On November 3rd 2009 Dragon Age releases on the Xbox 360 and PC

with the PS3 version releasing later that month, however the first round of downloadable content or DLC for short will be available on release day.

Now before you go on the same rant I went on after reading that headline two of those will be free to everyone who pre-orders the game with the third being the only one to pay for.

click on the link below for all the details

Dragon Age DLC Revealed

I am glad to see Bioware keeping up with their games hopefully this means Mass Effect 2 will see a good bit of DLC as well.

On a side note the original  Mass Effect only got 2 batches of DLC so Dragon Age has already out done it.

as for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 the first Downloadable character has been revealed that of Carnage.

click on the link below for details

MUA2: Carnage Hands-on

My personal thoughts on this are that like the MUA there will be at least two DLC packs one for villains and one for heroes.

And finally to drum up support for Brutal legend EA will be releasing a three pack of songs for Rock Band 2

click on the link

Brutal Legend Track Pack

As well as a list of the Achievements.

P.S. I will be getting the game on Wednesday so I should have part one of my review up on Thursday.

Song List

XBL Achievements

Everything I have heard and seen of U2 i have liked and this seems like a good step.

Hopefully oneday we will get that elusive Rock Band: Beach Boys game but that will probably happen sometime around the 2nd after a meteor crashes into the earth

click on the link below to read the full article

U2 Wants To Join Rock Band

A great parody of Maxwell’s Pretty Wings.  Hopefully, we can look forward to more like this from EZ Hines!

Billboard.com reports that Bob Dylan will release his 47th album on October 13: Christmas in the Heart, an entire album’s worth of Dylan performing holiday standards such as “Here Comes Santa Claus,” “Winter Wonderland,” and “The Little Drummer Boy.”

The album’s royalties will be given to Feeding America, an organization dedicated to providing meal assistance to hungry families during the holiday season.

Dylan fans will perhaps take note that this is an interesting strike into new territory for the icon, who is one of only nine recording artists in all of history who has never issued a Christmas album.  Simultaneously, the album marks a return to familiar ground in at least two ways: it represents a new phase in Dylan’s on-again-off-again social activism, and also can be seen as a return to Christian-based music.

Dylan’s first album of 2009, Together Through Life, hit #1 on Billboard’s Top 200 album chart

Kings of Leon – Only By the Night (2008)

 Vocals / Rhythm Guitar – Caleb Followill

Lead Guitar – Matthew Followill

Bass – Jared Followill

Drums – Nathan Followill

Track One – Closer

“Leaving me stranded all in love on my own”

The first thirty-odd seconds of this track – and therefore the album – consist of a haunting loop that is best appreciated on rural back-roads after midnight. At least, that’s been my experience with the song. I honestly can’t say how it compares to other opening tracks from the band, but for me, it was a great intro to the sheer depth of Caleb’s voice. Between the rhythm and vocals, don’t be surprised if you find yourself hearing this one in your head any time the lights are out.

Track Two – Crawl

“The reds and the whites and abused”

Tied for my least-favorite song on this album; I’m all for good politically-charged songwriting, and this isn’t a bad song. It just feels disjointed and slightly out-of-place with the rest of the album. On its “pros” side, the rhythm and arrangement are interesting, and it provides us with another side of Caleb’s voice. Plus the guitar solo at the end is above-average in bad-assery. Not terrible, just not something I want to hear over-and-over.

Track Three – Sex on Fire

“The kiddie-like play”

The first single off the album, this was the song that piqued my interest in the album itself. It showcases the band’s “rock” talents more than the first two songs. The bass and drum lines really steal the show here, and it sets the tone for other songs like it. These guys really have a handle on letting their songs flow musically between slow-paced verses and fever-pitch choruses. Most of the time singles are chosen for being more mass-marketable. While often great songs, they tend to be only third-or-fourth-best on the album; that holds true here, but considering how awesome this song is…

Track Four – Use Somebody

“Waging wars to shape the poet and the beat”

On my first listen through the disc, I had just finished listening to the main single, which really is good. And then this song came on. And I restarted it several times just to make sure I was actually hearing something so good. My second-favorite track off the album, this song captures what I mentioned above, and throws in a spark of that je ne sais quoi bands long for. The drum and bass are flawless, the guitar is used as an accent at just the right moments, and Caleb’s voice is that perfect mix of heartbreaker and heartbroken.

Track Five – Manhattan

“It’s gonna keep on, keep on, keep on”

Musically, this is a very laid-back, easy drinking song. The beat doesn’t do anything fancy, and the guitar line has that sun-coming-up-after-a-long-night feeling. Lyrically, I have no idea what the f*ck this song is about. The seemingly innocuous “dance all night” theme turns sinister, but I don’t know on whose part. The eeriest part is that Caleb’s delivery only reflects the change at the very end, when it’s obviously too late for whoever. I really like the song, and its placement on the album, but I have nothing to give you in the way of interpretation.

