Love (Pt. 3), or, Hope of the Hopelessly Romantic

«Buckets of Rain» versions [.zip]:

1. Bob Dylan (original Blood on the Tracks pressing)
2. Marissa Nadler (live on Phoning It In)

Are you in love? Maybe with an artist? Or a writer? Or a punk? A hippie? A stripper? A singer? A foreigner? A free spirit? A cult follower? A pagan? A teacher? A student? An introvert? An exhibitionist? A sister of mercy? A delicate romantic? A fearless sex beast? A wild child, kept alive inside a feral woman dripping in blood and pheromones? A hedonist? An Adventist? An innocent pervert?

And does this person make you feel blessed? Lucky? Beautiful? Joyous? Saved? Sacred? Scared? Helpless? Top of the world? Like you want to be better? Loved?

But is this object of your desire unavailable to you? Living in another country, perhaps? Or maybe on holiday on the other side of the world? Wrapped up in the world of work? Is the person of your affections lost at sea, trapped in a mine, on an expedition in the jungle, repairing a satellite, taken hostage by terrorists, or already married—to a ruthless drug lord with a decidedly jealous, no, let's make that paranoid streak? Or has she been married off to some snot-nosed would-be patriarch who keeps her in house arrest in some inflexible Muslim country to perform household chores and reproductive duties in his mother's home, controlling her communication with the outside world? Is your soulmate so wrought with issues and dysfunctions he or she is all but impossible to deal with? Is the person in a coma—dead, even?

Or is the feeling simply not mutual? The impossibilities are endless, but whatever the scenario, Bob Dylan has you covered:

Like your smile
And your fingertips
Like the way that you move your lips
I like the cool way you look at me
Everything about you is bringing me
Misery

Thank you, Bob Dylan, for writing a lullaby for the unbearable tension of nursing a crush on someone who may or may not be approachable, available, attainable—like when there's just no way of knowing yet! When infatuation makes your mojo grow and you can see the light of happiness glow right there in front of you, almost within reach, and you once again feel alive and like a member of that human race that writes schmaltzy love songs, cheesy rom-coms and queesy Valentine's cards that are otherwise so detestable. You can hardly follow a conversation, let alone work or sleep. Flights of fancy, daydreams, niggling hopes and nagging doubts dog your every move as you commute between Ecstasy and Despair (both perfectly imaginary). All productivity goes out the window, your rationality hanging by a thread of strenuous effort to maintain some sort of self-discipline, lest you turn into some incoherently raving stalker howling pathetically beneath the window of the hapless object of your affections.

In the long run, there really is nothing worth pursuing quite as much as love, but right now, in that endlessly suspended moment where you still don't know which way that obscure object of desire will swing—does this other person (and I do hope you're in love with a person, or else you're in for a wild but doomed ride, friend), does this seemingly irresistible someone actually feel the chemistry and the electricity, or is the connection not noticed by him or her and hence not a connection at all, but a cruel fiction invented by your own excitable self? Right now this uncertainty is torture. «Misery.» The wait for some sort of resolution seems endless, time crawling infuriatingly by, and nothing can quiet the swirling thoughts that amount to just one thought, really, repeated ad ridiculum: «Does s/he feel the same?» Until the answer is given, nothing else seems to matter. Food, friends, hobbies… Even though your mind's entirely one-track, you still can't think straight. In bed, you've been tossing and turning for more hours than are left before you need to get up for work, when those words of Bob Dylan's rise up from the depths of your memory (or is that your downstairs neighbour's flat?), to calm you right the fuck down.

Buckets of rain
Buckets of tears
Got all them buckets comin' out of my ears
Buckets of moonbeams in my hand
You got all the love, honey baby
I can stand

…

Little red wagon
Little red bike
I ain't no monkey but I know what I like
I like the way you love me strong and slow
I'm takin' you with me, honey baby
When I go

Aw, Bob, thanks! One listen to «Buckets of Rain» slackens that knot within. It's a pep talk for those ravaged by the sweetest thing there is. And because it's the sweetest thing, everything seems to hinge on it. (It doesn't, you know.) What you need is time out. Something to take you out of your tunnel-of-love vision. Like the recognition that this shit happens all the time, everywhere, so don't sweat it:

Life is sad
Life is a bust
All ya can do is do what you must
You do what you must do and ya do it well
I'll do it for you, honey baby
Can't you tell?

So drop your romantic urgency and desperate possessiveness for now, because that's not love anyhow. Be thankful that when thinking of others, you do not only feel regret, resentment, suspicion and disappointment, but something to make sense of your inborn impulse to be with other people. If Hell is other people, Heaven must be, too:

I been meek
And hard like an oak
I seen pretty people disappear like smoke
Friends will arrive, friends will disappear
If you want me, honey baby
I'll be here

Now that's luv, Bub.

Net Nuggets 24: M. Gira & Akron/Family

Today's the day Barack Obama, as we speak, is being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize here in Oslo. Now, I appreciate that when you govern the most powerful nation on the planet you can hardly afford to be a tree-hugging surrender monkey, but you'd be hard pressed not to see, not so much the irony as the logical contradiction in what basically amounts to a warlord being celebrated for contributions to world peace. (Something not lost on the US Commander in Chief himself.) And though Obama is hardly an Alexander the Great or a Napoleon, as 30,000 further troops are sent to Afghanistan and the US military presence in South America and Africa is escalated, I was reminded of some lines out of a song: «please remember as you kill us and cut us down / That time will not wash clean the bloody face of history / And someone will breathe here again and they will hate you for what you leave…»

And so it is to trusty Toilet Guppies faves Michael Gira and Akron/Family that we go, with live-in-studio recordings made on David Garland's show on New York radio station WNYC, Spinning On Air. Akron/Family's set was broadcast on 25 September 2005, Angels Of Light/Michael Gira later that year, on 23 October. For those not familiar with the artists, in 2005 Akron/Family—then a quartet—served as Michael Gira's backing band, together making up the vehicle for Gira's songs, the Angels Of Light. On tour Akron/Family would warm up for, then sit in with the Angels Of Light.

I once had the perverse delight of catching the Akron/Family/Angels Of Light line-up live, with the 50-something rehabilitated hippie and punk M. Gira riding the 20-something, frightened freak folkies like a horseman of the apocalypse. There he was, spitting and stomping, shouting at the bewildered young hippies as they tried to keep up with Gira's exorcism of all kinds of lugubrious little demons. With the band finally hammering out the minimalist riffs and noise with all their energy, Gira still seemed to demand more, always more, until the freaked-out drummer's eyes seemed to protest—impotently—that he was already beating the drums as hard as he could. Even so, Gira still managed to coax more out of him; a second sound that couldn't be heard but was evident to anyone in the room who could see the confused look in the skinsman's eyes, like a man who'd never known what depravity he was actually capable of, scared witless at finally being presented face to face with his own surprising actions and inner, unknown nature.

That's Gira; while Nick Cave always does that same, routine kick at exactly the same mark during «Red Right Hand», every time, like a less nimble and funky James Brown intent on entertaining your ass, Gira doesn't put on a show. He's in it for the catharsis and the transcendence and the spit and the rumble of soundwaves crashing onto your helpless body, losing himself in lust and violence and the Holy Spirit or whatnot, expecting no less of those given the task of backing him up. And so he whips them, not so much into a frenzy as into submission, until they don't dare but deliver what we're all there for, anyway. He rips their youthful souls out of their bodies and makes them dance! Pure S&M.

That's not in evidence on these recordings, which focus more on the country stylings and balladry, like the cover of Bob Dylan's «I Pity the Poor Immigrant» and Gira's maudlin, but warm and uplifting homage to Johnny Cash, «On the Mountain» (a.k.a. «Let It Be You»). «To Live through Someone», too, is sentimental in its daydreaming reference to war «heroes» and the deceased walking on roses up in the skies above, but Gira reins himself in with a wordless twist at the end.

These radio performances certainly are schweet, but the sound quality isn't nearly as good as on the official releases, all of which are available on Young God Records if you like what you hear. And if you do, you'll love those records, so get off yer lazy blog-dwelling, freeloading, file sharing bum and spend a little well worth dough for once, over here. You know it's right.

That said, this sampler is justified by those performances that differ from the originals, most notably Gira's solo renditions of «To Live through Someone» and «Promise of Water», and Akron/Family's «Sorrow Boy». (Not to mention their unknown song, never given an official release.) The early sketch of the Angels Of Light's «Not Here/Not Now» is interesting, as is one of Gira's most enduring and most accomplished songs, «Blind», here given a solo acoustic treatment to replace the original's languid, melancholy flow with a less accessible approach, perhaps more fitting, if you consider the inconsolable words.

