I wrote this almost three years ago, reflecting back on Labor Day 2003. I happened to think of it this week when I heard a piece of Bob Dylan’s new album. With a few truly remarkable exceptions, a couple of which are discussed here, Dylan has been phoning it in since he met Andy Warhol — who taught him that pigs will eat anything. And, yes, I’m off-topic again. And, no, I don’t know if I’ll do something like this every week. But this post dips at least one toe into the depths of depth, so it’s entirely possibly that you will emerge from this experience enriched, edified — or at least, I can hope, entertained.
Peter Pan at the CD rack…
It doesn’t matter what I say
So long as I sing with inflection
That makes you feel that I’ll convey
Some inner truth of vast reflection
But I’ve said nothing so far
And I can keep it up for as long as it takes
And it don’t matter who you are
If I’m doing my job then it’s your resolve that breaks
I’ve been thinking a lot about The Blues, which literally means the endlessly replicated, superficially variegated, ultimately massively redundantly meaningless Blues that was the focus of the Scorcese documania.
I said something stupid
Then I went and said it twice
Lord, I said something truly stupid
Didn’t I go off and say it twice?
I sold you the same old thing again
And suckered you in to paying full price
(I suckered you in to paying full price)
And that’s okay, really, because it’s stupid and useless and wrong, and just exactly as valuable as the paleolithic pottery people go ape over — for exactly the same reasons. The Blues is a primitive non-art made by people who had nothing to make art from — no instruments, no training, and no real talent except for a knack for hustling suckers. And that’s why this is such a wonderful work of art:
Because the hook brings you back
I ain’t tellin’ you no lie
The hook brings you back
On that you can relyThere is something amiss
I am being insincere
In fact I don’t mean any of this
Still my confession draws you near
To confuse the issue I refer
To familiar heroes from long ago
No matter how much Peter loved her
What made the Pan refuse to growWas that the hook brings you back
I ain’t tellin’ you no lie
The hook brings you back
On that you can rely
The song is Hook by John Popper from Blues Traveler. My son Cameron and I saw them over Labor Day at the fabulous sandy-beached wave pool at The Mandalay Bay Resort Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. It was a great first rock concert for Cameron, because he got to play in the pool until he wore himself out. Hook was the show-stopper, the catharsis button, and the whole crowd accommodated the moment by singing along — even though the entire point of the song is that both halves of the transaction are inherently fraudulent.
Suck it in suck it in suck it in
If you’re Rin Tin Tin or Anne Boleyn
Make a desperate move or else you’ll win
And then begin
To see
What you’re doing to me this MTV is not for free
It’s so PC it’s killing me
So desperately I sing to thee
Of love
Sure but also rage and hate and pain and fear of self
And I can’t keep these feelings on the shelf
I’ve tried well no in fact I lied
Could be financial suicide but I’ve got too much pride inside
To hide or slide
I’ll do as I’ll decide and let it ride until I’ve died
And only then shall I abide this tide
Of catchy little tunes
Of hip three minute ditties
I wanna bust all your balloons
I wanna burn all of your cities
To the ground I’ve found
I will not mess around
Unless I play then hey
I will go on all day hear what I say
I have a prayer to pray
That’s really all this was
And when I’m feeling stuck and need a buck
I don’t rely on luck because…The hook brings you back
I ain’t tellin’ you no lie
The hook…
On that you can rely
This is utterly brilliant on a number of grounds. Popper is a virtuoso both as a vocal stylist and as a harmonica player, and Blues Traveler is built around his girthy frame. The tempo is his, very fast, and the wit is his — way over the top, except that you can’t keep up with it. Blues Traveler has nothing to do with The Blues, thank god. They’re a rock band. But they do have a good deal to do with helping everyone understand what pop music is. It’s not going too far to say that Hook is the apogee of post-modern art: Sly, self-referential, warmly engaging and yet simultaneously enlisting the audience into a knowing conspiracy of self-mockery. It is not grimly masturbatory in the way of deadly self-serious art-about-art. It’s a delightfully mutually masturbatory celebration of the obvious fact that an outsized and masterful fraud can still be a great hook song.
