Judas 19 24/01/2007 10:02 pm Page 1 Judas! from Inside A Prune Welcome to issue 19,the Modern Times special,and thanks to all who wrote in with their thoughts on the album.We offer a variegated selection here of the many responses.So many indeed that I abandoned my own review, which may be for the best as it may not have been enthusiastic enough for most of your palates. I’ll use this double editorial to briefly explain why, (especially as I am not good at saying ‘goodbye’ so want to put it off as long as I can); although I did start off in the days prior to the full release defending the album. Or to put it more accurately, defending the pre-release teaser of ‘Thunder on the Mountain’against a stiffly negative welcome. It was not that I was knocked out by the song, but that it was being judged in isolation and my thought process was that ‘Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum’ would have sounded very weak in isolation but performs an important introductory function on “Love and Theft” so ‘Thunder on the Mountain’ should not be prejudged out of context. In addition it had the outrageously brilliant rhyme of ‘sons of bitches’ and ‘orphanages’ which I trust is original as it is difficult to imagine anyone other than Dylan thinking of it. It is not just a clever couplet but a deeply meaningful one as wars increase the number of orphanages needed, which in turn are a rich picking ground for future armies. On the other hand I did describe the track as sounding ‘“Love and Theft” lite’; a phrase that appears to resonate with many and hoped the album would not sound like its prede- cessor as that’d be such an un-Dylan-like thing to do.Alas that is one of the main stumbling blocks I have, much as I love “Love and Theft” the musical similarities are too conspicuous for comfort. Don’t get me wrong,there are times when I am captivated by Modern Times too.Such as the sumptuous opening of‘Workingman’s Blues #2’;the poignant beauty of the vocal on the opening chorus lines of ‘Nettie Moore’ and when the mood is right I can be charmed by ‘Spirit on the Water’and appreciate ‘When the Deal Goes Down’; I can even take one or two of the seemingly endlessly interchangeable blues fillers he presents us with in this old age. I note, though, that I write ‘when the mood is right’; very soon after its arrival Modern Times became something I rarely felt driven to play; whereas “Love and Theft” was with me for a year wherever I went, compelling me to listen again and again. The difference, in addition to the same-sounding musical background, is partly to do with a comparative lack of cohesion in the lyrics and the overall web of allusion. On “Love and Theft” and the successful songs from Time Out of Mind Dylan’s borrowings built a new, creative statement. Take, ‘Trying to Get to Heaven’ for example – a perfect patchwork of borrowed lyrics creating a definitive new Dylan song.Whereas on the songs here I feel that anything goes; it doesn’t matter within a song what couplet follows which. (continued in editorial for issue 20) Judas 19 24/01/2007 10:13 pm Page 2 Contents Number Nineteen Shifting Quality And Melodic Cohesion 3 by Stephen Scobie The Days Before Rock and Roll 7 by Peter Stone Brown Modern Times 13 by Mick Gold You Take The Good, You Take The Bad 17 by Kevin P. Davis Still Walkin’ In Woody’s Shoes 23 by Robert Forryan An Ultra-Wonderful Modern Times 27 by Robert Levinson Tell Ol’ Bob 29 by Nick Hawthorne The Present Of Memory 37 by John P. Morris Nettie Moore 47 by Robert Reginio Too Much Paperwork 59 by Peter Doggett The Handsomely Presented ‘Modern Times’ 63 by Sheila Clarke Notes on ‘Beyond the Horizon’ 67 by Guido Bieri Letters 68 to the Editor Photo Credits: Front cover John Hume, Vicar Street, Dublin 13th September 2000 Judas 19 24/01/2007 10:02 pm Page 3 Judas! Shifting Quality and Melodic Cohesion by Stephen Scobie So I suppose it’s time to say ‘Hail and farewell’ to Judas! Like all your regular readers, I’m sure, I do feel disappointed that you are ceasing publication. But sometimes a magazine has a natural life-span. It does what it has to do, and then it steps aside. Perhaps this is the time for some new forum to open up, and to give us ‘new eyes,’ as Dylan says at the end of ‘Highlands.’ Or ‘new I’s,’ in the wordplay which I never cease to insist on for its relevance to Dylan: I look in your eyes, I see nobody other than me. I see all that I am and all I hope to be. But having quoted these lines, let me pose what is possibly an unfair question. Quick now, without checking, straight off the top of your head, what song do these lines come from? Even if you came up with the right answer (‘The Levee’s Gonna Break’), you might have to admit that they could belong equally well in several other songs, not only on Modern Times, but on any of Dylan’s last three albums. They are what I would like to call ‘wandering’ lines – lines which appear in one particular song but which could equally well turn up in another song: for example: I’m doomed to love you, I’ve been rolling through stormy weather… I’m rolling slow – I’m doing all I know… I rolled and I tumbled, I cried the whole night long… Three songs, three albums, lines which would fit in any one. They may be good lines (sometimes they’re not), but they’re certainly not very context-dependent. 3 Judas 19 24/01/2007 10:02 pm Page 4 Judas! I’m not offering these comments change of mood. In ‘Thunder on the necessarily as a criticism of Dylan’s recent Mountain,’ for example, the altruistic writing, but more as a description, as an sentiment ‘Gonna forget about myself for account of what is going on, verbally, in a while, gonna go out and see what others these songs. Part of what intrigues me is need’ is followed two lines later by the the disjunction between this verbal level, decidedly non-altruistic ‘I want some real where wandering lines seem almost indis- good woman to do just what I say.’ But tinguishable, and the musical level, where who, listening to the joyful propulsion of the songs (especially on Modern Times) the music, takes time to be bothered by the retain an intensely strong and recogniz- blatant contradiction of the words? able identity. I could tell you in two Often, these suddenly intrusive and seconds whether a sequence of notes does contradictory lines contain references, or does not come from ‘Nettie Moore’; I hints, or outright threats of violence. would have no such confidence in saying Again, this effect goes back as least as far as whether or not the ‘rolling slow’ line “Love and Theft,” where the saccharine comes from that song. (It doesn’t; it’s from ‘Bye and bye, I’m breathin’ a lover’s sigh’ 2001’s ‘Bye and Bye.’) modulates into ‘I’m gonna establish my In a recent interview, Dylan spoke rule by civil war.’ Similarly, the gooey love about the coherence of, precisely, ‘Nettie lyrics of ‘Spirit on the Water’ are inter- Moore.’ This was the song, he said, ‘which rupted by the startling ‘I killed a man in troubled me most, because I wasn’t sure I Paradise,’ only to be returned to ‘we could was getting it right. Finally, I could see have a whomping good time.’ what the song is about. This is coherent, The violence of Dylan’s lyric intrusions not just a bunch of random verses. I knew – ‘If I catch my opponents ever sleeping, / I wanted to record this. I was pretty hyped I’ll just slaughter them where they lie’ – is on the melody line.’ Even here, it is inter- always shocking or at least disconcerting. esting that Dylan locates the song’s coher- Who can fail to be taken aback by the ence in the ‘melody line,’ rather than in sudden, gratuitous viciousness of ‘Some what he is worried may appear as ‘a bunch young lazy slut has charmed away my of random verses.’I would agree. The song brains,’ or by ‘I don’t want to brag, I’m is totally coherent, melodically and, I gonna wring your neck’? At times the think, emotionally. At a verbal level, I’m violence is modified by a kind of black not so sure. It is clearly a song about loss, humour, as when ‘Thunder on the and the grief for loss: but like so many Mountain’ produces one of Dylan’s recent Dylan songs, the words shift back greatest all-time outrageous rhymes: and forth, and accommodate a range of responses which is not always reducible to Gonna raise me an army, some tough a single interpretable statement. sons of bitches This shifting quality often produces I’ll recruit my army from the disconcerting effects of contradiction and orphanages 4 Judas 19 24/01/2007 10:02 pm Page 5 Judas! One could say that such lines intro- But then Dylan promptly follows up duce a note of hard-edged realism into that jibe by providing two lines which songs which are otherwise idealistically plunge the listener right back in to ‘the soft-centred as candy, but is that kind of world of research’: violence really the corrective we can value? Albert’s in the graveyard, Frankie’s A lot of these ‘wandering’ lines are, of raising hell course, from other sources.