The Never Ending Pool

So I've been away for a week, which explains the lack of posts. Did you miss me?

Anyway, the blog's been updated on the first post. Enjoy!

This is the first time I've read any of this.

But no, we didn't.

Chimes wrote:

QUOTE:
This is the first time I've read any of this.

But no, we didn't.

Okay, that made me laugh.

It also made me think. If that comment was because you think my blog sucks, well, I can't do anything about that. But if that was because you think I'm just basically doing the equivalent of spam on the board...that's quite different, and entirely understandable.

So how about this - most of you all probably know about this site by now, so I think the need for this thread may have run its course. I'll make an absolute concerted effort to be a better poster, and to contribute to more discussions. And I'm not saying this just because of the previous wisecrack; truth be told, I've had guilt over creating an entire thread basically for self-serving purposes, and had said as much to icq. So that's my promise to you - my contribution to this thread dies here. Anybody else want to post, be my guest.

With a cute picture like that, you'd have to laugh.

I think blogs are a wonderful thing. Best regards,


p.s. edit: If you have the time, please remind the readers, now and then of your work in progress.

re: with god on our side

ever hear the words manifest destiny?

country bill wrote:

QUOTE:
re: with god on our side

ever hear the words manifest destiny?

I apologize in breaking a promise I made scant hours ago, but a question was asked, and I feel duty bound to answer it.

Yes, I have heard the words "manifest destiny"; in fact, I just recently read What Hath God Wrought, which I believe covers the period in question when Manifest Destiny became an American credo. I was only aware that the term applied to acquiring territory in the continental US (and, possibly, some island areas); I was not aware that it could also be applied to fighting world wars and the Cold War with the Russians. Maybe Polk, et. al didn't have trench warfare in Ypres, the Blitzkrieg rolling through the Sudetenland, or an H-bomb wiping out 99% of all life on earth in mind when they drew up plans for annexing Texas and other territories. Who am I to say.

I also thought that the term applied more to the sense of spreading the American way of life, which I'm sure also covers the American way of religion; if the primary reason was purely from a missionary aspect, that's news to me.

Dylan's song, for what it's worth, doesn't talk about acquiring land; the only metaphor in the song proper that could deal with that period is the killing of Indians, which was a horrible side effect of Manifest Destiny, to be sure. However, he concentrates more on current events (well, current for 1963), which would take us through the time when the US was primarily an isolationist country outside its Monroe Doctrine-led sphere of influence, a dam that would show cracks after WWI and completely wash away after WWII. That only tangentially relates to Manifest Destiny. Well, at least that's how I feel - I certainly can and have been wrong before.

I suppose this could be in your defense, but even though Dylan's writing from a purely American standpoint, the concept of having God on your side is obviously not restricted to the United States (Jean d'Arc, the Children's Crusade, etc.). The concept of Manifest Destiny, as far as I can tell, is primarily American. Dylan may have had it in mind.

Now, if you think that bit of business I just typed out would have been better served on my blog, maybe you're right. I felt that it would not have been. As they say on these here Interwebs, YMMV.

And now I will re-honor my promise, and you may consider my contributions to this thread finished.

pardon me, but the blitzkrieg didn't roll through the sudetenland, it was surrendered by cowardly englanders at munich. the blitzkrieg first rollled through poland in september 1939.


also, the annexation of texas was voluntary. they asked to come into the union.


which battle of ypres? there were three of them.

manifest destiny
n.
1. A policy of imperialistic expansion defended as necessary or benevolent.
2. often Manifest Destiny The 19th-century doctrine that the United States had the right and duty to expand throughout the North American continent.


it's a fresh wind that blows against the empire


it's also a song about irony

Sigh...that's what I get for typing a quick response and trying to avoid generalities. I should've said "Eastern Europe" instead of the Sudetenland (although German troops surely did roll through after Chamberlain gave it up, so maybe it's semantics?), the annexation of other territory (like, say, Oregon) instead of Texas, and "any other patch of barren land in the hellhole that was Europe circa 1914-1918" instead of Ypres. And to think, I tried to do that all off the top of my head instead of consulting a website.

