41_lat/love_and_theft.htm

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  16 <h1>&quot;Love and Theft&quot; - an appreciation</h1>
  17
  18 <p>&nbsp;</p>
  19
  20 <p>Jag fruktade en platta full med Lonesome Day Blues när han
  21 omtalade den som en samling med variationer över blues-scheman, men även där håller
  22 det, tack vare att de enklare blues-rock-låtarna alla har nån liten grej som lyfter
  23 låtarna och ger det repetitiva ett slags egenvärde (licket i Tweedle Dee,
  24 rytmförändringen i Cry Awhile, som perfekt matchar det överspända i texten (eller för
  25 in nåt överspänt i texten)).</p>
  26
  27 <hr>
  28
  29 <p>General points</p>
  30
  31 <p>1. For the first time there is virtually no trace whatsoever of Dylan's guitar on the
  32 album - he has left the guitar parts to his very accomplished sidemen. Not that he hasn't
  33 had that earlier, but his own guitar has always been audible, even prominent, regardless
  34 of who plays the solos. Not so this time. In part that would have to do with the kind of
  35 complexity of the songs - Dylan hasn't played this kind of things before, m7-5 chords and
  36 all, the big difference being, of course, that this time that Dylan records an album that
  37 he as a musician is not familiar with (although he certainly is as a listener). </p>
  38
  39 <p>2. Piano based. For a piano based album, there is remarkably little piano on it. It has
  40 been suggested that it was written at the piano, but I can't really see anything to
  41 support this: the two main styles on the album are both idiomatically guitaristic - the
  42 blues-rock songs don't differ much from what he has done earlier and what he does daily on
  43 the road, and even the swing songs have an unmistakable guitar sound. Besides, there is no
  44 similarity with Dylan's own piano style, as far as I can see. </p>
  45
  46 <p>3. Dylan's fight against the dominant, and the confines of the 12-bar blues continues.
  47 For a man who has been playing the blues throughout a 40-year carreer, there are
  48 remarkably few &quot;straight&quot; 12s in his production; he is a master at varying the
  49 simple blues patterns - it's like it is a self-imposed set of confines, that he keeps
  50 fighting. So is the case on this album as well: in most of the songs where a dominant
  51 chord is to be expected, an evasive maneuvre is done, either a modification of the
  52 relevant chord, or by leaving it out altogether. Sugar baby: third measure of the intro,
  53 where the A (sounding: G) is played, it is not a full chord, but only the tones of the
  54 bass figure. Mississippi/Po'Boy: at the same place at the end of the bridge, the G chord
  55 is played in several different ways at the same time, to produce a characteristic,
  56 dylanistic, anti-dominant clash (or blur). And the rock numbers: Tweedle dum and Cry
  57 Awhile: no dominant whatsoever, Summer days: a Bb in the verses, but no
  58 &quot;turnaround&quot;, and in none of these songs is there any sophistication in the way
  59 the chord progressions are handled: they become &quot;stations&quot; rather than
  60 &quot;progressions&quot;, if you see what I mean. </p>
  61
  62 <p>Tweedle dee: the &quot;figure&quot; is usually cut off - building up some expectation,
  63 but emphatically disregarding them. Cut off in different ways in each verse.</p>
  64
  65 <p>Cry Awhile: that's the beautiful thing about this song (one of the beautiful things, I
  66 should say - the rhythmic changes are another): the dominant chord (B7 in this case) is
  67 never even touched upon, but precisely by being absent, it makes its presence very much
  68 felt, since it is usually a dominant feature (hehe), not only of the blues, but of just
  69 about any piece of from the western history of music. So: the more you expect it, the more
  70 you feel it when it's not there. (I could go on talking about life now, or love, but I
  71 guess my point has already been made.) Double dialectic: both the </p>
  72
  73 <p>4. The swing songs follow the same pattern, more or less, even using the same key (Bb).
