I've been waiting over a year to post this mix but, since early 2011's Snowtorious B.I.G., it seems that Chicago has been cursed with snowless, unseasonable warmth through out the period that used to be "winter." Unlike many Chicagoans who are all too happy to ditch their parkas and shovels, I've always loved the winter. As a child of the Midwest, I revel in the seasonal differences. Just like I revel in summer's warmth and sunshine, I need winter's grey and darkness. I like being forced to stay inside, I like having to brace myself to leave the house. I like the enforced humility that comes with a big Chicago storm or bitter chill, one that reminds us that we're all at the mercy of a larger universe.
I can still remember those early summer mornings. My parents would wake me up around four or five, before it was even light out and I'd grab the bag I'd packed the night before and hurry downstairs and out to the car. August always meant a vacation when I was growing up, which meant a road trip and when you were driving from Chicago to South Carolina, a road trip meant getting up early. Usually a surly and unwilling riser even at much more reasonable hours, I would be actually be a little buzzed on these mornings, excited to leave the house. Inevitably my father would keep my mother and I waiting in the car at least twenty minutes grabbing last-minute items before we could roll onto the road.
Sitting the backseat of the car, happily munching on some McDonald's breakfast (a rare and wonderful treat during my childhood), I remember feeling just how surreal yet satisfying it was to watch the sun actually come up and rouse the world into action. As I would later discover while mowing golf greens before the sun came up, watching the world awake provides an strangely settling and serene feeling, like you know something that everyone else doesn't by the mere fact that you conscious while they slumbered. Today's six-pack gives you six songs to perfectly soundtrack those early-to-rise days (and here's hoping they remain a novelty for all my readers, bless your souls). Next time you have a long road trip, early appointment or good old-fashioned insomnia, this playlist might help you take the heeding of Ben Franklin's annoyingly industrious advice to heart.
With each new twist, I can't decide what the worst part is. Obviously the shooting death of seventeen year-old Trayvon Martin by an over-zealous gated community vigilante is tragedy enough by itself. But each new detail seems to make it that much harder to swallow. Whether it's the fact that that 911 instructed him to stop following Martin or the fact that despite multiple recorded phone calls including one where Martin is shot asking his attacker to stop, no arrest has been made. Of course, I know that every year there are dozens of other Trayvon Martins with equally shocking stories, he's not unique. And yet, the fact that this story has grabbed national headlines, that every ounce of available evidence save the killer's own testimony, points to directly to manslaughter if not murder and yet still nothing has been done makes it all the more atrocious.
I've already gone on at length about Bob Dylan's cult of inscrutability and mercurial musical career, so I won't bore you with further description. However, despite this reputation his catalog of work due to its amazing depth and breadth has led to him being the second most covered artist after only the Beatles. In recent years multi-disc tributes such as 2007's I'm Not There Soundtrack and this year's Chimes Of Freedom have wrangled nearly everyone whose anyone from the indie rock world (not to mention your odd Miley Cyrus or Jack Johnson) into putting their stamp on one of Dylan's 500+ songs.
On Warmer Music likes nothing better than a good cover and I thought this onslaught of new Dylan tributes warranted a look back at some of my favorite memorable, important or underlooked Dylan covers. As always with these lists, it was a tough choice, especially given the breadth of musical love that Dylan gets but here are ten songs reimaginings of his work that won't leave you hanging.
"Folk songs are evasive - the truth about life, and life is more less a lie, but then again that's exactly the way we want it to be." - Bob Dylan
At this point it's almost impossible to know who or what Bob Dylan is or ever was. Mystic, poet, singer, sage, revolutionary, reactionary, wise man, fool, bomb-thrower, bible-thumper, washout and phoenix - all of these are hats that he's worn at one time or another. Often at the same time. Even the ones that contradict the other ones. As a public figure he's forever eluding your grasp, leaving behind brilliant music but no stable essence of who he is.
Standing here, on the far side of Dylan's massive career, knowing the seismic impact he would have on both popular music and American culture as a whole, it's almost impossible to put oneself into the mind of a listener first hearing his debut album in 1962 (not that there were many of them). Before he sang for Martin Luther King and dated Joan Baez, before he wrote anthems that defined a decade, before the drugs and the Beatles and the Pennebaker film, Bob Dylan, nee Robert Zimmerman was just a folk singer, a Minnesota boy with big ideas who played the New York clubs and managed to catch a break. He was signed to Columbia Records by John Hammond who saw his talent and told him "We're gonna bring you in and record you, we'll see what happens."
I can't believe it! I can't believe we're here at Labor Day weekend already! When one of my best friends asked me to be his best man some 18 months ago I was honored and couldn't do anything but accept. Now that the time to live up to that is almost here, though, I'm increasingly incredulous that all that time has passed. This isn't the first friend I've had get married, but it is the first one from my far early childhood and I can't help but get a little soppy about it.
Don't worry, I'm gonna save all the really mushy stuff for the folks that are already liquor'd up at the reception but I do have a few things to say. Marriage is an embattled and increasingly territorial institution in America that seems to be more the butt of jokes than an object of appreciation. But I will say this. Marriage is, ultimately the glue society rests on. Don't believe me? Think to yourself how many people you know who were products of divorce, separation and unhappy marriages and think of how many of them would wan the same for their kid. Commitment, perseverance and genuine love may not be the easiest sells but they're timeless human needs that will outlast all our self-centered asses. So here's to love, marriage and those who can make that work with all the joy implied therein!
Posts
