Talkin' Under the Red Sky (+Ex)

[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 Dilentans podcast. Hey everyone, I'm Jim Salvucci of the Dilentaunts, and welcome to the latest installment of million dollar bash. Only one year after the triumphal release of Mercy, Dylan came out with 1990s under the red sky. The album is known for its all star musicians, George Harrison Slash, David Crosby, Bruce Hornsby, Al Cooper, David Lindley and others, and was produced by Don Wuz. It is filled with the language and structure of childrens songs and music, which is befitting an album dedicated to Gabby Gugu, likely Dylan's then toddler daughter, Desiree Gabrielle Dennis Dillon. There are countless songs, fairy tales and echoes of nursery rhymes, but the songs often sport an ominous feel that is hard to shake, which, if we are being fair, is not too different from the traditional children's folk literature. For instance, the cats in the well is based on an old nursery rhyme about, you guessed it, a cat in a well. The weirdest aspect of Dylan's take, though, is the driving blues melody that backs the lyrics. It's a rockin number that belies the quaintness of its verses. Some songs, such as Born in Time, are stellar, while others are the targets of endless knee jerk derision. No song falls more into that latter category than the album's opening track, wiggle Wiggle. Personally, I've always seen wiggle wiggle as a harmless bit of fun, like country pie or every grain of sand, but others have pegged it as a sign of the coming apocalypse. Perhaps if it weren't the very first song on the album, people would lighten up a bit, but there you have it. We also see Dylan return to satiric form in several songs, most notably the romping, TV Talkin song, which is both hopelessly dated and sweetly naive in this Internet age. As a satire, the song is clever, though it's a narrative about a man holding forth in Hyde park, ranting about the evils of television. Most of the lyrics are simply a transcript of what he says, with the narrator serving as mere reporter. This structure allows Dylan some ironic distance from the message. At the end of the song, a riot breaks out, and Dylan concludes with this amusing irony. Later on that evening I watched it on tv. One oddity this is the rare Dylan album to include the lyrics in the liner notes. Under the red sky is a short album, 35 and a half minutes long, but in some ways it is too long. Handy Dandy would make a fine finish to the album, but instead we get one more number. The uninspired the cats in the wild. Most Dylan albums start and end strong. Under the red sky does the opposite, which may be one reason. Along with its uncharacteristically slick production and slapdash performances, the album has never been well received. But here's the good news. Today we have almost a full house on the bash, and I want to introduce our guests and ask them to say hi as I call their names. So up first is court Carney. [00:03:07] Speaker B: Hello, everyone. [00:03:09] Speaker A: Then we got Rayleigh Hearn. [00:03:12] Speaker C: Hey there. [00:03:14] Speaker A: Earn Callahan. [00:03:16] Speaker C: Hey, everyone. [00:03:18] Speaker A: And Rockin Rob Reginio. [00:03:21] Speaker D: Thank you, Jim. Thanks for having me. Hello, everyone. [00:03:25] Speaker A: All right, so what do we want to say about under the red sky? [00:03:33] Speaker B: Can I give you my hot take? I have my hot take. [00:03:35] Speaker A: Hot take, please. [00:03:37] Speaker B: I wish he had never written or released wiggle, wiggle for this reason. It's the laziest attack on him that people have. The song is fine, but it's such a shorthand for, like, oh my God, can you believe he wrote such garbage? And I think for that reason alone, I wish he had just cut it, because it just is. The laziness of writers to use that as an attack is just tiresome. Otherwise, it's a fine track. It's fine. [00:04:06] Speaker A: So why do you consider it lazy? [00:04:09] Speaker B: No, not the track itself. I think it becomes a lazy attack on Dylan where all these writers say, can you believe he wrote something so stupid? Or this is childish or whatever. And I don't think it's that bad a track. And I think that just becomes like a. It just carries the weight of everyone's disappointment. And I think that wiggle, wiggle become a shorthand for something that I think is unfair. Can you criticize the record? Absolutely. Can you criticize some of the lyrics in this period? Absolutely. But I don't think it's fair to be so dismissive of an entire record because of the opening track. My problem with that is that. Isn't there a question of slashes? Slash is hardly on there. Right. I know. Aaron, you wanted to talk about Slash. You had an album. [00:04:49] Speaker E: I did. [00:04:50] Speaker B: Material like my. [00:04:51] Speaker E: The merging of two great loves when all my friends were in love with Axel or Duff McKagan. I was all about Flash as a young 13 year old. And so I do love that there's a wonderful CB's radio recording or interview with him where he talks about the session that is still one of his favorite sessions. And he goes in and Dylan tells him to record something and