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04/09/2005 Archived Entry: "33 1/3"

33 1/3
The 33 1/3 book series produced by Continuum interests me still - though the one book I read so far, Live at the Apollo was good, but not too amazing (it didn’t’ go far enough with its temporal juxtaposition of 1962). The series editor has a blog devoted to the series' latest releases. I love the idea of this project. Small books devoted to one record; each represents a mix of history, impressions, personal narrative, and theory.
Engaging in an imaginary publishing venture of my own, I would do one of two albums for the series.
Blood on the Tracks - Bob Dylan
The Brides of Dr. Funkenstein - Parliament.

Neither are represented yet, and neither artist is represented. For now, I'll consider Blood on the Tracks. I was probably 14 when I asked my parents to bring me back a copy of Blood on the Tracks from the record store (why were my parents already going to a record store? The only records they owned were the ones my dad would buy for a dollar when he was in college: Count Basie, Hatari..). I had never heard the Dylan album. I probably read about it in Creem magazine, a magazine whose ripped out pages were taped up all over my room’s walls (Bon Scott, Keith Richards, Dylan, Jagger, Clapton). Instead of bringing it home, however, my parents brought me Blonde on Blonde. That album, too, would affect me; its raunchy singing and of the moment arrangements compelling for so many reasons. But it wasn't Blood on the Tracks.

Eventually (but when?) I bought a copy of Blood on the Tracks. Nothing like the other Dylan albums I owned, this one was soft, endearing, full of odes to lost love, women gone, moments amiss. The titles give its aim away: “If You See Her, Say Hello.” “Idiot Wind.” “You’re A Big Girl Now.” “You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go.” You listen to music like this, and you feel like you are at the center of all loss. Kodwo Eshun writes about post-humanity and sampling, but this is more like a pre-humanity music, a music before we’ve learned yet what it takes to remain human.

In lunch at school, someone showed me the chord changes to "Simple Twist of Fate." I once read Dylan describe this song as a painting. Its movement from scene to scene is picturesque, like a series of sweeping gestures to a city and to a woman.

They sat together in the park
As the evening sky grew dark,
She looked at him and he felt a spark tingle to his bones.
'Twas then he felt alone and wished that he'd gone straight
And watched out for a simple twist of fate.

and

He woke up, the room was bare
He didn't see her anywhere.
He told himself he didn't care, pushed the window open wide,
Felt an emptiness inside to which he just could not relate
Brought on by a simple twist of fate.

This is a song for broken hearts. And for impressing women. You play a song like this on your guitar in a crowd of friends, over beers, in an abandoned building area or drainage lake (this is Miami where the city is constructed out of commercial ventures), and you have won everyone to your side.

Now, I’ve been told that some one can’t listen to this album because it makes her too sad. But “Tangled Up in Blue” speaks to our very condition of meeting.

Early one morning the sun was shining,
I was laying in bed
Wondering if she'd changed at all
If her hair was still red.

And
She was married when we first met
Soon to be divorced
I helped her out of a jam, I guess,
But I used a little too much force

These are the moments where popular culture juxtaposes with our lives, but also informs our lives with levels of meaning other experiences cannot account for. It’s one thing to say about a song, “I can relate to it because it touches me.” But it’s another to actualize a moment, an encounter, a belief, a mood, a passion, a loss through the song not because you relate to it, but because you’re the song. You are these moments in the song. Thus, we could say that this is "our song" because of a moment of identification recognized in the lyrics. But the song is something beyond being "our song." It names us. It signs us.

Popular culture's strength derives not from the hegemony of the culture machine, but because we are popular culture. “Tangled Up in Blue” is important to me not because it reminds me of a condition during a specific time period. No. It is the condition itself. I spend a lot of time wrestling theoretical and pedagogical positions out of popular culture. But I also recognize the mix here, the ways that these positions are still tangled as well in the personal.

Replies: 1 Comment

It only makes me sad in a nostalgic sense. Dylan's voice can flood a girl with memories once she's been signed.

Posted by some one @ 04/10/2005 02:12 AM EST