Day 11: Murder Most Foul Part 2, Disease of Conceit

As I have been listening to "Murder Most Foul," I am reminded of Bob Dylan's song "Disease of Conceit."




The piano accompaniment and vocals evoke a similar mood if not the same key.

"Murder Most Foul"--A?

"Disease of Conceit"--D?

(Could I get a little help from Port Townsend on this?)

Here is the link to the opening bars of both songs.

Dylan recorded "Disease of Conceit" at the Studio, New Orleans in March, 1989 as part of the "Oh Mercy' album. He wrote in his memoir Chronicles, that he was influenced by the actions of Jimmy Swaggart, the televangelist who was defrocked by the Assemblies of God because of sex scandal involving a prostitute.

In the massive 704 page book,  Bob Dylan: All The Songs, the authors write, "Tony Hall's prominent bass and Willie Green's almost non-existent drums give the piece an inner strength comparable to a gospel song. A funeral march of sorts, it could have been recorded with a New Orleans brass funeral band."

Today the song resonates in a different way as we are in the grip of a different, more material form of disease. This verse is particularly gripping.

There’s a whole lot of hearts breaking tonight
 From the disease of conceit
 Whole lot of hearts shaking tonight
 From the disease of conceit
 Steps into your room
 Eats your soul
 Over your senses
 You have no control
 Ain’t nothing too discreet
 About the disease of conceit

This verse addresses the psychological toll that social distancing is taking on me. As well as the frightening array of 'what ifs' that I am contending with.

The 'disease of conceit' is also the complacency in which many of us took for granted our relationship with the natural world. Although epidemiologists have been predicting a possible pandemic, I put that in the category of 'what I am supposed to do about it.'

My lack of preparedness has not been personally costly (yet?). The current administration's failure to follow the National Security Council's plan to address pandemics will likely haunt our collective futures.

This dark song offers no consolation.

Give ya delusions of grandeur
 And a evil eye
 Give you the idea that
 You’re too good to die
 Then they bury you from your head to your feet
 From the disease of conceit

My own consolation comes from the love and connection that my family and friends continue to show each other in these harrowing times.

Day 10: Murder Most Foul Part 1.

By now everyone knows that Dylan released the near 17 minute song, Murder Most Foul, on Friday, March 27. The song weaves impressions of the JFK assassination with requests to the late Wolfman Jack, to play a wide range of music from classical, jazz, folk, country, rock and pop.

Let's take the Don's Basement tour of this song...this may take awhile but I'm staying home a lot these days.

It begins with a bowed bass (I think) scratching across the strings. In happier times, namely last month, Peggy and I were at MOMA on a day off from our grandchild sitting week in February. Peggy spotted a woman organizing a tour.  About  20 strangers gathered in a group lead by a woman...dancer, writer, teacher and lecturer who probably lived in Brooklyn and a stand up bass player whose name we can't remember but is well known in Manhattan jazz circles to view and experience Vir Heroicus Sublimis by Barnett Newman.

1951. Oil on canvas, 7' 11 3/8" x 17' 9 1/4". Much bigger in person

Unidentified leader and bass player

The tour lasted an hour of walking through the museum to the the painting. Experiencing the painting through movement, meditation, staring, breathing, interacting, and not interacting. The leader did not want us to look at our phones but I managed to get this photo.

Note the year of the painting. 1951. One of the most significant years in history. 

My birth. 

#1 Song on my birthday because I couldn't find baby pictures

In the song, Dylan sings, "It was a dark day in Dallas, November '63." Notice how he sings "November 63." It is so Dylan. It made me think of a story about "We Are the World." Dylan was having trouble just singing one part of the song. That was not his thing. 

Here is the Rolling Stone account.

“Stevie,” Dylan asked. “Can you play it one time?” 

Dylan then moved over to the piano, where Wonder coached the voice of a generation through his performance. Initially, Wonder was doing a better impression of Dylan than the man himself, but eventually Dylan’s mumbling vocals blossomed into his distinctive adenoidal wheeze. “‘We are the children,’ that’s nice,” Jones reassured Dylan as he positioned him closer to the microphone. 

“Is that sort of it? Sort of like that?” an uncertain Dylan asked after another take.

 After yet another run-through, he told Jones, “I don’t think that’s any good at all. You could erase that.” But when Jones gave him a hug and told him it was perfect, Dylan’s face lit up with a big smile. “If you say so.”

That's all for today. This song is a gift to my blog that will keep on giving.

Day 9: Going Full FACEBOOK...like?

In yesterday's "Coming Distractions,' I didn't make it clear when the exploration of Dylan's new song/narrative "Murder Most Foul," would occur.

Not today.

Instead, I'll share the quite inconsequential events that occurred yesterday.

On our walk, Saturday we saw the shell of a sports car.

Could be anything. If I remember where we saw sit it, I try to follow its progress.

In the past few days, we have seen a few cheerful markers laid out along the way.

And this one which is not as cheerful but somehow appropriate.

Then we saw the Highland Park Falls.

I'm going to keep counting. Keeps me off the streets.

Day 8: Coming Distractions

Hello Again Everybody:

It's Saturday and time again for "Coming Distractions." A look at the week ahead in Don's Basement.

Hope everyone is staying safe and sane...

Day 7: Is it me or is everything kind of fucked up?

Hello again everyone:

 I especially want to thank my overseas reader and the leader of the Dave Band. Eventually, (hopefully) there will be a link to our recordings and the inspirational story of our recording session. 

As I listen to music these days, some songs have lyrics that really grab me. Although the most recent song is from about 1970, artists have always felt the angst that surrounds them. And also some hope. Here are 10 that have resonated with me in the last few weeks.


 

1. All Along the Watchtower: Richie Havens

"There must be some way out of here?"

Right.

This is my favorite version of this song. He starts with a
little patter about Washington, DC. And then begins his mighty strum. We saw him at the Old Town School  He said that he had been on the road...since 1961. He is on my Mount Rushmore of Music.

2.  Visions of Johanna: Bob Dylan

"We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it."

Not sure about the denial part. We're pretty much sheltered in place. Also for those who have been to the Shearn place, this line is relevant.

"In this room, the heat pipes just cough."

On Mount Rushmore. Of course.


3. Helpless: CSN and Y but mostly Y

"Helpless, Helpless, Helpless."

When I was younger, I may have done a better job singing this song.

4. I Can't Make it Anymore: Richie Havens

Here Richie is talking about love gone wrong.  But there are times of day when I feel this way.

5. New Speedway Boogie: The Grateful Dead

"One way or another, this darkness got to give."

They were singing about Altamont but c'mon. We've got to get to the other side.

6: Mission in the Rain: Jerry Garcia


"Some folks would be happy to just have one dream come true."

Such a beautiful song about longing and regret. JG is on Mount Rushmore








7: Compared to What?: Les McCann & Eddie Harris

"Try to make it real, compared to what?"

Les McCann on vocals and piano and Eddie Harris on tenor sax had a hit with this song 1969. Now, that's what I'm trying do...aren't we all?

8: High Flying Bird: Richie Havens

"Lord, look at me here
I'm rooted like a tree here
Got those sit down
Can't cry, oh Lord, gonna die blues."

Written in 1963 by Judy Henske, this tune was played at Monterey Pop and Woodstock.

9. The Wheel: Jerry Garcia

"The wheel is turning and you can't slow down
You can't let go and you can't hold on
You can't go back and you can't stand still
If the thunder don't get you then the lightning will."

Okay, it's kind of pagan. The whole wheel of life bit. I take some comfort that the 'wheel's still in spin. '


10. Follow: Richie Havens

"If all the things you feel ain't what they seem.
And don't mind me 'cos I ain't nothin' but a dream."

Somehow that's comforting on an existential level. It's a fucking, bad dream now. But I hope it will pass safely for as many people as possible.

BTW: The fourth member of my Mount Rushmore is a street singer in Berkeley in the early 70s. More on him and all kinds of other stuff later...some time.

Day 6...Shelter in Place and a video. No extra charge.

Below is a video of "Better Things," that I recorded. Here are two much better versions of this song.

The Kinks

Dar Williams

Oh no, the video is blocked. On my site anyway!

Here's why....someone recognized the melody.

Here is a link that might work.

https://youtu.be/kyc54wEQ37I

Should I be counting....but it is Day 5.

I am debating on whether to keep counting the days of Shelter in Place. Did Nightline count all 444 days that Iran kept the hostages?  Was it always 'The Iran Crisis–America Held Hostage: Day fill in the blank?

Thought of the band, Phil 'N" The Blanks, here is their video from 1983 'Head Screwed On.'




Today's discourse concerns why I left Twitter and FACEBOOK. I left those sites on March 14. I guess that was the day that I began to believe that the shit was real. I had first mentioned it in my journal on January 31.

"Well, back from LA with a broken tooth and fear of the corona virus."

At the time, the broken tooth was a bigger deal to me. I broke it at a restaurant in Atwater Village (or as I invented 'the AV.)