he does something acoustic. And then he lays down the guitar solo and he tells Waz when you finish it, it over to me. And he gets the track and he's not on it and he's shocked. And so he calls waz up and he says, what happened? He said, well, Dylan cut it. Bob cut it because it sounded too much like guns n roses and slash took that as such a badge of honor because he said, I'm in a band that has a sound. And Bob recognized that sound. And he was so proud of that. [00:05:43] Speaker C: Disappointing, I swear to enter online. And he said it was one of the worst experiences, experiences of his life. [00:05:50] Speaker E: That's hilarious because I listened to the. [00:05:54] Speaker C: When Dylan said it sounds so much like Guns n Roses, said, well, what the fuck did you want me to do? [00:06:00] Speaker E: That's hilarious. I was listening to this thing last. [00:06:03] Speaker C: Night and he came right out and said, he called. He said Dylan was indifferent. He had no interest in me or what I was reviewing. Yeah. [00:06:15] Speaker E: That I was listening to. [00:06:16] Speaker B: No. [00:06:17] Speaker C: Love lost. [00:06:18] Speaker E: Yeah. No. And I wonder where, what the dates. [00:06:20] Speaker C: Are because when I was so, yeah. [00:06:23] Speaker E: I'll find it too because he was so. I was listening to it last night. It's an audio recording. And I was just, he was just, he was just, he said it's still one of the best experiences I was running. Yeah. So we can't trust, like we can't trust Dylan. Maybe. [00:06:37] Speaker B: The Dylan tons audience come checks in for the competing slash stories. Do it all just like you go to. [00:06:44] Speaker A: You go to Dylan albums for those screaming guitars. By the way, everyone, we're in luck. Nina Goss has made it and you just heard from her. So we have a full house now. This is great. Welcome. We're happy you're here. This was your idea. So we were really bummed. [00:06:59] Speaker C: Yes. [00:07:00] Speaker A: By the way, I heard the same story Nina did that he hated that session. It was the worst recording session of his life. And. But apparently Bob liked his top hat because we saw that pop up a little bit later on. [00:07:12] Speaker E: Right. I'll find the local link and send it to you. [00:07:15] Speaker C: I'll find it. [00:07:16] Speaker A: That's curious. [00:07:17] Speaker E: I probably still have it open because I was like, that's really interesting that he said. One of the things I read, he said he wasn't quite sure what Bob was asking for him. So he played what he wanted to play. But then in that CB's radio interview, he was very positive about. [00:07:32] Speaker C: Oh, isn't that funny? [00:07:34] Speaker A: When was it recorded, do you know? [00:07:36] Speaker E: I don't. I said I'll find it and I'll. It may be revisionist on Slash's part. [00:07:42] Speaker A: All right, so we've already talked a little bit about Wiggle Wiggle before we leave. [00:07:46] Speaker B: Wiggle wiggle. [00:07:46] Speaker F: Though it is interesting that one person who hasn't disavowed himself of the song and I just went dark again. If you're watching video, I don't know. [00:07:54] Speaker B: Why we're a robot voice. Greeley when you go dark, apparently. [00:07:59] Speaker F: But yet Dylan has not disavowed the song. I just looked it up and he's played it live 110 times. Think of all the great songs he's played less than that. That's double the number of times he's played song to Woody. So we can go down the line only upon in their game, let alone the ones he's never played, like sad eyed lady of the Lowlands. So I agree with your point that it has become a shorthand for just taking shots at Bob. But, but it. I think most of the people who do it, do it good natured. It's. It's funny. It becomes a kind of tagline. I was listening to one of the the Cincinnati Bootlegs 1992 at music hall, I'm pretty sure, and there was a pause waiting for the next song, and someone just perfectly timed before Dylan and the band kicked in the next song, wiggle, wiggle. And it just cracked me up every time. You just heard desolation row and you want him to follow that up with Wiggle Wiggle. Okay. [00:08:56] Speaker A: By the way, I wasn't going to leave Wiggle Wiggle by any means. I think there's much more to say about wiggle, wiggle. Why do you think, though, that it's not a lyrically brilliant or anything like that? It is a fun song, but why do you think it gets such derision? It's easy, yes, but there's other songs that are too. [00:09:14] Speaker C: How thrilled people were. After all, mercy. What they were waiting for. And this is the next thing you get. You put the CD in and what do you get? Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a big fat snake. My favorite line is like a ton of lead. Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of wick. I think it's. I think that's what the falling off feeling. [00:09:42] Speaker A: That's an interesting take. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. So you come off all mercy and then boom, there's wiggle wiggle waiting for you. [00:09:48] Speaker F: And you're the big stones fan, Nina. And it reminded me of start me up because some of the lines in there. Wiggle till you come. Wiggle till you raise the dead. That feels like the end of me. Up to. [00:09:59] Speaker C: There you go. [00:10:01] Speaker D: What's interesting about what court said about the. And what Nina and Aaron talking about Slash's view of the recording process, I found online an interview with Robin Ford, who was on the sessions and Fort's point about sloppiness of the writing. It struck me to read that Robin Ford basically describes the recording session as we all know Dylan's recording sessions go. He's flying by the seat of his pants saying, I want this sound. Let's throw the Vaughn brothers, Robin Ford, Al Cooper, slash in a room. And I'll just. And then they start. But he says, and when something would start happening that Dylan liked, he would get very animated. You could tell he was excited. He'd pick up the harmonica and start blowing and start trying to sing his lyrics that he's reading off the pages. And then what's interesting is that the Ford says, and there were literally pages and pages, loose pages. They weren't bound or anything. There must have been 40 or 50 pages on the table and he'd just start fishing through them and start singing them. So to a certain degree he is playing this fast and loose style of composing in the studio. But on the other hand, he's got a lot of writing backing up this album. And so this is a concerted aesthetic choice on his part to play with nonsense verse, nursery rhymes, that sort of thing. [00:11:34] Speaker B: I want to be clear here. And I think that that's what's so interesting about the process. Rob, I think there's interesting about this record is that there's not much out there on it. Right? Like that's the fun part. It's still a little bit mystery. You have all these big name people, but then it's like. And slash can't even be consistent in his stories. So. So I think that's interesting. I will. I will thank Nina for bringing this up because I cannot tell you the last time I sat down and listened to this record. And I'm pretty. It's pretty good. I think the worst songs are just fine. But I think some of the best songs are really great. And there's some really interesting things on here. It's our one Bob Accordian record, right? We have a bob on accordion. We have so many weird little things to it. And I do think going back to Grayling Point, I would love to read the. The story as to how handy Dandy got played once. But like in 2008, story there. Was that a special request? Like how does that become played so long after the record and then some of these record and like cats in the well. I know Jim used to be disparaging that that becomes a live staple. [00:12:41] Speaker C: That was the starting every show with that. [00:12:44] Speaker B: Anyway, I like going back to it. It's interesting. Thank you, Neil. [00:12:48] Speaker C: Welcome. [00:12:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I was. I enjoyed relistening to the album as well. Yeah, I'm not a big cats in the well fan. Cause I think the lyrics are trite. And the blues. There's a lot of blues on this album that could be a lot better. [00:13:00] Speaker D: Right? [00:13:01] Speaker A: 10,000 men. It's almost like he's phoning in the singing within cats in the wells. A little. Little too fast from slow down. It might be a little more interesting. Lean into the blues a little bit more. And that's why I'm down on it. Whereas I think candy Dandy is a. Is a dandy tune. [00:13:17] Speaker C: Does. [00:13:18] Speaker B: Does every boomer musician write a tv song during the eighties? I think there's. Or the nineties. It seems like there's so many like 57 channels. [00:13:27] Speaker C: Channels. [00:13:29] Speaker B: Bruce Springs. [00:13:29] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:13:31] Speaker B: Dire straight's whole video oeuvre is about Carton tv. [00:13:36] Speaker F: It occurred to me in listening to tv, the tv song, which I'm sure I had not listened to in over 30 years. I probably hadn't listened to it since 1990. And I don't particularly like it as a song, but it suddenly hit me. Wow. There are at least three Dylan songs that spring to mind that end with the singer in front of the television. You've got this one. You've got Black Diamond Bay and Tweeter and the Monkey man. All right, so this. I don't know what to make of that, but there it is. Dylan likes ending songs in front of the television. [00:14:11] Speaker A: I think maybe Dylan just likes television despite the tv talking song and its lyrics. Any other highlights in the album? [00:14:21] Speaker B: My revelation. And I use that word on purpose and I can't tell you how many times I've listened to it since I relearn this record is God knows what a great fucking track. And I have just been obsessed with it since I've. I don't know how many times I've listened to it before now. But I am just. There's a conventional wisdom that the O mercy session is better. I don't think that's true. I think the O mercy version sounds like a theme song from a nineties sitcom. But the. The Virginath on the record is really great. And it's weird. We don't hear those chords with Dylan very often. It's a mix of