  74 </p>
  75
  76 <p>5. The tune of Floater is taken from &quot;Snuggled On Your Shoulders&quot; by
  77 Lombardo/Young (it's remarkable how fast this kind of information is dug out in the Net
  78 community). That makes me wonder if other of the songs have similar sources. What then
  79 about the bridge in &quot;Bye and Bye&quot;, which is very similar to the bridge in
  80 Floater? I don't *really* mind that much. It's good music, and
  81 it is definitely Dylan, whoever wrote the tunes - he appropriates them quite well and give
  82 them credibility as &quot;his&quot; songs, albeit &quot;stolen&quot;. The only thing that
  83 annoys me is that it would have been so cool if someone today had sat down and written
  84 perfect 40's hits, and the only person around that could have done so, with conviction, is
  85 Dylan. Now, it turns out, they're perfect 40's hits because they were written in the 40's
  86 and that changes that picture a bit... </p>
  87
  88 <hr>
  89
  90 <p>Comparison with TOOM</p>
  91
  92 <p>I agree with what you say about TOOM - and yet I'm not sure
  93 L&amp;T is the better album. It's difficult to compare, since TOOM seems such a long time
  94 ago... (funny - that's when my site started, so for me, Dylan's entire production comes
  95 between those two albums...!). You're right that Dirt Road Blues and Lonesome Day Blues
  96 are the weakest tracks of the two albums. I never really like DRB, but reading what you
  97 wrote (and in the comparison with LDB), I began to think more fondly of DRB, precisely
  98 because of the soundscape, which brings in the rest of the album too, since it's the same
  99 'scape that is inhabited by Doorway, NDY and Highlands. And although TOOM was live, it was
 100 in a way more produced than L&amp;T - the vocal sound was more filtered (or enhanced),
 101 less raw and raucous.</p>
 102
 103 <p>And yet, this is what troubles me a bit with TOOM - it has,
 104 as you say, an atmosphere, but if you don't share that atmosphere (and woe on he who does
 105 that all the time!), it becomes prescriptive rather than inspired. That, I think, is the
 106 main difference with L&amp;T: it may create an atmosphere too, but it isn't exclusive (in
 107 the literal sense). This goes for the lyrics as well: some of the TOOM songs are so
 108 &quot;big&quot; they are finished and almost stand in the way, whereas L&amp;T is sheer
 109 exuberance, a Basementian overflowing of the joy of words, ranging from bad on-the-road
 110 jokes to the eternal values. </p>
 111
 112 <p>I notice that I keep contradicting myself (and you)
 113 concerning which is the better album. It's probably unavoidable, since they're both
 114 great.&nbsp;Right now I perfer L&amp;T, but I think I'll have to go home and put on TOOM,
 115 dance around to Dirt Road Blues.</p>
 116
 117 <hr>
 118
 119 <p>Basement Tapes</p>
 120
 121 <p>Texterna påminner mig om nån sorts stämning från Basement Tapes: ordglädje (jo,
 122 översvämning är ett bra ord: både på längden och tvären (&quot;She says, &quot;You
 123 can&#146;t repeat the past,&quot;&nbsp; I say &quot;You can&#146;t? What do you mean you
 124 can&#146;t? Of course, you can.&#148; &quot; måste vara Dylans mest överfyllda rad - och
 125 det funkar!), och en absurd, förvrängd syn på verkligheten (eller: en syn på en
 126 absurd, förvrängd verklighet) förklätt till skämt (&quot;Politician&#146;s got on his
 127 joggin&#146; shoes / He must be runnin&#146; for office, got no time to lose&quot; kunde
 128 ha varit ett av hans konsert-skämt). </p>
 129
 130 <hr>
 131
 132 <p>Mississippi</p>
 133
 134 <p>The simplistic answer is that the ascending bass line works by going upwards... It is
 135 not just a joke - The two ascents in the song: C to G in the &quot;verse&quot;, the full
 136 octave from G to G in the bridge, are both ambiguous, by taking place over an unchanging
 137 sonority, which in both cases are rudiments of the start chord (g-c and d-g respectively),
 138 and which makes it possible to regard them as &quot;surface-ripples&quot; over a
 139 sustained, implied chord, or as changes in the foundation, carrying with them implied
 140 changes in the chords that are built above the bass notes. It is possible to rewrite the
 141 ascents with chord formations similar to those in LARS, going back to standard cadential
 142 progressions (e.g. C - G/d - C/e - F - G - C and G - Am - G/b - C - G - Em - F - G,
 143 leading back to the C of the verse part). The second case is the most complex of the two:
 144 although the whole passage centres around G, by emphatically *not* using f# but f, Dylan
 145 emphasises the &quot;C major&quot;-ish character of the passage: the whole thing can be
 146 reduced, functionally, to a prolongation of the G step as a dominant - preparation - to
 147 the following C. The constant presence of the starting chord adds to this effect, &nbsp;
 148 but it is blurred or contradicted by the fact that it is in fact a *passage* leading from
 149 one point to another (which happens to be the same...), and which presupposes the elements
 150 involved in the passage itself to reach the effect (by recourse to the principles of
 151 functional harmony). So to conclude: there are chord formations that correspond to what is
 152 played here, but they will not entirely &quot;do it&quot;, since &quot;it&quot; depends
 153 upon the ambiguity of conflicting implications, which would be &quot;un-ambiguiated&quot;
 154 (hey, I think I made up a new word...) by the substitution of chords for bass line. </p>
 155
 156 <hr>
 157
 158 <p>En låt har jag svårt för (Lonesome day blues) - den är lite för lång med för
 159 lite intressant musikaliskt. De andra straighta blues-låtarna är ok, de har alla nåt
 160 speciellt, med Cry Awhile och Tweedle dee som de bästa, tycker jag. <br>
 161 Sen är ju swing-låtarna (eller vad det nu är) sagolika. Po' Boy - sättet han sjunger
 162 &quot;Po' boy&quot; i första versen... ah. Moonlight och Floating är inte långt efter
 163 heller. Highwater och Sugar Baby är givetvis höjdare - kanske bäst, tillsammans med
 164 Po'boy. Mississippi vet jag inte... jag saknar energin från Sheryl Crows version.</p>
 165
 166 <hr>
 167
 168 <p>Production</p>
 169
 170 <p>Rösten stör mig inte ett dugg, tvärt om: om den vore
 171 mindre skrovlig, skulle vi aldrig ha fått höra klangen på &quot;Po' Boy&quot; (första
 172 versen), som är höjdpunkten på skivan. Den röstklangen kan inte produceras, den måste
 173 komma &quot;naturligt&quot;.</p>
 174
 175 <p>Beträffande produktionen har jag bara en invändning: hade
 176 instrumenten varit bättre åtskilda i mixen, så hade det varit lättare för en stackars
 177 tabbare att höra vad de enskilda spelar...</p>
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