Bob Dylan: Livin’ Life On The Fly

 

 

Bob Dylan:  Livin’ Life On The Fly

by

R.E. Prindle

-I-

Bob Dylan created the character of Bob the Drifter back at the beginning of the Sixties.  He has since done his best to live the life of the ultimate drifter.  Early influences on the persona were probably Hank Williams musical alter ego Luke the Drifter and possibly Simon Crumb the alter ego the country singer Ferlin Husky.  His immediate role model was definitely Ramblin’ Jack Elliot who was born Elliot Adnopos making his adopted goyish name a cover for his Jewish identity much as Bob Dylan was doing.  Thus these two very Jewish guys have lived out their lives under assumed goyish identities.

Like Ramblin’ Jack Bob Dylan further patterned his life on the life  of the goy drifter Woody Guthrie.

Bob learned Jack’s style when both men lived in the early sixties folk environment of Greenwich Village in New York City.  When that particular bubble burst in the mid-sixties partly through the machinations of Dylan himself who introduced electricity into the Greenwich Village folk scene a dispersion took place.

I say partly because seemingly unnoticed by everyone while being completely overlooked today The Lovin’ Spoonful with the really legendary John Sebastian and Sol Yanovsky had used an electric guitar since early 1965 while also writing their own songs.

After leaving recording for a year or two after 1966 Dylan led a sedentary life in Woodstock New York with his wife Sara and a growing family.  The call of his destiny on the road was too strong with Dylan gradually edging back to the role of the roving hobo.

Mentally adrift for most of the seventies and eighties Bob then devised the perfect drifter life.  He became a drifting troubadour.  He not only roved but he made it pay to the tune of a billion dollars or more.  He got himself a couple buses and phased through several identity crises. He styled his drifting as The Never Ending Tour.

While living his early years in Hibbing Negro music appears to have made no impression on him.  He does say that he listened to Black music over the radio on stations blasting up over the central plain from locations such as Shreveport but I don’t detect that influence in his music too much.  Of course, once in New York he saw the necessity for Negro roots and reacted socially.

Dylan does however know all the great C&W tunes and artists.  His first great plagiarism was from Hank Snow one of the absolute greats.  C&W was however not mainstream.  In the peculiar White mentality C&W was rejected as ignorant White hillbilly music and I mean rejected.  You had to cover up your liking of C&W as though it was the original sin.  On the other hand with that peculiar mentality of Whites they were able to embrace equally ignorant Negro ghetto music as their own.  I could never figure it out.

Dylan didn’t try.  Sometime before he got to UMinnesota in the Fall of ’59 he realized he wasn’t he wasn’t going to make it as a rocker so he switched to Folk from Fall ’59 to January of ’61 when he left for NYC.  At UMinnesota he had listened to a few Folk records while someone gave him Woody Guthrie’s autobiography Bound For Glory so that in some mad burst of teen infatuation he came to the conclusion that he was the reincarnation of Woody Guthrie.  He adopted the persona to the best of his ability beginning to create a hokey Oklahoma drifter’s accent and vocal style.

One gets the impression that his folk act in Minnesota was raw enough that he was merely tolerated.  Bob, himself, knew he was a genius so he took his half-digested act East to New York City in that January of ’61.  But he was wary.  Cagey then as now he decided to scope the scene before he burst upon it.

While arriving in NYC in January he didn’t make his official appearance on the Village scene until late February.  Dylan himself explains that missing period by claiming to have been hustling his buns in Times Square.  People have refused to take him at his word but why would he say it if it wasn’t true?  Why would he say it even if it were?  Dylan had very low self-esteem at the time while being a very serious drunkard.  At UMinnesota he had blottoed out and spread out on the ground at full noon in the main crossroads at the U.  You have to glory in your shame to do that.

We don’t know how much money Dylan had when he stepped out of the car in NYC although he was never really broke when he buskered on the street; his Ace In The Hole was the folks back home.  They did send him money.

Perhaps though Dylan was so down so low that he needed to debase himself in the worst possible way.  He probably did stroll 42^nd St. looking to be picked up.  Perhaps receiving money picked him up a little; gave him value.

As he scoped the Folk scene and picked up the odd dollar he was devising a persona to splash into the scene.  His persona was totally absurd and his Ten Weeks With The Circus story would be, or should have been, seen through before he got it out of his mouth.  This was sophisticated NYC for Christ’s save, New Yorkers have seen and heard every hustle ever devised.  You couldn’t fool them so they must have been humoring Dylan.

Nobody could have done all the things he said he’d done and graduated from high school two years or less earlier.  He also tried to conceal that he was Jewish which seems ridiculous to me, but then Dylan didn’t see the obvious Jewishness of Jack Elliot so maybe it’s just me.  Anyway it took these sharp New Yorkers a year or more to figure Dylan was a little Jewish kid.

Dylan had analyzed the scene well.  He realized he couldn’t go in and do what everyone else was doing.  Besides there were a lot of good guitarists in the Village and Dylan wasn’t one of them.  He had to shake the scene up a little.  At the time the Village Folk scene was a bore.  Folk was on the down trend.  The New Lost City Ramblers, one of the more formidable Village folk groups were so trite they were unlistenable.  While not on the Village scene I was aware of the phonograph records made by the artists and quite frankly I was amazed that anyone would record those people.  I mean, like Dylan, I was a hillbilly.  There were many amazing records being made by real folk artists like the Carter Family.  These pale Village imitations by middle class Jews aping the mountain people were far less than authentic.

So Dylan practiced this garish voice, blew harmonica in an incomprehensible way and banged the guitar in an equally noisy and unmusical way.  Bud and Travis couldn’t play guitar either.  It boggles your mind to watch them flail the instrument.

People that say they liked his first couple records may very well be telling the truth but the truth is virtually no one bought them.  Fortunately Dylan soon learned to write songs.  They too made little impression as sung by him; sung by others, such as Peter Paul and Mary they sounded good enough to become hits.  Of course, Peter Paul and Mary had that religious sounding name and earnest style that opened a lot of doors for them.

Nevertheless by 1964 Dylan was beginning to make a name for himself as a songwriter so that people were more willing to accept his bizarre performances.  Andy Warhol said that Dylan began by singing political protest songs then shifted to singing personal protest songs.  That change began about 1964 with his Another Side Of Bob Dylan LP.

His friend and sometime road manager Victor Maymudes said that all Dylan’s songs were about his girl friends.  If you read his lyics with that in mind they will make more sense.  You still have to work at it though.  The language he uses really obscures the content.

It was at this point that Dylan went electric and moved out from his folk cover  (Dylan said that his folk music years were just a shuck.) and began his conversion to rock and roll.  Dylan began performing in high school as a Little Richard clone so the move should come as no surprise knowing what we do today.  When his rock and roll phase ended in 1966 Dylan then returned to his basal influence C&W.

As he shifted to personal protest on a rock and roll frame he made his impact as ‘a spokesman for his generation.’

Dylan was never a spokesman for the generation but he was a spokesman for people with the same psychosis as his.  Dylan was unbalanced as were all the people who took his message.  I was one of those who Dylan characterized as ‘abused, misused, strung out ones or worse.’  Dylan converted his angst into sexual frustration and his sexual frustration into lyrics.  We weren’t able to understand the lyrics because we were looking in the wrong place but we understood the songs perfectly on the subliminal level.  Dylan’s psychology matched ours.

Dylan’s last album as a New York folk singer, Blonde On Blonde, also expanded his audience while also confusing those who weren’t on his wavelength.  That is, people who hated him, and largely for psychological reasons, were forced to acknowledge him.  At the time the LP was so far outside our musical experience that we literally had heard nothing like it before.  Little Richard redux.

On the other hand I realized that he had peaked in that style and would no longer be able to continue in the same vein.  At the same time the pressures of the previous five years on Dylan were such that his mind was at the breaking point and actually broke.  He probably had what was called a nervous breakdown. Shortly we heard that Dylan had been in a motorcycle accident and might be dead.  He wasn’t, of course, and it has never been reliably determined that there ever had been an accident.  His brother David just laughs it off while many others reduce it to the equivalent of a mere scratch.  Dylan himself says that his manager Albert Grossman was driving him so hard that it was killing him.  He had to stop and catch his breath or die.

Dylan hadn’t yet learned to live on the road; he would master that later.

At any rate he had married his Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands, Sara in 1965 and needed time out to raise a family.  He did do that.

Regardless of whether he had been hurt or not he was not musically idle.  About a year and a half later in December of 1967 he released the awaited new LP John Wesley Harding.  The LP was a total rejection of his first incarnation.  He used a crooning voice backed by a C&W band.  He returned, as they used to say, to his roots.  He was no longer a trailblazer, just a C&W singer.  While I knew he would not follow up in the same style I was stunned by the reversion to a conventional country style.  At that time no one knew that his roots were C&W.

I loved the instrumental backing of his three big albums but had no interest in what seemed to be pseudo-country with rather ordinary lyrics.  (Let Me Be Your Baby Tonight.)  I abandoned him completely and never have gone back.  This was 1967.  The next wave of the British Invasion was in progress and it was astonishing.  The music was all fresh and picked up where Dylan had left off.  The sounds were all new like you’d never heard before.  The lyrics were nearly as inscrutable as Dylan’s.  Dylan was not missed by me nor a lot of his former fans.

As I said Dylan was not idle; he was busy.  The evidence of that appeared six months after John Wesley Harding.  Music From Big Pink by the Band.  This was relatively sensational music and lyrics.  Of course The Band was Dylan’s back up and his association with Big Pink buttressed his reputation a lot.  And then the legend of the Basement Tapes appeared that was even more tantalizing than the actual music although the songs from it that appeared by other artists were remarkably good.

So while Dylan left the Sixties with a much diminished reputation it was on a positive note.

-II-

The Never Ending Tour

While talent such as Dylan’s was is important, talent will not out without good luck and a helping hand.  Dylan undoubtedly had both.  There has always been some mystery about how a half skilled musician could show up in Greenwich Village in March 1961 and be signed to a record contract with Columbia Records seven months later in October.

People who had been around the Village were just blown away when the news got out.  Dylan’s talent was not that obvious to everyone.  Many could not see it at all.  He couldn’t play guitar and he couldn’t blow the harp.  His voice, at the time, was so raw it grated, and still does for me.  He hadn’t written a song in those seven months so his much vaunted songwriting skills weren’t in evidence.  Yet Robert Shelton, the music reviewer for the ultra-prestigious New York Times gave him a rave review that amazed everyone.  John Hammond of CBS signed him virtually without hearing him.  Other CBS staffers had such a low opinion of Dylan’s talent that they called him Hammond’s Folly.  Was there something going on behind the scenes, was something happening here that the Village couldn’t understand?   Listen to Positively Fourth Street and Something Happening again closely.

Well, you know, I’ve thought about this and studied this and I’ve put together the following scenarios for your delectation.  Granted it is highly conjectural yet based on facts.

Remember that Dylan is Jewish and New York City including the Village was and is a Jewish colony.  Being Jewish in the Village did and does count.

Back in Hibbing Minnesota the Jewish community was three or four hundred strong while Dylan’s, or Bobby Zimmerman’s, as he then was, family was chief among them.

Both Dylan’s father, Abram Zimmerman, and his mother, Beatty Zimmerman were of the Frankish sect of Judaism.  Dylan’s Jewish name, Sabtai, was derived from the last acknowledged human Jewish messiah.  This undoubtedly indicated the high hopes Abram had for his son as a deliverer of the Jews; in other words, a messiah.

