When Do We Say “The Fatal Crack Occurred”? » « The Strange Thing About The Strange Thing That Maybe Wasn’t So Strange

Things That Delight Me All Along The Watchtower

This is a really lovely blues-tinged cover, delivered with passion.

Every time I hear that song, I am lost in Bob Dylan’s words. How did he do that? Many musicians would call it a successful career to have written any two of Dylan’s masterpieces, but holy shit the guy’s still on the road, touring. He wrote All Along the Watchtower in 1967. My whole life has played out to Bob Dylan’s music and songs. At times, it has been my theme-music.

Jay Howie, the musician, has also posted recordings of some other songs that are highly difficult (Little Wing) and I’m looking forward to listening to them, too.

When Do We Say “The Fatal Crack Occurred”? » « The Strange Thing About The Strange Thing That Maybe Wasn’t So Strange

Comments

  1. johnson catman says

    Thanks Marcus! That was most excellent! I looked up his YouTube site. When you check out Little Wing, I would recommend watching his version of Voodoo Chile as well. He gets some amazing sound out of his acoustic guitar.

  5. brucegee1962 says

    Ever since reading Watchmen, I can’t hear this without thinking of NIte Owl and Rorschach riding to Ozymandias’ fortress.

  6. says

    brucegee1962@#5:
    Ever since reading Watchmen, I can’t hear this without thinking of NIte Owl and Rorschach riding to Ozymandias’ fortress.

    Yeah, me too! It’s interesting how a piece of music can become bound to a movie, in our minds. I was seriously pissed at Oliver Stone for using Barber’s Adagio for Strings in Platoon, but other movies (and books), it just seems to work

    There have probably been books written about Bob Dylan’s lyrics (?) and countless efforts to describe them; I’ve always thought of them as just vague enough to be powerfully evocative. (Except when he slammed a direct blast of outrage at the listener, like Masters of War and Hurricane) I think that what that does is lets us fill in with our own matching visions or experience. When I hear Hendrix’ version of All along the watchtower I see a row of towers with signal lights, sort of Lord of The Rings on frosty mountain ridges. It doesn’t match the “businessman, they drink my wine” at all but it’s what my mind coughs up.

  7. cjheery says

    Dylan is someone I have never listened to outside of radio hits. I would like to delve beyond those tracks into his most impactful music. What album would ya’ll recommend I start with?

  8. brucegee1962 says

    I sometimes think that much of the Watchmen plot was based on Moore attempting to attach visuals to this song. After all, the very first scene is about a confrontation between someone breaking into a room (a thief) and the Comedian who believes “life is but a joke.” And he certainly finds a way out of there.

    Maybe that’s reading too much into it. But the song must be the reason Bubastis is in there, for sure.

    I generally love the epigraphs at the beginning of each Watchmen chapter. “Fearful symmetry” works on so many levels.

  9. says

    @cjheery: there is an album called “Masterpieces” which is a sort of “best of” – I’d start there. But Dylan comes from the time of the album as art, so some might argue you should start with something that has unity, like “Nashville Skyline”

  10. Rob Grigjanis says

    Marcus @6:

    I’ve always thought of them as just vague enough to be powerfully evocative.

    Dave Van Ronk put it slightly differently;

    That whole artistic mystique is one of the great traps of this business, because down that road lies unintelligibility. Dylan has a lot to answer for there, because after a while he discovered that he could get away with anything—he was Bob Dylan and people would take whatever he wrote on faith. So he could do something like ‘All Along the Watchtower’, which is simply a mistake from the title on down: a watchtower is not a road or a wall, and you can’t go along it.

    I never saw the appeal of Dylan’s lyrics. Unlike the original Dylan (Thomas)’s words, they just leave me completely cold. Then again, poetry is in the eye/brain of the beholder, and different people have different resonant frequencies.

  11. billseymour says

    Dylan, basically his first seven albums, helped me keep my sanity when I was in the Air Force.  I once binge-listened to everything through Blond on Blond straight through.  8-)

    After leaving the service, I got interested in classical music; and I tend to be the sort of person who zooms in to one thing at a time.  Nashville Skyline, Dylan’s eighth album IIRC, is the last one I remember.

    As for the video in the OP, guitarists who grimace when they play almost anywhere above first position just strike me as phony.  I was much more impressed by Red Shea (who played for Gordon Lightfoot, also important to me around the same time) who never batted an eye.

  12. Rob Grigjanis says

    billseymour @11:

    I was much more impressed by Red Shea (who played for Gordon Lightfoot, also important to me around the same time) who never batted an eye.

    Robert Fripp wouldn’t move his fingers if he didn’t have to. Bloke looks like a cardboard cutout on stage. Loves me some Lightfoot too.

Leave a Reply