those.

She for her that could make her a star.
CD release gig in the Oregonian's A E Section, In four years she has gone from a raw talent, unsure of herself onstage, often sitting on a stool wearing a running suit, to a powerhouse, assured of her talent and her ability to move an audience, punctuating gig as her official triumphant debut. It was SRO at the still-sparkling new venue and by the end much of the audience was on its feet, hands in the air, dancing at their tables and screaming for more.

For Me, I wrote, In a medium-tempo funk groove, it begins, I stopped complaining about what I ain't got. It goes on to be what amounts to a self-help book in song. You might scrunch up your nose at the prospect, but Warfield makes it work, so to speak.

It never verges on Oprah-like sap because Warfield is so damned positive, such a good wordsmith, sings can see sunbeams shooting out the top of her head.
sappy or nasty, they're sexual, but you actually get the feeling she's talking about love with sex. Quite a concept.

clarity about relationships gone bad. I Decided, also from her CD, is a girl-leaves-boy story told not in self-pity or anger but actually examining things, talking directly to the man in question. She knows what she knows but also what she doesn't.

She sings about the heartbreak without whining, and calls him out without calling names.
up tomorrow and couldn't sing another note, she could have a spectacular career as a songwriter.
got the whole package here?

She can funk you up, she can sing you a lullaby, she can give you a right-cross to the chin, too.
her live performance, and that's ok. Almost better to listen later let her raise your roof in person.

employment, I had to keep a copy of a Burroughs anthology on my desk. Somebody asked me why. I said, It keeps me centered.

I think word got around. I'm no longer working there.
My favorite piece on here is, Words of Advice to Young People.

It contains the line, Any old soul is worth saving, at least to a priest, but not every soul is worth buying. And If you are doing business with a religious son-of-a-bitch, GET IT IN WRITING. His word isn't worth shit, not with the good Lord telling him how to fuck you on the deal.

of whores who say they don't want money. The hell they don't. to funky music with other stuff rolled in at the right times, audio clips from here and there, and studio chatter.

None of it detracts, most of it enhances.
is on here, Dr. Benway Operates, Did I Ever Tell You About the Man That Taught His Asshole to Talk?

and a lot of others including the title cut.
In a world gone mad, WSB sounds like the only sane man in the house.
living in Portland Oregon.

His book was published by Villard/Random House in November. are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory.