Play a Song for Me (+)

[00:00:00] Speaker A: This show is a part of the FM Podcast network, the home of great music podcasts. Visit [email protected] you are listening to the Dylan Taunts podcast. Hey everyone, it's Jim Salvucci, and welcome to the latest million Dollar Bash roundtable on the Dylan Taunts. On November 17, Rutledge published a fascinating and exciting new collection of essays entitled the Politics and power of Bob Dylan's live performances. [00:00:35] Speaker B: Play a song for me. [00:00:36] Speaker A: These essays address Dylan's performance set lists as objects of study in themselves, which, as this collection reveals, is a topic that is richly varied and highly elastic. As luck would have it, the editors of the politics and power of Bob Dylan's live performances happen to be two of the Dylan Taunt's regular contributors, Erwin Callahan and Court Carney, who themselves wrote chapters for the volume. Moreover, as more luck would have it, the other regular contributors to the million Dollar Bash also wrote chapters, nina Goss, Grayleigh Hearn and Rock and Rob Virginio, as well as myself. Amazingly, by some intervention of the calendar gods, we are all here to discuss this volume and our chapters and Dylan setliss in general. So I want to first turn to Aaron and court and ask you why. [00:01:23] Speaker C: Setlist Jim, thank you so much for having us on so many times to discuss this project. The set list idea is twofold. One, I think all of us on some level who follow Dylan or music obviously, generally at some point connect to the set list as sort of an organizing idea. It's an interesting thing to trace when you're looking at shows, and it's also, with Dylan, something that has its own sort of massive set of ins and outs and curves. I will say I saw the national the other night, excellent as usual, and two people, two separate people, had the set list from the previous show pulled out on their phones right in front of me. This is a non yonder bag experience, and they had their phones out. Looking at the set list from the previous night and the national are interesting because their set lists do vary night to night within the realm of believability. And it was interesting to think these are two people who were not necessarily, who knows why they were looking at it, but they were looking at it at various times, and they'd get their phone out and they would look at it and keep tabs of what was going on, and it was just a reminder just how these things have become ingrained. And I think setlist FM, who I don't know the individual history of there was at one point Aaron and I were talking about maybe digging into the history of that, and we never really that piece of the story off, but it was just this idea of how this becomes a resonant way of appreciating the show. And then as scholars, as historians, as critics, it's interesting to go back and see what the long narratives can be made out of that. So that's the one piece, and then the other piece I'll let Erin talk about, but that was more directly related to some work that she had done. [00:03:11] Speaker D: Thanks, court. And again, thanks, Jim, for having us on. So many times I echo court in that sentiment. So we all, Jim, Nina and I met in December 2018 in France, and Nina had this fantastic idea for us to present at the world of Dylan, which we did, and I'm grateful for that. And that's where I met Grayley and court. And then, Rob, you weren't there, but we were talked about quite a bit. And at that conference, I had an idea before the December conference, and I was at a Dylan show that the set list was really dark. And I saw this voice going through similar in the way that Grayley examines in his book on time out of mind and also his chapter in our. [00:03:55] Speaker E: Book, that there was this kind of. [00:03:57] Speaker D: Voice that was echoing some sort of modern anxiety. And I wanted to write that paper. And then when court and I met in May 2019, we became fast friends, and we attended a conference in San Diego together where I presented a shell of the paper that's in the book. And court had the hindsight or the wisdom enough, not hindsight, the wisdom enough to say, I don't think set lists have been looked at in this way. We should do a book. Do you want to do a book together? And I said, sure. And I think that it was good because it really gave us, as I've said in other interviews, focus away from the pandemic, which dina kind of Covers in her chapter as well, that we were stuck in suspension during that time and really focused on the crisis outside. And he contacted me and said, do you want to work on it now? And that's how we got the ball rolling. And we had really thought about maybe doing, co authoring a monograph on it, but we're really grateful that we didn't, that we have all these Wonderful Contributors that have given voice to different things that interest them and shared their insights into the set list. [00:05:01] Speaker B: Great. [00:05:02] Speaker E: Thank you. [00:05:03] Speaker A: So in these essays, we have Dylan's performances treated as conversations, as play cycles, as interpretable text, as splayed anthems, as thematic narrative, and as a collective experience. Imbued with meaning. The chapters are arranged chronologically, and Court had the first one. So we'll start there with chapter one. Court, your chapter is Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the implications of the past. [00:05:29] Speaker B: A case study. [00:05:30] Speaker A: What drew you to Dylan's Woody Guthrie connection, starting in the, then extending well beyond that? [00:05:39] Speaker C: Yeah, there's a couple of pieces to this as well. One thing is I do a lot of work with Woody, with a teaching research group that I've been a part of. That comes out of COVID as well. So all these SilVer lining of linings of staying at home, but working with the Woody Guthrie People and the Woody Guthrie Center, I had really connected to that story. And I also published an article on the January 68 Carnegie Hall show, which is Bob doing his version of Woody, which I still think is a fascinating story. So that was always in my mind. And then, to be honest, I was thinking of a way of sort of an introduction. Part two of this is what I was thinking this would look like. One of the great things about opening this up to so many people and having EveryboDy Join in is that essays look so different than what I would have done, which is, I mean, that in the most positive, wonderful ways of. How would I have approached that? Or this essay is coming out from angle I never would have thought about. So that's one of the great things about it. And then the idea with my essay was saying, this is the narrative, the constructed narrative. I could see out of this. And since you had us on very recently, I will not go through, and to give time to others, I will not go through all parts of the piece. But I will say this, thinking about this project again, as we have so fortunately been able to do, I went back and listened to song to Woody from 2002, which is the final time he played it. He plays it in the UK. And I went back and listened to that recording. It's a great recording. It's a great period. As, as we all know, that early 2000s period is really interesting. He plays a traditional song or a country standard, and then he goes into song to Woody in the second slot. It's the last time he plays it. But I was thinking about this. That was also the 40th year of that song. It's 40 years since he wrote this song. And then here he is, and now it's been over 20 years, half that time since he's played it live. That's the last time he played it live. And it was an interesting kind of idea of going back to these moments and going, what does time do to this? It's such a beautiful idea, and it's a beautiful sound and a beautiful song and a beautiful performance. And you have Larry and Charlie and Jim Keltner. It's just a crack band. And his voice sounds great. This is a song he could sing forever. And I'm not sure what we can really wrap our minds around with that, but that idea of I'm out here 1000 miles from my home, one of the most primal lyrics he writes is also a lyric that we can go back to infinite ways. And when he hits it and he sings it a little different every time, as we know. But in 2002, that final performance to this point, it's so gorgeous and it's so beautiful and it's what does the meaning of that? How's that resonate? And that's the point of the story. It's like when he sings this song, he doesn't sing that song that often, but when he sings it in 1974 and when he sings it in 1988 and when he sings it in 2002, is he going back right to that moment of invention? I don't pretend to know and I don't pretend to speculate, but I think internally that's the idea of all this, of like, what does it mean when he goes, I'm 1000 miles from my home, 40 years after writing a song that is well beyond its years in its origin story, I just find that really fascinating from a kind of a heart experience, seeing him do the Merle Haggard song on this last tour, hearing him sing about Merle saying, at 41, but what am I doing out here on stage? And Bob singing that song at 82, it explodes any sort of sense of what do we expect from our artists, what do we expect from our singers, what do we expect from our performers? But that idea of being 82 and singing and then also looking at that other shadow history of 1000 miles from your home being a constant, I think, fascinating. [00:09:48] Speaker A: This is where I'm going to open it up. If anybody had any questions or comments. [00:09:51] Speaker B: For court, I'll just throw this in. Because in my Dylan in Cincinnati project, I'm up to the year 2000 when Dylan was playing with Phil Lesh and friends, and this was an outdoor show in Cincinnati. And so Dylan was actually the opening act. As Rob informed me, this was common for outdoor shows because Phil Lesh had a big light show and Dylan did him the courtesy of letting it get dark before his set came on. But Dylan opened that concert with Duncan and Brady, and his second song was song to Woody. The only time he's ever played that song in Cincinnati. And yeah, whatever location he plays that song in, it feels special. With the line a thousand miles from my home and the tribute to his early mentor and hero, Woody Guthrie. But I love speaking of Set list, the idea of starting with an old folk song, a murder ballad with the refrain, he's been on the job too long. And then going in the song to Woody. Which is another kind of reflection of someone who's been doing this for a long time. Even though when Dylan wrote it, he had only been doing this thing for a short time. He's imagining his way into that experience and starting down his own path. But now we get to see him about 40 years further down that road. Actually further than would he ever made it down that road. And so there's another case where the necessity of your book is on display. Because there is what Dylan does with these songs when he records them. There's how they evolve over time, through performance. But then there's that theatrical sensibility of what happens when you juxtapose this Song against the Song in a certain chronology. Yeah, your focus on Song to Woody sounds great. And looking at it within the context of set list makes it just that more rich and interesting. [00:11:46] Speaker E: Court, when he wrote song to Woody, that moment of transition from Woody Guthrie to young Bob Dylan. All the sentiment of the kind of wanting humility of the song would be so present and so transparent to the audience in 1960. 219 61. And what do you make of the fact that in 2002, it's easy to say that very few people in the audience had a frame of reference for Woody Guthrie, period. What do you make of the vitality of the song in that, given that. [00:12:31] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great question, Nina. I think the one thing I was thinking when you were talking is that this moment, which is such an old sort of cosmic moment of music, is also written at a time of youthfulness. Right? He's very young when he meets Woody for the first time. He meets Arlo. Arlo's 16. These are young men. They're teenagers when they first come into contact. And then he's writing this song, still young. And then it's all about something that is well beyond you. And I think that's what I was first thinking about. Then how does that sort of. Is that contradicted? [00:13:08] Speaker B: Is it deepened? [00:13:08] Speaker C: Is it weathered? But I think you're absolutely right. When people. There's a version of the song when he starts singing it from an earlier show and the crowd goes nuts. And there's like this moment of realizing this song. Now part of it is that's the second song, as Grayley was saying. So he does like a Roy acoff number, right? And then it does that. And so there's partly that. But I think it's also a recognition within the Dylan world of this is the beginning, maybe even more so than Woody. That's one way of taking it. I don't know how many people in 2002 were clearly connected to Guth. I think that's an interesting question, but I think it connects to Dylan's emergence. And I think him singing that has a certain power, more so than maybe even like blowing in the wind or some other songs. I think this song in particular, for my mind, is much more emotional connection to that moment. [00:14:06] Speaker A: So go ahead and jump, what, seven chapters? Now we're going to jump over a bunch of really great chapters by some really worthy authors. So make sure you get the book and read it. Then we're going to jump to Grayley, who had chapter eight. And Grayley was treating Dylan's performances in San Francisco in 1980. And his essay is entitled the Warfield Cycle. Dylan's mystery plays San Francisco, November 1980. So Brayley, why these very specific performances in which you treat the set list. [00:14:42] Speaker B: As a play cycle with religious overture? When Aaron a. Port first approached me with the idea for this book, I thought, that's a great idea. How is there not already a book out on this? Yes, please do this book. But I didn't immediately think that I had anything to contribute. I was not a huge bootlegs guy by that point. I certainly would not have initially anticipated writing about that second war filled residency. I knew it somewhat. I knew it because of the one and only live performance of Caribbean Wind, one of my favorite Dylan songs ever, the live debut of groom still waiting at the altar. I'd heard some of the Mike Bloomfield stuff from that, I guess his last live performance, certainly with Dylan, but I didn't know a lot about that residency. But actually I think what led me in this direction was re encountering that quote and I should pull it up on screen so I can quote it correctly from Dylan's music hair speech. Right when he said, I'm glad for my songs to be honored like this. They didn't get here by themselves. It's been a long road and it's taken a lot of doing these songs of mine I think of as mystery plays, the kind that Shakespeare saw when he was growing up. I think you could trace what I do back that far, and that was the key that unlocked it for me, I think, because thinking of mystery plays, which as an english professor who sometimes teaches, who often teaches drama, I've taught mystery plays before. And in fact, the mystery plays I was most familiar with are called the wake filled mystery plays, or the wake filled cycle. They're sometimes called. These are plays that are little miniature reenactments of key scenes from the Bible, and individually and collectively have a kind of spiritual instructional element to them and a sense of renewing the faith and commitment of audience members. And I started to think, yeah, if you were looking for an example of Dylan's concerts working like mystery plays, you couldn't find a better example than those two war filled residencies. But I became especially interested in the second one because there is a case where Dylan is finally starting to reintroduce, reintegrate some of his older, I guess we could say, secular music alongside his newer religious stuff. I just found that the more I listened to it, the more fascinated I became, because it did feel like it was working, serving many of the same dramaturgical functions as the mystery plays. And then when I thought of the clever play on words, of making titling mine not what Bill Graham called it, a musical retrospective tour, which sounds so nostalgic, but instead thinking of it in terms of mystery plays and dramatic arcs over the course of each concert, but then over the course of several concerts in a room and thought of the title, the warfilled cycle. Now, I had to write the thing just because I love the title so much. But, yeah, that's basically how I look at each concert, as having a dramatic through line, a dramatic development. You've got the prologue in half of the concerts where the backing vocalists aren't backing vocalists, they're actually up front and singing by themselves, three or four gospel tunes. And then Dylan comes on stage and you've got what essentially serves as the first act. Got to serve somebody. Wait, got to serve somebody. I believe in you and like a Rolling Stone and even that, those three songs together work in interesting ways. Right? You may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you're going to have to serve somebody. And then he follows it with a song of serving the Lord. I believe in you. [00:18:36] Speaker C: And then next, a song. [00:18:38] Speaker B: It's not exactly serving the devil, but it is a song of making the wrong choices, choosing the wrong path, one that leads to ruin and destruction. And it's a great example of a song that we all know and love. But then when it's juxtaposed in that new position, you suddenly hear something you hadn't heard in it before, and it seems to be serving some larger function in terms of Dylan's work, in terms of showing you that my new stuff is not completely alien to themes I was already exploring in my older stuff. And so not just randomly playing the hits from the past, but selectively choosing certain songs, putting them in certain places in the set list to reintegrate them alongside his new material in thematically interesting ways. And so then I follow it through with a second act of songs, which is much more like the traditional mystery plays. You've got a song set in the Garden of Eden, man gave name to all the animals. You've got really kind of more apocalyptic songs, like senor, a third act, which is really fascinating, especially for the songs which feature Dylan and other singers, like his songs with Regina McCrary, Mary from the Wild Moor, and especially those amazing duets with Clyde and King, rise again and Abraham, Martin and John, and leading up to in the garden. So you've got now the kind of crucifixion and resurrection, so you can see how the religious story is proceeding, but also interesting dynamics between Dillo and some interesting choices of COVID songs, too, and this religious art. And then the amazing encores, which would always begin with this gospel arrangement of blowing in the wind, and then usually would be followed by a new song, city of Gold, which is fantastic, and then some great hits from the past. And you really got a sense at the end of these concerts that there's a lot of love and a lot of enthusiasm in the room and a kind of renewal of vows, really, between Dylan and his audience, which had some tension and maybe some rupture in the past couple years with his Bible thumping fundamentalism during those born again years. But there is a sense, I think, of trying to, of community renewal, just like in the old mystery plays at work in those concerts. Yeah, it really became a fascinating project in and of itself, but it really has opened a door for me to do a lot more work on live performances than I had ever done before. And so in that sense, really pointed the way toward this Dylan in Cincinnati project, which is my main passion for the last couple years. So thanks, Aaron and court, for opening that door for me, because, turned out there was a lot behind that door. [00:21:23] Speaker D: I just want to say, one of the things that I admire about your work, and I love, is when I was reading the chapters over the connections you made, there were two things in particular that stood out, but you always find these lovely connections between an Abraham Martin and John. And just not the Bobby connection, but also the Clayton King connection and how that's speaking on a religious allegorical level, but also that parallel to american history, which I thought was just fantastic. But then you bringing the background singers into the forefront and making them part of the show equals to, as Gail Wald does in her chapter, but also challenging some of the folks who think they're shrill or just disregard them. And I thought it really did service to the shows to show that communal effort that you say beyond the floodlights, but also on his side of the stage lights, we see that he's really, in a sense of community through your chapter. So I thought that was so spot on. Really well done. [00:22:22] Speaker E: Thank you. [00:22:23] Speaker B: Thank you. Yeah, you're right. That sense of kind of communal renewal on multiple levels is being enacted on the stage, and then it's being reenacted across the footlights with the audience and that back and forth energy circuit they established there. And I have to give credit here to Laura Tensher because it was her episode as a tribute to Clyde King after the death of Clyde King. That really made me start appreciating more the importance and the kind of unfairly dismissive attitude too many people had toward Dylan's collaborations with those singers. Clyde King, probably first and foremost, but a number of others as well. [00:23:10] Speaker C: I just want to add that the depth of history in Grayley's writing is always so nice to see. And your substac is worth looking at, too, because you do these nice connections. And I'll just add a meta story here is that I love when you say you didn't know if you had anything to add, but then you were the first person to get us a complete draft of an essay. And that essay helped us get the book together because we then included that essay. It was a present. But even more importantly, b wonderful. And so Grayley's essay really is what I think cracked the door open for us to get momentum going. So thank you, Grayley, for the essay, but thank you, Grayley, for the essay, and thank you, Grayley, for all of the things you bring to the Dylan world, which I think is extraordinary. [00:23:58] Speaker B: Thank you very much. And before I pass the baton to our next presenter, did you say that the book came out officially on November 22, or did I get that wrong. [00:24:07] Speaker D: On the 17th, the same day as Buddha Khan? [00:24:10] Speaker B: Okay, that's what it was. I wanted it to be the 22nd. It's Kennedy assassination, but it's also the day that Dylan got married, and it was also the last day of the second residency at Warfield, November 22, but 17th, he was playing there too. [00:24:27] Speaker A: So my chapter was next. And odly enough, it happened to cover October 1981, literally eleven months after Gray Elite's chapter. And we plowed a lot of the same ground, but in different directions, I think. [00:24:41] Speaker B: So it's quite different. [00:24:43] Speaker A: But I actually want to move on to Rob's chapter number eleven. We jump quite a bit. And his chapter is entitled Bob Dylan's Splayed Anthems. We jump chronologically somewhat to pretty much the late ninety s, and he compares the late ninety s to a nineteen sixty two performance of a hard rain's going to fall. And he tracks those performances across the ages. Now, Rob, you use the lens of poet Nathaniel Malmacki's concept of displayed anthem and the curation of african american music. So tell us, what is a splayed anthem and what brought you to this particular approach? [00:25:24] Speaker F: That's a great question. The splay anthem is the title of a collection of anthems. It's not really a collection of poems per se, as an installment in an ongoing epic poem that Mackie is writing, similar to Hound's kantos, Charles Olsen's Maximus poems. He was very much, or he was, he is very much influenced by the Black Mountain school of poets and of course, jazz. And so those are the two vectors. [00:25:55] Speaker B: That he's bringing together. [00:25:57] Speaker F: I just thought the playful title of the installment in this ongoing epic poem that he's writing, splay anthem, of course, from his perspective, is kind of talking a little bit about what Grayley was speaking about in terms of the communal aspect of these musical performances, in that an anthem is meant to unify an audience. When you splay an anthem open, you investigate the ways in which the affecting aspects of music nevertheless are somewhat subverted or undermined by the larger kind of political anxieties surrounding an anthem. [00:26:40] Speaker B: Right. [00:26:41] Speaker F: And the anthem, of course, here is a hard rain is going to fall, and so a hard rain is going to fall. On the one hand, in the gaslight recording from 1962 is meant to unify an audience. And yet, if you look very closely at the song, which I do in the chapter, do a close reading of it, questioning the ways in which this path between the singer of where have all the flowers gone? And the audience listening to that anthem bind together? And Dylan already very precociously in composing the song, has in it the seeds of questioning whether this kind of production of a musical form, the anthem, can in fact bind communities. And then, of course, you get his performance in 62, where he tweaks his way of singing the refrain every time to prevent the folks in the audience from making it a sing along. And I don't know if anyone's familiar with this bit from it's a bootlegged the Robert Shelton Denver hotel tape where he and Shelton is recording Robbie Robertson. [00:27:48] Speaker B: And Dylan hanging out. [00:27:49] Speaker F: And I always imagine Shelton and Robertson wanting to go to sleep, but Dylan is still going and going, and he decides, hey, I'm going to lay a new song on you. And of course it's sat eyed lady of the Lowlands, a little song that you'll whip out and just play on your acoustic guitar. [00:28:02] Speaker B: It's crazy. [00:28:03] Speaker F: And you can hear Shelton asking about the song, and Dylan is only able to repeat the refrain of the song. But he says, in another example of Dylan's brilliant wit, he said, if I ever hear Pete Seeger make this refrain a sing along, I'm going to come. [00:28:20] Speaker B: At him with a hammer and a sickle. [00:28:22] Speaker F: And it's just a really great comment that every time I hear that I laugh. [00:28:26] Speaker B: And then I think what he was. [00:28:27] Speaker F: Doing in that early 62 performance where he's got this song, the audience wants to make this kind of collective anthem, and yet within it, 10,000 talkers whose tongues were all broken. The sense of communication and the ability to create a kind of unified culture is critiqued. And then, of course, the 1999 performance is interesting because I look at a series of shows, bogarts in Cincinnati, for. [00:28:54] Speaker B: Example, that Grayley was able to be there. [00:28:58] Speaker F: I'm so envious because I love 1999 and I love those shows. He was playing with Paul Simon on tour, and Simon gave a kind of nostalgic 60s jukebox version of his songs. He did a professional job. [00:29:13] Speaker C: Dylan, of course, couldn't stop. [00:29:16] Speaker F: It wasn't enough shows for him. It wasn't enough. And that always struck me as what is Dylan doing by playing Bogarts in Cincinnati on an off night? Surely you want to rest on your laurels or on your ass or whatever, but Dylan has to be up on the stage performing hard rain. [00:29:33] Speaker B: He never performs hard rain at the. [00:29:36] Speaker F: Main shows with Paul Simon at these big arenas. He only performs it at these small venues. And so he's recreating, I think, in those small venues, the kind of environment that he first performed the song. And it's remarkable how the audience is. [00:29:51] Speaker B: So silent during the song. [00:29:54] Speaker F: They're really keyed in and they're not singing the refrain. I think that has a lot to do with the ominous arrangement of the song and the mournful quality of the song, specifically, when you get to the end of it, what do you do? [00:30:07] Speaker E: Now? [00:30:08] Speaker F: He knows his songs well and has not stopped singing those songs. And so his reiteration of that pledge. [00:30:15] Speaker B: I'm going to know my song well. [00:30:18] Speaker F: Before I start singing, is ominous because it's suggesting a singing that has to keep going on at infinitum. And so I do make this kind of rather tendencious bridge between Mackie and his concept of a poetry that has this ongoingness and yet is always scrutinizing narratives that offer redemptive closure to Dylan's work. [00:30:46] Speaker A: It just so happens I saw, I think the third time I saw Dylan, it was on that tour with Paul Simon in northern Virginia at a really horrible venue. And I remember Dylan being exceedingly interesting. And I remember Paul Simon being exceedingly boring. And yet the crowd reacted in the exact opposite way. [00:31:05] Speaker F: That's a good point, right? [00:31:07] Speaker B: The inscrutability that we like to see. [00:31:10] Speaker F: That was the era of Dylan's changing his set lists every single night. That in my chapter, I argue pre sage, is what's going on in love. [00:31:17] Speaker B: And theft, where we've already mentioned in. [00:31:21] Speaker F: Court'S discussion here the folk songs that he begins the set list with. And then he got the acoustic set and the electric set. But it's changing every single night. And he's performing it in different arrangements. And the crowd is responding, as you described it, perhaps perplexed or not, as you've got the example of Paul Simon giving the audience what they want and Dylan giving the audience something that. Not what they want, but something different. [00:31:50] Speaker B: Right. [00:31:50] Speaker F: He's profoundly anti nostalgic in his rendering of hard rain in 1999. [00:31:57] Speaker A: I have a distinct memory of someone nearby in the audience. Dylan was playing a song from time out of mind. I don't remember what song. And someone screamed out, I don't know this song. What's this song? And I yelled back, it's from his last album. And the guy said, here's a new album. This is about two years after it come out, right? [00:32:17] Speaker B: Remind me of a moment in the Bogart show when he plays not dark yet, which I think was not until the first encore. And it was his first time out of mind song of the evening. But in context with the Simon tour, like Rob was saying, it suddenly strikes me funny. And the line can't even remember what it was I came here to get away from. Because the answer is Paul Simon. [00:32:47] Speaker C: Exactly. [00:32:48] Speaker B: Apologies to Paul Simon if he's a loyal Dylan towns listener. We're just poking fun here, Paul. [00:32:57] Speaker D: But I think it makes the encores when you play with Simon a little bit more interesting because you have jukebox Simon with non jukebox Dylan playing the songs that they, I think they played not fade away, either the boxer or sound of silence. And I can't remember the Dylan song they played, but I saw that twice in New Jersey and then in Houston, and I was fortunate enough to see both the boxer and sounds of silence. But yeah, it was interesting because the way that Dylan was phrasing, you could see Simon was uncomfortable with a little bit. Maybe it wasn't as melodic, I assume, that he's used to, but interesting nonetheless. [00:33:35] Speaker A: Best version of sound of science I ever heard that duet with Dylan dragging Paul Simon along. [00:33:42] Speaker E: It was great. [00:33:45] Speaker A: All right, I want to jump to Aaron, who we just heard from. So, Aaron, your chapter, which is chapter twelve, you look at Dylan's set list as sociopolitical commentary, particularly in the 2010s, in your essay, which is called Bob Dylan's wasteland. Contemporary existential anxieties reflect it in the 2013 to 2019 set list. Tell us what happening in those performances in reaction to the political world and what was unfolding around us at that time. [00:34:16] Speaker D: I think it's an extension of the idea that he gave us in chronicles, where he talks about his post World War II, his atomic anxiety about growing up as a kid and not knowing that, or knowing that any, at any moment the world could just end. And so I feel like when I was at that concert with my parents on October 14, 2018, I knew what the set list was. But then hearing it, I saw this sort of threat going through that. It was this one nervous proof rockian character. He starts us out with a worried man, a worried man with a worried mind, and he is unable to make any changes. He's waiting. Whatever is coming, whatever doom is coming, he's next in line and he's bracing for it, and he can't change anything and then anything that he does throughout the entire set. So I saw this theme kind of going through. His love is unrequited, unfulfilling, or he just wants to get away from it, unsatisfying. Right after the 2016 election, he says, once I started to look at that set list as it was, there's a master list of the songs. Through the repetition, I thought he was reinforcing this theme of contemporary anxiety. And so I looked at where he started it, and he made some really interesting changes after the election. Trump and do I think that he was