Father Abe was the Anti-Defamation League representative in Hibbing.  That may have caused some friction between himself and the goy townsmen.  There seems to be an undercurrent of resentment both to Abe and Bobby Zimmerman in Hibbing.  As an Orthodox Jew Abram had connections back in New York probably with the Chabad Lubavitcher sect led by its chief rabbi, Menachem Schneerson.  Abram traveled frequently on religious business including to NYC.

Abram wanted son Bobby to also embrace the Lubavitcher sect.  Thus, as Bobby approached thirteen and his Bar Mitzvah Abram sent back to New York for a Lubavitcher Rabbi to come to Hibbing specifically to educate Bobby in the Lubavitcher belief system.  This was the rabbi Reuben Meier.  In full Lubavitcher gear he was an anomaly  in Hibbing where according to Dylan he embarrassed the Jewish community.

As Dylan tells it he got off the bus one day, spent a year teaching Bobby ‘what he had to learn’ then got back on the bus presumably returning to NYC his mission accomplished.

Dylan has or had a messiah complex.  Still, as he observed the fate of Jesus (look what they done to him, he said) he was unwilling to pick up the cross thus never declaring himself.  Still Abe had connections in NYC that could be and probably were useful bumping Dylan’s career along.

I haven’t found any evidence that Dylan ever contacted the Lubavitchers once in NYC but then it can’t be ruled out and he didn’t have to.  His father could have worked with them unknown to Dylan.  Still, Dylan later in life did associate himself with the Lubavitchers.  Could be coincidence, of course.

Shelton who wrote his glowing review of Dylan worked for the New York Times which was and is owned by the Jewish Sulzberger family.  Thus in all probability Abram called in some favors from the Lubavitchers to forward Dylan’s career.  Among them Abram had some position, and asked them to make sure that Dylan wasn’t overlooked.  Thus within the synagogue, so to speak, Shelton wrote his actually preposterous review of Dylan.

Now, Shelton came to New York from Chicago in the late fifties.  Dylan’s future Jewish manager Albert Grossman also came from Chicago where he had owned the seminal folk club The Gate Of Horn.  Shelton knew Grossman in Chicago where he wrote reviews of the folk acts.

When Grossman went East for whatever reasons in 1959 he helped found the Newport Folk Festival with the Jew George Wein.  Thus the Newport Folk Festival was a Jewish organization giving them the control over who could and could not make it.  Grossman hung around the Village analyzing the talent as he had plans.  He didn’t necessarily let the acts come to him but he went out and created them as in Peter Paul and Mary which was his total conception.  Sensing the direction of things he realized that a trio of two men and a woman with the right lineup would succeed and spread the message.  His final choices were two male Jews, Noel Stookey who became Paul and Peter Yarrow and a woman Mary Travers.  He chose well.

Prodded by Shelton Grossman took a look at Dylan but could see no use for him until Dylan began to write.  At that point he fit into Grossman’s plans who then created Bob Dylan as a commercial entity.  Dylan justified the confidence in himself when he scored with the puerile Blowin’ In The Wind.  Dylan was still unlistenable to most people but with the voices of the more musical Peter Paul And Mary he began to establish his reputation as a song writer.

The Synagogue was behind him so that coupled with his talent he was given maximum and incredible exposure.    Now, Peter Yarrow who was very close to Grossman, one might say almost a collaborator, said that without Grossman there would have been no Peter Paul And Mary and more importantly no Bob Dylan.  Yarrow believed that Dylan’s success was due to Grossman.  Luck was with Dylan then when Grossman came to town a couple years before he did while Shelton was there at the Times.  You must have that luck.  Grossman definitely nurtured Dylan as a songwriter and put his career on track.  Whether Grossman was connected to the Lubavitchers isn’t clear but I’m sure the religious connection was there.  It was all within the Synagogue; strictly a Jewish affair.

Those who closely analyze Dylan’s songs love to point out the Biblical references with which his songs have always been replete.  Indeed, when Dylan was writing John Wesley Harding his mother who was visiting him during the period says that he kept a large Bible open in his living room that he would jump up to consult it from time to time.  Obviously the Bible informed his lyrics as he dealt with his injunction to be the new messiah, if I am correct in my analysis.

His religious training would surface in the seventies when he explored Jesus’ relationship to the Jews.  Contrary to what people believe Dylan never turned to Christianity, he was interested in the Jewish Jesus cult.  At the same time he was getting the Christian take on Jesus through the Vinyard Fellowship he was studying with the Jews For Jesus cult.  Indeed, when he came out as a Jesus freak at the Warwick Theatre in San Francisco Jews For Jesus people were used to proselytize  outside the theatre but not the Vinyard Fellowship.

Having satisfied his curiosity about Jesus he next showed up in full Lubavitcher gear in Jerusalem.  The Christians were stunned at the seeming turnabout.  Rabbi Reuben Meier had not failed the Lubavitchers back in the fifties in Hibbing.  Dylan came home.

-III-

On The Barricades

Jewish self-confidence was ruined in the wake of WWII but began to resume with the establishment of Israel in 1948.  A feeling of power began to revive after the 1956 war; then after the Six Day War of 1967 a feeling of invincibility seized the Jewish mind.  Born in 1941 Dylan was 26 in 1967.  In 1968 the aborted Paris insurrection took place.

As a result of the Six Day War the New York Rabbi Meir Kahane organized the Jewish Defense League (JDC) as a terrorist organization from which came the JDO or Jewish Defense Organization.  The JDO was murderous.  Both were terrorist groups who engaged in serious bomb attacks in NYC and assassinations.  It was pretty nutty.

At roughly the same time the Weatherman group was formed that was a combined Goy and Jewish affair designed to bring down the US government.  That group was headed by the Chicago terrorist nutcake Bomber Billy Ayers.  The JDL, JDO and Weathermen traced their origins back to Dylan while including Dylan as one of them.  Dylan had JDL members as bodyguards and possibly JDO so at one time he seems to have been a member.  More regular Jews warned him to dissociate himself publicly from the JDL and JDO so that he did disassociate them from himself at least as far as one can see.

Dylan’s association with the Weathermen if it existed was more tenuous.  It would be interesting to know if through Greil Marcus Dylan knew Ayers.   All groups considered Dylan a revolutionary.  This could easily be inferred from songs like Subterranean Homesick Blues and Ain’t Going To Work On Maggie’s Farm No More plus many of his Negro protest songs.

Now, when Dylan was awarded the French decoration, The Legion Of Honor, in 2015  he was commended for his contributions to the Paris insurrection of ’68.  What those contribution were weren’t specified; it may only have been the moral support of his songs that the revolutionaries heard as a call to arms.  Or perhaps Dylan functioned as a courier during his tours throughout the world.  It wouldn’t be the first time entertainers were used as covers.

In 2007 when Sarkozy had been elected President of France one of the first things he did was to call a number of people to Paris to receive awards.  Three relevant Americans made the trip, Dylan, Greil Marcus and David Lynch the filmmaker.

As it turns out Dylan and Greil Marcus are or were fairly closely associated.  Marcus was ostensibly a music critic for Rolling Stone Magazine, another Jewish set up, but he was also a member of the French Jewish revolutionary group, the Situationist International led by Guy Debord.  Debord and his SI claim to have been the moving force behind the Paris revolt thus tightening the connection between Marcus, Dylan, the SI and the Paris insurrection.  Dylan was also associated with the revolutionary group centered around John Lennon and his widow Yoko Ono.

Now, in 2001 Dylan, Marcus and future president of the United States Barack Obama were in Chicago as associates at the time of 9/11.  Dylan’s LP Love And Theft was released on that date that has references that seem applicable to the destruction while Marcus published an article shortly thereafter that seemed to celebrate the attack.  So Dylan’s actions seem to point to revolutionary ends.

Now, as Dylan was touring the world from the Sixties through the present he may have been a courier connecting global revolutionary activity.  It would not have been wise to communicate by phone or internet in later years as phones and electronics are easily tapped so it would be necessary to communicate by hand delivered messages.  Such services would have been invaluable while coded messages in songs or interviews on radio and television appearances are possible.  Eric Burdon formerly of the Animals was arrested by the German authorities on that suspicion.

You don’t get awards just for being cute.

Exhuming Bob 25: Bob And Sam

 

Exhuming Bob 25:

Bob And Sam

by

R.E. Prindle

Shepard, Sam: The Rolling Thunder Logbook, 1977, Sanctuary Publishing.

      Sometime in the mid-seventies, possibly in 1976 Paul Simon wrote in one of his lyrics:  I don’t think this stuff is funny anymore.  Coincidentally at the same time as I surveyed my record store of a Saturday morning the same thought occurred to me.  Things had been overdone.  In one bat of an eyelash the whole thing got old.

 

Bert Williams In Blackface

    This was not case with Bob Dylan who in the waning months of 1975 put the greatest clown act New England had ever seen on the road.  The Rolling Thunder Revue; or as it might alternatively have been named:  The New Bob Dylan Minstrels.  One purpose of the Revue seems to have been to spring the convicted triple murderer and ex-boxer Hurricane Carter from jail.  That didn’t come until the very end.

     Along the way Dylan wanted to film a sort of existential movie that would later be released as Renaldo and Clara.  Working from some strange chaos theory Dylan had no actors, no script, no-nothing.  Needing some sort of guiding hand he commanded the actor, cowboy, playwright Sam Shepard to attend to his writing needs.  Sam then wrote what he called a log of the experience called the Rolling Thunder Logbook.

     On the first reading I didn’t think Sam put much into it but the pictures  were good.  Still there was the nagging feeling that I might have missed something.  On the second reading the logbook assumed more significance.  It’s kind of impressionistic.  It’s not a narrative; like the title says its sort of like a ship’s logbook.   The impressions sort of pile up until you have a definite impression.  I don’t know if that’s what Sam intended but that’s the way it worked with me.

     Bob being the kind of powerful show biz personality he is didn’t bother to negotiate terms with Sam; he didn’t even bother to call himself; his agent or stooge  or whatever interrupted the life of Shepard to tell him Dylan wanted him in New England.  Sam doesn’t mention any terms, or indeed any payment.  He just dropped everything, literally, and drove East.  Did I mention he was in California?  Well, he was; he was in the process of moving. 

     Bob tries pretty hard to cultivate that elusive, mysterious image and he succeeded with Sam who couldn’t locate him for a few days after he got there.  Bob probably wanted to accustom him to the menagerie before he showed his face.  Even then Sam didn’t have any guidelines he just expected Sam to free lance a few lines of dialogue if at any time he saw the cameras running.  The film crew was more disorganized than Dylan if that were possible.

     What was it all about anyway?

It Takes A Worried Man- Sam Shepard

     As we should be aware 1976 was the two hundreth anniversary celebration of the American Revolution.  But there were  a number of conflicting revolutions running simultaneously.  There was the revolt of the Matriarchy, what Eric Foner calls the Unfinished Revolution which was the replacement of Whites by Negroes and of course the perpetual revolution of the Jews against mankind, not to mention the revolution of the gay crowd.  Bob as we all know is Jewish so one may reasonably ask why he chose New England for his chaotic Marx Brothers routine on the occasion of the Yankee Revolution around the new England sites such as Bunker Hill?  Could he have been thumbing his nose at America?  Well, it does look suspicious.