Later in that trip, we had lunch at the Paramount Studio dining room (and besides seeing Pauly Shore), our son's friend was worried about the 'thing' in China. I suppose I was just star-struck because we also saw Ryan Reynolds shoot a scene from the probably straight to video film, FREE GUY



 We were only in town a few weeks when we took a trip to New York to visit our kids and some old friends (like the waxed figure of Don King)

 Still everything was pretty normal. In Times Square, one of the characters wore a protective mask but besides being shocked by the prices at Applebee's, my world had not gone crazy.

When I got back on February 23, activities  were still normal. Jamming with my band, the Repeat Offenders (no link available), playing bocce ball with the guys, working on my novel, Liberty Day (no link available) and checking in on social media.



The 'normal' morning used to begin at the gym, breakfast, updating my spreadsheet (known as the Mentaculus by a LA film director), and then checking e-mail, FACEBOOK and Twitter. Throughout the day, I would return to E-mail, FACEBOOK and Twitter to catch up with friends, real and imagined, and follow the primaries, the upcoming baseball season, and a few strangers that I found interesting.

Here are three of them from England.

Anthony Ekundayo Lennon: A London based actor who looked like one of my characters in Liberty Day. Before all of THIS, I made up a board with pictures of the characters and followed all of them that I could find on Twitter. He is a controversial dude but I'll leave you to find out why. He actually followed me on Twitter.

Ben Burrell: This fellow (whom I linked to yesterday) does the Bob Dylan, Album by Album podcast. He has a wife and a baby and is now recording his podcasts and doing his radio show out of his house. He responded to a few of my comments. And yeah, I sort of had a crush on him.




Kerry Allen Totally had a crush on her. She came to my attention in January as she was reporting on the 'China Crisis.' Found out that she is from a small town, speaks fluent Mandarin, has pet groundhogs, loves dogs and was horrified at the lack of preparedness in England.


Saturday, March 14 as it turned out fell between Friday the 13th and the Ides of March. I spent the day in the usual manner but feeling anything but usual. I was uneasy at my last bocce game on Wednesday the 11, despite playing very well. Worried at my Thursday music get together and don't remember if I played well or not. Shabbat dinner on the 13th was peaceful, we sat by a fire with some social distance. But on Saturday, I became overwhelmed.

So much so that I had an official panic attack. I looked it up. Or Peggy did. It officially hit me that the shit was real. I had to back off uncurated social media. Too many numbers. Too many anecdotes. Too many 'takes' coming from the same crazy place they came from before when it didn't really matter.

Now, I still glance at the New York Times, sparingly and Forge because my daughter edits it and it is a curated site.

I miss the 'old days' of loose talk, Internet gossip, and the odd comments but it will be awhile before I go back. For now, I am going to make up my own loose talk, Internet gossip and odd comments. Blogging is a low stakes hobby in the high stakes world.

Stay safe and sane!

Day 4: Shelter in Place...Really, only 4 days. Okay.

One app that I have enjoyed and relied upon during this 'thing' is Spotify. Several months ago, we chose to go with Spotify Premium. We had previously used Pandora which seemed heavily weighted toward Paul Simon...he seemed to pop up on my admittedly boomer artist lists.

I had used youtube but I did not pay for the premium services. The result were lots of ads, interestingly for Turkish Airlines.

Back then, I thought it was pretty hilarious because of the 'crisis' we were having with Iran. Remember that...January 3. The US drone attack killed Qasem Soleimani and I was afraid that we were going to have a broader war in the Middle East. WW3 was trending.

Here is one of the Turkish Airline ads.

"How Was Turkey?"  Spoiler: The answer is, "Turkey was Yes."

Well, no.

With the switch to Spotify came an increasingly Dylan focused nerdiness. This was fostered by my friends Larry I. and Chuck F. who are unabashed Beatle nerds. If they could sing, play, and read extensively about the Beatles (and their post Beatle careers), I could certainly dive into Dylan.

I did this by listening to Bob Dylan: Album by Album  a podcast by a charming English fellow (who, I followed on Twitter until I stopped following Twitter). Peggy and I attended the Bob Dylan songbag hosted by Jimmy Tomasello once a month at the Old Town School of Folk Music until, well you...

With Spotify came Dylan Playlists: Entry Level Dylan (by Ben Burrell, the English guy) and Dylan 2019 Tour, inspired by one of the Dylan songbags.

Yep...All going pretty swimmingly. Here was my Spotify Home Page on February 29

Three Dylan albums and the Daily Mixes. (Suggested playlist by the algorithm based on what you listen to.)

