Expecting Rain

An attempt to listen to all of Bob Dylan's studio albums in order over the summer, climaxing with the release of Tempest on September 11! There will be about 2-3 albums per week.

Part 17:
Desire
Release: January 16, 1976

If you're just joining us, catch up! Grab a bottle of your favorite whatever, put Bob Dylan on, and play them all in order through Desire. And then, pry yourself away from the Tempest thread--if you can--and report your Desire responses here!

allmusic review:
If Blood on the Tracks was an unapologetically intimate affair, Desire is unwieldy and messy, the deliberate work of a collective. And while Bob Dylan directly addresses his crumbling relationship with his wife, Sara, on the final track, Desire is hardly as personal as its predecessor, finding Dylan returning to topical songwriting and folk tales for the core of the record. It's all over the map, as far as songwriting goes, and so is it musically, capturing Dylan at the beginning of the Rolling Thunder Revue era, which was more notable for its chaos than its music. And, so it's only fitting that Desire fits that description as well, as it careens between surging folk-rock, Mideastern dirges, skipping pop, and epic narratives. It's little surprise that Desire doesn't quite gel, yet it retains its own character -- really, there's no other place where Dylan tried as many different styles, as many weird detours, as he does here. And, there's something to be said for its rambling, sprawling character, which has a charm of its own. Even so, the record would have been assisted by a more consistent set of songs; there are some masterpieces here, though: "Hurricane" is the best-known, but the effervescent "Mozambique" is Dylan at his breeziest, "Sara" at his most nakedly emotional, and "Isis" is one of his very best songs of the '70s, a hypnotic, contemporized spin on a classic fable. This may not add up to a masterpiece, but it does result in one of his most fascinating records of the '70s and '80s -- more intriguing, lyrically and musically, than most of his latter-day affairs.

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Bob Dylan
Release: March 19, 1962
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The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
Release: May 27, 1963
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The Times They Are a-Changin'
Release: January 13, 1964
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Another Side of Bob Dylan
Release: August 8, 1964
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Bringing It All Back Home
Release: March 22, 1965
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Highway 61 Revisited
Release: August 30, 1965
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Blonde on Blonde
Release: June 20, 1966
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The Basement Tapes
Recorded: June-September 1967 Release: June 26, 1975
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John Wesley Harding
Release: December 27, 1967
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Nashville Skyline
Release: April 9, 1969
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Self Portrait
Release: June 8, 1970
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New Morning
Release: October 21, 1970
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Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid
Release: July 13, 1973
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Dylan
Release: November 16, 1973
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Planet Waves
Release: January 17, 1974
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Blood on the Tracks
Release: January 17, 1975
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Desire
Release: January 16, 1976

Street Legal
Release: June 15, 1978

Slow Train Coming
Release: August 20, 1979

Saved
Release: June 20, 1980

Shot of Love
Release: August 12, 1981

Infidels
Release: November 1, 1983

Empire Burlesque
Release: June 8, 1985

Knocked Out Loaded
Release: August 8, 1986

Down in the Groove
Release: May 31, 1988

Oh Mercy
Release: September 22, 1989

Under the Red Sky
Release: September 11, 1990

Good as I Been to You
Release: October 27, 1992

World Gone Wrong
Release: October 28, 1993

Time Out of Mind
Release: September 30, 1997

"Love and Theft"
Release: September 11, 2001

Modern Times
Release: August 29, 2006

Together Through Life
Release: April 28, 2009

Christmas in the Heart
Release: October 13, 2009

not as great as Blood on the Tracks, i don't think, but still wonderful. some of them, Hurricane, Joey, and Black Diamond Bay in particular, drag on a little too long for my taste, though they great songs. i listen to Isis, One More Cup of Coffee, and Oh, Sister all the time. and Sara is definitely on of my top ten Dylan songs.

the art work is really interesting too, but it fits with the music well.

It's like after Blood, he consciously avoided being so personal (excluding Sara), leaving Abandoned Love as an outtake and writing some great cinematic story/songs (cowrote). My first impression many years ago was the exotic sounds, like Simon's Graceland but ten years earlier. Of course, now the sound I notice foremost is his voice...the best it's ever sounded perhaps.

Isis! "This is a song about marriage!" the casket was empty There was no jewels, no nothin', I felt I'd been had And then it ends with Sara. Wild.