     As Sam notes the crew made it a point to visit Plymouth Rock and the replica of the Mayflower which sacred symbols of  pre-immigration America they reviled all but pissing on the Rock.  The faux American cowboy, Elliott Adnopoz was swinging from the yardarm of the Mayflower.  Y’all know Elliott as the yodelin’ cowboy Ramblin’ Jack Elliott o’ course.  For the rest they pissed and farted their way across New England carousing and corrupting as they went.  Of course it might just have been New England exercising the gang’s Rock n’ Roll genes, no more than that.  Sam kept his discontent sotto voce by which I mean between the lines.  Bob, with his need for conflict invited not only his old flame Joan Baez and his new flame Joni Mitchell but his wife Sarah playing each against each.  Baez who grows more Mexican with each passing year seems willing to put up with whatever Bob does.  Shortly after the tour Sara came downstairs one morning to find Bob dandling a strange beauty on his knee for breakfast.  Well, you know, she threw in the tower after that, as, who wouldn’t?  Bob seemed to be perfectly dismayed by this untoward turn of events.  ‘Women in my family just don’t divorce.’  He whined uncomprehendingly.  Well, at least, not without due provocation.

Joni Mitchell Looking Out Her Window

     That leaves Joni Mitchell.  She’s apparently been stewing about her treatment for thirty-five years.  She just recently expressed herself by saying in effect that Dylan is just a god-damned phony.  Well, Bob can always go join Joanie in that bomb shelter in Viet Nam.  They can exchange rings made of the fuselages of American fighter planes, if they haven’t already.  So, how sincere is their devotion to this great land of the once free and no longer brave?  It would seem their loyalties lie elsewhere.

     In my own obtuseness, quivering in my own psychological bomb shelter, I never saw Bob as a revolutionary in those far off days but then I was just listening to records, I didn’t know anything about him; boy, I sure have remedied that situation.

     Back in those palmy days of the early sixties before racial and religious animosities had reached their present prominence I don’t know that anyhbody really thought of Dylan as a Jew.  Certainly the name Dylan is not Jewish and I’m not sure how many people would have known Zimmerman was.  Or, that they would have cared.  In those days everyone cheered when Israel won one of those too frequent wars.  Now, though, one has to put Bob’s religious affiliation up front.  Make no mistake, he’s a fundamentalist, believes the Bible is the literal word of god.  Orthodox.  Chabad Lubavitcher even.  Thinks the universe is fifty-seven hundred years old like his deceased mentor Rabbi Schneerson.   Swear to g-d.

     Must have picked it all up from Rebbe Rueben who came West from Brooklyn to Hibbing to indoctrinate him in Lubavitcher lore for his Bar Mitzvah.  Like Bob said, he learned what he was supposed to learn.  He very cleverly inserted the stuff into all those songs too.

     Bob broke his mind in the excesses of the sixties, that high mercury sound he was seeking was the result of all those amphetamines he was shooting back then.  Andy Warhol had his boy pegged.

     In the late sixties and early seventies Bob had to rebuild his personality and he rebuilt it around his religion.  His Mom was real proud of the way he had his Bible open on a stand in his living room so he could jump up and check it as the occasion arose.

     Then as he got back on his feet he aligned himself with Meyer Kahane’s violent extremist revolutionary Jewish Defense League carrying a couple of JDL thugs around with him as bodyguards.  Maybe his Jewish revolutionary mode was getting too obvious so in ’77 he began hanging out with Jews For Jesus and the Christian Vinyard Fellowship organization.  Once that clouded the picture he reverted back to his Lubavitchers where he has been since.

     So on the Rolling thunder tour one may be excused for thinking that he was in his revolutionary phase.    Sam Shepard doesn’t mention it but his experience left a very bad taste in his mouth which he expresses with as much force as Joni Mitchell really has.

     On the tour Bob did the strange thing of wearing white makeup which has remained a mystery.  It shouldn’t be really.  Remember the tour was to end in a successful attempt to free a Black man while the Black boxer Muhammed Ali was unstage at the Garden.  A Garden party a la Ricky Nelson, get it?  The Revue was actually a parody of the Minstrel show of what Greil Marcus would call the old weird America.  In the old Minstrel shows the White actor wore black face in imitation of Black people.   This may sound strange to you but Jews don’t consider themselves White notwithstanding their pale complexions they consider themselves Jews and goys as White.  So, in disguising himself in White Face he was parodying the old Black Minstrel shows while mocking his ultra-White New England audience.

     Bob Dylan was having the time of his life.  The joke was on the Honkies.  Funny, huh?

     As noted, the keynote of the tour was the final concert at Madison Square Garden at Christmas where he took on America over the issue of  the Black Hurricane Carter and won.  Now, compare that Christmas show with the 2009 release of Bob’s Christmas album.  Seemingly done straight it also mocks Whites.  In Bob’s video for the song It Must Be Santa Claus you may have noticed that the audience showed minimal diversity.  The airheads were all White.  Bob comes prancing through wearing a lank blonde White girl’s wig, climbs into a balcony and stands looking down his nose in his wig at us all.  It’s great.  Nobody gets it.   There is something happening here but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jo-o-o-nes.

     Jewish power vs. American power, make no mistake.

     Sam jumped ship before the end of the tour, he’d had enough, but he was there for the Garden party.  He can’t even force himself to dissimulate a complimentary attitude as he did at the beginning of the Minstrel show.  And then the final confrontation between the playwright and the singer.

     At this point is is clear that the Rolling Thunder tour is something Sam wished he hadn’t gone on and an experience he preferred to forget.

     Shepard closes with a chapter concerning the opening of his play The Geography Of A Horse Dreamer.  I don’t know the play but it may have been based on Rolling Thunder.  In the play Sam names the horse Sara D.  Dylan is in New York at the time wanting to see the play.  He wants to make his entrance in company with Sam.  Sam writes:

          ..so I’m in the hotel lobby waiting for the Cadillac convertible to haul us over to the theatre.  The big boxcar camper pulls up outside and Dylan hops out.  My stomach does a full gainer as I see him approaching the hotel.  The idea of him sitting in the audience is more like a nightmare than a blessing…He pauses at one of these signs (reading signs in the lobby) long enough for me to scuttle past him out into the street and hail a cab.  It’s bad enough knowing that he’ll be there without having to ride there with him in the same car.

     So not only was the tour distasteful to Sam’s sensibilities but the experience of first hand acquaintance with Bob has also left a bitter taste.  Well he isn’t the only one.  The evening of the opening of Sam’s show is not going to improve relations.

     …the so-called curtain is being held up for Dylan’s late arrival.  He shows up plastered, along with Neuwirth, Kemp, Sara and Gary Shafner.  They take up a whole row.

     So whatever the cause of the conflict Dylan is reciprocating  his disrespect fully.  He means to sabotage Sam’s show and then leave early too.

     At intermission Sam doesn’t see Bob so he hopes he’s left the theatre.  No such luck.  Dylan comes out of the toilet.

     He sees me standing there and pauses as though trying to bring certain thoughts into focus.  “Hey, Sam, what happens to this guy in the play anyway?’  I’m dumbfounded for a reply but come out with something like, “That’s the reason for seeing the second act.”  He stares at the floor, his knees shifting slightly as though he’s about to go into a nose dive.

     “Hey, how come you named that horse in the play Sara D?”

      “That’s the name of a racing dog in England.”  It suddenly cuts through me that it’s also the name of his wife.

     “I mean it’s the name of a greyhound.  A real greyhound.  You know the kind that race around the track.”

     He smiles and shuffles through the door, almost making a left turn into the light booth.

     Apparently Dylan didn’t find that answer any more satisfactory than I would have.  Something is going on here, isn’t it?

     As the play draws to its end Dylan makes his move.  Shameless.  Pure chutzpah immersed in chocolate sauce.

     Dylan stands in the back row.  “Wait a minute!”   Who’s he yelling to?  The actors?  “Wait a second! why’s he get the shot?  He shouldn’t get that shot!  The other guy should get it!”  Lou Kemp is trying to haul him back down in his seat….

     Dylan is struggling to free himself from Kemp’s hammerlock grip.  Neuwirth is telling him to shut up…Finally the Sam Peckinpah sequence begins, with shotguns and catsup all over the stage.  Dylan leaps up again.  “I DON’T HAVE TO WATCH THIS!  I DIDN’T COME HERE TO WATCH THIS!

     Apparently the Rolling Thunder tour didn’t end until Sam had written this play and run it by Bob.  Dylan didn’t like the play any better than Shepard liked the tour.  Hard feelings everywhere.

     Apparently Bob used people much too roughly.   He managed to either blow off a number of people immediately following such as Shepard, Jack Elliott, Neuwirth, the maligned Larry Sloman and probably the whole film crew while Joni Mitchell has weighed in thirty-five years on.  We have yet to hear from a number of other people, most notably Roger McGuinn.

      Bob managed to trash everybody including the USA with his Minstrel show for the 200th anniversary year.  Which revolutions was he leading?  I don’t think this stuff is funny anymore, do you?

 

Bob and Joan, Joan and Bob?

Conversations With Robin Page 5

 

Conversations With Robin

Page 5

Conversations betwen R.E. Prindle and Robin Mark

Concerning certain musical questions.

     Who me?

     I was born in Dixie

     In a boomer’s shack

     Just a half mile from the railroad tracks

     My daddy was a Fireman

      And my mama dear

     She was the only daughter of an engineer.

     I’m one of those who had to flee the South to escape the degrading slave economy.  Off to bloody Kansas where we fought the Slavers to make K a free State.  Of course after the war I fled Kansas, as who wouldn’t, for greener pastures.  Did you ever wonder why Baum told Dorothy You’re not in Kansas anymore?  What a drag it would be growing old in Kansas.

     Of course, I always remember the Song Of The South and Uncle Remus with great fondness being a sentimental Alabaman.  The real Alabama exists only as a figment of the imagination while the prewar Alabama is the dream.  The South shall rise again and trample the Puritan bastards.  You can feel it happening.

Nazis?  There never have been any American Nazis except in the imaginations of Communists or Jews.  In the twenties Communist became a dirty word but they had no counter name until the Fascists arose in reaction to the Commie finks.  Then in the late twenties, early thirties the Commies were able to polarize American society by calling former  ‘Red baiters’ Fascists.

     Calling Americans Nazis is a Jewish thing that arose in the late fifties and early sixties when Jews wanted to stigmatize persons they found objectionable.  Nobody in their right mind pays attention to this Jewish-Commie garbage.  Sorry to have so say this to you because I know how sensiteeve you are to Jewish criminations.

     But, if you will be archaic, a religious anachronism, there’s little that can be done about it.  Always best to be scientific and discard the useless past.

     What’s happening with Expecting Rain?  I checked the message boards but couldn’t find anything.  I’m not signed in.  Did you?

     Just remember one takes invective lightly.  I apparently blew them out with the Warhol thing but that’s an expected reaction.  Guilty of it myself when someone hits me with something new that turns out to be true no matter how preposterous sounding.  Give ’em time to digest and come around.  They will, they have to because I gave them some accurate history.

     As far as the UofO I know I’m guilty of heresy but Toynbee is a great master of history, per se, interpretation is something else.  By the way A Study Of History is not ‘a book’.  It’s a massive twelve volume, six thousand page masterwork.  I didn’t just pick up a few facts but in depth studies of what Toynbee considers civilizations, all the way from the Eskimos to the Chinese and all stops between over 10,000 years of history.  It’s an amazing product of one human mind.  Better than 3000 mikes of LSD for expanding the mind.  Hits about that hard too.