making a political statement? I'm not naive enough to think so, but I found it interesting because he replaced it's all over now, baby blue, which at least strike another, strike the match and start a new. Like we get some sort of positive message there with beyond here lies nothing that's interesting. And then he kept that in. But so I just felt that everything that he gave us in terms of the songs and how, as we've all said, they're working together in this one list, and anything he pulled out and put in or replaced with either got darker or reinforced the theme with desolation row being a centerpiece of, as Robert Shelton says, as closest to Hal or the wasteland as Dylan gets. It just really seemed dark to me. So I thought it's playing on that theme that I see run throughout from Hargrain's going to fall through. His contemporary, really, even his 21st century output, that there's an anxiety of apocalypse. And I end with a quote that he. From the night, from 1980s, from 2020, where he said he doesn't see apocalypse as bad. It's just an ending of one thing and the start of something else. And what the something else is. The question that he forces us to puzzle out, he doesn't know. He's not answering it for us. He just knows. Except maybe in beyond here lies nothing because that's the darkest of the songs from the 20th century. But it's interesting to see how he's putting these things together. And it does really communicate a sense of anxiety through the character that he's singing through on stage. [00:37:14] Speaker A: So you tracked in that particular period what was going on with the set list. Do you have any sense that's happened in any other periods of Dylan's set list, that sort of socio political commentary? [00:37:27] Speaker D: I don't know that I can answer that with any depth because those were the ones that I lived with and listened to for so long. So I would have to get back to you. And you can edit this out because I don't have an intelligent answer for this because those were the ones that I was specifically focused on in terms of that thread. [00:37:47] Speaker A: So, Nina, you had the 13th chapter, the lucky 13th chapter, which happened to be the last of the Dylan taunts chapters. And your chapter was called what's going on in your show? A look at this. Shadow Kingdom. Setlin, you take on what could be described as Dylan's most recent album. Right. Shadow Kingdom, as an example of his late style art. So the first thing I need you to do is just tell us what that term means. Right. The late style art and so people understand that. And also, how did the pandemic broadcast of Shadow Kingdom, how was that a collective experience, like a concert that both captured and reflected the time? [00:38:30] Speaker E: Oh, my God. I have to answer all these questions. Okay. Late style studies is a fascinating, flourishing new critical field that is this bizarre relation to the late works of strong artists and late style studies goes back to the 19th century. I don't want to get into the whole genealogy of this, but it's this half nervous and half terrified and half redemptive attempt to find extraordinary innovation and ingenuity in the very late works of artists. It began with examining Beethoven, Michelangelo, titian, artists whose late works really do manifest a break from even the works that they produced in their prime. But what fascinates me, and Bob Dylan has got to get in this number, he has got to get in this box of late style artists. And no one listening to this and no one on this Zoom Brady Bunch, everyone knows that this is absolutely crucial, that the work that he's done since he's 60 years old has been on. We don't even know where to start. Our generation doesn't know where to start to make real coherence out of the extraordinary work that he's produced in the last 25 years. But what interests me about late style studies is that it has this neurotic hysteria about it. It's really a body of critics for whom the very viability of their field and their approach is contentious, and who really all seem, and I count myself in this, just this extraordinary appetite to find vitality and magnificence in work, in art that confronts directly mortality and all of our personal apocalypses, which we are all anticipating. And as the years go by, it's a lot more lucid for us. So that's a long prelude for that. And what Shadow kingdom seemed an easy, seemed low hanging fruit for a set list essay, because it was a highly conceived, one off project, very contained. This is to examine a set list that is fixed and fixed in this theatrical. And as I say, high concept frame is so inviting, and I don't want to say easy, but wanted. What first struck me in the sense of relation and shadow kingdom is while I sat right here in this, where I'm sitting right now with this very computer and waiting for the. You pay your $25. And I'm sure you all remember waiting for this thing to start. On the right hand side of your screen is all these cascading messages from people all over the world waiting for this thing to start. And they're also. Maybe he'll do Oxfordtown. Maybe. Oh, I hope he does. Blowing in the wind. I can't. This tension and fraught and excitement that just transmitted off the screen in these type messages from people all over the world who are waiting for a pre recorded, hour long video that you paid $25 to see. And not only pre recorded, but it's all synced. All the music and the vocals are all synced. You're waiting for this completely contrived, artificial non event. And it just. That sense of anticipation through cutting through the torpor and the inertia and the death in life, of pandemic life, that seemed to inform the whole experience of Shadow kingdom. And it wasn't hard to find that narrative through the songs themselves. What I write in the paper is the Shadow Kingdom set list showcased what have always been Dylan's preoccupations. How does the past erupt into the present? How can desire distance people or close that distance? Why do Dylan's own invented wonderlands trap him? How can a song address and manifest an absent other, including the listener? But Shadow kingdom triangulated these familiar concerns with theatrical tableaus and our own historical moment of inertia, alienation and futurelessness. I felt that it is possible to say that we can impute anything. The songs are so inexhaustible, we can impute any narrative and any frame and any coherence that we want to any set of Bob Dylan's songs. There's no end to what we can weave out of any set of songs, and I have to accept that. But at the other hand, it felt very moving to find in these songs, these webs of alienation, of desire, of distance, of timelessness in terms of futurelessness. It felt like a very moving project for me to