Track Six – Revelry

“It rained so hard it felt like snow”

A song much like the previous one in almost all respects, and this time I have an actual idea of what is being communicated. By my reckoning, this is an old-school “I’m here and she’s not” song, but one of the areas where the Kings excel is in telling the stories we know in new, perfect ways. The drum and bass continue to roll along evenly, while the guitar twangs like it’s as heartbroken as the singer. This is an easy listen, but by no means a dull one.

Track Seven – 17

“Said it’s a culmination of a story and a goodbye session”

I’m not sure about how I feel about this song, which is actually composed of just one verse that plays then repeats with the music changing between the two. It and on last song seem to be matched with “Crawl,” at least to my ears; I can maybe sense their place on the album, but I’m just not a huge fan. Again, there’s nothing wrong with the song; the musical arrangement and execution are impressive, and the lyrics are delivered with poignancy. I just don’t like it that much. Can I say that? “I don’t like it. Maybe.”

Track Eight – Notion

“So don’t knock it, don’t knock it, you been there before”

One of my favorites, this song belongs to Caleb’s voice. The music takes a back seat while he sings, and then cuts in during breaks and as an accent to the chorus. It’s awesome, well-paced, and plays its part well. But the way the lyrics sound just grips you, makes you want to feel the “notion,” even though you know it’s a bad thing. A terrific song, hands down.

Track Nine – I Want You

“The night vision shows she was only ducking the truth”

This songs rounds out my bottom three alongside “Crawl” and “17”, though musically I think I enjoy it slightly more. As far as I can tell, the song is maybe a critique of frat-boy mentality or, more likely, the back-country-teenage-good-old-boy mentality from which the former originates. Let me really drive this song home for you: After the line I posted under the title, the song seems to indicate they are watching a video of a girl performing oral sex on a black man. It is insinuated that the viewers know this girl, personally.

Wait, what?

Track Ten – Be Somebody

“Was this your big plan, your gun in your hand”

Holy shit I love this song. So much that I cannot accurately describe it to you. It was this song that made me go “Whoa. Who the hell are these guys?” I’m sure there is a video on YouTube, but hell if I know how to post those on the site. Go find it. Please.

Track Eleven – Cold Desert

“I’m too young to feel this old”

The album draws to a close with a song that resonates with “Closer,” but is different enough to let you know that you’re at the end of something, rather than the start. That haunting quality returns, with all of its country-back-roads overtones. I think the thing I love about this song is that if anyone else tried it, it would probably sound overused, gimmicky, whiney, etc. But when the line I chose to accent the title is delivered, it comes across as honest. A great finish to a great album.

Final Thoughts

This is the first time I have ever tried to review a piece of music critically, and I know there are some holes. But I write on this site for one reason – to share things. If you get nothing else out of this, take away that I really enjoy this album. Enough to risk writing about it on the internet.

Thanks to his last couple of albums — and to songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” — Bob Dylan was, in 1964, considered by practically everyone to be at the forefront of the popular protest movement … everyone, that is, except for one: Bob Dylan.

Dylan began almost immediately to try leaving this image behind, and one of the first major salvos fired in the war between Dylan the Image and Dylan the Man was Another Side of Bob Dylan, an album focused almost entirely on relationships and more personal — and decidedly not socially conscious — songs.

(1) “All I Really Want to Do”:  The album starts with one of the more playful songs in Dylan’s discography … but it’s playful in the same way a cat leaping at a window to get at the bird it sees flitting about on the ground outside is playful.  It might not seem so playful if you were a bird.  (It might not have seemed so playful, also, if you were one of the fans of Dylan the Protest Singer.  After all, this song is entirely about Dylan not wanting to do the things it’s been intimated that he wants to do.)

Another Side of Bob Dylan was recorded in a single day, and there is a rawness, a lack of polish, that serves some of the songs poorly and some of them well.  I think it serves “All I Really Want to Do” pretty well.  With the song presumably fresh for him, it comes off as having more of his personality than might be present on some of his other records, and as such, I think it’s possible to argue that this one of the most “Dylan” of all Dylan albums.

That said, “All I Really Want to Do” has never been one of my favorite Dylan songs.  It’s kinda vapid, and mean in a way.  This is what passes for bubblegum music in Dylan’s canon, though, and as far as bubblegum music goes, it’s not too bad.

(2)  “Black Crow Blues”:  This is probably one of my least favorite Dylan songs, at least amongst his output from the ‘60s.  It sounds like what it probably is: a song Dylan came up with five minutes before he recorded it.  However, it’s always fun to hear Dylan doing the blues, and it’s also always fun to hear him playing the piano.  In some ways, I think the song points the way toward Highway 61 Revisited, but that point of interest isn’t enough to make me interested in this song.