     The problem with Cal State was that as ex-high school teachers the ‘profs’ were used to dealing with immature sixteen year old minds.  By the time I got there I’d been in the service for three years, in the work place for four.  So, you know, a certain amount of incompatibility.  In other words, I had the abrasive personality they thought,  not them.  Besides I was pretty tightly wound back then.  Same way today, I see no reason to talk to anyone who sleepwalks.

     Another interesting story is that after Kennedy was shot, being in an ‘intellectual’ atmosphere I was going around saying that Robert was up next basing my opinion on the Gracchi of ancient Rome.  I don’t suppose any of those Bozos had ever heard of the Gracchi.  Anyway they turned me into the FBI and the next thing you know I’m talking to three- one, two, three- Agents.  Wanted to know how I knew about it like maybe I was one of a team of assassins.  I don’t think they’d ever heard of the Gracchi either.  Seemed kind of disappointed after my historical lecture.  Didn’t have to be so insulting though.  They called me I didn’t call them.

Second entry 3/07/10

OK Robin, I’m going to talk about Albert Goldman now and I don’t want you to come unglued.   The guy does seem to have some interesting facts, if they can be relied on.  What do you have on Parker’s setting Elvis up with the draft board?

     And then, Larry Geller.  Elvis’ regular hair dresser Overbite or Orifice or whatever can’t keep his appointment; Geller is sent over from Jay Sebring’s salon.  Sebring is Streisand’s hair dresser.  Are we making any connections yet?  Could Streisand have wanted to sack Elvis but not know how to go about it.  Too much of a condescension for her?  Did she want to corrupt him?  Anyway substituting Geller for Orifice is an obvious power play.  Sebring just told Orifice to take a hike, he was out.

     Why Geller?  He’s an esoteric who captures Presley’s mind with what an ignorant Goldman thinks is rubbish.  So Goldman, Streisand, Geller are Jews.  Sebring probably although I’ve never considered him.  So, whether you like it or not the Jew-Goy thing is operating.

     Now, Goldman constantly denigrates hillbillies, rednecks, Southern people  and the South in general.  Very irritating to an old hillbilly like me, dare I say Goldman is a bigot?  Let us then conclude that Goldman represents the attitude of at least the Hollywood Jews.  So, Geller is there to play with Elvis’ mind.  Take over, take charge.  I’ve been through this myself.

     According to Goldman Geller introduced Elvis to 24 esoteric titles among ‘hundreds’ of others that Elvis is said to have read while reading many of the 24 two or more times and making a 25th title The Impersonal Life his Bible.

     As it is I’ve read many of the 24, in fact, I’ve read nearly everything Goldman implies he had read implying he is one hell of an informed guy.   I’ve read the Golden Bough twice, all twelve volumes or whatever and some of those three times so  it may be said that I can walk in Goldman’s path.  I know what’s being said here.  Generally speaking this is a very good list of esoterica, classic but good.  Unlike the nut Goldman who doesn’t believe the Gnosis is religion, I know it is, but it is religion and you know my views on religion.  The Gnostics were a part of history and thus cannot be dismissed or ignored.  I find it hard to believe a hard partyer like Elvis had the patience to plow through Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine by Madame B.  Each is 1500 large pages long and requires a historical background to put it in perspective.  Elvis couldn’t possibly have had that, nor did Geller.

     The Urantia Book is a massive, large page 2500 page mind scorcher than can double as science fiction. It is a really interesting scientific/religious volume but once again it requires real concentration and then some, but a real mind boggler.  Drugs and partying?  Well, we’re all different but such a reading regimen seems a stretch.

     And then the list contains some wonderful stuff by Manly Hall and his Philosophical Research Society.  You’re down there so you could drop into their book store and library.  Hall is a good writer and is as well versed as any in esoterica.  Short books, no problem for Elvis.

     Max Heindel is not so smooth but his Rosicrucian Society is terrific.  The Cosmo-Conception is worth reading and even think about.  His outfit is still down in Oceanside by San Diego is you want to drop in on them.  It would be worth it.  I’ll have to check out a couple items on the list like The Sacred Science Of Numbers.  Numerology is an important historical study.

     Over all a fine list of esoterica but I can’t believe Elvis actually read it all plus hundreds of others.  About the time Geller came into his life he was down to ten years or less remaining.  I can’t even believe that Geller had command of this stuff.  He couldn’t have been that old while at 50 pages a day some of these books take a couple months to read.   Seems like Geller was being provided titles by an organization like the ADL where scholars have organized all this stuff.  It’s just to unreal to believe Geller had even heard of all these titles, most of which are really obscure.

     I have to believe that something is wrong here.  Goldman is either just showing off his knowledge or he’s flat out lieing.

     Since this stuff is anathema to his Jewish sensibilities, the reason he objects is that the  books give no precedence, no pride of place to Judaism, in fact, tacitly dismiss Judaism, Goldman is probably putting Elvis down although inadvertantly paying him one hell of a compliment.  If Elvis could get through the Urantia Book he is one hell of a guy which is an inadvertant compliment to myself because I have.

     Anyway The Swami  chapter was very interesting.  Applying your Elvis erudition what do you think?

 

Exhuming Bob 22: Prophet, Mystic, Poet?

 

Exhuming Bob 22:

Prophet, Mystic, Poet?

by

R.E. Prindle

http://www.forward.com/articles/120548/

Looking for a direction hom.

 

    Back in the early sixties a film appeared under the title: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence.  It was a Jewish fable clothed in Western Americana not unlike Bob Dylan’s lyrics.

     The story line is about how to deconstruct one legend and reconstruct it to suit one’s purposes.  The gist is that once a falsehood is enshrined  as legendary truth it is impossible to debunk it.  This film and notion was obviously for goyish consumption.  As we know from experience a whole culture with a long history can be ‘debunked’ with minimal trouble if you control the media.  Thus in fifty short years Americans have gone from  being the most benevolent and generous people on Earth to the most destructive self-centered Nazi types.  Furthermore Americans were conditioned to believe it about themselves.  ‘Why do they hate us?’

     The secret was contained in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence.  One of the primary agents of that change was the prophet, mystic ans seer, the very Jewish Bob Dylan.  I left off poet because at best Dylan is merely an effective lyricist.

     A San Francisco Bay Area fellow, Seth Rogovoy, has written an essay on Dylan with the above title without the question mark.  Stephen Hazan Arnoff who is the executive directory of New York’s 14th St. YMHA has written a review of Rogovoy which he subtitles ‘Jerimiah, Nostradamus and Allen Ginsberg all Rolled Up Into One.’  High praise indeed, if unwarranted.  Just as Mr. Arnoff inflates Dylan’s significance he grossly inflates that of the pornographic so-called poet, Allen Ginsberg.  Perhaps it is time to use techniques learned from ‘Liberty Valence to debunk the reputation of Dylan.

     Dylan is no prophet, he is merely topical using enigmatic phrasing to give the appearance of depth.  There is little actual difference between the topical material of Dylan and Phil Ochs.  Mr. Arnoff improbably writes:

(Dylan’s) prophetic persona is particularly resonant in his first few albums where songs like “Blowin’ In The Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin'” sets the gold standard for prophecy in popular music.

     Prophecy in popular music?  What’s that?  Actually neither song is prophetic.  ‘Blowin” actually refers to the past of Dylan’s youth in Hibbing although topically it has usually been extended to represent the then current civil rights activities in the South.  ‘Times’ is merely a cocky know-it-all sneer at politicians who aren’t aware that the kids are alright, on the move, have a voracious apetite to eat them up.  Both songs have borrowed tunes (no crime or even sin in my estimation) and, if Rogovoy is correct lyrics cribbed from the Bible.

     As Mr. Arnoff notes, Rogovoy chooses a single critical lens- Judaism- for understanding Dylan and his work.  No fault in an essay, pointing out the Jewish influence in Dylan’s work.  Actually Mr. Rogovoy is no innovator or pathfinder, the same material has been adequately covered by numerous investigators including myself in a series of essays.

     But Mr. Arnoff  also notes there are other avenues to approach the songs that Mr. Arnoff believes are equally valid:  Greil Marcus explains him as a mystic raconteur of the secret history of the United States, coded thorugh traditional music while Christopher Ricks describes a master interpreter of classical Western literature and thought.’  (cough, cough)

     While Greil Marcus is another good Jewish boy I hardly think he is a responsible authority on anything.  He takes roughly the same approach as Mr. A.J. Weberman while the latter is vastly more entertaining.  I have to combine Mr. Marcus and Mr. Ricks.  While I certainly respect Dylan’s intelligence and acumen I would have to question both the breadth and depth of his education.

     Dylan attended high school in Hibbing, Minnesota which is a far cry from any of the leading cultural centers of either the Western or Eastern worlds.  I grew up in a slightly larger town up North than Dylan although probably not much different than Hibbing intellectually.  I keenly felt the lack of intellectual opportunites when I went out into the large world.

     There is a question as to whether Dylan graduated from high school while he never attended college.  Immediately immersing himself in folk music he left Minnesota for NYC.  There he found people with libraries of which he availed himself while boarding with them.  This was a very brief period during which he could only have picked up names and impressions such as he employed in his song Desolation Row.  His girl friend Suze Rotolo introduced him to more culture than he could have imagined from 1961 to 1965.  This could not have been much.

     During that time Dylan spent a lot of time writing songs, drinking and drugging and touring.  Not a lot of opportunity to become a ‘master interpreter of classical Western literature and thought.’  I have no idea what Mr. Arnoff means by ‘classical.’  I doubt seriously if Dylan is any authority on, say, the pre-Socratics.  If Mr. Ricks believes as Mr. Arnoff represents him I would have to question Professor Ricks’ qualifications for his post.  There’s something wrong there.

     Now, as to Mr. Marcus and his mystic raconteur of the secret history of the US.  What secret history?  Dylan says he studied the ante-bellum South from newspaper accounts in the archives of the NYC library.  This would have been over a couple of months only.  As near as I can tell he did so with an enquiring and open mind and is fully capable of making cogent observations.  This however is scarcely a secret history while being only one brief period and region.

     What Dylan has done is immerse himself in the songs of the US.  He says that when he visited Carl Sandburg it was with the itent to discuss Sandburg’s ‘American Song Bag.’  One certainly has to respect Dylan’s song knowledge and his excellent taste.  This knowledge however is well beyond Mr. Marcus’ ability to understand.   He, as far as I have been able to ascertain had nil knowledge of songs and music until he joined Rolling Stone Magazine in the late sixties.

     Up in Hicksville Dylan immersed himself in every kind of music, without discrimination.  He was fully conversant with Hillbilly as his native music.  The Carter Family was a living entity to him and not an academic study.  All those now obscure names were living legends to him and not mere footnotes at the bottom of a page.  Thus while Dylan’s Jewish influences are prominent, uppermost and dominant he nevertheless has a foot in both cultures.  His American culture is musical however, and what sounds like ‘a secret history’  to Mr. Marcus is merely the hillbilly interpretation of  ‘revenuers’ ‘white lightning’ and such.  I do not see Dylan as a ‘classically’ educated man.

     Mr. Arnoff displays his Jewish bigotry when he says:  Messianic Judaism (or Jews for Jesus) is the weakest form of interpretation for Dylan.  So far as I know no one interprets Dylan’s work through the lens of Messianic Judaism.  However it is equally apparent that Dylan was interested enough to study the topic carefully.  That says more for Dylan’s open mindedness than Mr. Arnoff’s narrow minded bigotry.  One must be ‘open minded’ n’est-ce pas?

