I knew it was coming but somehow it slipped my mind. Yesterday, May 24, was the 70th birthday of a certain Robert Zimmerman, aka Bob Dylan. I have never met Bob, although I've seen him in concert several times. But I can say that it feels like I have a deep karmic connection to his music.
Many times, before I even knew who he was, I was stopped dead in my tracks by his songs, whether performed by him or by someone else.
I am a bit younger than those who first fell under his spell. But I recall as a kid a time my late brother came home from college and plucked out "Blowin' in the Wind" and being stunned by the words.
(As I grew up, I must confess a greater affinity for the older, more cynical, Bob than for the younger idealistic one. But still, there it was.)
I recall other moments growing up when certain Dylan songs, like Knocking on Heaven's Door or Tangled Up in Blue just froze me up where I was standing. Eventually, I figured out who this guy was and started listening to his music.
There's one question that I'd really like to know at some point. Does he really know what he's writing when he writes the lyrics or is he just a vessel of the Muses? I remember being at an Arlo Guthrie concert one time when he speculated that Bob fished upstream from other songwriters and just caught more than they did.
However it happened, he has the power of the Word. And I even like the voice that delivers it. The raspier the better.
SPEAKING OF WHOM, some birthday tributes can be found here
and here.
RAKING IT IN. Massey Energy executives stand to profit big time in a sale to Alpha Natural Resources if the deal goes through, in spite of playing games with the lives of coal miners. My best advice is that the Gentle Reader make Ken Ward's uber-blog Coal Tattoo a regular site to visit.
STRANGE AS THIS WEATHER HAS BEEN. Bill McKibben suggest a connection between climate change and extreme weather events here. I think he's right.
BECAUSE I NEED TO SLEEP AT SOME POINT, this post has been scheduled for publication in advance. Well may the world go and I'm against anything bad that happened between then and now.
GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED
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1 comment:
How does that song go???????
Guineas are screaming the water is high.
I smell chevon cooking it's starting to fry.
Windows wide open Appalachian spring. Politicians talking don't mean a thing.
Hell nobody knows where to cast their vote.
Much less the man with the large white goat.
Somebody saw him looking at a saw.
Down on 60 at the Milton mall.
He looked into their eyes when they stopped to ask, if he wanted a deal and he just stared and laughed.
Somebody said from the bible he'd quote there was cat hair on the man with the large white goat.
Preacher was talking there's a sermon he gave and an alter call for those who wanted to be saved.
Noone came forward to answer the call.
They were out with him burning one in the hall.
There was a lot of coughing cause it burned their throat. They were lauging with the man with the large white goat.
There are no mistakes in life some people say. Your happy or sad, straight or your gay. F*ck them all if they can't take a joke.
Words of the man with the large white goat.
There's sewage in the water from the failing tanks. Trailers blowing up cause people are making crank. Feel the pulse and vibration as the mountaintop's blown. There goes a boulder thru somebody's home.
I've had enough of it, I'm reaching for my coat. I'm leaving with the man with the large white goat.
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