maybe some sort of old rhythm and blues, spiritual sort of chord structure, doo wop structure. But then it sounds kind of like something Wilco would have done ten years after this. It's cool. It's strange. Kenny's drumming is weird and sort of like falling off a cliff. And the whole song is really great. But then, and this is what was astounding to me, was listening to. I think it's the 94 Roselyn ballroom version. If anybody hasn't listened to that recently, that version of God knows in 94 is just killer. It's killer. The band is so hot. He's playing lead guitar, I think, on that. I think Dylan's playing lead during that period. It's just a great song. It's a throwback in some ways. It's a throwaway in some ways, but I don't think so. I was really impressed with, like, where did this song come from? From. It's buried in the back half of the record, but he plays it a lot. It's like what Graylee was saying. Some of these songs just get played over and over and over again and he must have dug it. Like, it has a nice. Sort of like just him by himself and the band crashes in. But the drumming on that live version of 94 is amazing. Anyway, that was my big moment of like, wow. How many other songs out there are going to be the soundtrack of my life in 2024, other than this 1990 backside of Under Red sky record? Anyway, that's my positivity for the mix. [00:16:27] Speaker D: I love the O mercy version. I find the vocals are much more committed, less tentative. [00:16:33] Speaker B: But, Rob, we don't have to agree on everything. Yeah, the music, like the music of it, we can off the. No, I. [00:16:41] Speaker D: And what's. What's funny is that you've got both Vaughn brothers playing on God knows on the album. [00:16:47] Speaker B: I think Stevie Ray and Jimmy Vaughn. [00:16:50] Speaker D: And I have to say it sounds like heresy, but there are some rather cheesy blues riffs they just throw in there. And I like the stripped down version of the O Mercy arrangement where it's just these rhythm guitars pushing the song forward. [00:17:06] Speaker B: Are you suggesting we need more texas erasure? This is blasphemy. [00:17:12] Speaker D: No care about graphics. [00:17:14] Speaker B: I just think it's a cool vibe. And on the released version, as a cool vibe, you don't hear very often. It's got a bored thing that he doesn't play that often. And then it has a really cool collapsing piece to it. But then the 94 version, which I've gone back to a million times, is just so hot. That band during that period is really great. It was just a revelation to me about that song. And the song goes back. There's. Lyrically, there's some cool things in it, like the desserts to a string line is cool. And there's all sorts of. Really. There's like a Mary, don't you weep. Obviously, pointillism going on there. But I don't know, I was just like, he's got so many cool songs that you never hear, that I don't ever hear. I don't listen to that often. I was like, this is as good as I hear what you're saying. And I hear everyone's gonna say, and it's gonna be. I'm gonna be. It's gonna be dismissed out of hand. But anyway, for this, for the 1 June, 2024. 2024. This is the song that's. [00:18:11] Speaker F: That's just hitting it. [00:18:12] Speaker C: When I first heard the song, what I loved about it is the. The way he plays with the contronym of the phrase God knows, because the idiom means nobody knows. God knows. And then, of course, God knows his omniscient. So it's the people I love the way he plays with that. I like those cheesy blues stuff, but I think that there's a super weak and probably fatuous case that you could make I. That there's God knows and unbelievable and tv talking song he's playing in this very weak and ranty way. This is what I think Bob Dylan is ranting about postmodern, relativistic meaning in the world, that he's tuning into these threads and he's taking this on, and because I do. And political world is another. And so when you. When you take these songs together, these kind of weak, profit, ypro, ph e t type songs, and they really are weak. But I think that there's a thread of Bob Dylan taking on postmodern epistemology in these songs. But believe me, I'm sure all your 250,000 listeners are turning off, leaving and turning this off right now with no listening to me whitter on about this. But that is what I loved about God knows that. I think it's. It has the potential for real ingenuity in the way he's using that phrase. [00:20:09] Speaker A: Well, thanks, Nina, for lowering my surprise. At the end of this announcement, I got 250,000 listeners. [00:20:16] Speaker C: Yeah. And steering your podcast right into a dish. [00:20:21] Speaker A: No, I actually agree. I thoroughly. And I would throw everything is broken into the same. The same mix, right? No, I actually have exactly the same feelings because I think those songs are all the piece and they rub me the wrong way, but they're also incredibly fascinating. I just found them really fixating some. [00:20:41] Speaker F: Ways an album that invites comparison to O mercy, and not just because it happens to be the next chronologically, but some of the points court was making, too, about mutually, how it's strikingly different than what Landois would have done with the song. And we don't have to speculate because we have telltale signs to know in a couple of cases what landlord did with these songs as outta. And maybe this is also hinting at why it's the first appearance of Jack Frost, right? Jack Frost, Dylan's ghost name for himself as a producer, is credited as co producer of under the Red sky. So maybe some of those clever, odd musical decisions court was referring to are coming from Dylan, and maybe he decides he wants some credit for taking his music in that different direction, a direction that other producers, including Lanois, wouldn't and didn't take it. [00:21:39] Speaker A: So what sort of lowlights do we have? [00:21:43] Speaker C: I just. Lyrically, it's an album of such missed opportunities that there's strong lines and then, like two by two, it starts out so strong, and then you get that weak image of the foggy Dew and then the song trails off and there's just a lot. There's just. There really is a. What everyone calls the carelessness of this. I just hear it as so many missed opportunities where I feel great. Strong. There's such strong lines and strong images. And the phrase in two by two, steps in the arc, step in the dark, turning the key, and then turn it some more. I love when he. I think that's a strong stanza. And then it just. The song doesn't support it. And there's just great suggestive lines. I'm sorry I keep repeating myself. But the way tv talk and song. There's a real cleverness to the way he's reporting. He's reporting someone else's speech and he handles that really deftly. And then the song ends on this cheap punchline. Even born in time, this. This version of born in time, it. It doesn't hold together the way other versions of the song do. It doesn't have that suggestiveness. I'm sorry, I'm just whittering on. So. [00:23:12] Speaker A: No, this is. This is what we're here for. That's all we do is blather. One of the things that strikes me about this album, and it strikes a lot of people, but I think it's. It's worth exploring. Is that idea of, like, the song, like, two by two? It's a counting song. It's one of a couple counting songs on the album. It's got a children's flavor to it. Lyrics aren't children's lyrics per se, but it seems to fall back on that a little bit too much, in my opinion. What thoughts do you have about that? The children's flavor to the album? [00:23:44] Speaker D: A lot of the archetypal images that you get right in these nursery rhyme, children's songs type compositions. I find echoes with some of the songs in the basement tapes. Right. When he was also surrounded by children. And so I think, for me, this album shows Dylan really empathizing with the situation of being a very young child. And he takes that, I think, very seriously in the dark edges around some of these nursery rhyme type songs, because we know nursery rhymes and children's fables, and children's songs always have these dark edges about them because children are incredibly emotionally complex little beings that are anxious. So there's that. And then I'm looking ahead to 92 and 93 when he goes back to world gone wrong. Good as I've been to you. So it seems to me one of the things I was thinking about when I was listening to this album again is this is Dylan going back to some of the nonsense songs or those kinds of strange, archetypal songs from the basement tapes. And then he goes back. So he's. [00:25:00] Speaker B: He's. [00:25:00] Speaker D: He's searching for some sort of inspiration here. [00:25:04] Speaker E: Sort of interesting. Rob, you see him spinning in the guy, right? Like he's with his children. He goes back to american music, and then he comes out with something brilliant when he comes out with time out of mind. And he does that in 75 where he leaves his blood on the trout. So there seems to be some sort of similar pattern there. Right. [00:25:21] Speaker D: That's a great point. Yeah, that's. That's parenting for you, reading history. [00:25:26] Speaker E: Right. [00:25:27] Speaker D: Playing with the kids and singing the songs to existential. Yeah, no, that's really sharper. That's great. [00:25:34] Speaker A: That's. [00:25:34] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. [00:25:35] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:25:36] Speaker E: I see that quote from chronicles where he's like, they're the stages of an empire and who knows our society and who knows where we are? But it seems like we're in a falling off period, but there's no one to check with. And I love that ending of cats in the well or may God have mercy on your soul. And it reminds me of when he released. When he released murder most foul. And he says, greetings to my fans and followers with gratitude for all your support. And he ends it. Stay safe, stay observant, and may God be with you. And I just hear this sort of echo that there's sort of a recognition at the end of this, of like, maybe we're not in this together, but he's recognizing, he's speaking either to the child or whoever he's singing to specifically. Or you could be him, as he's pointed out, or maybe he's singing to us. But