     As Mr. Arnoff notes, Dylan always said he was ‘a song and dance man’ and I think that says as much as need be said.  Anyone who has been able to entertain a significant audience nearly fifty years now has to have a serious talent.  One should bear in mind though that Dylan appeals to a relatively small and well-defined audience he himself defines as ‘the abused, misused, confused, strung out ones and worse.’  This is his core constituency to which he ‘kvetches.’  Apparently English isn’t good enough for Mr. Arnoff.

     Dylan’s greatest song is Positively Fourth Street which is maximum kvetching.  I considered myself abused and misused when I first heard the song.  The lyrics had me slavering like one of Pavlov’s dogs when he heard the dinner bell ring.  But, like Pavlov’s dog there wasn’t really anything on the plate.  Once I passed through that phase of my psychology I lost interest in Dylan.

     While Dylan has managed to retain, recruit and entertain his audience he is far from the man who shot Liberty Valence or Jeremiah, Nostrodamus and Allen Ginsberg all rolled up into one.  I’m afraid that’s one legend that will be debunked before it’s formed.

     Kvetcher or not I still can’t listen to him.

    

Conversations With Robin Page 3

< Wep> 

Conversations With Robin, Page 3

Conversations between R.E. Prindle And Robin Mark

 

     Well, well, well.   Robert Goulet.  I should have known that filthy bastard would be mixed up in there somewhere.  What amazes me is that Guralnik could write two fat volumes on Elvis and never mention the Mob once.  I think we can begin to integrate Elvis’ Mob conflicts pretty clearly now, although research will have to establish the connections for sure.

     For starters, entertainment is a Mob industry both records and movies; that includes both Jews and Sicilians.  If you haven’t read Gus Russo’s Supermob yet, do so.  The Sidney Korshak role at MCA is crucial.

     Anent shooting out TVs remember that Sinatra had a plane he called Superwop or something to that effect so it is clear he bore a grudge against the Anglo world.   The plane was a small ‘Lear’ if I remember correctly.  Elvis went out and bought a 707.  Big plane, big penis; little plane little penis.  Not exactly true in Frank’s case, but you get the point.  So at least Goulet and Sinatra.  I can understand why Dean Martin tried to distance himself from those creeps.

     Parker must have had the business dealings with the Outfit.  As he ran into gambling problems the only commodity he had to barter was Presley.  Thus he would have had to ‘sell’ Presley to keep both his legs under him.  Elvis’ rapid deterioration could have been because of his realization that he was ‘caught in a trap.  I can’t get out.’  Devastating awareness.  One could only retreat into booze and/or drugs.

     Now, Leiber said that he and Stoller at one time worked for the Mafia.  This wouldn’t be unusual nor should it  be held against them because if you’re in entertainment you’re involved, like it or not.  The question is when were they involved, for how long, and for what purpose.

     We all know Fabian was a Mob creation.  Why not others?  If you haven’t seen and studied The Girl Can’t Help It, do so.  The movie is an alegory of the record business.  Everything you see in the movie is the Outfit in action.  In the fifties every Juke Box in America was stocked by the Outfit.  You didn’t get your record stocked unless you were Mobbed up somewhere along the line.  Someone recently told me that the girls on the Dick Clark Show were prostitutes and Bandstand was used to showcase them for Johns.  Don’t know that it’s true but I wouldn’t be surprised.

     Leiber and Stoller could have been co-opted to write songs for, say, The Coasters.  A Black act with interchangeable personnel.  Kind of an early Back Street Boys.  I don’t know but I’d like to hear Leiber talk about it.  Might prove enlightening.

     So, let us assume that the Colonel was drawn into the Mob scene from the beginning of Presley’s movie career.  That might explain some of his stupid decisions and those dumb movies.  Perhaps Parker didn’t have a free hand but was ‘wise’ enough to figure out that something is better than nothing.

     Then after Vegas Presley was increasingly drawn into orbit until he learned the horrifying truth.  Guralnik seems to have his head up his ass as far as I’m concerned.

     As Presley learned the truth looking forward to forty more years of slavery he found drugs more comfortable than reality.  Possible, it would make things make sense.

  

 

 

Exhuming Bob 21: Will The Real Bob Dylan…?

 

Exhuming Bob 21:

Will The Real Bob Dylan…?

http://contemporarynotes.wordpress.com/2009/04/05/greil-marcus-bob-dylan-bill-ayers-barry-obama/

http://meaningfuldistractions.wordpress.com/2008/06/05/the-times-they-are-a-changing-again-bob-dylan-on-obama/ 

Dylan

      Our friend Bob Dylan has given the impression that he knew nothing of Barry Obama, The Great Black Hope, until the summer of 2008 with just a few months left in the campaign when he gave the candidate his endorsement.  Surely this isn’t so.  Surely he not only knew of the Hope but knew him personally probably before 9/11/01.

     In my essay Bill Ayers, Greil Marcus, Bob Dylan and Barry Obama on my Contemporary Notes blog, linked above, I posit that all four knew each other and of 9/11 before it happened.  Impossible, huh?  Stranger things have happened.

     I hadn’t thought about it much after writing my piece but then a few days ago- 7/22/09- I came across a post by one Lark, The Times Are A Changing (Again):  Bob Dylan On Obama.  Lark quotes Dylan on Obama in the London Times.  Let’s review it:

     Dylan begins:  “Well you know right now America is in a state of upheaval.”

     True enough.  Many sorts of upheaval.  What sort of upheaval does Dylan refer to:

Bomber Billy Ayers

     Poverty is demoralizing.

     Can’t argue with that.  Is he talking about coal miners, fruit pickers, the unemployed, or what?

     You can’t expect people to have the virtue of purity when they’re poor.

     More problematic here.  Purity isn’t a virtue it’s a state or condition.  Has nothing to do with poverty.  Well, Dylan’s a poet, one of the enigmatic kind, so I presume he may mean honest by pure.  But which people, is he talking about Blacks?

     Well, I come from a long line of poor people and so far as I know we were the kind described as ‘poor but honest.’  In other words we didn’t steal or cheat.  I’m not sure how scrupulous we were about lieing.  Seems to be a much more common fault.  I’ve been around the block a few times now and I’ve come to the conclusion that crime has nothing to do with poverty.  Rich or poor a thief steals and is well able to justify his thefts.  Need I point out the 50 billion dollar thief Bernie Madoff?  Or about the raft of Rabbis just arrested in New Jersey for some very serious financial crimes.  And then I read about this reasonably well off  one guy who stole some records because he thought he could use them better than the rightful owner.  So it may be common to think you have to be poor to be ‘impure’ or dishonest but mistaken nevertheless.

     Bob makes himself a little more clear:

     But we’ve got this guy out there now who is redefining the nature of politics from the ground up…Barack Obama.

     Naive but sincere.  Spoken like a true cheerleader.  ‘This guy out there’ sounds like affection if not familiarity to me.  So now, when and how did Dylan become aware of the Hope?  As I conjecture it Greil Marcus is the key to the riddle.  I’m guessing, but my guess is that Marcus’ curiosity led him to introduce himself  or be introduced to Bill Ayers, the ole Mad Weatherman Bomber,  probably in Chicago.  Ayers and Marcus being of the school of  Whiteness is a plague on the Earth probably quickly came into accord.  And then the Hope was probably on the way under the sponsorship of Ayers so Marcus and the Hope were introduced when certain anti-American and anti-White plans were discussed probably among them a projected attack on America.  Certainly one remembers that Ayers had already made several bomb attacks on America so why not the Big One…the Really Big One…the World Trade Center.

Greil Marcus

    Dylan and Marcus are pretty close.  Dylan is either a Lubavitcher or close to them.  Lubavitchers hate Whites, especially of the Christian sort.  That partially excludes me by the way, White but not of the Christian persuasion.

     As it appears that Dylan was much more familiar with the Hope than he let on and his album Love And Theft seems to reflect a pre-knowledge of 9/11 coupled with Marcus’ Rolling Stone article as detailed in the link to my essay above, there is every reason to believe, or think, or fear that Dylan, Marcus, Ayers and Obama were privy to 9/11 well before it happened.  Possibly if not probably in on the planning stages.

     Dylan goes on:  He’s redefining what a politician is, so we’ll have to see how things play out.

     If the Hope is redefining what a politician is then the definition is toward that of an African chief.  An African chief owned every bit of his territory personally.  He owned every inhabitant as his slave to dispose of as he wished.  He was free to do with all as he chose with or without their consent.

     That seems to be how the Hope  is playing things out.  True, the Hope is somewhat hobbled by the remains of the old political system but with his Liberal allies he has so far met with no insuperable resistance.  To oppose his plans is to be vile.  So far the fear of being considered vile has prevailed.

     Then Dylan:  Am I hopeful?  Yes.  I’m hopeful that things might change.  Some things are going to have to.

     Well things have changed.  Many of us believe the way things are changing is in a direction more destructive than beneficial.  In short the Hope is already a complete failure.  We’d all be pleased to have a detailed opinion from Dylan on whether his hopes have been realized.

     Dylan then closes with a platitude:  You should always take the best from the past, leave the worst back there and go forward into the future.

     Yep.  Sure enough.  I suppose the argument would break down over the issue of what’s best or worst and which has been left behind.    There’s no doubt we’re headed into the future.  Some kind of future at least.

    

Exhuming Bob 15: Dylan’s Jesus Years Re-examined

 

Exhuming Bob 15:

Dylan’s Jesus Years Reexamined

by

R.E. Prindle

https://idynamo.wordpress.com/2008/11/17/exhuming-bob-14-the-law-and-bob-dylan/

https://idynamo.wordpress.com/2008/10/19/exhuming-bob-13-fit-5-bob-as-messiah/

http://www.forward.com/articles/14574

     Stephen Hazan Arnoff has broached an interesting possiblity in his Jewish Forward article cited above.  He implies that Dylan is a ‘messianic’ Jew in conspiracy with Mitch Glaser and Al Kasha of Jews For Jesus to promote Jesusism as a sect within the Jewish faith.  I think there is some evidence to support this contention.

     First let us review the nature of Jesus and relationship to the Judaic faith at the transition from the Arien to the Piscean Age.  So far as I know there are no authentic third party references to the Jesus hubbub in Israel.  Whatever happened in Israel regarding Jesus was beneath the notice of the outside world.  Thus the only accounts we have of the historical Jesus are the accounts of the various gospels.  These while hagiographic appear to be eyewitness accounts.

     Jesus opposed himself to the Pharasaic establishment.  Because of this the Sanhedrin had the Romans arrest and execute him.  Yes, I know the Jewish version imposed on the world denies this fact as reported by the eyewitnesses but as the story becomes meaningless outside the context I’m going to stick to the ‘official’ story.

     With Jesus removed from the scene the Jesus sect within Judaism flourished nevertheless.  The Pharasaic establishment persecuted the Jesusites onto death.  Often referred to as Jewish Christians this is a misnomer.  The Jesusites didn’t become Christians until after Paul combined Jesusism with the Greek Kyrios Christos cult and the ‘savior’ became Jesus the Christ combining Greek and Jewish influences.  That is, he was the Messiah, the Mahdi, the Awaited One.

     Jesus the Christ then expanded out of Judaism and the very last in Judaism became the first in the world.  The Jews because of the Jewish heretic, Jesus, then made Christians their enemies both within and without the faith.  One might compare Jesus to Judaism as Luther to Catholicism.

