News from Nowhere

Last night BBC4 offered us Masked and Anonymous (2003): a film written by Bob Dylan, starring Bob Dylan, that I had never heard of - how could this be? We watched it without expecting too much - we have, after all seen Renaldo and Clara - but the cast was respectable, and the soundtrack offered an interesting mix of Dylan singing, and of other people singing Dylan. On that basis, I was not disappointed. Roger Ebert really didn't like it, but although he is hostile, he isn't far off the mark: the movie he criticises is the movie I saw. It's just that he didn't like it, and I - well, I didn't like it exactly, I wouldn't claim to have followed much of what was going on, and I rolled my eyes at much of the dialogue - but there were pleasures to be had, too.

In a country in the throes of revolution - the sort of country you'd hope to get away with festooning with fairy lights and calling "south of the border" (filmed entirely in LA), and the sort of revolution in which revolutionaries are the good guys until they take power, when they must be opposed by counter-revolutionaries who are much the same - Uncle Sweetheart (John Goodman) is putting together a benefit concert. Ostensibly, this is to benefit some charity or other, because that's how you get rock stars to play; Uncle Sweetheart plans that it should benefit him, because he owes money to the wrong people; and the new President wants the public relations benefits. There will be only one star, whose career has gone downhill to the point where he is now in prison, and he is released in order to play: this is Bob Dylan, going by the name of Jack Fate. The naming convention of the film does not invite the audience to see him as a personification of fate: Uncle Sweetheart is not a sweetheart, and Jeff Bridges' obnoxious journalist Tom Friend is not your friend. In fact:

... you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now
The hour is getting late...

Was the name chosen purely to justify the backing band employed for the concert, described as a 'Jack Fate tribute band', being called 'Simple Twist of Fate'? Don't know, but it amused me. I liked, too, the way the artist immediately slots himself into the group, and the next thing you know they are playing an easy-listening version of Dixie: I have a theory about Bob Dylan, that all he wants is to play along with whatever band is playing at the time, and certainly this seems to be true of Jack Fate. Would he actually have gone along with the set list provided by the President for the benefit concert: the Beatles' Revolution n° 9, Won't Get Fooled Again...? Who knows? We never get to the benefit concert, because things fall apart in a shoot-out worthy of Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts. In fact, the whole narrative feels like something from one of Dylan's songs, and it might have worked better in that form.

But then we wouldn't have had Tinashe Kachingwe as Mrs Brown's lovely daughter, a child who has been presseured by her mother into learning all of Jack Fate's songs. She sang, clearly and sweetly, unaccompanied, The Times Are a-Changing, and I'd have been sorry to lose that moment. Is that the intended response? All those present listen with exaggeratedly thoughtful expressions, and the soundtrack layers Fate's (not obviously connected) musings over her voice, so who knows. It was my response. Despite all the less-than-wonderful stuff Dylan has done in his life, the wonderful songs remain wonderful, and not only do we have his recordings, we can and we do carry on singing them.

Five things make me feel better:

• Sometimes when things are out of stock, you just have to make do. Ocado didn't have my preferred olive margarine / spread, so I increased my butter order. This morning we buttered our hot cross buns - and there was mirabelle jam, also supplied by Ocado (though I recognise the 'Reflets de France' brand from French supermarkets). Breakfast, best meal of the day ...



• I have telephoned an order to Broom House Farm, which was as stressful as I anticipated. I have ordered meat and a lemon drizzle cake, and it's all necessary supplies, but you can't browse when every item involves asking a very stressed person do you have any ... I had anticipated the worst of both worlds, whereby I order by phone and still have to collect, but another customer from our street will be collecting tomorrow, and will have their arm twisted to deliver for us, too (I didn't recognise the name, but do know their next-door neighbour). And maybe another time, you could deliver for them? asked Jane Grey. Good plan ...



• Neanderthal string (with thanks to poliphilo for the pointer). There are plenty of small objects with holes in them, which is evidence of their being hung from some sort of cord, but that could be leather or animal sinews: now archaeologists have found some actual, twisted from vegetable fibres, string.



• The pandas at Hong Kong zoo are enjoying being left in peace.



• When you're lost in the rain in Juarez, And it's Eastertime too ... The Guardian ranks Dylan's 50 best songs in order - and that isn't even one of them. Some surprising decisions, and not just because they have placed songs I don't know above those I do. All together now:
  

  I see my light come shining
  From the west unto the east
  Any day now, any day now ...