Michael Gira & Akron/Family Live on Spinning On Air [.zip]:

AKRON/FAMILY
1. Awake
2. [Title unknown]
3. Running, Returning
4. We All Will
5. Sorrow Boy

The ANGELS Of LIGHT
6. Destroyer
7. Come for My Woman
8. I Pity the Poor Immigrant
9. On the Mountain
10. My Sister Said

MICHAEL GIRA
11. To Live through Someone
12. Promise of Water
13. Not Here/Not Now
14. Blind

Studio versions of 1, 4, 7 & 8 can be found on Akron/Family & Angels Of Light;
studio versions of 3 & 5 on Akron/Family;
studio versions of 6, 9 & 10 and band version of 11 on The Angels of Light Sing «Other People»;
studio band versions of 12 & 13 on We Are Him;
original studio band version of 14 by SWANS on M. Gira's Drainland or SWANS' Various Failures (1988-1992).
Equally recommended is same-period Akron/Family mini-album «Meek Warrior».

Rare or Unreleased 38: Bob Dylan

Sat across the table, my friend told me how his girlfriend and he had just split up. Despite the brave face, it was obvious he was love- and
forlorn. Seems like an everyday occurrence—romance never being stable for anyone—but it was almost enviable how his heart could still break. Almost.

Days later, some beautiful stranger just passing through started me «daydreamin' 'bout the way things sometimes are» (to quote Bob Dylan). Looking back on the record that quote is from—the widely regarded Blood on the Tracks—Dylan once said, «A lot of people tell me they enjoy that album. It's hard for me to relate to that. I mean, it, you know, people enjoying the type of pain, you know?» What the man seems to be missing is that it's better to have loved and lost, etc. And so even the prospect of heartbreak becomes life-affirming, which may help explain why so many enjoy an album that, after all, celebrates the good with the bad. Like heartache, Blood on the Tracks is all about possibility: missed opportunities, current impossibilities… future prospects? If you can feel that ache, there's still hope. There are only other fish in the sea if you're capable of love, devotion.

Now, these days any bohemian songwriter with respect for him- or herself writes at least one relationship break-up concept album in the span of their career. But it wasn't always like this: In 1975—when Blood on the Tracks (the most famous work in that genre) came out—the only previous break-up album proper had been 1970's equally pared back vox, acoustic guitar, bass and harmonica vehicle, the by turns tender, bitter, funny (and totally underappreciated) Requiem for an Almost Lady by Lee Hazlewood. Save for the absence of humour, straightforward lyrics and quirky spoken intros, Dylan's landmark album is remarkably (almost suspiciously) similar. But no less impressive.

The original 1974 test pressing of the album's solo acoustic material was held back, with Dylan re-recording the longest tracks in incongruous «classic rock» band versions, finally releasing a new version of the album that lost in intensity what it gained in variety. Apart from «Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts», the acoustic versions that were replaced have since appeared on official Dylan anthologies—Biograph, The Bootleg Series, vols. 2-3
and the Jerry Maguire soundtrack(!). Some alternate acoustic versions, however, (as well as the solo version of «Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts») have only seen unofficial release on bootlegs.

So until the veritable goldmine of unreleased Dylan stuff is eventually exhausted, here you are: takes of «Tangled Up in Blue», «Idiot Wind» and «If You See Her, Say Hello» that differ from the renditions on The Bootleg Series—as
well as the acoustic take of «Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts» and Roger McGuinn's version of irresistably self-pitying Blood on the Tracks outtake, «Up to Me», recorded exclusively for Mojo Magazine's September 2005 CD give-away, Dylan Covered.

Bob Dylan: Variations on Blood on the Tracks [.zip]:

1. Tangled Up in Blue (alternate acoustic take)
2. Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts (acoustic version)
3. Idiot Wind (alternate acoustic take)
4. If You See Her, Say Hello (alternate acoustic take)
5. Up to Me (covered by Roger McGuinn)

Blood on the Tracks saw Dylan mature from the immensely talented, but ultimately immature wise-ass clever-dick showing off that very talent with self-indulgent, faux-Surrealist throw-away lines («All except for Cain and Abel / And the hunchback of Notre Dame / Everybody is making love / Or else expecting rain») into a mostly sincere and less defensive-aggressive songwriter. (Well, on this record, at least.) Blood on the Tracks features some of the most satisfying song structures Dylan has ever come up with, like the way he adapts the phrase «tangled up in blue» at the end of each verse in the song of the same name. And then there are the melodies, squeezed out of a drawl
that but for the urgent flow of pained words seems lazy, but is actually a minor revolution in phrasing, even for Dylan, carefully enunciating probably the best words he's ever written—all accompanied by his impelling, but always unobtrusive guitar strumming and Tony Brown's subtle, empathic bass for a backdrop. The old calculating people user, movement exploiter, media trickster and narcissist savant never sounded so truthful…