I am glad to see that my definition of Manifest Destiny, from a US standpoint, is more or less correct.

I would hope that the song being ironic could've been taken as read; I mean, the song's 7 minutes long, and even though the plain speaking you can hear the audio version of a wink all throughout.

That's twice I've broken my promise. Maybe I was rash in making it...

mayhaps

well, I gotta say, your blog post has very little to do with the song.

again, I didn't read all of that diatribe about Christian music. I'm not sure what point you intend to make, but I don't think you make any. That the bulk of the "Christian music" is "Wonder Bread", so what? the bulk of all the music is some sort of assembly-line end-product. It may not be white bread, it may be pre-packaged tortillas or instant grits, but it isn't of any note (you should excuse the expression).

If you like, you might consider Bob Dylan's "Christian" songs. There is some fine, dare I say great, work there.

As for Dylan's "blatant plagarism" what about blatant ignorance?

The tune used by Dominic Behan for Patriot Game is basically take from an old Irish tune "The Merry Month of May". Beyond that I'm not sure Behan's position about Bobby was much different than Ewan MacColl's.

But what about the song? You don't really write much about it.

I don't wanna say anything else here.

I will post my comment's from the Dylan Pool "Song Oracle"
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Date: 10-19-03 14:25

The duets with Joan may well be the best performances of this song. Perhaps the most amusing discussions, no, defineately the most amusing, was Murray Kaufman interviewing William F. Buckley and bringing up this song by Bob. Murray, ya know, had spent years as AM disk jockey Murray the K. With inane banter about submarine watching and whatnot. I avoided the guy. He was also one who took on the rather unqualifed moniker "the 5th Beatle". Pete Best you poor bastard. Murray had his good qualities though. In fact, he brought some of the great bands to New York and they played the Brooklyn Paramount and or Fox, same as Frank Sinatra had years before. The Animals, the Blues Project, Ben E. King.

When FM radio was mandated to do its own programming, different from the AM feed; Murray surfaced as Mr. Kaufman, hip intellectual, who was given to playing a whole side of Richie Havens' Mixed Bag in one sitting. So, the K, confronts Buckley, using poor Bobby as his advance man. The only remark I really remember is that William F. in that Yale-like toad voice of his, says in fact Jesus did forgive Judas Iscariot. Of course I knew that, and I find it one of the problematic lines in this song, certainly with a later vision of Bob as a Christian.

All in all, this is one great song. One of the first I played. The one with the symbiotic relationship with the Patriot Game. It has a somewhat simplistic view, one I hear from about 90% of every so-called intellectual I've ever run into, but it also contains the duality that is so often in Dylan's work. It doesn't just point and ask "where is/was G-d". It questions the teaching that passes off our actions, our responsibilities, mistakes, indiscretions, murders. Rather than being dated, I think it keeps us in mind of the different threats; some most realized and some most fanciful, that we have encountered. When I saw Bob at Jones Beach around 1988 or 89, he added the Vietnam War verse and it was awful, just one of the rare times it seemed he was making a concession to some of his critics. I love the way he almost spits out "I'm weary as hell". This is not one of Bobby's brilliant lyrical pieces. It has some fine observations and, in the early years, some wonderfully formed vocal presentations.

I leave you with my parody, that speaks to something.

In many a dark hour
I've been thinkin' 'bout this
How they called you Judas
for playin' those riffs.
Now I can't think for you
you'll have to decide.
Whether Kooper and Bloomfield
had Bob on their side.

I don't think "With God on our Side" is a good song. It's a clumsy and unsophisticated anti-cold War diatribe, maybe he had just suffered from a heavy dose of indoctrination from his radical buddies. Of course it's fine to be against war but I don't see that he has any alternative to offer and I'm still waiting on Bobby Dylan's ideas to solve the problems of the Cold War even now that this era is long over.

The verse about the Russians is really dumb & I wonder that nobody has ever taken him to task for that. I don't think he or anyone else in the USA has ever been taught to "hate Russians all through my whole life". Even in the darkest hours of the Cold War it was always the point to be against the communist system but not against the people in Russia who were regarded as victims of a repressive system.