And that’s the point. The Blues is crap. In the hands of someone like Robert Cray, The Blues becomes crap filtered through a virtuoso: Fascinating, even thrilling, at first, but ultimately irritating, as the same spots are tickled in the same ways again and again. When we hear a virtuoso performance at the symphony, it takes our breath away, and we lose sight of the fact that the music itself is breathtaking, even when performed by amateurs or children. An incompetent Robert Cray wannabe is an abomination. But a rap act ripping off Pachelbel manages to create work that at least blows kisses at art.
The point is this: Pop music is not music as such. It is lyrics and attitude. It’s a performance literature, like the drama — and unlike opera, which actually can hold its own as music. The London Symphony Orchestra’s ill-advised excursions into making pop respectable serve only to underscore how little score there is under pop. And yet there is not a song in the entire catalog of Skip James or Leadbelly that can compare to Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat by Bob Dylan:
Well, I see you got your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat
Yes, I see you got your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat
Well, you must tell me, baby
How your head feels under somethin’ like that
Under your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hatWell, you look so pretty in it
Honey, can I jump on it sometime?
Yes, I just wanna see
If it’s really that expensive kind
You know it balances on your head
Just like a mattress balances
On a bottle of wine
Your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hatWell, if you wanna see the sun rise
Honey, I know where
We’ll go out and see it sometime
We’ll both just sit there and stare
Me with my belt
Wrapped around my head
And you just sittin’ there
In your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hatWell, I asked the doctor if I could see you
It’s bad for your health, he said
Yes, I disobeyed his orders
I came to see you
But I found him there instead
You know, I don’t mind him cheatin’ on me
But I sure wish he’d take that off his head
Your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hatWell, I see you got a new boyfriend
You know, I never seen him before
Well, I saw him
Makin’ love to you
You forgot to close the garage door
You might think he loves you for your money
But I know what he really loves you for
It’s your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat
It’s The Blues, although it violates the 1-2, 1-2, 3-4, 4 verse structure endlessly replicated, superficially variegated, yackety-smackety blah-blah-blah. What it has that is found nowhere in the sacred canon of The Blues are the essential elements of pop music: Lyrics and attitude. Dylan takes an inherently stupid musical form and makes something fun if not awe-inspiring from it by turning it into comedy. This is the same thing Popper is doing, but he insists that you laugh at yourself — and treasure the hook song at the same time.
There’s more, more, more to this, much more than I can cover here. The most grievous omission, here and in every discussion of American pop music, is the incredible debt rock, folk, country and bluegrass owe to the English and Scots ballad. The perfect irony is Bob Dylan writing and performing a gripping ballad called Blind Willie McTell.
Seen the arrow on the doorpost
Saying, “This land is condemned
All the way from New Orleans
To Jerusalem.”
I traveled through East Texas
Where many martyrs fell
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTellWell, I heard the hoot owl singing
As they were taking down the tents
The stars above the barren trees
Were his only audience
Them charcoal gypsy maidens
Can strut their feathers well
But nobody can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTellSee them big plantations burning
Hear the cracking of the whips
Smell that sweet magnolia blooming
(And) see the ghosts of slavery ships
I can hear them tribes a-moaning
(I can) hear the undertaker’s bell
(Yeah), nobody can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTellThere’s a woman by the river
With some fine young handsome man
He’s dressed up like a squire
Bootlegged whiskey in his hand
There’s a chain gang on the highway
I can hear them rebels yell
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTellWell, God is in heaven
And we all want what’s his
But power and greed and corruptible seed
Seem to be all that there is
I’m gazing out the window
Of the St. James Hotel
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell
It’s a ballad, not The Blues, and it’s amazingly better than everything the real-life bluesman Blind Willie McTell did in his entire career. Better as literature. Better as performance. And therefore better as art.
jf.sellsius says:
“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief,
“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.”
“No reason to get excited,” the thief, he kindly spoke,
“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But 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.”
Dylan mixed with Hendrix makes a potent brew.
September 2, 2006 — 11:41 pm
Greg Swann says:
> Dylan mixed with Hendrix makes a potent brew.
I agree. “Like a Rolling Stone”, too. And there was a man who found something new in The Blues, as well.
September 3, 2006 — 9:22 am