renarate the set list in this fashion, in the frame of the pandemic life and death. [00:45:16] Speaker F: Nina, would it be safe to say, you talk about, one of the things that we're talking about here is set lists, and these are things all of us have spoken about, the kind of intentionality behind the self curation of these set lists. Hearing you describe your chapter here, then, is it safe to say, and I think the answer is yes, that Dylan is not interested, per se, in curating his legacy as much as he is in reconfiguring his body of work to fit. Like Aaron was talking about and you were talking about to be a response to the. [00:45:53] Speaker E: Yeah, exactly. Because to see wicked messenger and to be alone with you performed together in this ridiculous tableau of people who do not seem aware that they are at a Bob Dylan concert. And to see that there is no conceivable way that you can accuse Bob Dylan of, again, as we say, of nostalgically reminding us of his canon. That's just when forever young and when I paint my masterpiece. These two songs are such contrasts in Persona, in the sense of what it means to exist in time, what it means to address a listener. There's just such extraordinary incompatibilities, which is a word I use a lot about Bob Dylan, but there's extraordinary. Somehow he makes all of this an appeal to us, to experience more fully the sense of alienation and timelessness that the pandemic manifested for all of us. And I find that that makes Shadow kingdom a fascinating artwork, and not just fascinating. Another fascinating step in the Bob Dylan journey. I think it has a richer frame to it. [00:47:24] Speaker C: I love how well versed and academic your work is. Obviously, I'd be remiss if we didn't say that Rob and Nina, y'all, were on a panel together recently. Those papers were so altering in terms of how we approach your two topics. But I also love how you connect the emotion of it, like the emotional. And I think as I go down the road, thousand miles from my home, I feel like I'm more comfortable playing with that and stepping aside sometimes of the analytical. And is this fucking moving? And what he's doing is touching, and it's interesting. So I love that. What I will say is that Nina, and as heard behind the scenes, Nina and Laura Tinscher both wanted to work on Shadow Kingdom, and they both delivered very different essays. And I think that's a really wonderful way of how different people do different things. And they're not like, oh, this is part two. They're very different, and it's really engaged. Jim, you and Grayley don't quite cross paths, but you're so close to each other, yet very different essays, very wonderful moments. Rob, you're by yourself. No one really goes where you go, but it's so wonderful to see people take on very similar seed beds. And weirdly, Rob, you're in a place where we thought we'd get a lot of essays, and you're standing alone. But I love the fact that you have two different people writing very different things about similar. That's what's so great about the experience. I can't say enough just to go to the emotional route, to have people who I see now as friends and colleagues, and to be a part of all of this. Seeing this work come together, it's been one of the most gratifying things. If I'm thankful, Jim, this is what you can cut this out. If I'm thankful, this thankful for a group of people like all of you. [00:49:25] Speaker E: So nice. Thanks, court. [00:49:28] Speaker D: Thank you. One of the things that. One of my favorite passages, I love that you used Ball's vocalization that was just pure genius to describe the way that the songs are working. But I did feel, knowing you personally, to riff off what court was saying when you wrote that the folks in Shadow Kingdom don't realize they're at a Bob Dylan concert, that just struck me as being so to the core of who you are, in essence. Like when you said, once you've sat in first row, even the second row isn't enough. [00:49:57] Speaker E: And just so it just. [00:49:59] Speaker D: It was one of the most Nina phrases in that whole essay. People don't realize that they're that close to Bob Dylan, at a time where Vienu said, none of us will ever be that close. But also, we couldn't even be close to each other in this sort of communal experience. [00:50:13] Speaker E: It was just one of my favorite. Can I just add on what court was saying about emotion? We all had the pleasure and the privilege of seeing him just in the last month. That's an amazing, wonderful coincidence. And anyone at those shows had to have been so deeply moved and impressed by how fucking hard he is working. He is 82 years old. He works so hard to get every ounce of feeling and power and wit and anger in every syllable that comes out of his and how much he has at stake in every one of these songs, in every one of these shows. And you got to meet his emotion. You got to meet that with whatever you have. And that's all I have to say. [00:51:09] Speaker A: I have a question that I hadn't thought of Nina until you were talking before. So, his latest set list, his latest performances around the country. We're recording this in late November 2023. He is combining almost all the songs of rough and rowdy ways, except for murder most foul, for obvious reasons, and many of the songs that he recorded from Shadow Kingdom, which I would say are his last two albums, and the Shadow Kingdom songs, he's doing largely in the Shadow Kingdom style, along with gotta serve somebody and every grain of sand, and also one Frank Sinatra number, usually what is. And then. And then perhaps a cover of a Grateful Dead or Merle Haggard or a. [00:52:02] Speaker E: City, if you're lucky. [00:52:03] Speaker B: If you're lucky. [00:52:05] Speaker A: I actually saw the last time he did that, which was at the Capitol. [00:52:08] Speaker B: Theater in Port Chester, where he did. [00:52:10] Speaker A: A grateful Dead song. So that combination of things. What do we have to say about those combinations of particular tunes? I find that a fascinating set list for a man, 82 years old, be up on stage. Virtually none of these songs is a hit. The one at the beacon and at the Capitol Theater, when I saw him, the one that was received the most wildly was got to serve somebody. [00:52:35] Speaker B: That was the biggest hit. [00:52:36] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:52:37] Speaker A: Of the set list. The thoughts you have. [00:52:41] Speaker E: I'm really curious. I'd be really curious to talk to people who are new to this, where this is maybe the first time that they've seen Dylan live. And what do you make of the difference between I contain multitudes or key west and to be alone with you or watching them, what do you make of the difference between these songs