     The Jesus sect has always existed within Judaism.  Then sometime in the seventies of the last century Mitch Glaser and Al Kasha formed the sect Jews For Jesus and began to proselytize.  Initially Glaser was in San Francisco and Kasha was in LA where Dylan ran into him.

 2,

     Now, the question of Dylan’s interest in Jesus arises.  Dylan, I believe, has the emotional problem where he must be in rebellion against whatever.  Whatya got? As Marlon Brando intoned. Also the movie Rebel Without A Cause was Dylan’s favorite.  Thus, while he was indoctrinated by Rebbe Reuben Meier, a Lubavitcher, which is to say Ultra-Orthodox and reared by a father and mother of the same persuasion he was in rebellion against those authorities.  There can be no question that Dylan was reared as a Jew of the Jews and accepted the role.  When Jews For Jesus came into existence Dylan may have found the vehicle for his rebellion against his Orthodox upbringing.  Nothing could be more rebellious to the Orthodox Lubavitchers than turning to the arch Jewish heritic, Jesus of Nazareth.  Forget this Christian stuff; Dylan was never a sincere Christian.  As a Jew of the Jews there was no way he could have been.

     Now, it appears that he took up with Al Kasha in LA before he turned up at the Vineyard Fellowship.  Dylan was very close to Kasha not only living in his house, old habits are hard to break, but he was given a key to it.  He composed many of his religious songs on Kasha’s piano.  There is no flirtation with Christianity here.

     There must therefore be an ulterior motive in his exploitation of the Vineyard Fellowship.

     Let’s follow the sequence of events.

3.

     Having written and recorded Slow Train Coming Dylan the decided to introduce his new persona and songs in the city of San Francisco.  Why SF?  Los Angeles has the largest concentration of Jews in any one city in the world.  Why not there?  Perhaps because SF also with a very large Jewish population was the Rock mecca of the world.

     Now, an interesting thing happens.  Dylan already has a close association with Jews For Jesus.  Having been a house guest of Kasha while udoubtedly becoming a convert to Jews For Jesus it seems improbable that Mitch Glaser hadn’t also spent some time with Dylan at Kasha’s place in LA.  What could be more natural?

     Well, gosh, now we go through a charade where Jews For jesus ask if they could proselytize outside the Warwick burlesque house where Dylan was playing.  No answer.  Then someone ostensibly from Dylan’s organization calls and says Dylan’s amenable.  Well, Glaser’s no fool, he and the other Js for J  get their heads together and determine to ask for passes as proof.  If those are at the window they’ll know Dylan is sincere.

     What’s going on here?  Obviously this had been planned for months.  Dylan is a Jew For Jesus, he knew Glaser pretty well.  So why the mysterioso act?  Possibly because Dylan wanted to dupe the real Christians, however many of these might have attended his shows, while allowing the Js for J intruders access to any obvious Jews attending for proselytization purposes.  Dylan had a very large following amongst the Jews so a very large proportion of the audience would be Jews.  Sort of making it easy for them to crack that hard nut.

     As Arnoff says of the Js for J:

     (The Jews For Jesus were) almost universally regarded by non-messianic Jews as being beyond the margins of organized Jewish life.

     Hence they are outside the Law of the Talmud.  Thus we have the meaning of Arnoff’s title: Jesus, Bob: To Live Outside The Law You Must Be Honest.  Dylan was now both outside the Law and dishonest in Arnoff’s mind at least.  A marked man.

     However, confusion here, not long after:

     Dylan submitted fully to the Law that provides a singular answer to plow through the doubt, paradox, hurt and unbelief…

     What more do you need?  By that Arnoff means that Dylan submitted to a course in re-indoctrination from Orthodix Lubavitcher Rebbes.  If you believe that there’s a bridge that isn’t too far called Brooklyn with your name on it:  Fool.  Arnoff should think this through twice.  It’s not alright.

     The Beatles were bigger than Jesus and Bob Dylan undoubtedly thinks he’s bigger than Judaism.  At least as a Messiah in the Jesus mold.

4.

     So, Joel Gilbert went to a lot of trouble and expense to produce his four hour movie:  Rolling Thunder And The Gospel Years.  Note: Gospel Years rather than Christian years.  In the hopes of spreading his message and failing that, getting his money back Gilbert has separated The Gospel Years from Rolling Thunder and renamed it Inside Bob Dylan’s Jesus years: Busy Being Born…Again!  Still no mention of Christianity.

     Arnoff is nearly beside himself that anyone would promote such a film.  Of course as Dylan said in his song Motorcycle Nightmare:  If it hadn’t been for freedom of speech I would have wound up in the swamp.  Thank G-d for small favors hey?  I don’t know why it isn’t proper to spell God out since he doesn’t exist but that’s the way these people do it, so me too.  But hang on tight.  Arnoff:

     Gilbert’s mere desire may have been to find an audience for his work, but placement of the event by Glaser’s group, as well as messianic Congregation (Jews For jesus) Sha’ar Adonai at The Society For Ethical Culture- founded as a nonsectarian movement by the humanist Jew Felix Adler- added an element of irony to the insult of a messianic soft sell throughout.

     Imagine a nonsectarian humanist Jews of you will.  A contradiction in terms if I’ve ever seen one.  Mr. Arnoff somehow sees himself as nonsectarian while being aghast at the idea of outlaw messianic Jews being allowed to use this ‘nonsectarian’ facility.  As he says the insult of a messianic soft sell.  Freedom of speech.  Right.

     So, what about it?  Was Dylan brought back within the Law as Mr. Arnoff says or is he still a messianic Jewish outlaw?

Well…he may look like Robert Ford

But he feels just like Jesse James.

Addendum:  As a sort of addendum Dylan’s words at the election night bash at U. Minnesota should be looked at more closely.

Now, I was born in 1941.  That was the year they bombed Pearl Harbor.  I’ve been living in a world of darkness ever since.  But it looks like things are going to change now.

     What can that mean?  The first two sentences set the scene for the last two.

     ‘I’ve been living in darkness ever since (I was born in 1941.)  Does that mean that Dylan thinks Pearl Harbor made the world dark for everyone or does it just mean that Dylan has been denied the light personally ever since the day he was born?

     Such a state of things would seem impossible.  Born on 5/24/41, Pearl Harbor was bombed on 12/7/41.  So Dylan wouldn’t have been aware of that until say 1946 or 1947-48.  So, the bombing of Pearl Harbor is related to the bombing or darkening of Dylan’s psyche. He believes himself mentally affected since birth.

     ‘But it looks like things are going to change now.’  Alright.  The change or lifting of his personal darkness is related to Barry Obama.  Dylan’s too realistic to believe any politician is going to change anything, so what does he have to look forward to to brighten his outlook?

     In his vanity he considers himself a ‘great’ poet.  Indeed Christopher Ricks compares him to Shakespeare and Milton.  Dylan introduces himself at his concerts as ‘The Poet-Laureate of Rock And Roll.  (Snicker, snicker.)

     In Chronicles Vol. I in his discussion of the Poet Laureate of the United States he seems to show some interest in succeeding Archibald McLeish in that role.

     The idea had already occurred to me that it might happen but I read on the web recently a suggestion that Barry make Dylan the Poet Laureate of the United States.  It would cheapen the title but perhaps the deal was a Poet Laureateship for an Endorsement.  Cheap enough for Barry while the appointment would apparently lift Dylan’s inspissated gloom.

     Ain’t life too strange for words?

    

A Review: Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home

 

Greil Marcus, Bob Dylan And Martin Scorsese

A Review of the Movie

No Direction Home by Martin Scorsese

by

R.E. Prindle

 

Texts:

Scorsese, Martin:  No Direction Home- A Film

Marcus, Greil:  http://www.powells.com/essays/marcus.html

 

     I’m not the only one that shakes  his head over the rants of Greil Marcus.  The perspective he’s coming from deserves some attention.  Greil Marcus in the disciple, probably the successor. of the decadent leader of the Situationist International, Guy Debord.

     The SI is a crank organization.  Like Hitler they place a lot of emphasis on architecture.  Architecture seems to go with the totalitarian personality.  Unlike Hitler whose goal was a Roman grandiosity to match his Thousand Year Reich, we can’t be sure what SI architecture would be like other than ‘human to make people happy.’  In other words Debord found fault with architecture that the majority were happy with but displeased him.  He seemed to think that he could create some stunning new architecture that might please someone other than himself.  We all know how hard a feat  that is.

     But he ranted and raved actually being influential in the moronic disturbances in France in 1968.  Whatever beauty he proposed we’re still waiting to see.  Greil Marcus still thinks the ability of the SI to transform God, life and beauty is within his grasp.  He runs around America at the public expense trying to drum up the Revolution.  Bob Dylan seems to be the centerpiece  of his plans.  Greil’s reaction to Martin Scorcese’s Dylan movie might then be a little more understandable.

     As film biographies go, and they don’t go very well on average, I thought Scorsese’s effort made the most of not too much.  After all there is really very little earth shattering in the career of Bob Dylan.  Greil thinks Bob brought in something new; at best Bob just brought in something a little different no matter how startling it seemed from the perspective of the times.  From the perspective of this time  one wonders what the fuss was all about.  Nevertheless Scorcese maintained a nice tension of interest.  But not for Greil.

     Martin Scorsese’s Dylan documentary- a shape-shifting assemblage of 1950s and 1960s film footage, still photos, strange music, and interviews with Dylan and compatriots conducted over the past years by Dylan’s manager, Jeff Rosen- never holds still, it allows, say, the Irish folksinger Liam Clancy, telling stories of Dylan in Greenwich Village, to contradict Dylan telling his own stories about the same thing;  the film contradicts itself.  There is nothing definitive here; within the film there is not a single version of a single song that runs from beginning to end.

     So now we’re essentially back to Guy Debord’s SI architecture argument.  Whatever has been created is no good and must be replaced by Debord’s ideas which unfortunately for us we cannot evaluate because Debord gave no examples.  It doesn’t really matter, of course, because if he did their ‘definitive’ beauty and utility would not be, perhaps, so apparent to the rest of us as it was to him.

     So, as Debord’s successor Marcus implies that Scorsese has made a movie as ugly as the architecture that Debord and presumably Marcus despises.  The implication is the Greil would have done much better.

You can imagine Rosen driving up to Scorsese’s door with a truck and dumping thousands of pounds of books, interview tapes, film  reels, loose photographs, a complete collection of Dylan albums along with a few hundred or a few thousand bootlegs, and then leaving, trusting that a fan who also knows how to make a movie to make you watch…could wave his hands and just like that a movie would emerge…

     Well, why not?  I’m not aware of Scorsese’s process but a very fine movie of its type does emerge.  With unerring insight Scorsese seeks out key influences, the most important artists in Dylan’s life, introduces them to the viewer, very likely for the first time, and brings some coherence into the Dylan story.  It’s only a movie though, no substitute for study.

     I do not consider it a fault that Scorsese presents all the high points covered by the four main biographies.  His purpose seems to be to cover the years from Dylan’s high school beginnings to Bob’s nervous breakdown in 1966 which he does.  Although already a long film it is never boring while to cover more ground it would be necessary to condense and eliminate to add anything beyond 1966 making the film unintelligible- something like Greil’s own prose.  Of course, the Situationist International that believes in magic might be able to snap its fingers and make it happen, although I think their blank screen notion might be easier to conceive than something with content.  Besides I don’t believe in magic.

