Royals and Dignitaries Warned 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall'

How fascinating to watch the recent Nobel Prize ceremony awarding Bob Dylan. Dylan's designation as recipient of the Nobel for Literature was instantly incongruous.

Singer Patti Smith performed Dylan's apocalyptic warning "A Hard Rains A-Gonna Fall", in the middle of a fantastically plush concert hall for an audience that included a King, his royal family, members of parliament, international dignitaries, all wonderfully arrayed in luxurious tuxedos and designer gowns, as bejeweled and regal as imaginable.

Dylan's words and a spare Philharmonic(!) arrangement filled the room as Patti sang before the very type of audience that the song seeks to challenge. The song from 1962, like much of his work from that decade, seethes with rage at the institutions corrupted and the decency abridged in the modern world. And Hard Rain especially forecasts the dire consequences of allowing corruption to flourish.

And while Patti became overwhelmed briefly at one point, she soulfully delivers Dylan's words with great power.

Dylan's writing galvanized protests around the world, demanding humanity become the best it could be, his love songs throb with desire and longing, his words express hopes, dreams and sorrows felt by all. More than that. the elegant and vivid poetry of his words is imminently distinctive, unique and startling.

Dylan submitted a speech to be read (I truly appreciate the fact that only Dylan's words were heard at the event and that he was not seen), and he said:

"As a performer I’ve played for 50,000 people and I’ve played for 50 people and I can tell you that it is harder to play for 50 people. 50,000 people have a singular persona, not so with 50. Each person has an individual, separate identity, a world unto themselves. They can perceive things more clearly. Your honesty and how it relates to the depth of your talent is tried. The fact that the Nobel committee is so small is not lost on me."

Awarding the prize, the host said "Alfred Nobel wanted to reward those who have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind." The prize committee did just that this year. 

Take the time to visit Dylan's website to read his lyrics. It's a stunning collection.

A HARD RAIN'S A-GONNA FALL

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?

Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?

I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains

I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways

I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests

I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans

I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard

And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard

And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall



Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?

Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?

I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it

I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it

I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’

I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’

I saw a white ladder all covered with water

I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken

I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children

And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard

And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall



And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?

And what did you hear, my darling young one?

I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’

Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world

Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’

Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’

Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’

Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter

Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley

And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard

And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall



Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?

Who did you meet, my darling young one?

I met a young child beside a dead pony

I met a white man who walked a black dog

I met a young woman whose body was burning

I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow

I met one man who was wounded in love

I met another man who was wounded with hatred

And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard

It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall



Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?

Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?

I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’

I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest

Where the people are many and their hands are all empty

Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters

Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison

Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden

Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten

Where black is the color, where none is the number

And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it

And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it

Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’

But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’

And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard

It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall


Copyright © 1963 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991 by Special Rider Music

Laurie Anderson's Concert for Dogs and Return to Knoxville

2016 is bringing back one of my favorite people to Knoxville, artist Laurie Anderson, part of another impressive lineup at the Big Ears music festival March 31st to April 2nd. She and Phillip Glass will perform their most recent collaboration.

Anderson has the most unique, wide-eyed wonder and wisdom in her words and music and now film. Tonight in Times Square as part of a public arts series Midnight Moment, a 3-minute shortened version of her highly acclaimed new documentary "Heart of A Dog" will be spread all across the towering Times Square screens. And just prior to this screening, Anderson will perform a concert for dogs - I love this sentence from this NYTimes piece:

"Dogs and their owners are invited to sit on the red steps of Duffy Square while she performs music that, to passers-by in Times Square, may not sound like much because of the low frequency."

Yes, dogs are invited. Such a show (her 2nd actually) has such whimsy, and stands so far out away from what others do. I prefer to also imagine the dogs will likely be very pleased, unlike cats who would probably go online and start a twitter backlash about it.

Her movie features her dog of course, and also the dog's death, and that of her husband Lou Reed, and essentially deals with how we deal and do not deal with death and grief, and also life and love.

A fascinating interview with her in studio q is here and is well worth the listen.

Here's a trailer for her film.

Sunday Sermonette: Big Science

Today's text comes to us from the album Big Science as written by Laurie Anderson, titled "From The Air."

Good evening. This is your Captain. 
We are about to attempt a crash landing. 
Please extinuish all cigarettes. 
Place your tray tables in their 
upright, locked position. 
Your Captain says: Put your head on your knees. 
Your Captain says: Put your head on your hands. 
Captain says: Put your hands on your head. 
Put your hands on your hips. Heh heh.
This is your Captain-and we are going down. 
We are all going down, together. 
And I said: Uh oh. This is gonna be some day. 
Standby. This is the time.  And this is the record of the time. 
This is the time.  And this is the record of the time. 

Uh-this is your Captain again. 
You know, I've got a funny feeling I've seen this all before. 
Why? 'Cause I'm a caveman. 
Why? 'Cause I've got eyes in the back of my head. 
Why? It's the heat. Standby. 
This is the time.  And this is the record of the time. 
This is the time.  And this is the record of the time. 


Put your hands over your eyes.

A Prime Selection of Long Reads

The "long read" nature of my writing style and my general slow, sometimes oh-so-slow, process could - to some readers- appear contrary to the popular binary wave patterns digital lifestyle blurring past us and around us. But hang in there kiddo, it's worth it.

So while I apologize for making you wait for a new post, I bring gifts, a prime selection of long reads - first up is an artist using photography and digital tech to create powerful images. Via Medium, their profile of Adam Maygur begins:

"Adam Maygar is a computer geek, a college dropout, a self-taught photographer, a high-tech Rube Goldberg, a world traveler, and a conceptual artist of growing global acclaim. But nobody had ever suggested that he might also be a terrorist until the morning that he descended into the Union Square subway station in New York.

At the time, Magyar was immersed in a long-running techno-art project called Stainless, creating high-resolution images of speeding subway trains and their passengers, using sophisticated software he created and hardware that he retrofitted himself. The scanning technique he developed—combining thousands of pixel-wide slices into a single image—allows him to catch passengers unawares as they hurtle through dark subway tunnels, fixing them in haunting images filled with detail no ordinary camera can capture."

Please oh reader, explore his images on Medium, as my humble but lovable blog cannot convey how fantastic Maygur's work is:

Maygur says at one point: These moments I capture are meaningless, there is no story in them, and if you can catch the core, the essence of being, you capture probably everything." A constant element in the my own writing/pondering about writing is about the nature of Art itself. By which I mean, what prompts the creation and execution? That leads us to an interview with Phillip Roth, the now-retired Phillip Roth, whose the hands down winner of, if not the long read, the long answer to press questions. And his mastery of language is impeccable. Below, Roth gives an assessment of America:

"Very little truthfulness anywhere, antagonism everywhere, so much calculated to disgust, the gigantic hypocrisies, no holding fierce passions at bay, the ordinary viciousness you can see just by pressing the remote, explosive weapons in the hands of creeps, the gloomy tabulation of unspeakable violent events, the unceasing despoliation of the biosphere for profit, surveillance overkill that will come back to haunt us, great concentrations of wealth financing the most undemocratic malevolence around, science illiterates still fighting the Scopes trial 89 years on, economic inequities the size of the Ritz, indebtedness on everyone’s tail, families not knowing how bad things can get, money being squeezed out of every last thing — that frenzy — and (by no means new) government hardly by the people through representative democracy but rather by the great financial interests, the old American plutocracy worse than ever. You have 300 million people on a continent 3,000 miles wide doing the best they can with their inexhaustible troubles. We are witnessing a new and benign admixture of races on a scale unknown since the malignancy of slavery. I could go on and on. It’s hard not to feel close to existence here. This is not some quiet little corner of the world."

I was deeply grateful to discover a 1999 essay om Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" by Tim Kreider - grateful because it was a brilliant piece about why EWS is great and critics of the day so very wrong. Ignoring all of Kubrick's previous work is idiotic as he was likely the most thoughtful composer of film images ever to wield  a movie camera. I  too read the movie as a scathing critique of greed and corrupt depravity at the cusp of the 21st century, especially among the mega wealthy, and a critique of those who see themselves as above such lowdown behavior. At heart, their is a murder mystery in the movie and the resolution so typically Kubrickian - intriguing spaces for audiences to ponder on meanings and conclusions:

"The open-ended narrative forces us to ask ourselves what we’re really seeing; is Eyes Wide Shut a movie about marriage, sex, and jealousy, or about money, whores, and murder? Before you make up your own mind, consider this: has there ever been even one Stanley Kubrick film in which someone didn't get killed?"