performed, as you say, in this kind of more or less consistent register with this band? I'd be curious. Otherwise, I don't. [00:53:17] Speaker F: It's quite stunning how he's able to. [00:53:20] Speaker B: Put on the Persona of I'll be your baby tonight and then sing Rubicon. [00:53:30] Speaker F: Something like that. [00:53:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:53:31] Speaker F: So that just strikes me. And a personal anecdote that I have is 2019. Seeing him in Ithaca right before the pandemic where he played girl from the north country, this beautiful version turned right around. Immediately he turned on his heels and played that minor key version of not dark yet. And to see him be able to do that was just like someone performing. I can't think of an analogy. The switch there just during performance. So this is something that I think, for me at least, is enjoyable. About the set list that he's got. [00:54:09] Speaker B: Right now, is to see him, not. [00:54:12] Speaker F: Effortlessly, because he is working up there on the stage. [00:54:15] Speaker B: You're right, Nina. [00:54:16] Speaker F: But to see him kind of work at making this switching from one Persona to another, which leaves you in this interesting space. He's not this singular figure for you to pin down. [00:54:30] Speaker B: I had the experience, as probably all of us had when we've seen these concerts. If at some point things were quiet enough for someone to yell out a request like a Rolling Stone, and you're just embarrassed for someone, right? Not embarrassed in the sense that, how dare you not be following his set list every single night the way that I am, but that, you poor thing, you're going to somehow manage to be disappointed by this show. And this show is the most amazing performance I've ever seen. For reasons like Nina just described, that he is investing so much of himself in these songs, and it feels like almost like Tinkerbell moment, where he's feeding off the energy of the audience mean, he's giving us so much, and it's so inspiring to us. But then what we're emanating back from our side toward him, I think, is it's like spinach for Popeye. It's giving him what he needs to deliver the performances that are so stunning. And then occasionally, when he gives a very special gift to the people in the room at that time, as he did with south of Cincinnati and Cincinnati, which felt so precious until he played it the next night in Akron. But that's another matter. But, yeah, I mean, that he's just giving us so much that I can't imagine walking away from a Bob Dylan concert anything other than completely gratified and in awe of the talent, that we won't see the likes of him again, but unless, hopefully, he keeps on coming back around to our town, and then we can't. [00:56:10] Speaker E: I think. [00:56:11] Speaker D: Nina, did you see him three nights in a row? Brooklyn and then the beacon? [00:56:15] Speaker E: I saw the first Brooklyn show and then the Beacon, and then the first Jersey show. [00:56:22] Speaker D: I saw him three nights in a row in Chicago. And that Saturday night, the energy, his energy was so different because the crowds, like you're saying, he's feeding off of the crowd. And that was where, I don't know, that he had intended to play truckin, because he turned to Tony and he said two syllables, and they launched right into. And so I think that was impromptu. We all went nuts. And then the Sunday crowd was a little bit more subdued, and that was when he just did the straight set list. He didn't play born in Chicago, but Grayley, that recording of south of Cincinnati brought me to tears. I can't imagine just hearing the recording. The bootleg of it was so moving. I can't imagine being there and having that. You're right. These are just special shows, and he's working so hard to give those to us. But I wonder if people have seen him multiple times, if you felt that sort of shift. And I saw him in the same place three times. So it wasn't necessarily from Brooklyn to Manhattan to New Jersey, where you might find different crowds. But I'm interested to know what you thought about crowds. [00:57:18] Speaker E: They were very similar crowds. Don't kid yourself. It was basically the same people. That was that. And because the venues were so different, so the tone and the acoustics were very different, but otherwise, I was very hurt. Like, I was surprised to find myself authentically, deeply hurt that he did nothing for me in Brooklyn. I was born like four blocks from the king's theater, and he could not give me anything in Brooklyn on that turf. And I was very hurt by that. It was an extraordinary show. That's not the point that I'm making. But I was surprised to find myself that when you feel that connection to this artist, that you think that he can disappoint you in that bizarre. In a completely arbitrary and ridiculous way. And the show in Jersey was spectacular. It was just so clear and strong. And so if you can get recordings, that's one that I would recommend strongly. [00:58:28] Speaker D: I've told this before, but the first night in Chicago, there was a kid sitting next to me, and it was his 23rd birthday, and all he wanted. [00:58:35] Speaker E: To do was to see Bob Dilt. That's wonderful. [00:58:38] Speaker D: He was so exuberant. He said, I have to talk to him. You have to ask him questions. He's not going to answer the questions. Jim said, he doesn't have any more of the answers than you do. But when he played every grain of sand, he stood up and he's, I have to go down there. Because people were going into the aisle towards the stage. Oh, they like to do that. And he stood there just with. He was beaming, radiating joy. He was a tall kid. He was probably about 6465, and you could see him above everyone else, but it was so precious, just that he was so happy to be. It was like a child looking at Santa Claus almost. He was just so delightful. And he came back and he was so excited. That was the best experience of my life. So he was the kid who was not disappointed. There's always folks who aren't expect, they're not getting what they expect, and so they're going to be disappointed. But I was happy to share that moment with that kid. [00:59:32] Speaker E: That's so nice. [00:59:34] Speaker F: Yeah, I can't wait to see. I've got really excellent student in the Dylan seminar I'm teaching this semester and she lives in New Jersey and she left the campus early. She went to go see that first show. [00:59:46] Speaker E: Oh, nice. [00:59:47] Speaker F: So I cannot wait. [00:59:50] Speaker E: Yeah, let me know. [00:59:52] Speaker A: Thank you for listening to the Dylan Taunts podcast. Be sure to subscribe to, have the Dylan taunts sent directly to your inbox and share the Dillon tots on social media.