     Greil apparently doesn’t believe in differences of opinion or else he feels that loyalty to his ideal requires everyone to ask what Bob said and confirm it.  Marcusian version of freedom of speech.

     As it is I thought Scorcese very skillfully selected song snippets to bring out the very best of artists like Hank Williams, John Jacob Niles, Makem and the Clancys and others.  His interviews with Dave Van Ronk, Liam Clancy, John Cohen and Suze Rotolo were apt and to the point presenting each as attractively as possible.

     I mean Bob left some bad vibes behind that were not accentuated, nay, even glossed over.

     The key point of the movie was the actual monologue or dialogue carried on with a very careworn looking Dylan.  Time has treated him fairly viciously.  Bob revealed himself as much as a modest man could.  There was very little braggadocio while Bob explained himself in a very natural droll manner.  He was much more charming than first person reports of him would lead you to believe.

     Of course, Greil is fixated on what he considers the revolutionary break with the Folk Tradition with Bob as the Promethean figure bringing electricity to ‘weird old America.’

     Greil apparently believes we viewer have been hoodwinked by Scorsese of malevolent intent as a result.

     So you enter the movie with your ideas suspended and your prejudices disarmed, thrown back- eager to be moved- as in moved from one place to another- as you were.  You’ve been set up; you’re ready for anything.  You’ll buy whatever the movie is selling.

     But by the end- when the film has taken the viewer from Dylan’s childhood to those halcyon days in the spring of 1966, then cutting the story off, cold, with just a little card to indicate that the story went on, Bob Dylan continued to do various things, but it’s not the movie’s problem so good night- you don’t know how it got to “Like A Rolling Stone” starting up on stage one more time.

     By this point Marcus has divorced himself from reality and vanished into the pure rhetoric of his armed prejudices.  He’s no longer talking about the content of Scorsese’s movie.  Greil is contrasting the movie he thinks he would have made, Debordian architecture, with the movie or architecture that actually exists.  An inability to perceive reality that is quite mad in its own way.

     It’s what the Jews call building a fence around Torah.  A mad attempt to prevent reality from disturbing the lovely inner version of not only the way they think things could be but shoud be.  Once again as with Debordian architecture or Marcus’ movie not a vision likely to be shared by many others.  One’s private dreams never would be.

     Greil even disagrees with Scorsese’s title in a rather vehement way:

     …despite that title, “No Direction Home,” from Dylan’s greatest hit, “Like A Rolling Stone”- already used as a title for Robert Shelton’s 1986 Dylan biography- such a cliche, isolated like that, so “On The Road”, so “it’s the journey, not the destination,” so corny.

     LOL.  I suppose so, but it didn’t bother me nor affect my enjoyment of the movie.  The running interview with Dylan unifies the movie while giving us an open window to Bob’s motivations and the working of his mind.  While no song was finished Scorcese has great taste and selected the most moving passages from the songs he showed displaying the remarkable vocal talents of the singers.  I was astonished at the mad approach of John Jacob Niles with its odd setting of his auditors standing over him as he sang.  I melted before Tommy Makem’s rendition of the Butcher Boy. (Don’t know the real title.) while the Clancys were superb.  I’d heard all these artists on record before but the recordings lost all the dynamics of the performances.  Even the old Red Pete Seeger really put his song across live.  The New Lost City Ramblers unfortunately were as stiff as their recordings.

     By this time I suppose most people reading this have seen Scorsese’s movie but for those Dylan fans who haven’t the movie is highly recommended.

     As for Greil I can only cite the words of the old Children’s game:  Greil Marcus, Greil Marcus, come out, come out, from wherever you are.

A Review: Conquest Of A Continent by Madison Grant

 

A Review

Conquest Of A Continent

by

Madison Grant

Madison Grant

Review by R.E. Prindle

Texts:

Grant, Madison, Conquest Of A Continent, Liberty Bell Publications, 2004. Reprint of 1933 Edition

Fischer, David Hackett, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways In America, Oxford, 1991

Higham, John, Strangers In The Land: Patterns Of American Nativism 1860-1925 Rutgers U. Press 1955

Myers, Gustavus, History Of Bigotry In The United States, Random House, 1943

Wittke, Carl, We Who Built America: The Saga Of The Immigrant, Case Western Reserve, 1939

     In the immediacy of the moment one frequently overlooks or forgets the history leading up to the moment.  One might think for instance that the current flap over Diversity and Multi-Culturalism is a recent occurrence.  While the two terms are of recent provenance the argument under different names goes back much farther while the protagonists are essentially the same.

     The story of immigration into America is almost always told from the point of view of the immigrant.  Few books tell the tale from the Nativist point of view and they are universally and viciously derided as a tale told by bigoted idiots.  While charity is demanded from the Nativists none is to be expected from the immigrationists.

     Thus we get volumes like Strangers In The Land by John Higham and Carl Wittke’s We Who Built America that distort the issue in favor of immigrants while deprecating the Natives.

     Qustavus Myers’ History Of Bigotry In The United States on the other hand appears to be a willful misunderstanding of the nature of the relative status between immigrant and native resulting in a slanderous approach like that of the contemporary Greil Marcus.

     Conquest Of A Continent has been placed on the Jewish Index Of Anti-Semitic Books.  Based on that I expected a detailed derogatory examination of the Jews from their entry into America perhaps being the conquerors referred to.  The President of the American Jewish Committee sent a letter to every Jewish publisher in the United States demanding that they refrain from either reviewing the book  or noticing it at all.  Dynamic silence was to prevail.

     After reading Conquest I can only conclude that the AJC was hyper sensitive to a degree.  Since his 1916 Passing Of The Great Race Mr. Grant had learned that ‘You Don’t Mess With Rohan’ to quote Adam Sandler.  Grant all but ignores the Jews in his volume.  No, his offense, according to the AJC was even more egregious, he uses the world Nordic and dares to imply that they are ‘the Great Race’ rather than the AJC’s own Semites.

     The other volumes mentioned and, indeed, all writing in this genre which is pretty extensive, defers to the Jews as ‘the Great Race’ probably genetically superior to all others.

     So Madison Grant is interested in telling the story of how the Nordic race conquered the continent.  This approach can only be considered as a sin by non-Nordics.  Grant then tells the story of how the US and Canada were occupied by peoples other than the native Indians.

     He begins early referring to twelfth century attempts to settle by Scandinavians.  In the 1100s the firece native Indians were able to exterminate the invaders and may well have been able to exterminate the Puritan settlers but for the fact that a small pox epidemic shortly before the Puritan arrival had reduced the native population by as much as half while weakening them concomitantly.  Such is the luck of the draw.

     Grant thus traces immingration back to its origins colony by colony and then State by State as the Nordics moved Westward.

     David Fischer in his excellent Albion’s Seed retraces the same ground fifty years after Grant with much addional detail concerning the places of origin and their activities once in the US.

     Grant’s approach is in some ways superior to that of Fischer since as an unabashed Nordic advocate he is interested in detailing the exact racial content of the occupation of the various states and provinces.  If you aren’t aware of the progress of settlement and by whom there are numerous surprises.  My own notions were certainly vaguer before I read Grant.

     I was surprised at the seeming numerical superiority of Southern migrants in the Westward movement.  It seems that Whites did not like to live in the South where they were compelled to compete with slave labor while being despised by both the plantation owners and their slaves.  Thus there was a constant stream of the best and brightest  of the South moving into the North and West.  As Grant notes, Virginia was the mother of States.

     Then too some of Grant’s population statistics are of interest also.  At the 1790 census before the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 there were less than a million Africans in the United States.  Seventy years later as the Civil War began the number had increased to four and a half million. Thus natural increase was out of the question.  It follows then that between 1800 and 1860 more Africans were brought to the US than there were before 1800.  As a result the slave trade fluorished more than ever.

     Prior to 1800 Alabama and Mississippi had no settlers so that in 1860 these two States were still rough frontier States still in a state of organization.

      There is much good background here as to how the US came under settlement.  The continent was accupied in its entirely when the truly major immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe began to accelerate in the 1870s and 1880s changing the basic Nordic institutions  of the country.  The change in Grant’s eyes was much for the worse.

     Carl Wittke’s We Who Built America published in 1939 was undoubtedly in response to Grant’s Conquest Of A Continet.  Wittke, was published by Case Western Reserve University.  Grant explains the meaning of The Western Reserve which has always puzzled me.  The Western Reserve was three million acres set aside as a concession to the State of Connecticut for giving up other territorial rights.

     Wittke made a great impression with his his volume, his opinions being taken as overriding fact.  I remember my sixth grade teacher in Michigan lauding the book to the skies.  I finally read it a couple years ago.  Not so much.

     As is usual with books and writers of this type Wittke overstates his case and underproves his facts.  A contribution to the dialogue at best.

     Grant’s book should prove useful to any unbiased reader.  If his attitude of Nordic superiority offends you, ignore it.  His history as history is sound.  For those of you reared on Myer’s History of Bigory attitude you will probably be surprised to find that there is another point of view.  Bigotry is not a matter solely of American destestation of immigrants as the program of Diversity and Multi-Culturalism indicates, bigotry is a red herring and not the issue.  The issue is who will be Top Race.  The contestants for the Top Spot have turned out to be the Africans, Semites (both Jews and Arab Moslems) Hispanics, Chinese and Euro-Americans. (Grant’s Nordics)  As you can see race has replaced nationalism.

     The contest is real and ongoing.  Peace is merely another form of war.  The prize will go to who wants it the most.  If you don’t see the contest in these terms I suggest you remove your rose colored glasses.

Exhuming Bob 11: Bob And Toby: A Review Of Positively Main Street

 

Exhuming Bob 11:

Bob Dylan And Toby Thompson

A Review

Positively Main Street

Text:

Thompson, Toby: Positively Main Street, U Minnesota Press, 2008 reprint of the 1971 edition.

Forty Miles Of Bad Road Later

     Toby Thompson’s self identification with Bob Dylan is an interesting situation.  In a way he predated the Elvis impersonators; blazing a new trail.  That he recorded his infatuation on the spot and got it into print is even more fascinating.

     I suppose people have always identified with important people as the insane asylums full of Napoleon Bonapartes indicate, but when the movies came into existence things changed.  Movie actors were designed to appeal to certain character traits making identification with the actors more accessible.  That the actors came from social strata much like one’s own with no apparent effort or skills made identification easier.  (See the novel Merton Of The Movies by Harry Leon Wilson)  When sound was matched to image one could act like and even talk like these heroes.

     Older people being formed already were more immune than younger people so that the John Wayne imitators, Bogarts, Jimmie Stewarts or what have you began to surface in numbers beginning in the fifties.  Still there was a psychological distance between the people on the screen and oneself while a direct imitation brought ridicule on oneself.

     Then in the mid-fifties Presley burst on the scene.  Here was a guy who drove truck, we were told, one day and was a major recording star the next.  Then, as immediately as it seemed to all of us, more to some of us than others, he parlayed that into becoming a movie star.  That was just about every teenagers dream.  Now that was something we all could do and a great many of the most venturesome did get at least to the level of recording stars but they all wanted the movies.

     Presley was the first who created a legion of impersonators.  The movies formed a cadre of amateur impersonators but Presley spawned a full frontal impersonation for a profit; People who became Elvis Presley as a surrogate for themselves.  This began fairly early in the Presley career too.

     Then as the sixties hit young people were conditioned by phonograph records.  Records were the way the generation communicated with each other; They took the place of movies and literature.  One could still write books or rarely, like Presley, make it into the movies but anyone with enough ambition, little training during the sixties and none in the seventies, could make a record.