1. Bob himself
2. T Bone Burnett, reputed to be an influencer in Bob's Christian period (1979-1981 approx.)
3. Richie Havens (Here is Richie's charming story about All Along the Watchtower)
4. Doc Watson
5. Britney Haas, fiddler. Peggy and I share an account and she is taking fiddle lessons.
6. Ed Sheehan, don't know how he got there.

When the shit started getting serious around the country, I changed my listening patterns. Everything was either too on the nose..."Desolation Row" or "Not Dark Yet." Or too much a reminder of the music that our group, The Repeat Offenders, played at our only gig on November 2. And that the group has been social distanced. It all made me pretty sad.

Here is the Spotify Home Page of today, March 24.

The mixes tell a story...

1. Joni Mitchell, lots of heart ache

2. Tom Lehrer, heavily into comedy albums of the 60's and 70's. Newhart. Shelley Berman. Early George Carlin

3. T.Bone Burnett, not sure how he's hung in there

4. Errol Garner, piano jazz is comforting. Bill Evans, Ahmad Jamal,

5. Oscar Peterson (see above)

Only 1 Dylan Album. I was listening  to "Visions of Johanna."

"We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it."

 I'm not really stranded. I have music. I have a partner, family and friends. 

But sometimes, goddamnit, I feel that way. 

Day 3: Shelter in Place....

I hope everybody is staying safe and sane. I am safe for the moment and even sane.

Here is what I scribbled last night.

I am a civilian in a multi-front war. There is an invisible enemy that may be deadly or may be not. There is uncertainty.

• Health (any cough can raise the hair on my neck)
• Fiscal (outliving my money may not be a problem)
• Societal Collapse (haven't really worried about that one too much in the past. This one is new.)
• The fate of family and friends (a familiar concern; some experience here )

I would not be wrong to feel overwhelmed. However, being overwhelmed will not put me at my best to resist these multi-prong threats.

Bravery will allow me to face the fears. The immediate ones like getting food and having some liquidity can be dealt with, although not nearly as easily as 2 weeks ago. The speed of this societal and personal change is wishlash-like  The what-ifs are fears that I can't do too much about.

As I am prone to self-criticism, I have faulted myself for not being properly prepared for the pandemic. Not having enough cash-laughing off the preppers- not following events closely enough. The virus was on my radar since late in January.  Then I have to ask myself...is that criticism helping anyone? 

Can I stop that inner voice? Not likely. I never stopped in the past. I can from time to time recognize it and try to stop it. Write down a plan. Yes, the plan will change. Here, the war metaphor works well. 'No plan survives first contact with the enemy.'

A therapist who treated me, compares the human brain to a computer. Our mind wanders to various web sites. Panic, fear, self-loathing, anger have been heavily visited lately. But so has music, family, friends, a biography of George Washington (who had tons of self-doubt and an empire to fight), comedy albums, and reading every page of the New York Time Book Review. Even a little dose of religion. 

From the sacred to the profane...

Here is part of Al Pacino's monolog in Glengarry Glen Ross. Unfortunately, I can't find a clip of Pacino delivering the lines. It is the scene where Pacino as Roma is getting Lingk (Jonathan Pryce) drunk and trying to sell him some land in Florida. 

I find it instructive as a way to stay mentally strong.

(Trigger warnings galore....it's David Mamet). 

And what is it that we're afraid of?

            Loss.  What else?

                   (pause)

            The bank closes.  We get sick, my

            wife died on a plane, the stock

            market collapsed...the house burnt

            down...what of these happen...?

            None on 'em.  We worry anyway.

            What does this mean?  I'm not

            secure.  How can I be secure?

                   (pause)

            Through amassing wealth beyond all

            measure?  No.  And what's beyond

            all measure?  That's a sickness.

            That's a trap.  There is no measure.

            Only greed.  How can we act?

                       

            The right way, we would say, to

            deal with this: "There is a one-in-

            a-million chance that so and so

            will happen...Fuck it, it won't

            happen to me..." No.  We know

            that's not the right way I think.

                   (pause)

            We say the correct way to deal with

            this is "There is a one-in-so-and-

            so chance this will happen...God

            protect me.  I am powerless, let it

            not happen to me..." But no to that.

            I say.  There's something else.

            

           What is it? "If it happens, AS IT

            MAY for that is not within our

            powers, I will deal with it, just

            as I do today with what draws my

            concern today." I say this is how

            we must act.  I do those things

            which seem correct to me today.  I

            trust myself.  And if security

            concerns me, I do that which today

            I think will make me secure.  And

            every day I do that, when that day

            arrives that I need a reserve, [a]

            odds are that I have it, and [b]

            the true reserve that I have is the

            strength that I have of acting each

            day without fear.

                   (pause)

            According to the dictates of my

            mind.