Let's follow the questions about creating home to Tennessee, or at least the South. Located on the Tennessee River, the music recorded in the wee studios of Muscle Shoals are the very foundations of rock and roll and soul music. The 2013 documentary "Muscle Shoals" has been airing on PBS recently and its a solid 2 hours of artistic collaborations that made history,

Yes, I know, a movie is not a read. How about reading movies? Would that work? Actors in Hollywood have been staging live readings of movies, most recently the notorious script for Quentin Tarantino's western The Hateful Eight" - notorious because it got leaked online, which pissed him off so much he decided to not make the movie and sued Gawker for linking to the script. But actors are doing more scripts with all new casts:


"We started with The Breakfast Club," says Elvis Mitchell, the former New York Times critic who now curates film at LACMA. ... Imagine The Graduate without Dustin Hoffman or Anne Bancroft. Now imagine those roles being filled by Jay Baruchel and Sharon Stone (that was April's other live read),  all in a stripped-down environment with the actors sitting in a row at a table facing the crowd, with their character names on a card in front of them, like the US supreme court in session. The approach has produced some happy moments of inspired casting, such as Paul Rudd and Mindy Kaling in The Princess Bride, Seth Rogen as The Big Lebowski, The Usual Suspects with Dexter's Michael C Hall, and the pilot episode of Breaking Bad, which was vigorously rejigged with Rainn Wilson as Walter White and Mae Whitman an absolute riot as Jesse Pinkman (Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul were among those cheering from the stalls). Other productions have included Ghostbusters, with Rogen, Jack Black and more Rainn Wilson, and a Boogie Nights do-over that was especially well received, with Taylor Lautner as Dirk Diggler and Don Johnson in Burt Reynolds' porn-impresario role."

Turn Left At Greenland - The Beatles and America

It's my earliest memory.

Watching The Beatles on TV on a Sunday in February 1964.

I was only three but this event was new, different. I can recall there was some yelling involved - my siblings were yelling and singing while watching TV standing up and jumping around. That was not they way we usually watched TV.

There had been some yelling before that too - some serious tension from my parents who did not think this Beatles thing on a Sunday of all days was good. It was bad.

Youth won out. My brother and sister and I watched it all.

My minister father really disapproved. And yet by the end of the 1960s, his hair was growing over his collar and his sideburns had gotten long. 

That night in 1964 quickly changed everything - music, clothes, politics, religion, family, fame, and much more. Billions of words have been written about every note, every song, every person linked to the band, and more arrive every day.

It's good - great even - to know I was there that night. To grow up listening to the music, waiting for new albums and new singles to get released. It seemed each release pushed at the limits of imagination. 

I've learned since that night how much work the band put into all they did. Work which changed how music was written, recorded and marketed. Business changed. Families changed. Lives changed.

Changing the world with music. It's a primal force, which many have tried to duplicate - none have.

50 years later, we all live in a world those four musicians remade. 

Annual Christmas Music Sampler

I like many of the traditions of Christmas, especially music. But it's kind of sad how older Christmas songs swamp anything newer. There are tons of forgotten and/or obscure Christmas songs too that are great fun. The nearly year round collections of Christmas tunes via Check the Cool Wax blog are a great way to while away hours online during the holidays.

Hearing many of the tunes played during the holidays instantly conjure powerful memories for most of us - but don't hesitate to make new memories with friends and families.

For the last few years, I've really enjoyed the Christmas music sampler issued by Paste magazine, which offers many new bands and musicians performing their own works for the holiday. Below, a collection from their 2011 and 2012 samplers, and a few other favorites.

And a most merry and happy Christmas to one and all!

J-Rabbit's Jazzy Acoustic Christmas Music

Two Korean ladies, Jung Da Woon and Jung Hye Sun, take their acoustic music to the internet, under  the name J-Rabbit. You can keep your Gangham madness. They have their own YouTube channel and their own website loaded with music, both covers and originals. Above and below are some samples of their Christmas music, and their covers of jazz standards are mighty impressive too.

The Vast Legacy of Dave Brubeck

"One of the reasons I believe in jazz is that the oneness of man can come through the rhythm of your heart. It’s the same anyplace in the world, that heartbeat. It’s the first thing you hear when you’re born — or before you’re born — and it’s the last thing you hear.” -- Dave Brubeck

A legendary musician and a master of jazz, Dave Brubeck died today at age 91, one day shy of his 92nd birthday. Much will be written about him, now and for many years to come, and I wanted to instead showcase some of his music. (The 2010 documentary "Dave Brubeck: In His Own Sweet Way" produced by Clint Eastwood provides a most comprehensive look at his life and career for those wishing to know more about him and his vast influence worldwide on jazz and music in general.)

His 1959 album "Time Out" stands as one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time, and the tune "Take Five" is immensely well known, though the composition is credited to saxophone player Paul Desmond. I think the first track on the album, "Blue Rondo ala Turk", is much more emblematic of Dave's style. The album grew from the Quartet's experiences traveling in Eastern Europe and the Middle East as ambassadors touring on behalf of the US State Department - Brubeck was captivated by the musical time signatures of the music from other nations, Turkey in this instance.