(3)  “Spanish Harlem Incident”:  This one is a good case-in-point to show how recording an entire album in a single day might not be the best idea in the world.  Just listen to this song, and pay attention to how Dylan’s energy level seem to simply disintegrate by the time he finishes the third and final verse.  At several points, it seems as if the whole endeavor is simply going to fall apart.  As such, what could have been a solid entry in the Dylan canon is reduced to being a merely decent recording.

It’s probably worth noting that the song does offer more evidence of where Dylan’s songwriting was going.  This, despite being played only on a single acoustic guitar, is blatantly a rock song, and I think it would have been much better in that guise.  Imagine a good anchoring rhythm section, and maybe a nice Al Kooper organ section … that might have been something slightly magical.

Still, there are some decent lyrics here – “On the cliffs of your wildcat charms I’m riding; I know I’m ‘round you, but I don’t know where” – so it’s not a waste of time by any means.

(4)  “Chimes of Freedom”:  Lyrically, this is a complex, complicated, and possibly even confusing song, and it’s unquestionably one of the high points of the album.  From a narrative standpoint, what seems to be going on in the song is that the singer and a friend have been caught out in the open by a thunderstorm, and have sought shelter in the doorway of a building (possibly a church).  From there, the pair of friends are awed by the sight of the lightning and the sound of the thunder, and of hail, and this summons in the singer’s mind sympathetic connections with various members of society, such as pacifists (“warriors whose strength is not to fight”), refugees, rebels and rakes, “mistreated mateless mothers” and “mistitled prostitutes,” and so forth.

Look, I’ll be honest here: apart from that, I really have no fucking clue what this song is about.  And that kinda bothers me, but only kinda.  Really, this is a song that’s entirely about how well-performed it is (Dylan’s voice gets dangerously close to giving out at a couple of points, but by and large it is a tour de force), and also about the not-so-simple thrill of the way the words sound in relation to that performance.  There are some lovely images, such as these:  “Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail, the sky cracked its poems in naked wonder”; “In the wild cathedral evening, the rain unraveled tales for the disrobed faceless forms of no position”; and so forth.  I don’t necessarily understand a lot of this, and I’m about halfway convinced that there no understanding to be had, not really.

But sometimes, abstraction is okay, and it’s pretty damned okay here.

(5)  “I Shall Be Free No. 10”:  Not by any means one of Dylan’s better-known songs, this is another seeming example of the musician just farting around in the studio.  However, it is clear that he was in high spirits – possibly literally – when he recorded it, and it practically drips with Dylan’s weirdo sense of humor; as a song, it’s not entirely dissimilar to some of those infamous press conferences he would give a few years later.  The song is filled with hilarity (“Well, I set my monkey on the log/and ordered him to do the dog/He wagged his tail and shook his head/and he went and did the cat instead/He’s a weird monkey; very funky”), and it seems to be a bit of a head-scratcher until you think about what the song’s first verse means.

Here’s how it starts: “Well, I’m just average, common too/I’m just like him and the same as you/I’m everybody’s brother and son/I ain’t different from anyone.”  Dylan goes on then to say that “It ain’t no use talking to me/It’s just the same as talking to you.”  Given the album’s title and intent – to distance Dylan from the protest movements of the time – I think it’s hard to interpret this as anything except the singer saying, Seriously people, don’t look to me for any sort of wisdom.  After this first verse, the song launches into a series of bizarre bits involving Dylan challenging Cassius Clay to a fistfight, the aforementioned monkey episode, Dylan imagining himself in the guise of a tennis player at a country club (and later as a golfer), and so forth.  Each verse is self-contained, and seems to have no larger significance, unless being confusing is Dylan’s goal (which it almost certainly was).

Dylan performs all of this with an invisible smile on his face and with laughter constantly threatening to erupt from the weirdness.  I’m especially fond of the line in which Dylan rhymes “home” with “poem” by pronouncing it “hoem,” and I also love the final verse, which contains a musical joke I don’t have the vocabulary to articulate.  So I’ll just leave it to you to go and have a listen.

(6)  “To Ramona”:  Another of the album’s highlights, “To Ramona” is a terrific song that addresses a woman who, evidently distressed (by the state of the world,?) has come to the singer for solace, which he gives for a time, until finally counseling Ramona to go and do what she thinks is best — with the knowledge that whatever she does, she’ll have to do it without him.

