Ask Greil: August 19, 2024
Hi Greil, I hope you are doing well. I can't imagine I am the only one to ask: How do you feel about the use of "weird" as it has been sucked into the US political conversation—obviously in comparison to the way you have used it? —CAM PATTERSON
Hey, it’s a big word. In my usage, it meant (to me if not anyone else), unexpected, something that could not have been predicted, yes, something that made one kind of sense, but shift it an inch back to institutional, the way it ought to be and always has been, the, you know, so-called narrative, it’s something else. I think the way Tim Waltz used it means two things: ‘not like us,’ which is close to my usage ( though my way has a ledge, which is, ‘but wouldn’t you like to be,’ which Waltz did not mean), and, primarily, ‘fucked up.’ I’ll go with that.
As fascinating as the concept of the United States is, do you believe it has ever been a true democracy in the actual definition of the term? —BEN MERLISS
I don’t know that there’s any actual definition of democracy other than the examples of democracies that have actually existed. To me, a democracy means a political and social formation where people are in a position to hold themselves and their government accountable for their present predicament. That leads to the question of who the people are. At the start, in the United States, the people were white male property owners operating under a system that did not exist independently of them, as did, say, the regimes ruling England, France, or almost any other country on earth. Today the people includes every citizen, born or naturalized, 18 or older. There are powerful, well-organized groups and institutions determined to reverse this, from John Roberts and his destruction of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to every Republican now operating worthy of the name. In a democracy, no question is ever settled, until democracy ceases to be.
Hi Greil. I enjoyed your book Real Life Rock (among others), and have spent time looking up songs you referred to in it. One thing that puzzles me is your reference to Jefferson Airplane's track "Planes" from their 1989 self titled album. You wrote "The FAA is investigating."
I watched the first sixty seconds of the video on youtube, which was all I could handle. Crash and burn, am I right? —JACK PAYNE
Or blew up on the runway.
Dear Greil,
In their early years Blue Oyster Cult and the J. Geils Band got critical raves in the pages of Rolling Stone and Creem from people like Jon Landau, Ed Ward, Ben Edmonds, and Lester Bangs. Just wondered if either band ever impressed you on record or on stage. —CRAIG ZELLER
Blue Oyster Cult were a critic's band, with Richard Meltzer and Crawdaddy at the front cheering them on. "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" was a fine song on the radio. You could hear how smart they thought they were and how they lived up to it. But the number I loved, was moved by, was "In Thee." That's still lodged somewhere in my rock 'n' roll soul.
I loved the J. Geils Band. Their first album was a revelation to me, maybe because I didn't know enough about where their music came from. I found "Serves You Right to Suffer" overwhelmingly convincing. It seemed to contain endless mysteries. Maybe because for them it did and they were still trying to solve them. I think I liked them even more when they turned into a modern Coasters with "Love Stinks" and "Centerfold."
There's a great little Peter Wolf scene in Robert Greenfield's novel Temple where the main character asks him what L7 means. Wolf makes the sign with his fingers and says, "Name it and claim it." Just rings true, as if it really is a memory the character will carry forever.
Reading Ann Powers's new book about Joni Mitchell, it occurs to me that some of the things that motivated her to transcend her understandable frustrations of being perceived as a woman in a male dominated scene were among the same ones that made her appear in your own words "too self-congratulatory." Mitchell is more of a double-edged sword for me than she is for you, and while I am fascinated by her I can still see your point in a lot of ways.
Which leads me to this question: Can you name a female artist who succeeded in your eyes where Mitchell did not, namely by transcending the question of her womanhood in her (musical) artistry without letting it be colored too obviously by certain strains of ego in a way that Mitchell never quite managed? And if so how did she do it? —BEN MERLISS
Kim Gordon. Penelope Houston. Carrie Brownstein. Corin Tucker. Janet Weiss. Mary Weiss. Martha Reeves. Aretha Franklin. Darlene Love. And on and on.
hello good sir.
you think it was sumn when Robert Johnson, Elvis and Johnny Rotten screamed their thing? and it was. Well, how bout when Mozart had his characters screaming about creation itself 250 years ago in his Masonic opera The Magic Flute? Papageno = The Papa Genome. And Pamino and Tamina = Amino acids! How's that for the ultimate time traveling magical mystery tour? Anyway. Thanks for your prodigious talent and influence. Hope all's well. I'm not joking regarding my short thesis. There's much more. But that is private. Cheers. — NICK SKOURAS
I took out my Captain Midnight decoder ring and it confirmed your argument to a t. In other words it came up with a perfect 33.