Some in the music world thought Dave's piano style and the Quartet's music was too extreme, others thought it far too tame. Thankfully, Dave and his colleagues followed their own Muse. His 1957 album, "Dave Digs Disney", was way too hip and way too square all at the same time - but his improvisations on classic Disney tunes are excellent, and today jazz inspired by Disney music is a genre all its own.

The 1961 album, "Time Further Out" is my own personal favorite. And the tune "Bluette" is a knockout, blending jazz and blues and evokes strong and subtle emotions. Thanks, Dave, for such a vast legacy.

Music From Carmen, Played Via a Machine Shop in France

Nine French musicians (or, as noted on their home page "Neuf musiciens-comédiens-chanteurs") calling their group Zic Zazou perform the Habanera from Carmen on various tools and constructions made by the musicians. I think my favorite part though, is the way at the end they all stop and look at you ... or maybe the balloon squeezing ... tough call.

Their entire YouTube channel is here.

Merry Thanksgiving!!

Frightmare Manor Soundtrack 2012

To help get you in the mood for the horrors and screams ahead as Frightmare Manor continues their run for the 2012 Halloween season in East Tennessee, I've put together a soothing little soundtrack of horrors for you.

Get your tickets online here - or be sure and explore their Facebook page each week to win FREE tickets. Also Papa  John's Pizza is offering special deals for Frightmare fans too - just check out Frightmare's Facebook page for details.

For now, bring on the chill of a crisp October night, crank up your speakers and enjoy!!!

Marching Band Creates Video Games

This past weekend, the Ohio State University Marching Band showed off their video game knowledge. 

Next week, they'll salute funny cat videos from YouTube.

Otis Redding's "Tennessee Waltz" plus Al Green and Superpup

From the most impressive album, "The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul" comes a most memorable soul version of the country music tune "Tennessee Waltz", featuring Otis and backed by the legendary Booker T. and the MGs.

Reinventions in pop culture are often merely lost in time, even though they stand as unique creations all on their own. Another stunning example, is Al Green's super-soul version of the country ballad "For the Good Times", a Kris Kristofferson tune, which Al brings to vivid life in this Soul Train appearance.

Reinventions do not always succeed, yet the sheer brazen oddity of such creations stand out - for example, the immensely popular 1950s TV series version of the "Adventures of Superman" inspired some folks to create a TV show about ... um ... well, Superman had a dog named Krytpo in the comics, but these TV producers decided to make a show called "The Adventures of Superpup". A pilot episode was filmed, which you can watch on YouTube and it is uniquely bad and yet certainly memorable.

Superpup is secretly the mild-mannered reporter Bark Kent, working for the gruff editor Terry Bite and he's got a girlfriend named Pamela Poodle. And for some reason Superman's pal Jimmy Olsen is now Superpup's pal, but he's been transformed into a hand puppet mouse. Just check it out.

Just goes to show ya, reinventions and remakes have always been with us, some are wonderful and some too strange to be anything other than historical oddities.

Dylan's 'Duquesne Whistle' Video Arrives

The newest album from Bob Dylan arrives next month, but today we have a new video from one of the tunes from "Tempest", called "Duquesne Whistle". The video director is one Nash Edgerton, who's had a long career as a stunt double in the "Matrix" movies and for Ewan McGregor in the "Star Wars" movies. So maybe that's why this video, featuring a young lady who drives a Gremlin, features her young male admirer who gets beat up for his single-minded romanticism.

This is a jaunty Bob Willis-styled tune, and Bob's voice is as gravel-bumpy as a forgotten road. I still so enjoy his work, and was recently diving back into his astonishing album from August of 1965. His musical creations have been a constant wonder during my lifetime. I'm quite glad we are both still here, exploring, playing and pondering life and love and everything else.

Duquesne is as fun to write and pronounce as Albuquerque.

Zombie Theme Parks and Country Music Zombie Ballads

Walking dead folks are quite popular - so popular that they could bring a wave of economic booms and boomlets.

One developer in Detroit is pushing hard to let the city fathers sell off some 200 acres of the more derelict sections of the city to build Z World Detroit -- a zombie-infested theme park. While his fundraising is pretty low so far, but the final outcome might just be that one day you and the family can trek to the Motor City and flee and fight zombies. The LA Times has more on the story.

The official website for Z World Detroit offers t-shirts, buttons and fun drawings like these via this promo video:

But what about the fans of country music with earnest singer-songwriter aspirations who also have zombies on their mind?

Then meet Amanda Richards, who has a new record out, a 'concept album' about the plaintive tunes of the last lone survivor of the Zombie Apocalypse called "Play Dead". Richards says her music is from the perspective of " ... a collection of old-school country songs about the zombie apocalypse written from the perspective of the soon-to-be last person on Earth who happens to be a country singer and a feminist.  The songs span nearly the entire history of country music: from boot-stomping old-timey banjo tunes to classic he-done-me-wrong ballads; endearing melodies sung with charm and poise countered by gory apocalyptic themes."

Songs include:

"Don't Leave Your Woman (When There's Walking Dead)" 
and
"Undead In My Bed"

Freedom

A Zombies Summertime

Kraftwerk Retrospective - The Art of Computers

We are driving on the Autobahn

In front of us is a wide valley

The sun is shining with glittering rays

The driving strip is a grey track

White stripes, green edge

We are switching the radio on

From the speaker it sounds:

We are driving on the Autobahn

Celebrating the works of a unique group of musicians, Kraftwerk, the Museum of Modern Art provided 8 nights of concerts from the German band, whose creations of minimalist techno tunes signaled  the beginnings of our digital age.

I latched onto their album Autobahn as a Christmas gift to myself in 1974 and absolutely loved it and still do. When I shared the music with some friends in my small town back then, they grimaced listening to the vocoders, looped tracks and computerized rhythms as if fingernails were scraping a blackboard and I told them, just like a time-traveling Marty McFly, "Your kids are gonna love this."

As much as I enjoyed the simple, hypnotic sounds (check out a sample from Autobahn or from Trans-Europe Express) I also marveled at what their work implied - music generated by computers and technology offered a glimpse of what was ahead for the world, which would soon be transformed by technology. It was a science-fiction soundtrack for this emerging force. So I'm not surprised, decades later, to see these musicians show off their work at the MOMA. Seems the most appropriate place for them:

"Kraftwerk anticipated the impact of technology on art and everyday life, creating sounds and visuals that capture the human condition in the age of mobility and telecommunication. Their innovative looping techniques and computerized rhythms, which had a major influence on the early development of hip-hop and electronic dance music, remain among the most commonly sampled sounds across a wide range of music genres. Furthermore, the use of robotics and other technical innovations in their live performances illustrates Kraftwerk’s belief in the respective contributions of both people and machines in creating art."

This past week audience members could capture the performance on hand-held devices we all think of as commonplace and ordinary.

'Needs More Cowbell' World Record

Some 1,600 people gathered in Burlington, VT this weekend to play some cowbell. You can never have too much cowbell - you need more cowbell. That was the advice actor Chris Walken had for Will Ferrell in a Saturday Night Live Skit in April 2000 - it's a phrase which made the Swiss set a world record for public cowbell playing in 2009. Now Burlington has the record.

Members of the band Phish put the world record effort together and raised money for charity at the same time. The result - loudness!!

Needs more cowbell - the catchphrase of a generation.

2-Year-Old Rocks The House

Even at the age of 2 years old, he sure knows how to have a rockin' good time. The boy just owns the floor and the entire room. Check out his bow at the end. Thankyou, thankyouverymuch. He can also do some classy ballroom dancing too. Helps if mom and dad run the dance studio I guess.

But when you take in what Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart could write and perform at age 11, everyone the planet is a slacker. (And he started younger, age 4.) See how behind you are in your accomplishments?

Annual Christmas Monkey Caption Contest with Musical Bonus

We all hold to certain traditions, likely because as necessary as it may be to learn to roll with the constant changes of life itself, there are comforts unexplainable in keeping and holding traditions. And so here we are again at Christmas, and since the first official Cup of Joe Powell blog post for Christmas, I have offered the Annual Christmas Monkey Caption Contest.

No prizes, save those of personal satisfaction, which may well be the reason we keep and hold to our traditions - a moment of personal meaning which we need not explain to anyone. And yes, the ideas expressed so far in this post seem far too serious for Santa Monkey. Still, the fact he (or she) appears but once a year imparts solemnity despite the appearance of hilarity ... which may be the best definition one could make for the word 'tradition'.

So please leave your caption in the comments.

In preparation for this year's posting, I did review those of years past and sadly learned that several of the hand-picked Christmas music I've added over the years have vanished, mostly due to using web sites which ceased to be. Most fortunately this year, I found a pretty darn fine collection via Paste magazine - they offer 40 tracks which you can download for free or just listen to. But I decided to tempt fate again and offer just a few of my favorites from this collection, starting with "The Christmas Waltz" by She and Him, which is actress Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward. Zooey has a voice that could melt snow. And while these tunes are all from one collection, each one below has been hand-picked just for you and just for this year. I think it's likely one of the best collections of music I've ever offered here.

Merry Christmas, dear reader, and may it be the best you have had so far.