We are on the train, northbound, homeward bound, and the sun is low and red ahead of us. It is not a happy train: first it had to make a detour to avoid a trespasser on the line who refused to move, then it had to make an unscheduled stop to take on the passengers from a failed train. It was already quite full, and now it is very full, and we are sharing a table with some youn Americans who are getting more fun than I would have thought possible out of a pack of cards. But the train is moving, and there is the sunset ahead of us, and a full moon behind us.

We came south at short notice for the funeral of a cousin: we had known since earlier this year that she had cancer, and that things were bad, so this was not unexpected. She's been there all my life, and though geography never made us close, she brightened every event when we met: she had great warmth and charm - and it was a good funeral, because I came away from it feeling that personality through the reminiscences of her family and friends. A funeral's a bad thing, because it means that someone has died; but when someone has died, actually a funeral is what you want: a chance to say goodbye in the company of other people who are missing them.

As a bonus, we stayed with the Bears, who also came to the funeral. But first, last night, they took us to a Clean Cut Kids gig. The Kids are Keith Taylor and Richard Cryan, and they sing Dylan. I can't link to the YouTube video, because the train's wifi blocks the site, but scroll down their Twitter feed and there's a link there. If you recognise the name, you'll know that they range across the full Dylan repertoire: the earliest song they did (by a comfortable margin) was Blowing in the Wind (and the latest was probably Early Roman Kings, though I'm not reliable on the last decade or so). The best, I think, was also their least faithful: Highway 61. Disclaimer: Richard and Keith are friends of the Bears, and by now I have probably known them long enough to claim them as friends myself too. So I may be biased. But if you like Dylan (and I do) the Kids are alright.

Update: we are now in Newark Northgate, and the guard has announced that we are currently delayed by a balloon on the overhead wires.

Today is Bob Dylan's 70th birthday; Saturday was Martin Carthy's. For the best part of 50 years they have been the fixed stars in my musical firmament. They are the two faces of folk music as I know it, the singer-songwriter and the reviver of traditional material, yet they are not opposites. The first Bob Dylan album I bought* credited Martin Carthy as the source of the tune for Bob Dylan's Dream. I wish I had been there when they were playing the Troubadour together.

I wish them both many happy days, and I thank them for all the music.

---

*My cousin Michael recommended two new folk singers, Tom Paxton and Bob Dylan. He told me that Dylan had made an album called Bob Dylan, but when I went to buy it I found there was a new one, Freewheelin', so I bought that instead.

Just been watching a tv programme we recorded last night, a repeat of an old documentary (celebrating thirty years of the Arena arts programme with a series of repeats, no expense spared) tracing Bob Dylan's early influences up and down Highway 61.

Plenty of maps showing this amazing road running north-south through the centre of the US, from the Canadian border, through Dylan's home town of Hibbing, south all the way. The core of the programme was a conversation with John Bucklen, the school friend with whom Dylan had spent a couple of teenage years discovering music, about their early taste for R & B. This was woven into a tour of the musical associations of the highway - Elvis lived here, Bessie Smith died there, down to New Orleans where Little Richard made his records.
( A note in passing )
It's interesting material, if not quite enough to sustain the length it's spun out to. But the main effect, watching it now, is to amplify the tune that had already been running in my mind, Highway 61 Revisited, Dylan filling the road through New Orleans with some of his most apocalyptic visions:

Now the rovin' gambler he was very bored
He was tryin' to create a next world war
He found a promoter who nearly fell off the floor
He said I never engaged in this kind of thing before
But yes I think it can be very easily done
We'll just put some bleachers out in the sun
And have it on Highway 61.

Damn. Missed it. The recording of Bob Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone, 40 years (and two days) ago today.

Michael Zulli is painting one more portrait of Morpheus: the last, the best, the definitive portrait. He's publishing a diary of his progress [dead link removed], and it looks terrific - a classic Joshua Reynolds court portrait. The only thing is, as it stands right now, it's a portrait of Bob Dylan.

This doesn't bother me as much as it might: in fact, it makes a lot of sense. A lot of Dylan's great songs could easily be dreams (not to mention the ones that are explicitly "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" etc.)

What's more, of all the famous figures that people dream about (as in, people's dreams about the Queen, or Madonna), Dylan's the only one who's ever visited my dreams.

So one way or another, I think Michael Zulli has put his finger on something here: I suppose he's done it consciously...?