Ever since your column of April 19, I've spent far too much time on the question of "guinea" vs "dilly" in "Put Your Cat Clothes On," a song I never cared much for and less so after repeated listenings. I prefer your interpretation, but I hear "dilly"; as for your comment "I have no idea what a 'dilly' might be or what it might have been to Carl Perkins"—seriously now? According to Dictionary.com, "dilly" is an "Americanism first recorded in 1905-1910" and refers to "something or someone regarded as remarkable, unusual, etc.: a dilly of a movie." Sounds to me like just how a guy in cat clothes would want to look. Also, and this is pure conjecture, but if Perkins was going with "guinea," why end the next line with "hillbilly," when the much more appropriate and better slant rhyme, "cool kitty," was there for the taking?
If you still disagree, try listening to the song set to YouTube's 0.5 playback speed (like I say, I've spent too much time on this... maybe I'll tackle "Louie Louie" next).
Unrelated, but as a collector of "Like A Rolling Stone" ephemera, do you know Joe South's "These Are Not My People"? I hear it as a (somewhat) empathetic rewrite. —STEVE O’NEILL
The Joe South song is a real…Dilly. He was taking a lot of harsh stands in those days. On the first Swamp Dogg album in 1970 which was just filled with great protest songs he used South’s “Redneck.” I can see why you don’t care about “Cat Clothes”—the rhythm doesn’t track, the beat never comes into focus. For me the problem is that at that time ‘Guinea’ meant both black and Italian. But cats were black and who in Memphis wanted to look like an Italian?
Hey Greil - There’s a trio of subjects about which I’d like to pick your brain.
Having followed T Bone Burnett’s work [since] his 1980 Truth Decay album, I’m over the moon that I’ll get to see him play at Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage in September. His most recent album, The Other Side, has gotten more plays from me than any other release this year. Curious about your thoughts on T Bone’s works, in particular his latest album.
Then there’s the matter of golden oldies albums being performed in their entirety in concert. I’ve loved this practice when artists do this with new album releases. Seeing Lou Reed perform New York in full at the time of its 1989 release made for a great show. Same goes for when Joe Jackson performed his (then) newly released album Blaze of Glory in its entirety.
That said, although I love all of the albums I’m about to mention, I’ve never had a burning desire to see Springsteen play Born in the USA, The River or Darkness on the Edge of Town from start to finish. Likewise for when U2 hit the road to play The Joshua Tree or Achtung Baby from start to finish. The thought of going to such a concert bores the hell out of me.
However, I recently made an exception… and, man oh man, am I glad I did. Over the course of two nights, The Magnetic Fields performed all of their 1999 album 69 Love Songs at San Francisco’s Curran Theatre. 69 Love Songs is a constant contender/finalist for my desert island disc pick, and their two night performance of these sixty-nine gems did not disappoint. Wondering if there are any albums you’ve gone (or would go) out of your way to see played in full.
The last matter regards 420 as slang for cannabis. Popular myth attributes the coining of this phrase to a group of Marin County lads who called themselves the Waldos. To hear them tell it, they claim 4:20 pm was the randomly chosen time of day after school in which they’d meet to smoke herb back in 1971. However, I call B.S. and think there’s some typical White Trustafarian appropriation going on here. At the very least there’s a failure on the part of the Waldos to give full credit where credit is due.
The reason why I question this popular legend/myth is due to Bob Dylan’s 1966 song “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” with its key line “everybody must get stoned.” If you take the #12 and multiply it by the #35, the product is 420. Hence, Bob Dylan should be credited in part for 420 becoming the popular euphemism for marijuana. That said, I doubt Bob’s losing a lot of sleep over this matter. What say you…do you think I’m onto something?
Thanks always for this much appreciated column, as it seldom fails to open up both new and old worlds. —BILLY INNES, San Francisco
I haven’t followed TB B since “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” Can’t tell you why.
I loathe the Play the Album concert concept. I want to see something happen. If I want to hear a script read I’ll go to a reading.
But the Magnetic Fields would be a different proposition. The concept of that record is so crazy, the result so chaotic and confusing, and yet piece by piece so lucid and enchanting, there’s no way they could just Play the Album. It would play them. Is that how it felt?
As with an earlier question from Devin McKinney [July 22] this question is not intended as a "Gotcha!"
You once described The Rolling Stones album Between the Buttons as their blandest and most conservative. But you still cited the US version in your subsequent Desert Island list saying "Like everyone else they were astonished by Blonde on Blonde." Except for the last song "Something Happened To Me Yesterday" (though even that one isn't a personal favorite) I agree that it's a difficult album to appreciate while being listened to due to its own implied comfort in its instrumental excess.
Still, is there something about the American version of Between the Buttons that manages to make it work for you? And how do you connect it to Blonde on Blonde (which incidentally is a personal favorite)? —BEN MERLISS
For Blonde on Blonde I meant the expansive, open sound, which seemed to capture the sense of open possibility of the moment, and promise that it was something to pursue, to grasp. But here the Rolling Stones couldn't take it in. Unlike Aftermath before and Beggars Banquet and Let it Bleed and even Flowers, after, except for “Amanda Jones” and “Something Happened to Me Yesterday,” there’s no zeitgeist, not just in the words but especially in the music: no sense of the moment, on a world scale or just a scene in a single club. This is more like It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll. As everyone from Alan Freed to the Showmen to the Rolling Stones knew, rock ‘n’ roll is never only rock ‘n’ roll.
There is a 27 CD box set of Bob Dylan/The Band Tour '74 being released and I don't care if it's merely a copyright dump, I have to have it! The live Before The Flood LP from 1974 is where I came in as a lifelong fan of Dylan and The Band and for me, it's the greatest rock music ever: Dylan's singing, never stronger before or since, combined with the alchemy of The Band's musicianship, made for the most exciting, craziest sound I have ever heard. You wrote about the tour in several articles in 1974 and included a passage in your first book, Mystery Train, and I doubt if your opinion of the music could be higher, as you recounted from the Oakland Coliseum show: "I read a lot about Bob Dylan's tour with the Band before it arrived at the Oakland Coliseum...what the press did not prepare me for was the sound...Dylan was flat out the ultimate rock 'n' roll singer, the Band was the final band." And after listening to a bootleg of the Oakland show: "I haven't the slightest doubt that what Dylan and The Band did in 1974 was as memorable as what Dylan and the Hawks did in 1965 and '66." And 'six men running wild within a structure that still keeps its shape, that is never coherent or arbitrary seems to be what is authentically new about this music, as well as what is best about it." Whew! I hope you will review the box set when it's released, but somehow, I don't think rock fans, not even ardent Dylan fans, regard Tour '74 as the greatest in his career. It's usually '65-'66 or Rolling Thunder. Not for me for not only was Dylan singing at his very best during Tour '74 but The Band had become The Band, with all or most of their great songs already recorded and their musicianship at its peak. For me, Dylan and The Band had for a time, that aura, that maybe only The Beatles could match: these were the guys from 'Royal Albert Hall' or The Big Pink basement, making music that has become mythic. And in 1974, to quote a line from a Chicago magazine reviewing the decade that has stayed with me since I first read it in 1979, 'Bob Dylan and The Band walked across Lake Michigan to play miracle music at The Chicago Stadium.' Period. —JAMES R STACHO
I’ll listen to the whole thing, in a row, as I did with the 1966 compendium. I hope the sound isn’t thinned out as it was there, where bootlegs from the UK remain where you have to go to hear what happened. I have no idea if what we’ll hear now will stand up to the maybe overheated words I wrote at the time. It’d be a thrill to find that I fell short. But there’s a cloud over all that. Of the six people who were on those stages in 1974, four are dead. Garth Hudson, the oldest, born in 1937, is in a care facility in upstate New York. Bob Dylan, at 83, is where, presumably, he wants to be: not home.
Did you know Charley Pride? —Robert Mazzella
No.
At which points in his writing did Hemingway equal Chandler? —BEN MERLISS
In Our Time. The Sun Also Rises. A Moveable Feast. Funny, I was just thinking about this yesterday.
I picked up a very old Sun Also Rises at my favorite bookstore a few years ago and immediately reread it. I remembered all of the plot and the action. I hadn’t remembered, or maybe never knew, how good it was. Word by word.
We are lucky to have you in our midst.
Tim Walz not Waltz