there seems to be a sense of community there that I like that he ends on. [00:26:25] Speaker F: There are religious illusions scattered here and there, as there are in almost every populin album. So it's not special in that sense. But the one that really struck me, not that it's an overt illusion, but under the red sky, which allegedly Bob Dylan told Don was about people stuck in his hometown. I don't know, make of that what you will. I don't feel bound by that interpretation. And in fact, it feels like Genesis to me. It feels like Adam and Eve and God, right? That there was a little boy and there was a little girl. They lived in an alley under the red sky, and you've got the man in the moon. I don't know. It's not a big leap to go from that. But then the image that the man in the moon abandoned them at the end, right? And the river runs dry. It's a kind of theologically bleak vision, too, if you're willing to make that leap, that there are some and a person we know who is a dedicated listener to this podcast, Andy Muir, who is great, and he is definitely one of those folks that really opened my eyes to there being more there there. About this album. I would recommend, if you can find it, it's out there somewhere in the dark corners of the Internet. But some back issues of his fanzine Homer the slut had an excellent long article on under the red sky, putting it in the context of nursery rhymes, putting the context of nonsense verse, and making some of those allusions to the basement tape, too. Like apple suckling tree, which also feels vaguely garden of Eden, right, but translated into a different kind of language. [00:28:03] Speaker C: And song and dance man. Michael Gray does great, extensive, great study of this. He takes this album very seriously and goes very intricately into the relation between fairy tales and nursery rhymes and folk, and links that to folk illusions and folk origins in Dylan's work. He ties it together in a larger frame and as I say, takes the album really seriously and that's worth looking at. [00:28:32] Speaker B: Also, there's a shadow history here that's hard to pin down. But it's also, I think Graylee mentioned one of these songs earlier from the first record, but the traveling Wilbur, because they're volume three, is released right after this. And he does seven deadly sins. That's, that's a Dylan song. So he's doing the counting thing there. But it's in the guise of old rock and roll. Also, to, to Rob's point, I think there's some experiments like with handy dance. That's, that's a, that's a. That's a garage rock chord progression. Like he's going back to these very primal ideas. Also. [00:29:08] Speaker C: I will always. [00:29:08] Speaker B: I don't know if it's supposed to be funny or not, but when he first line of handy dandy always makes me laugh. Controversy surrounds him. [00:29:16] Speaker C: Oh my God, don't we know it. [00:29:19] Speaker B: But it's hard to pin down with the Wilbury stuff. It's hard to pin down chronologies and it's hard to pin down when those songs were written. But they were clearly would have been cross pollinating with this record. I would assume he had said. [00:29:31] Speaker E: I read a few things where he said he was recording with the wilburious during the day and then doing this at night. There is crossover in the scheduling where they're trying to make it all work out. So you're not wrong there. [00:29:45] Speaker B: Slash was probably like, how come I didn't get called for the Wilbury session? I had to be on the. I could be on Wilbury twist with Slash. [00:29:54] Speaker A: Yeah. They needed another guitarist for the Wilbur's. [00:29:59] Speaker D: Or the salt. [00:30:00] Speaker B: Another Tom patent group between Bob and Tom and Slash. [00:30:05] Speaker A: Right? That's right. The top outs of popping. I do want to talk a little bit about handy dandy because I find it an interesting song. That line, that open line. I've always taken it as being. It's supposed to be funny because a lot of the song is supposed to be funny. He has an all girl orchestra and he says strike up the band. [00:30:21] Speaker D: They hit it. [00:30:22] Speaker A: There's a lot of. Lot of really funny lines in that song. But what's your take on Handy Dandy? [00:30:29] Speaker C: I love this song. I love it like Christopher Ricks loves it. I just. I think it should be up there as one of his great Persona, the real Persona song. I do. I think it's just outrageous and witty and raunchy and wonderful. It's the standout song to me of the record and an incredible vocal too. I would say that what it said, the fourth stanza, sitting with a girl named Nancy in a garden. It's 22 syllables that he just rolls right out. I just think the character he creates has that crazy coherence that only Dylan can. Can do. [00:31:19] Speaker B: If this is the low point, we probably, if we're going to say there's a low point, it's probably right before this. 86. [00:31:26] Speaker C: The song or the record. What's the low point? The song or the record? You think Handy Dandy is a low point on that? [00:31:37] Speaker B: This is considered his. We predate that a bit earlier, obviously. But I think to your