(and yes, I agree, his voice sounds magnificent)

Bootleg 5, in a way, spoiled this one for me: live versions are so damn good, they make it sound kind of flat. Indispensable for 'Black Diamond Bay', though: was that ever performed?

rarely listen to it. I subscribe to the notion of live 75 being better. I do love the idea that he changed his sound so drastically. From 74 to 79 his albums kept changing sounds. Not one album can prepare you for the next. That's pretty rare. Rare here is not a single blues song but mostly ballads, which is nice. I tend to believe it's over rated to extremes but I do enjoy it.

He has not revived that one in concert.

This is a one song album with filler. The one song is Black Diamond Bay, one of his better if sometimes overlooked songs. Everything else is either embarrasingly awful, like Joey and Hurricane and Mozambique and One More Cup of Coffee, or just average but performed reasonably well by Dylan and Emmy Lou Harris. Isis has an interesting lyric narrative, but the sing-song waltz and bombastic performance wore out my interest decades ago. This is the album on which Dylan began to lose command of his gifts and his feeling for how to use them. Had his decline not continued and accelerated, I think more listeners would hear just how silly and overwrought much of the album is, but given the records that followed, it retains something of the charismatic glow Dylan manufactured for himself in the 1960s. The singing is pretty good, especially considering how he bellowed his way through the 1974 tour, but the lyrics often undermine the voice, most egregiously when reminding us that jail is where they "try to turn a man into a mouse." Giving that much fake emotion to such silly lyrics does not reflect well on the judgement or instincts of the artist.

Wasn't Black Diamond Bay supposedly played at the same Salt Lake 76 show that he supposedly played Lily, R&TJOH?

Yes, but this was only stated in one newspaper report at the time, and it seems more than likely that the critic was probably referring to 'Romance in Durango' by the wrong name. Leastwise, that's what I heard.

At the time greatly hyped, played to death, very cool record indeed. Over time and on close inspection a lot left to be..desired.'Hurricane' forgettable,'Joey' romance about an out&out ruthless criminal, a few ditties 'Mozambique' 'One more cup', some good intimate ones 'sara' 'oh,sister', a smallzy cinematic novellette that goes nowhere' Black diamond bay', a fancyful 'Romance in Durango' and one really good song that unfortunelaty is musically a bit tepid 'Isis'. Compared to 'Blood on the tracks' an experiment that falls flat. Very good singing though, but that fiddle, ahrg!! Hard Rain is much better, but on that i prefer the non Desire (except 'Isis') ' memphis blues' 'Idiot wind' 'One too many mornings' 'Maggie's farm'.Had to wait till 'Street Legal' to get back on track.
As much as 'Blood' has risen 'Desire' has sunk..
(don't wake up BB, or he might start barking..

Listened to Desire back-to-back with Live '75.

I read Ratso's book last year and remember him bugging Dylan a few times to go back into the studio and re-record Desire with the 'superior' Rolling Thunder arrangements, and Bob each time saying something like, "aw, man, you know, I already made that record."

^
Do like Live '75 better?

^
I do. It's got more kick to it. But I enjoy the album for the most part--Isis, Black Diamond Bay, One More Cup of Coffee, Romance in Durango...Really dug that quad Desire.

It's amazing how quickly everything goes from mysticism to fundamentalism. And from Sara to Gotta Serve Somebody.

It's always been my alltime fav Dylan album.
(for years it was so by far and large....lately Street Legal got closer, to my ears....still Desire is no.1)

Hurricane, Isis, Black Diamond Bay are absolute masterpieces.
The sound is the best Dylan has ever boasted.
Rivera's violin is his alltime best backing instrument.....
(if I think we've had XXX and XXX for >20 ys now......)

His voice is top of the charts.
The sound is the greatest he's ever obtained.
(the closest to RTR we got in studio....)
The songs are overall adorable, no 12bar blues, no fillers, no dead ends, no struggles, no hindrances, no holes.
Perfection.

Well "Desire" was out many years before the BS therefore, for me, it's Desire. I recall, in the Uk, DJ John Peel played it on his radio 1 show in it' s entirety. I was blown away. It was the first "new" Dylan I bought on release so it will always be special. That, and those crazy days in the Kibbutz clubhouse!

Desire is one of Bob's finest albums; not quite in the top notch but that's because of the nature of its subject matter. The album is a study in romantic escapism. To appreciate it fully you have to abandon all those moralistic hang-ups that tell you escaping is bad and just embrace the passion that is released. It's no more a criticism of Desire to say that it departs somewhat (!) from reality than pointing out that Middle-earth does not really exist is a relevant criticism of Lord of the Rings. As Tolkien said, what's so wrong about escaping from a prison?

Hurricane is the romance of the righteous cause. It's not about Rubin Carter; he's just a prop. I love the way the track starts rather hesitantly and then quickly picks up energy and then just comes rolling in through those speakers.
Isis is the romantic quest. Indiana Jones before his time. Plods a bit because of its bass line but a neat twist on all that Egyptology stuff.
Mozambique is the romance of denial-in-fantasy (though some call it irony). That newly independent nation was riven with bloody civil war, but just imagine ("Imagine there's no hatred - it's easy if you try") what could be true! Why not indulge the desire? The song has a brilliant bridge, too!
One More Cup of Coffee is the romance of mystery. Mystery is so romantic, after all, and they don't come more mysterious than gypsy gals with eyes like jewels in the mysterious heart of darkness.
Oh, Sister is the romance of, well, romance. Love to the ends of the earth, or at any rate, the ocean (I find that line very moving - it does indeed come to an end).
Joey. Ah, Joey! Let's get this straight: if I wanted to find out about the life of Joey Gallo I'd read a biography like any other normal person. I wouldn't listen to a pop song (pardon the language). I couldn't care less about Joey Gallo; it's the story, stupid! Joey is the romance of what things ought to be, the passion for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe.
Romance in Durango is self-evident pure, beautiful romance. From the moment you hear about those red chili peppers you're lost. Brilliant escapism!
Black Diamond Bay moves away from the romantic theme. It distances the pretention, sets it in make-believe TV world, and we come down to earth with a bump, ready for
Sara. Yes, I know: unashamed blubbing in song. I love it! Sometimes romance is the only medium in which you can feel what's real. A paradox, but that's what makes great art.
And yes, there is more going on in the album than just the romance. It is a place "where myth meets reality, where storytelling gives us the refracted and reflected truth, where perspective is skewed to reveal the hidden secrets of the heart. . . Cinema in song." (as Bennyboy said).
So maybe it is top notch after all.

Desire is an album I go through phases with; for a while it will be my most listened to Dylan record and for a slightly longer while it will be on my most avoided list.

The pros of the record are huge - big, sweeping narratives that go so far into fiction that we can abandon all hope of finding the "Real Dylan" and simply enjoy his talents as story teller extraordinaire; Emmy-lou's backing vocals that make the stories so much more affecting'; the sense of an artist using his skills for the purpose of sheer enjoyment and nothing more (or less); some absolutely wonderful playing from the assembled orchestra.

However, if you aren't in a Desire frame of mind then the arrangements can be dirgy, the sentiments confused and the fact that there are countless better versions of the songs from the Rolling Thunder Revue inescapable from thought.

Nonetheless, if you don't own and know Desire inside out then your journey as a Dylan listener is one that is far from complete.

Oddly, I find myself agreeing completely with both Harmonica Albert's assessment and most of theUnwavedHand

(and i just read Pedro's - Bravo! well stated! and welcome to ER!)

The first three legit albums i got from bob in my early acquisition days were: World Gone Wrong (first new release I encountered on my bob curve) New Morning (after falling in love with time passes slowly from biograph) and Desire (because i watched Dazed and Confused and realized i didn't have a compilation that carried Hurricane, and I was left scratching my head as to why that was until Greatest Hits III was released)...

What a strange place to start with bob! I guess it explains a lot about where I ended up...

Well, Desire got a LOT of play during high school and early college. then it did not. for a very long time. I chalked it up to being something sonically wonderful that i was drawn to as a boy (like the beatles, the who, ozzy osbourne and Yes) but something i must have grown out of. I kept it on the shelf for special occasions, like for saturday morning cleaning, every other month or so...

This view changed a bit when I got it on vinyl and the sound was brought to front stage once again. Front stage is a good way to describe this sound. His voice is front and center, crystal smooth, and ambitiously reaching - his harmonica, when used, is soaring above the stage, and the violin - well it does the job as far as bending the ear goes....

That's really the heart of the album i think. digging deep is similar to digging deep into Hemingway - there's good stuff there, sure, and there may be some throwaway stuff, but who cares. This is wine on the ears. I don't find the lyrics part of dylan's best catalogue - but they are not exclusively dylan lyrics - they are desiring of something else...i pass in and out of attention to them. better put, i let them reach to me to grab my attention. much like a lot of music i like from those particular years in music - i'm not seeking to gather any great insights about life - I'm singing along with my brain, whistling with my heart, and nodding with my head.

Hurricane - those are some words - and the beat - the pace - not much to top that. I'm conditioned to not like this after enough plays - but it's one of those songs like Blowin in the wind, the first time you hear that acoustic drum roll, you feel like you must have heard that somewhere (i probably have, and it probably came from Pete Townsend). regardless, it was certainly worth learning on guitar and it was a helluva lot of fun to memorize and sing the lyrics. It has the same aggressive forward tempo that i recall from Absolutely Sweet Marie. so chargingly fast, but inviting at the same time. These days i'm just as happy to start the album with Isis but when i'm in the moment to hear it, Hurricane can and will blow me away.

Isis I heard it live prior to hearing for the first time here, from the biograph collection, so it took a long time to warm up to the studio cut. it's really interesting paired with Hurricane - from an acoustic charge to a piano march. From social concern to narcissistic love...another song that fed a young man's appetite pretty easily. Today - i like the following: the cleanliness of his voice. his forced midwestern short 'a' sound, which i related to. the occasional ironic line or joke. and real subtly cool phrasings, like 'welllll, i guess.' in sum, when it begins, i usually take a piss break or move on to whatever i was doing before i started the album - but no matter what i've begun, the last verse takes me back to full attention...

Mozambique I liked it when i was young. it sounded very different from most anything i had heard from dylan (i think i first heard it on the Australian masterpieces collection, if it was even on it), and i didn't know where Mozambique was, but i wanted to go there after hearing it! now i usually take a pass. The drums i quite like!

One more cup of coffee I find this an absolutely perfect dylan song. again different from almost anything in his catalogue. drums are incredible, bass line hypnotic. the lyrics do the job for me. I bank on and I am revived from life's struggles with cups of coffee in my day to day life, and i have acute fears about that valley below - so it has made my personal anthem dylan songlist easily hands down. i've never hard of the exotic/worldly blues song genre - but if there was one, this song would fall into that category pretty snuggly...

Oh sister the best part might be the first 10 seconds before the lyrics begin, but the lyrics do something for me that not alot of other dylan songs do - they make me think about my family and my relationship to them. needless to say i usually take a pass on this one...

Joey well, for a long time it was very hard to get through this one, but once i had the vinyl side to flip over to break up the repetition between Oh Sister and Joey - i could better attend to it. as in hurricane, i don't think it's too impressive that dylan can put a wordy narrative together - but i do enjoy how each syllable makes it's way into the meter and the melody (host-ag-es were trembling...sister Ja-que-line...one/last/good/bye/to/the/son/he/could/not/save...). the refrain and musical dance that occurs between verses bother me more than anything on this one i suppose, but i never really mind listening to the verses. and again, good bursts of phrasing - 'and i swear he did look great.' I like how it opens. the Mandolin reminds me of Cowboy Junkies...

okay it might be too long. after the 'he did look great' verse, i'm a little tapped out...a version with the chorus removed and just the verses would be very enjoyable for me i think.

Romance in durango Love it musically. love it lyrically. love it love it. A nice tango with dylan's lyric melody and the music behind it -- song starts off wonderfully again - great drums, bass and mandolin?, lyric goes in a very different direction that adds another dimension - by the end of the first verse, all are in harmony. Very clearly, dylan is not only putting on his work desk the way words and phrases can be used to generate interesting messages in songs - he is also tuning into words as a phonetic structure. how to make a word roll and be expressive (Canteeeena) - the way an actor does it on stage. what's wrong with that?? songs like this seem so parallel to the work done on Together Through Life it makes me wonder what happened to benny in the interim to not connect the dots. okay the voice is a lit/tle dif/fer/ent.

The segway into Black Diamond Bay is one of my favorite dylan moments of all time...
followed by all the rest of the moments in this song. everything is perfect about this song so I won't list them. but i especially like the drums again! i may have thought about it being nice to visit mozambique earlier, but I want to find black diamond bay and build treehouse there....guess i'll need a canoe too...H.Alberts words are ringing true - it's like all the other songs were experiments leading up to what is achieved in this song. It's achieved in Abandoned Love too.

Sara i've never understood the complaints against it. i guess i'm biased. i fell in love with it as a young boy. but it worked then and it works now. Initially, I bought the album for Hurricane - and this song + one more cup of coffee + sara were the goto anchors for me, because there was all this exotic instrumentation in the songs in between that I was not familiar with at the time. today, i love Sara for the harmonica. and even the straightforward, obvious gesturing of it. I guess it's the wedding song that works for me. especially the chelsea hotel line. when i played this one with my wife - as we drove through the American Southwest for the first time together, i enjoyed playing this album and telling her the stories behind the song and explaining those chapters in dylan's life. she would never ask me about it otherwise, so it's nice entry point for the part of the population that wouldn't read a dylan biography. given Dylan's dense and indecipherable trajectory for so much of his material - it's a nice breath of fresh air to hear something that appears to be confessional every now and again. it's important, i think, that so many of those moments are directed out towards Sara.

also, the last three closers together send an interesting message: Wedding song/Buckets of Rain/Sara.

I love the kelp and old ship line too. I wonder which word he put into that verse first, kelp or help?

the last note and fade is a fine way to leave an album...

Troub, I HAVE to read this and I will when I get back on here. You know what your post count is??? 4888 I believe? Are you going to sit on it for a while? I will be back in a while to see where you are? I want to be here when you hit the 5,000 mark!! This looks like a great review!!!! Love, Joanna XOXOx

1. Hurricane
2. Isis
3. Mozambique
4. One More Cup Of Coffee (Valley Below)
5. Oh, Sister
6. Joey
7. Romance In Durango
8. Black Diamond Bay
9. Sara

One of the very best albums. Ever.
(especially love Isis, One More Cup, Oh, Sister, Joey, Romance, and Sara)

A magnificent record because of Dylan's voice, the zeitgeist, and the romance and sex drenched atmosphere. My wife's favorite record and she is only a casual fan. As a teenager, "Isis" gave me a glimpse of an adulthood that was far beyond the restricted, bland lives on offer through standard channels. Bob shows that every life is touched by myth and that romance is an archetypal battle, not a walk in the park. "Sara" gave me hope that the fight could be won and a vision of the serenity that might be achieved (not knowing of course, that the singer had already lost). "One More Cup of Coffee" offered a boy a glimpse of the pleasures that a real woman could bring. "Romance in Durango," "Mozambique" and "Black Diamond Bay" filled me with wanderlust and the visceral emotion of the album's title, as I lay in the basement in the dark. "Oh Sister" validated my melancholy nature and the universality of my emotion. "Hurricane" and "Joey" had less personal meaning, but who can resist such good stories, so deeply felt?

Dylan, sprawled there on the back cover in some kind of trance, feeling the world, transmuting it through song into something I could nearly understand.

Maybe not Dylan's best record but absolutely essential to my life.

The whole background music of the album is really strange. But I love it. Bob's voice is great, the lyrics are good, and One More Cup became one of my favorite Bob songs after first listen.
By the way, does Isis remind anyone else of Tangled Up in Blue?

I like it.

I'm bumping this thread up because I wasn't sure where else to put it - I don't think it's been posted before - it's something I knicked from WT - Julien Levy (Jacques' son) talking about his Dad, Desire, Bob Dylan, lots of stuff -
http://www.reddit.com/r/bobdylan/commen ... _lyricist/

Here's some of what he said about Dylan:

Here I am. Sorry, I was just out seeing 'Skyfall.' Pretty sweet. Anyway, here I am at the computer.

I have met Dylan a bunch of times. He came over to the house more when I was a wee little kid, so I don't remember that, but I have met him a bunch over the years.

He's a nice guy. He loves kids, and joking around. He likes to be treated like a normal person. As an example, once, when I was probably 7 or 8, he was in a rush to go, but with the time he had, he and I managed to trade jokes: Me: "What's a ghost's favorite ride at the amusement park? The roller-ghoster. Him: "Where do cows go on saturday night? To the moo-vies."

My mother spent a lot of time with him, independent of my dad. She always talked about how funny he was, how he liked to laugh and have a good time. She said he could never really sit still, he was always looking around for something to do or comment on. She said she had him up at our little house in the Hudson Valley, and he loved it because it felt so far away from everything, and it was totally unpretentious.

My mom told me he took art, literature and poetry seriously. She said he is a great painter. He introduced my mom to the man who eventually became her painting teacher and mentor.

I think he hates being addressed as anything more than a guy, I think he resents being put on a pedestal. My mother said that he liked my father so much because my dad wouldn't just tell him he was doing something great if he wasn't. My dad wasn't afraid to be completely honest with Dylan, and I suspect that aspect of my father's personality is why they had a good working relationship and friendship.

I remember the last time they saw each other. This was about a year before my dad got sick. We walked back stage and my dad went up to Dylan, and the first thing he said was "What the x is this mustache you've got? You look like Vincent Price. And this suit?" he indicated Dylan's pink suit and cowboy hat. Dylan laughed. They just gave each other shit like old pals. It was funny to watch.

Anyway, I don't think that the person you see in interviews etc. is the real person. He's a very interesting, complicated guy. And whose full-measure could be taken in a venue like that? I would defy anyone to be under the kind of pressure he is, and accurately represent a full spectrum of personality.

The writing process I think worked in some version of Dylan spitting out things he'd been working on on guitar or piano, and my dad would spit out whatever struck him as a response to the music. Or maybe they had a plan, and my father would jot down lyrics and they'd refine it with music, bit by bit, adding here, subtracting there--chiseling away at it until it was a fully-realized song. I know that their relationship began when they ran into each other on the street. They lived in the same neighborhood, had met each other before and both knew Roger McGuinn. Dylan invited my dad to write with him, and my dad jumped at the chance. On the strength of their first night collaborating (out of which came 'Isis') they decided to get a house in Long Island, hole up for a while and work. Once they had a bunch of songs, Dylan talked about recording them for an album. My dad was there during the recording process, adding his input. He and my mom had their first date on my dad's 40th birthday--he took her to the recording studio to watch 'Oh Sister' be recorded.

At the end of that, Dylan wanted to begin touring again, and he asked my dad (with his theater directing acumen) to help him create a kind of tour like a traveling circus. Theatrical and whimsical, etc. My dad obliged, and the Rolling Thunder Review was born. To my understanding it was wall-to-wall insanity start to finish. All of my mom's best friends were on the tour, and they're all always telling stories about it.

Anyway: my personal favorite album fluctuates, as I'm sure everyone's does. I'm fan, what can I say? I love a lot of albums and songs for different reasons, and I dislike some just the same. I love the feel of the 'It Takes A Lot to Laugh, It Takes A Train to Cry.' I love the simplicity of 'Bob Dylan's Dream.' I love the sweetness of 'A Simple Twist of Fate.' I love the haunting nature of 'Blind Willie McTell.'

I always cite three particular sets of lyrics when I talk about my favorites of all time though. I think they stick with me because they hit me at important stages in my life.

One I remember so well because when I was growing up, I never really liked Dylan's music, despite my dad's connection to it. And then one day, a day about which I remember nothing else, my mom was driving and I was in the car with her alone. This song came on and I was just rapt at attention during one section in particular. It was as if for the first time, I was understanding what all the fuss was, as if for the first time I understood that people could be moved in ineffable ways by music. The lyric was from 'Mr. Tambourine Man.':

"...Yes to dance beneath a diamond sky with one hand waving free, silhouetted by the sea circled by the circus sands with all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves let me forget about today until tomorrow..."

The second is from a song that Dylan wrote, but the definitive version (I think) is performed by someone else: The Band. In the fog of days that became weeks following my father's death, this song found a very special meaning for me, and I listened to it constantly. It's still the saddest song I know. The lyric I most love from 'Tears of Rage' is:

"...I want you to know that while we watched, you discovered no one would be true And I myself was among the ones who thought it was just a childish thing to do..."

The third (and final, I don't want to bore you to death here) is a lyric that I had heard a thousand times before, but had never really considered until a few years after my father's death when I was self-pitying and angry, and couldn't find direction. It's not so much that the lyric changed anything in me, it just felt like the kind of instruction my father could have given me in a time of such listlessness and confusion, like a flash of clarity when all else was static. 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue':

"...Leave your stepping stones behind there's something that calls for you. Forget the dead you've left they will not follow you. The vagabond who's rapping at your door is standing in the clothes that you once wore strike another match go start anew..."

Anyway, sorry for the long, pseudo self-indulgent answer. People ask me about this stuff and of course, I get to thinking and reflecting. All I have of my dad now is memory and his work, and to talk about my relationship to Dylan is impossible without talking about my dad, so the whole thing is a mess in my head.

Thanks for reading, if you did.