     This was no more evident than in the case of Bob Dylan.  Quite frankly my own first impression was that here is a talentless guy putting out records.  If Dylan could do it, if I wanted to, I could.  It then became easy to identify with Dylan.  Plus he was a nobody, had never even been to college.

     After I and many others had written his early records off he surfaced in a way to seize your attention, however his appeal was limited to a certain psychology.  But, now, in the twentieth century via records and radio if there were only a million of any certain type those million could make an artist very, very successful, viz. Janis Joplin.

      When Big Brother And The Holding Company with Janis Joplin released its first CBS disc the record went to the top of the charts on the strength of a small minority of the public.  The vast, and I mean vast, majority of the public had never heard of the band or Joplin.  I was in the record business at that time and was astounded that a relatively few hippies made a group and singer unkown to 9 1/2 out of ten, at the minimum, could send a record to the top.  Hippies were not known to take care of their possessions.  They trashed that record in a week or two playing it perhaps a hundred times or more then coming back to buy another one after another.  Each one of those sales contributed to the accumulation of a million so the entire course of American music was swayed by the success of a record purchased by a very small percentage of the population, and the lunatic fringe at that.

     So with Dylan.  Dylan provoked a violent split in society.  Just as Pat Boone was opposed to Elvis as a role model so Simon and Garfunkle were opposed to Bob Dylan.  In 1966-67 the S & G faction was much larger than Dylan’s.  Bob got more TV attention however.  His cult was as the misunderstood, oppressed genius, the Outsider who was shucking the world.  You can see where his fan base came from.  So, all of us who were in that category became devoted, almost obsessed, advocates of Bob Dylan.  I was one, I’m merely analyzing not being superior.  I never went as far as Toby Thompson in my obsession but then I didn’t think of what he did either and I was six years older.  I already had a life of my own, such as it was.

     The younger people took to the pop stars with ease.  We had Jim Morrisons, various Beatles and Stones or whatever as well as Dylans walking around campus, people completely immersed in the various identies.  I don’t even have to p[oint out the Deadheads and they were truly legion.

     So Thompson’s notion of reliving Bob’s youth in his own person while extreme was not completely imcomprehensible.  Still psychotic but borderline as he never completely lost contact with reality.  Really interesting because unlike Freud’s Schreiber he was able to write a book about it even as it happened.

     Thompson was born in 1944 being  three years younger than Bob thus being able to look up to him as a role model.  Being three years older than Bob I always looked down on him as a younger sibling who was somehow outshining me.  The identification was there nonetheless.

     Through 1966 Bob befogged us all.  Blonde On Blonde was such a towering effort both musically and lyrically that it was incomprehensible.  No one could understand it.  Some of it you couldn’t even listen to but you were convinced it was a work of genius.  The people who called it mere noise weren’t entirely wrong either.  Philistines nonetheless.

     I knew that Bob had peaked along those musical lines and there would have to be a model change.  But then the word came out that Bob was dead, close to it or paralyzed from the eyes down.  He disappeared from the stage for a while but as he wasn’t dead or paralyzed we all stood with out faces turned to Woodstock waiting for news from the East.  We all, being those of like psychology.

     Then Bob dressed like Billy the Kid or some other Western desperado released John Wesley Harding.  the psychology was changed.  What had drawn us in for ’64 to ’66 was the muse using Bob Dylan as an instrument and he now had been discarded.  I dropped him as did many others.

     A year later Toby Thompson conceived the idea of searching out Dylan’s roots in Minnesota.  He didn’t go as a mere reporter though.  He went as a Bob Dylan impersonator.  There was Toby Thompson standing in Bob Dylan’s shoes.

     The Thompson that emerges from his telling is a very disturbed young man of twenty-four.  His intake of alcohol and marijuana was prodigious.   Of course, he’s telling a story, but I can’t recall one day that he wasn’t stone drunk.  He keeps a pint in his glove compartment.  He gets so drunk he stands on his head in the middle of a dance floor and can’t remember it the next day.  The guy must have smelled like a brewery all the time.  I’m sure the fumes coming from him when he interviewed Dylan’s mother in the daytime gave her a very negative opinion of him.  Robert Shelton, Dylan’s biographer, future biographer at this time, had been out to Minnesota the year before.  He was a professional Journalistic persona older than Dylan’s friends.  Thompson was three years younger and appears to have been accepted on a personal rather than professional basis.  After all he had no journalistic history, he was only going to write.

     On that basis he formed an intimate relationship with Dylan’s high school sweetheart, Echo Helstrom.  I’m going to concentrate on that aspect of the book for this review.  Bear in mind that she is three years older than Thompson.

     Thompson’s visit to Hibbing must have had the locals’ heads spinning.  Thompson, in his book, doesn’t seem to be aware of the impression he was creating.  From his description it seems that he appeared among them as a Bob Dylan impersonator.  Bobby Zimmerman left Hibbing ten years earlier, became Bob Dylan, and now ten years later this guy shows up impersonating him.  Doing a good job of it too.

     One can only imagine what Hibbingites thought. 

The idea of this guy pictured below going forth to conquer the world  of popular music appears to be absurd.  We all have known kids who wanted to do the same.  We may even be one of those kids but the odd

       Look Out Little Richard

of succeeding were about a million and a half to one.  How could anyone even suspect that Bobby Zimmerman, the kid above, from the virtually uninhabited North Country would be the ONE.  Everyone in town must have been laughing up their sleeve, like the guy on the right above, when Bobby Zimmerman sallied forth to ‘join Little Richard’ and conquer the world.

     Now, this guy Thompson using his own name came posing as a journalist but impersonating Bob shows up.  Thompson seems surprised at the reaction of Maurice and Paul Zimmerman, Bob’s uncles, but can you imagine being interviewed by a guy talking and acting like your nephew Bob.  It’s kind of crazy.  Imagine what Beattie Zimmerman, Bob’s mother, thought sitting across from Toby doing Bob.  Maybe that’s what Bob meant when he said ‘This guy Toby Thompson has got some things to learn.’

     Nobody knew what was going on there, did they?

     When Bob and John Bucklen and Echo Helstrom were kids, like many another group of Musketeers, they swore that if one of them made it he or she would help the others along.  Well, Bob made it but he forgot John and Echo.  No big deal.  Teenage vows even spoken in earnest have no meaning after the fact but the promise lives on in the innocent hearts of those who aren’t pulled through by the successful one.  There is a sense of betrayal.  Added to that there was romantic ill will on Echo’s part because of Bob’s eleventh and twelfth grade betrayal.

     Bob is making it big while Echo just has a job.  A young woman trying to make her way has a tougher  row to hoe than a guy.  But, if she knows how to work it she does have a story that’s worth at least a couple three or four years worth of wages.  She doesn’t know how to market it though.  Robert Shelton came out to Minneapolis a year before Thompson and paid her a hundred dollars for an interview.  She held the hundred up to Toby as hint but he wasn’t thinking that way.  She was only going to get screwed by Toby, literally.

     If Toby hadn’t been in an alcholic haze he might have realized that the story Positively Main Street was only subsidiary to Absolutely Sweet Echo.  The money was with Echo.

Echo When She Knew Bob

          As they’re driving up Highway 61 Echo pulls out a hundred dollar bill and says ‘See what Robert Shelton gave me for an interview.’  The light still didn’t go off in Thompson’s head.  He reached into the glove compartment for his pint.

     I am astonished at the amount of alcohol Thompson consumed on these trips.  If he isn’t novelizing the guy was in a virtual stupor the whole time.  When he and Echo arrive in Hibbing they go to a bar where Toby becomes blotto on beer, no less.  He has no memory of the moment but Echo tells him that he stood on his head in the middle of the dance floor as coins and keys showered out of his pockets.

     Echo must have been one tolerant girl or else she was hoping for something to happen.  Perhaps a large part of the charm of Positively Main Street is the stunning unconciousness of Thompson.  The guy was twenty-four years old at the time, not a kid- exactly.  He had been telling Echo he was going to write a book.  When he gets the first trip written up he sends her sixty pages.  Echo writes back:  ‘Sixty pages isn’t enough for a book is it?’  She has reasons to be disappointed.  Heck, Toby is using her to attempt to make his fortune and he hasn’t even promised to cut Echo in for a dime.  Think about this.  The self centered naivete shines through with startling clarity.  For that reason it is one of the most interesting books in the the Dylan canon.

Echo When She Knew Toby

     Now, in these sixty pages Toby has misunderstood what Echo told him about the time Bob called her on the phone and played Bobby Freeman’s Do You Want To Dance claiming to be singing the song.

     In his sixty pages he projects a better story where Bob shows up on Echo’s front porch playing guitar and sings Do You Want To Dance then strutting all through the house singing and playing somewhat like Elvis in the dime store in King Creole.

     Echo points out this error.  Toby liked his version so much he left it in the way he first wrote it.  Then when Echo introduces this Bob Dylan impersonator into his parents home Toby whips out his quitar and reenacts his version of the incident strutting around the house as he plays and sings.  The guy was absolutely out of his mind in his alcohol haze.  He must have smelled like a brewery the whole time.

     One is astonished that he was so well tolerated.  Of course maybe everyone was thinking:  ‘This is amazing, but it won’t last long’ and let it pass.  Waved his car goodbe as he sped away.

     One wonders what Echo’s emotional rection to the Bob Dylan impersonator was.  Toby must have reactivated dormant affections for Bobby Zimmerman as he came on to her strongly in Bob’s persona.  Echo had ten year old memories of Bob and now here he was, his double, coming onto her again.  Frightening actually.

     Toby left again and never returned.  In the book he seems oblivious to the havoc he created in Echo’s life.  In the interview at the end of Main Street given many years later he doesn’t seem to be any more aware.  In fact he seems to be still posing as Dylan’s double.  He mentions that he still contacts Echo, who has moved to LA, occasionally as does Bob but Bob seems to have better success in finding her. 

     Hurt and mystified that Thompson had no more use for her she wrote a poem for him that she mailed to him in far off Washington D.C.

Hey! Toby!

Where can you be?

Somebody told me

That you went back to

Washing Machine D.C.

How can that be?

 

You came to town in your Volkswagen

And I’ll tell you we sure had fun!

And now you’re gone!

 

You played for me on your old guitar,

Took me for a ride in your little car,

Drove me near and drove me far,

We looked at the moon,

And stared at the stars,

You stood on your head in my hometown bar…

How could it be you’ve gone so far?

 

Hey Toby?  Where are you?

– Echo Helstrom

     Toby hadn’t gone anywhere.  Like Bob he’d just never been there.  His fantasy like Bob’s didn’t include anyone else, they were just bit players in his own movie.  Toby was no longer thinking of Echo.  He was married to the bottle.  He was touring bars across the country to get material for his next book.  Echo could just consider herself as one of those bars.  Once Toby had visited it there was no reason to return.

     The tragedy for Echo was that she was betrayed once by Bob in 1958 and then again by a Bob impersonator in 1968.  Perhaps a wound was created in her heart that could never heal.  One wonders what her later history was after she left Minneapolis and drifted West.

I wonder where you are tonight.

I wonder if you are alright.

I wonder if you think of me

In my lonely misery.

There stands the glass,

Fill it up to the brim,

Till it flows o’er the rim,

It’s my first one today.

-Webb Pierce.

     Here’s to old memories.  Bottoms up.