point, Ross Point his singing during the. He's. There's really great vocal perform. [00:31:46] Speaker C: My God, there's a lot of committed vocal performances. I think that was. [00:31:50] Speaker B: They're witty. They're. He's, he's. This is not Lapdash in any way with some of the, with the, with the, with vocal. We might quibble with some of the lyrics, but I think vocally it sounds great. I would like to see this record kind of maybe. I don't know. I don't want to attack our dawn was stands. Maybe a different. I don't know. It has that sort of nineties. Oh, by the way, I looked this up. You saw what record was released the same day as this one? [00:32:19] Speaker A: Cherry pie. [00:32:20] Speaker C: But was a by what? [00:32:24] Speaker B: Warren's cherry pie, y'all. [00:32:27] Speaker D: How auspicious. [00:32:28] Speaker F: Yeah. [00:32:29] Speaker B: You weren't in them all in 19 night. [00:32:33] Speaker C: No. [00:32:33] Speaker B: What was same day? Anyway, I want to hear more from Aaron about your slash. You had some other stuff on slash, didn't you? [00:32:43] Speaker E: Had nothing. No. [00:32:47] Speaker B: We had an hour and a half text exchange about Izzy Stradlin before this. [00:32:51] Speaker E: So that was you. You were, you were really fascinated with being in or around Ohio. So that was, that was all. [00:33:00] Speaker B: Don't even look up Izzy Strouden's Wikipedia page where it says as of 2016 he lives in or around Ojai. [00:33:08] Speaker C: Are you really a slash fan, Aaron? Yeah. Oh, I saw him with Springsteen on the Luckytown human tod when he tour, when he was. I'd throw seats. He was really, you could see that Springsteen hated him, but there was no chemist, no chemistry there. But that was quite a, quite a scene, the two of them. I think he. [00:33:36] Speaker E: He's probably prickly to a lot of people, but especially someone like Springsteen. But I. You missed it when I said when all my girlfriends were in love with Axel and Megan, I chose flash because I thought he could play. Yeah. Oh, we can't it was my 13 year old crush, right? [00:33:56] Speaker B: Or slash. [00:33:56] Speaker D: He's just trying to do right by Springsteen and Dylan and these other. [00:34:00] Speaker C: Really, he's showing up who's earning his pain. [00:34:04] Speaker A: He was even at the Academy Awards this year playing. All right, I want to bring this back to under the red sky, so let's bring it back. [00:34:14] Speaker D: I got a longish thing because I was. I'm thinking a lot about the basement tapes in my own work recently, and so I've been thinking about nonsense verse, like Edward Lear or Lewis Carroll and these children's songs and nursery rhymes. And I read this great article in preparation for this by the british psychoanalyst Adam Phillips on Edward Lear, who wrote the Owl and the Pussycat and the book of nonsense poems, these little limericks that always have these dark edges to them as well. [00:34:46] Speaker C: And he did the hunting of the snark. I'm sorry, that's Lewis Carroll. [00:34:52] Speaker D: Yeah, Louis, I love hunting. But there's a difference between Lewis Carroll's. [00:34:57] Speaker C: No, there is. I'm sorry. [00:34:59] Speaker D: Then. Then the kind of like the economy and the strange kind of elliptical economy of Edward Lear's verses. But he says, phillips, he calls it organized nonsense, these nursery rhyme ish kind of songs of Edward Lear's. And he says this about the organized nonsense of Lear's poetry, and the coherence, interpretation tries to enforce upon it. This is Phillips writing. Coherence, compliance with narrative expectation, is a defense against whatever threatens to render one incoherent. Nonsense is what one can say or be when there is no threat of intrusion, whether that intrusion is desire or frustration or other people's demands, nonsense is a kind of like release from compliance and from the meeting of demands, end quote. And so in the nonsense poetry, I'm using that word because that's what Lear used to define his own, his word, his poetry. So in the nonsense poetry of some, like handy dandy of songs for Gabby Gugu, a crafting of a side of play or treatment, demands of being righteous and the shades or shadows of those things the nonsense would seek to defend itself against, such as growing up, growing dull, growing compliant, alienated from oneself. So these songs, in a way, are a kind of protest music. And so I can't help but everyone hears, like Rolling Stone at the beginning of Andy Dandy, a music that really empathizes early childhood. And Phillips, again, I'll just belabor this point with the quote. Just as much as a person wanted to be understood, there was a protest about being intelligent, against being drawn into intelligibility and acculturated into making sense. And so it's not that the songs don't make sense, that they're replicas of, like, baby gibberish, but they're entwined together with this organized signs of side of it, with the nonsense so organized, we could simply say, like rhymes. There's a lot of rhymes. There's a lot of the blue structures in these songs as well. And so for Handy Dandy, that last line of it, the last one of the last verses