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Certain Songs

Certain Songs #85: Bob Dylan – “One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)”

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Album: Blonde on Blonde
Year: 1966

Whenever I read any story about Bob Dylan which references his famous quote about the music he hears in his head, this is the song that I think of.

“It’s that thin, that wild mercury sound. It’s metallic and bright gold with whatever that conjures up. That’s my particular sound.”

Two guitars, bass, drums, harmonica, organ and piano. That’s the sound of Blonde on Blonde, the sound of 3:00am, and it is never more fully realized than on this song. Its also so difficult to balance that outside of Bob, the only person who’s been able to do anything with it for any serious length of time is late 70’s Bruce Springsteen.

To me, that thin wild mercury sound is one of the most beautiful sounds in the universe – and a primary reason why I love mid-60s Dylan so damn much. There’s always something new going on in this song whether it’s a organ swell, piano fill, drum build or guitar lead, but it never even comes close to falling about.

When I was a teenager, I was told that the only true way to understand Blonde on Blonde was to listen to it on acid. So the one time I tried acid – at age 29 – I dutifully listened to it. It just sounded like Blonde on Blonde to me. Like I’d internalized it so much that not even LSD could change that.

“One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #81: Bob Dylan – “Visions of Johanna”

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Album: Blonde on Blonde
Year: 1966

First off, let me just point out that this is the man’s best song. Which is an impossible and stupid thing to say, and almost totally indefensible. So how about this: “Visions of Johanna” may or may not be the best Bob Dylan song ever, but it is certainly the most Bob Dylan song ever.

Here are a few reasons why:

He recorded multiple different versions. Dylan tried again and again to get a version of “Visions of Johanna” recorded, and each version is somewhat different. Beyond the two studio versions have have been released, there are at least two more that exist only on bootlegs, one of which is a slow, organ-drenched dreamy version where he sings about “the nightingales code.”

Cryptic lyrics that evoke imagery just this side of actually making sense. I mean, it opens with:

Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin’ to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it

And concludes the second verse with the famous:

The ghost of ’lectricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place

Though my favorite has always been this:

But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles

There really isn’t a chorus. Instead of an actual chorus, “Visions of Johanna” ends each verse with how those visions are affecting him, followed by a lonely harmonica-and-high-hat breakdown before the next verse starts up.

There is an audible mistake on the released version. In the last verse of the Blonde on Blonde version, he adds a couple of extra lines prior to going into the “and these visions of Johanna” part. However, bassist Joe South didn’t get the memo, and you can hear his confusion as he starts playing the wrong part, but quickly recovers. 

And Bob Dylan decided to go with the version with that mistake, understanding that perfection is often the enemy of awesome. 

“Visions of Johanna”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #80: Agent Orange – “Living in Darkness”

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Album: Living in Darkness.

Year: 1981.

With the exception of X, who would have been outliers in just any scene they came from, I was never fully onboard with the early-80s hardcore scene. Hardcore always felt to me like they took all of the anger that had come out of the U.K. punk rock in the late 70s and distilled it so deeply that only the violence and nihilism remained.

Sociologically, that was pretty fascinating, especially when you added the ritual of slam-dancing as a way of expressing that violence and nihilism. At any given show, the pit was continually contracting and expanding, a real-life example of how random violence could engulf us all at anytime.  

And for a generation that had spent our entire lifetime wondering if today was going to be the day that the nukes fell, the threat of random violence was an existential threat: we could all be gone in the blink of an eye at any. fucking. moment. No future for you, indeed.

It was musically where I had the problem: while I theoretically loved the anger and energy of hardcore, there were so many instances where that was all that existed.  And I need songs somewhere in my songs, which hardcore consistently didn’t deliver. 

So while punk rock changed my life, and I supported hardcore and loved how it was the genesis and raison d’etre for D.I.Y. music scenes all across the country, I was never a punk. I was always too much of a musical mongrel to declare allegiance to a single thing.

All of which means that most of the hardcore I loved probably wasn’t really canon  (a distinction without a difference in 2015 but a real problem in 1985 when local punks would occasionally tell me to play more punk rock on my airshift). Like “Living in Darkness” by Agent Orange, a blast of supersonic surf guitar, weird percussion noises that nearly invoke The Handclap Rule, and singer/guitarist/songwriter Mike Palm’s assertion that withdrawal was the only solution.

I feel safe just being alone
Living in darkness
Living in a world of my own.

At 4:13, and featuring many guitar solos, “Living In Darkness” broke many of the musical rules that hardcore lived by (as did the band’s look – just three dudes who wouldn’t scare anybody on the street), while delivering the same energy and thrills.

Fan-made video for “Living in Darkness”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #79: Bob Dylan – “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry”

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Album: HIghway 61 Revisted.

Year: 1965.

After the 12 minutes of world-changing craziness that preceded it on Highway 61 Revisited, the slow blues shuffle of “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes A Train to Cry” must have felt like a relief. Here at last, was something relatively normal!! Even the lyrics were pretty much a straightforward love song, couched in railroad imagery.

Well, I ride on a mailtrain, baby
Can’t buy a thrill
Well, I’ve been up all night, baby
Leanin’ on the windowsill
Well, if I die
On top of the hillllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
And if I don’t make it
You know my baby will

The irony, of course, was that in its original “Phantom Engineer” version, “It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry” was a raucous as “Tombstone Blues” or “From a Buick 6,” and while the garage-rock takes are definitely fun, they’re also very much like a lot of Dylan’s speedy songs, and it was clear that he was looking for musical variety for Highway 61 Revisited.

Don’t the moon look good, mama
Shinin’ through the trees?
Don’t the brakeman look good, mama
Flagging down the “Double E?”
Don’t the sun look good
Goin’ down over the seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeea?
Don’t my gal look fine
When she’s comin’ after me?

Which is good, because the slower version allows him to do some of his best singing ever, and I love the drum builds in each verse, as well as the barrelhouse piano throughout.

Now the wintertime is coming
The windows are filled with frost
I went to tell everybody
But I could not get across
Well, I wanna be your lover, baby
I don’t wanna be your bosssssssssssssssssss
Don’t say I never warned you
When your train gets lost

 This was also one of the songs that got me into Dylan, as my brother Joseph – who was actually a Dylan fan before I was – used to play it in his room on acoustic guitar, and many times when I heard him play this, I would walk in and play percussion on whatever was around, usually the back side of an broken acoustic guitar.

Official Video for “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #78: Bob Dylan – “Tombstone Blues”

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Album: Highway 61 Revisited.

Year: 1965.

If groundbreaking-single, titanic-masterpiece-that-better-writers-than-I-have-devoted-full-volumes-to “Like A Rolling Stone” was the opening salvo of Highway 61 Revisited, then “Tombstone Blues” was where everybody realized that Dylan had stepped up his game once and for all.

A warpspeed whipsaw through hallucinatory imagery, powered by rattling keyboards and Michael Bloomfield’s lightning guitar, “Tombstone Blues” was pretty much the musical equivalent of the punk rock attitude that Dylan was serving up on the album cover. It’s so studded with fucking great lines that I don’t even know which one is my favorite.

Maybe

“The sun’s not yellow, it’s chicken”

or

“The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone”

or

“And the National Bank at a profit sells road maps for the soul
To the old folks home in the college”

Again and again, Dylan returns to the chorus, reminding us that while he’s clearly having more fun than everybody else in the song, he’s still deep in with everybody else.

“Mama’s in the factory
She ain’t got no shoes
Daddy’s in the alley
He is lookin’ for food
I’m in the kitchen
With the tombstone blues”

Even still, he’d better get the hell out of that kitchen ASAP or he’s liable to be impaled by a Mike Bloomfield guitar solo.

Official video for “Tombstone Blues”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #77: Bob Dylan – “Like A Rolling Stone”

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Album: Highway 61 Revisited

Year: 1965

I almost didn’t write anything about “Like A Rolling Stone,” not because it isn’t a song that I love, but I’m not sure I have anything to add to the infinite plethora of words that have already been spilled dissecting it every which way. 

How does it feel?

What can I possibly add? I mean, Greil Marcus wrote an entire fucking book about it, and I’m guessing that – unless it takes you unawares (and “Like a Rolling Stone” is pretty fucking great at taking you unawares) – you roll your eyes when it comes on the radio cos you know it so well.

How does it it feel?

I mean, as well as you’re ever going to know an eternal mystery such as “Like a Rolling Stone." So for me: three quick glimpses into that eternal mystery.

To be on your own?

First off: the absolute lushness of the original version, making all of the groundbreaking rock songs from Bringing It All Back Home seem like sketches, with Al Koopers organ vamps, Mike Bloomfield’s subtle leads and Bobby Gregg’s builds at the end of each verse, it pretty much makes everything else recorded that year seem two-dimensional.

With no direction home?

Next off: the version from the Manchester 1966 concert where – pissed (or pretending to be pissed) at being called "Judas!” – he instructs The Hawks to “PLAY FUCKING LOUD!!!”  And with that, they all crash together on the song’s majestic beginning, and Dylan just spits out the lyrics, singing not from his head, but right from his everlovinmutherfucking heart. I think it’s, arguably, the most intense rock and roll performance ever. 

Like a complete unknown

Finally, there’s the version in 1974’s Before The Flood. The Hawks are now The Band, and it’s a document of the biggest tour ever. No boos, only adulation. It’s also the version that Martin Scorcese got me to love. I’ve only ever seen Scorcese’s "Life Lessons" segment in 1989’s omnibus film New York Stories once or twice, but the scene where Nick Nolte paints furiously to this steamrolling version is forever etched in my brain. Prior to seeing it, I was lukewarm on Before The Flood afterwards, I was all in.

Like a rolling stone?

“Like a Rolling Stone”

“Like a Rolling Stone” Newport Folk Festival, 1965

Certain Songs #76: AC/DC – “You Shook Me All Night Long”

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Album: Back in Black.

Year: 1980.

I’m 100% sure that I’ve been underrating AC/DC for my entire life.  On paper, they’ve always had everything I should love in a rock band: big dumb riff-filled songs that are actually more sophisticated than they initially come across; words that are about sex & drugs & rock ‘n’ roll & sex; and a dogged adherence to their pretty fucking awesome signature style.

But I’ve never really loved them as much as I think that I probably should, and as a matter of fact, I hated them for quite some time. Looking back, it’s clear that hatred was because AC/DC  & I got off to an extremely rocky start. Here are a few theories why:

1. I discovered them after I discovered punk.  If you look closely, most of the hard rock / metal bands I’ll write about here either pre-dated punk rock and/or had a punk influence. While AC/DC released their first album in 1975, they didn’t really make it to the radio in Fresno until the exact moment I started buying Clash & Ramones albums and started rearranging my musical identity in that direction.  

2. They were the opening band for one of the worst concerts I’ve ever seen. In 1978, I saw AC/DC open for Aerosmith at Selland Arena in Fresno. It was the second concert I’d ever been to. Once again, on paper, DUUUUUUUDE!.  

Unfortunately, at at time, Aerosmith was in the middle of their most drugged-out druggy drugs drugs drugs period and were absolutely fucking TERRIBLE.  As was AC/DC, who were actually booed during their set. (Which was actually not an uncommon experience for opening bands in Fresno.) The whole thing kinda sucked, and might have thrown me off of concert-going if I didn’t love just about every aspect of concert-going.

3. Their fans in high school. All of the dudes who were into AC/DC in high school were all of the dudes whose taste didn’t exactly jibe with my taste. In just about anything.  Even funnier, it felt like many of them only decided to love AC/DC because KISS had decided to do a disco song and they needed somewhere to go. Nowadays, I try not to hold the worst excesses of an artist’s fans against that artist, but things are way different in high school, of course.

Any one of those things by itself, probably not a problem: but all of them combined, I figured why bother with AC/DC when there’s a new Jam album every few months?

Of course that was 35 years ago, and while I could tell even then how great songs like “Whole Lotta Rose,” and “Touch Too Much” were, it took “You Shook Me All Night Long” for me to make me realize that maybe I was wrong about AC/DC.

But that was years and years later. Until then, I would only admit a grudging admiration for the big-ass kick drum, perfectly stoopid riff and insanely catchy glam rock chorus of “You Shook Me All Night Long,” which I now realize that I always kinda loved, even if I didn’t wanna admit it to anybody, least of all myself.

Official Video for “You Shook Me All Night Long”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #75: Bob Dylan – “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”

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Album: Bringing It All Back Home.

Year: 1965.

This utterly sublime break-up song ends Bringing it All Back Home with almost the complete opposite mood from how Dylan opened it. Side one was nearly all uptempo rock songs, many of them absurdly fun,  but on side two – with  "Mr Tambourine Man,“  (not sleepy, but weary) as the transition – the mood darkens and darkens until it’s finally capped by the final kiss-off of "It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.”

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun
Crying like a fire in the sun

“Crying like a fire in the sun.” Such an amazingly mean line. Cry all you want, but nobody is even going to notice.

Oh, and just to make sure you’re still paying attention, he sings the first two lines of every verse loudly, the next two quietly, and then alternating loud and quiet on the last two. It’s an amazing singing performance, and a fantastic way to end his first fully great album.

Also: I love the melody of this song so much that Beck’s sample of the organ  on Them’s cover version is what fuels my favorite Beck song, “Jack-ass”

“It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” on Spotify

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #74: Bob Dylan – “Subterranean Homesick Blues”

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Album: Bringing it All Back Home
Year: 1965

A rollicking shout of word-filled joy, and definitive proof that Bob Dylan was younger than that now, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” has spent the past five decades being a pure shot of adrenaline.  Even now, that opening can’t help but make me sit up and grin:

Johnny’s in the basement
Mixing up the medicine
I’m on the pavement
Thinking about the government

Dylan had previously done hallucinatory dream-logic songs, and he had previously released a rock and roll song, but this was where he wed the dream-logic to the rock and roll. As part of that wedding ceremony, he added a dose of speed, a dose of weed and – of course – a dose of Chuck Berry, whose “Too Much Monkey Business” provided the launching point from which Dylan headed towards the ionosphere. 

You don’t need a weatherman
To know which way the wind blows

This is the beginning of the Bob Dylan that I love most:  the one who killed it for a couple of years in the mid-1960s before nearly killing himself.  I realize that declaring yourself a fan of mid-60s Dylan is a cliche – it’s not exactly being contrary or even cool to profess oneself in love with that particular period – but for nearly 35 years I’ve thought this was pretty close to the greatest music I’ve ever heard in my life, so not to focus on it would be a lie.

Don’t follow leaders
Watch the parkin’ meters

Oh and one more rant: as everybody knows, this song appears as a music video at the beginning of Don’t Look Back, a film about Dylan performing his “old” music, but – OF COURSE – it’s not available on YouTube. What is available is an “official” video that is just a picture of the album cover of Bringing It All Back Home. Which makes no fucking sense whatsoever.

UPDATE:  Tim Gaskill has pointed out that I was wrong – the video exists on YouTube, but it’s listed as the “Don’t Look Back Official Trailer.” So here it is!!

“Subterranean Homesick Blues”

Certain Songs #73: Bob Dylan – “Walkin’ Down The Line”

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Album: The Bootleg Series Volume 1.

Year: 1963.

I know that it probably feels heretical to kickoff what will be a month or so of posts about the greatest musical artist (or really, the greatest artist in any field) of the past 50+ years with a song that remained unreleased until 1991. Even more heretical: this is going to be the only song from his pre-electric folksinger period, which is my least favorite (yup, that includes the 1980s) period of Dylan.

As I wrote back in 2006, everybody who loves Bob Dylan has their own Bob Dylan, and my Bob Dylan truly begins when he plugs in an electric guitar. I respect, like and even love several songs from the finger-pointing era, but they just aren’t my most favorites.

That said, this particular version of “Walkin’ Down The Line,” recorded as a publishing demo – and never released on any his early, is one of my favorites. For whatever reason, the melody and momentum get to me, as does his singing.  Two bits stand out, for entirely different reasons.

First, is how he sings the the second verse:

My money comes and goes
My money comes and goes
My money comes and goes
And rolls and flows and rolls and flows
Through the holes in the pockets in my clothes

The way he wraps his voice around the repetition of the internal rhyme of  "rolls,“ "flows” after “goes” and prior to “holes” and “clothes” is masterful. And remember, this is just a publishing demo.

My other favorite thing is the words of the third verse:

I see the morning light
I see the morning light
Well, it’s not because
I’m an early riser
I didn’t go to sleep last night

While I am an early riser, and my life was nothing like the guy in the song, there was a period in my life in the early 90s when one summertime adventure or another would keep me up all night. More than once during the summer of 1991 – when I was absorbing this whole amazing box set, back deeply in love with Bob Dylan for the first time in several years –  I’d find myself walking home in the coolish Tower District dawn with this song in my head.

“Walkin’ Down The Line” official video

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever