Expecting Rain

I figured it was using these guys as a metaphor.... http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/king ... ofRome.htm

I'm sure Bobby is very familiar with the writings of Plutarch.

but i could be dead wrong

As I spend a lot of time recycling Jimmy Reed and Slim Harpo riffs It's kinda hard to knock Blobby for his recent use of common blues changes but much as I enjoy some of them I'd prefer something more, ahem, 'original' - I don't think the riff for, lets say, Frankie Lee & Judas Priest was noticeably lifted from elsewhere.... I see a lot of people referring to mannish boy but this is much lighter than that riff, it brings to my mind the great 'no money down' by Chuck Berry, although there aren't many changes in that. Sounds like fun but not epic - fair enough. But weren't they actually Emperors, not Kings, back in ancient Rome? I guess that's a hard word to rhyme but he could've made the song about penguins.... then I really would have liked it!

Rome was ruled by kings before the founding of the Republic and well before Imperial Rome.

Everybody's reading up on their history today. Good, well done.

Bob liked to read his history, too, and he'll fill you in on the rest.

You know, this is an excellent result of Dylan's writing style. His audience will be auto-didactic Liberal Arts scholars. Mix the dry histories of the Greeks and Romans with a spoonful of blues and a dash of murder ballad and it goes down smooth.

Yes. This used to be common knowledge, before education went to sh*t.

That's where I found the song (potentially) interesting. The 'early Roman kings' ended up getting turfed out and one of history's greatest examples of free republic erected in their place. If we read the lyric as making an analogy between today's financiers/power-brokers and those kings, then the song acquires an edge through their implied parallel fates: "They too shall fall. And America, like Rome, shall rise, free from enslavement."

But if it's just about thugs from the Bronx, then...whatever.

This sounds like a nice way of saying soulless, antisocial word machines.

Noooooo. Never dry.

Actually, it was a single. I have the 45. Backed with "Bye and Bye."

It wasn't released ahead of the album though, it was a free promo giveaway when you bought the record.

Hmmm, who could we be talking about here?

I shouldn't say that. We haven't heard the whole album yet, I'm sorry.

Well, it certainly doesn't sound like the radical departure from recent recordings that some people seem to have been expecting and/or hoping for. No bad thing as far as I'm concerned - the bedraggled vaudeville blues character he's playing at the moment suits him perfectly and I see no reason for him to change it dramatically. Where it will sit in the context of the album obviously remains to be seen, but if the rest of the album is as simultaneously conventional and eccentric as this then I can't see any reason not to thoroughly enjoy it.

As for the lyrics, I think the "Noo Yoik Thugs" reading holds most water - he does like a bit of underclass romanticism after all. Maybe you could see it as a companion of Joey in the wider pantheon...

Fairy Nuf - I still wish he'd write a song about penguins

Well, not for people who love them like you. But for weaker souls like me. Ha.

Very dry. Dusty old dust.

I think its a stock western phrase. I'm sure I've heard it in western movies, and I know it was in Frankie Laine's "Rawhide" from the late 50s.

Two thoughts on the lyrics:

The one about each being bigger than all the rest sounds to me like it was lifted out of a draft of "10,000" men. The whole thing has a bit of a dark nursery rhyme feel to it.

The phrasing of "all the ladies goin' crazy for them Early Roman Kings" sound, to my ears, a lot like "everybody's crazy about the Wilbury Twist."

Man, you are just chock-full of hate and condescension. Nearly every post you make seems to be another bit of nastiness for some group you think is a lower form of life than you. Is there anyone you don't think you're better than?

Really? A demeaning attack on people who read books on their own?

Let's see if I can make your posts vanish from my browser...

^
this is like the Tea Party saying it's snobbish for people to aspire to go to college. workin' that class hatred any way they can.

This is all pathetic shit. One big happy community.

Blues music - full of exaggerating, lying and bragging. Easily heard today in it's offspring, rap and hip hop.

First thought was that it was very 10,000 men-ish.

And makes ya want another one...

Bobby played chucks song on theme time radio.