of it, handy Dandy, he's got a boss basket full of flowers and a bag full of sorrow. He finishes his drink, he gets up from the table, he says, okay, boys, I'll see you tomorrow. Handy Dandy, just like sugar and candy Handy Dandy, just like sugar and candy and so for me, there's a mix of melancholy and play for its own sake that's embedded in here. And so that's one of the things that I liked about going back to this album was to see how seriously Dylan takes this status of children who want to be understood, but also don't want to be understood, who want to play, but also feel the demands of being acculturated. Right. And so the Persona that you get in handy Dandy is this kind of like another Dylan Cowboy outlaw figure. Right. But I have to agree with Nina. I like the song very much for that reason. The Adam Phillips and Lear got me thinking very much about how Dylan deploys these strategies of nursery rhymes or archetypal. And going back to Michael Gray, folk sources, really in an engaging way. [00:38:10] Speaker C: I totally. What I love about what you're saying is it so strongly illuminates what the kind of shaky ground of the album, because Bob Dylan's moral and mortal organs are so highly developed that I think he just can't give himself over to pure play ever. That there's always the dark knowledge of morality and mortality that's always there. And that's why when it works and you get, uh, handy Dandy with the, the pure play of sugar and candy that's tinged with the, the darkness and the fallenness in the, in the song, the raunchy, the girls hitting it and the, all that stuff. But, but totally. That illuminates how hard it is for him, I think, to give over to. [00:39:12] Speaker A: That, you, you just compared Bob Dylan to Jonathan Swift there, Nina. That was pretty brilliant. I love it. [00:39:22] Speaker C: I don't think I touched too hard. [00:39:24] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I think that's great. [00:39:26] Speaker F: Well, speaking of dark moral universes, it's worth mentioning that other lear King Lear, which is where handy Dandy come from. At least that's the origin that I'm first aware of, is that's that scene between King Lear and the blinded Gloucester about injustice and how the wretches of the world are never given justice. And Handy Dandy is a memorable phrase in that speech. And so. And we know Dylan knows the Shakespeare and probably King Lear more than any. And talk about King Lear and basement tapes. It's all over the place. And so, yeah, there are lots of fascinating interconnections that I hadn't thought about. Now, as is often the case in the million dollar bash roundtables, now you've got my brain pinging like a pinball machine. [00:40:16] Speaker A: We should have a drinking game. Everyone has to take a shot every time Graylee brings up King learning one of these discussions. [00:40:24] Speaker C: Drinking games are for the listeners, not for us. [00:40:27] Speaker A: That's right. Everybody take a shot. King Lear. [00:40:30] Speaker F: I love Adam Phillips, too. I've not read him in a while and I've not read the book or work you're referring to there on Edward Lear. [00:40:37] Speaker D: But Edward Lear's nonsense. It's called. It's called Edward Lear's nonsense and british psychoanalysis. He's making an argument about Winnicott, but he does some really good stuff in talking about how entrancing Lear's poetry is for adults. [00:40:54] Speaker F: I'm sure I've told you at some point at a bar somewhere in our many journeys that I met Adam Phillips. He was a keynote speaker at a Wgzebald conference I went to many years ago. So. Wouldn't it cool. [00:41:08] Speaker A: All right, well, I'm going to. I'm going to make the call here. Thank you, everyone. This is another great discussion. Yeah, I think we got a lot out of this album. We always do. Unless you have something else. Nina, do you have. [00:41:20] Speaker C: No, I don't. Thank you all for listening to it. [00:41:24] Speaker A: I think we. We covered some good ground. I think some of us were pleasantly pleased to go back to this album. I know I was for sure. I really enjoyed. I've listened it several times in the last few days over and over again. Can't get out of my head. [00:41:36] Speaker C: Can I sing? You can cut this. But did you, did you all go to the shows that, where Jimmy Vaughn opened for him? Did you go. And he was touring and Jimmy Vaughn, he was terrible. He was terrible. So that's, that's that. I was really surprised. He does a great job on the album, but life, he really just. Yeah. So it was that the ballpark shows he was opening for him. And a lot in the book. A lot of the book. [00:42:14] Speaker A: All right, well, thank you, everyone. [00:42:16] Speaker C: It's nice to see everybody. [00:42:18] Speaker A: Yeah, it's great to see everyone. [00:42:20] Speaker C: All right. [00:42:21] Speaker A: And thank you so much for another great million dollar bash. [00:42:24] Speaker C: You bet. [00:42:25] Speaker D: Thanks a lot. [00:42:28] Speaker A: Thank you for listening to the Dylan Pons podcast. Be sure to subscribe to have the Dylan Tons sent directly here in box and share the Dylan tons on social media.