And the verse about WWI is equally troubling. I mean if he didn't know at that time why the Americans took part in that war he should have sued his teachers instead of writing that song. In fact the Americans have stopped the slaughter on the European battlefields.

By the way, in the 30s and 40s the reference to "God" played a great role in the political discourse but here it was used to mark the difference to the totalitarian ideologies that were seen as attacking religion and religious freedom. In this era the point was that - with three totalitarian dictators in Europe and the last democracies there under massive pressure - Americans could soon be the only ones to be on God’s side and stand for religious freedom. I wonder who knows for example President Roosevelt's radio adress on Brotherhood day 1936:
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=15250

QUOTE:
"This is no time to make capital out of religious disagreement, however honest. It is a time, rather, to make capital out of religious understanding. We who have faith cannot afford to fall out among ourselves. The very state of the world is a summons to us to stand together. For as I see it, the chief religious issue is not between our various beliefs. It is between belief and unbelief. It is not your specific faith or mine that is being called into question—but all faith. Religion in wide areas of the earth is being confronted with irreligion; our faiths are being challenged.[...]"

well, the verse about the "first world war..." is pretty poor. It's just a throwaway, much as the later insertion of a "Vietnam War" verse would be.

This lecturing us in the U.S. is a bit much, and chastising Dylan for something you really don't know about isn't to the point. The only thing I thought was a bit "dumb" was the use of "Russians", when after all it was the Soviet Union. If you don't know, which clearly seems to be the case, there was a hell of a lot of paranoia spread regarding "Russia" (as most Americans did mistakenly refer to the Soviet Union) and "Red China". The inverse also applied in many areas of the Soviet bloc, in China, and persists to this day in North Korea. Mindless paranoia was sold as a reasonable perception. I experienced, and I've met many who experienced it from the "other" side.

You posted the Roosevelt speech before.

It wasn't for Dylan to offer alternatives; yet he did anyway. Simply presenting the ludicrousness of positioning ourselves as spokespersons for G-d. This had as much to do with the palable threat of nuclear devastation as did A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall. "One push of the button ...."


And what is an "anti-cold War diatribe." I mean, you might either be "anti" what you perceived as U.S. propaganda, or "anti" what you perceived as U.S.S.R. propoganda. I mean Pete Seeger wasn't singing any "anti" cold war songs.

I do think the song is "clumsy", that's because there is a lot of contrived lines in it. But it's got enough Dylan to it to make it special.

this is about your "One Too Many Mornings" entry.

one more paragraph and I would have wrongly chatised you for largely not writing about "music" at all. Then you did get to a Dylan's performances of this song in 1966.

You didn't need to rehash all that doom and gloom and what you perceive as "sop", but you did - ya know the whole take on the album.

The album version is beautiful. While you did well describing the intensity and the painful elongation (ouch) of Bobby's vocal in the '66 version you seem to not see the beauty in the sound of the album track. It's an extraordinary balance of almost punching out some lines "restless hungry feeling" and the softness that you do allude to - "the silent night is shattered by the sounds inside my mind".

and on your entry for "North Country Blues"

Blues huh.

This was your first post to really delve into the feel of the song. I mean you went on and on about some sort of socio/political thing, and if you use that phrase "finger-pointing song" again I'll be the one pointin' a finger.

yes, A minor, a miner, ay myna, etc. - not new thoughts, but thoughts.

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04-28-03 22:05

When I got, Times They Are A Changin' I do believe this was my favourite song initially. I am sure it was the first one I played on the guitar and sang. I don't know if it was because I thought the chord positions were relatively easy or what. It is extraodinary that the mood of that album is so gray, made up of blacks and whites, and so somber. The cover is perfect for the content.

As with Hollis Brown, this is a study of a bleak demise of a working class family in the wake of the great wave of poverty. This, however, is a first person recanting, a woman at the center of downward spiral. As with Percy's Song, the musical roots are British Isles ballad. Unlike that tune, it is barely melodic, never pleasant, alw