It seems entirely likely that “Ramona” is in fact none other than Joan Baez, with whom Dylan had a famously troubled relationship.  I always resist applying any sort of strict biographical reading of songs, but with this particular song, the temptation proves to be do much for me to overcome.  If the album represents Dylan trying to break with the protest movement – which his sometime-lover Baez was very much a part of – then it also, in some ways, has to represent Dylan trying to break at least some part of his relationship with Baez herself.  And indeed, the final verse of “To Ramona” seems to take that, or some fictional version of it, into consideration: “I’d forever talk to you,” the singer seems to sigh to his distressed lover, “but soon my words would turn into a meaningless ring.”  This is a thought that is both gentle and cruel, and if you know much about Dylan’s marital life during the next decade, it’s impossible not to feel some serious pangs for the younger 1964 version of the man … and to wonder if maybe he ought not to have given “Ramona” a bit more of an opportunity.

“Everything passes, everything changes; just do what you think you should do.  And someday, maybe – who knows, baby? – I’ll come and be crying to you.”

Great stuff.

(7)  “Motorpsycho Nitemare”:  Another comedic song, this one tells the story of the singer spending the night – part of it, at least – at a country farmhouse, where he has run-ins with the farmer and the farmer’s daughter.  The whole thing seems to be a lead-up to a punchline about freedom of speech, but frankly, it’s a bit tiresome as a song.  There are a couple of amusing line-readings, but that’s about all there is to recommend here.

(8)  “My Back Pages”:  Here’s something you won’t often hear me say: I think I might actually like this song if not for the lyrics.  Remember earlier, when I was expressing slight concerns over “Chimes of Freedom” not entirely making sense to me?  Well, “My Back Pages” makes almost no sense at all, up to and including the refrain “Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”  Basically, the song is a long series of images that occasionally come close to having some sort of concrete meaning, but never quite get there even individually, much less as a whole.  But Dylan sings the song with conviction, so if you do the listening equivalent of letting your eyes go crossed, you might enjoy it.

(9)  “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)”:  It’s got its problems, I guess (some of the lyrics are fairly crap if you just read them on the page), but Dylan plays the piss out of this song, and I just like the conceit of it.  It’s bitter, confused, and slightly jaunty in a righteously belligerent way.  I’d guess this is a good example of a fairly mediocre song being elevated by being recorded at precisely the right moment in time and thereby somehow becoming better than it has any right to be.

(10)  “Ballad in Plain D”:  The best thing I can say about this song is that Dylan sings it with utter conviction.  Here, however, is a song so blatantly autobiographical that there’s no need to wonder how to interpret it.  The song is about Dylan’s breakup with Suze Rotolo (she’s the woman on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan), which – depending on who you talk to – was exacerbated by Suze’s sister Carla.  Dylan and Carla didn’t get along too well, and at one point had a shouting match so violent that it literally put Suze into a catatonic stupor.  Dylan seems to have felt the need to write a song about it, and it’s probably one of his least successful compositions – both musically and lyrically – from this era of his career.

It does have a nice final verse, however, which makes reference to Dylan’s feelings about being “free” from his relationship and single again: “Ah, my friends from the prison, they ask unto me, ‘How good, how good does it feel to be free?’, and I answer them most mysteriously: Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?”

(11)  “It Ain’t Me Babe”:  A piercingly sad song, Dylan here is singing about how he’s simply not the person his lover needs him to be … and maybe I’m hearing what I want to hear, but he sounds like he’s pretty damn bummed out about it.  The only other song on this album with the same tone is “To Ramona,” and that leads me draw the conclusion that this song, too, is about Joan Baez.

Dylan gets a bit nasty toward the end this time, though: “Go melt back into the night, babe; everything inside is made of stone, there’s nothing in here moving … and anyways, I’m not alone.”  But his voice is sad, and clearly wishful that he wasn’t having to break the heart of whoever he is addressing in this fashion.

Even long before I knew enough of the biography to know that Dylan and Baez had been a couple, I was struck by Baez’s cover of “It Ain’t Me Babe,” but with the biographical details – rightfully or wrongfully – in mind, it kinda hurts a bit to hear Baez sing the song.  In more than a few of her Dylan covers, it almost sounds as if she’s using his songs – which may or may not be about her – both as an attempt to reconcile herself to the facts and to bring herself closer to Dylan.  Baez’s singing voice, on these occasions, becomes positively angelic with distressed beauty.

Apropos of perhaps only a little, I’m also a big fan of the Johnny Cash/June Carter version of the song.  Knowing what we know about their biography, the song becomes something else entirely: a song in which two people are desperately, and with blithely unconvincing cheerfulness, trying to convince each other that they don’t need each other at all, not really.  But, of course, we know better.

FINAL THOUGHTS:  By no means a great album, Another Side is nevertheless an interesting piece of work that has several extremely worthy songs on it.

Several of this album’s songs are about breakups of one type or another, and it’s interesting to compare the tone Dylan takes in dealing with each scenario.  In “To Ramona” (and “It Ain’t Me Babe”) it is wistful, regretful, but resigned; in “I Don’t Believe You” it is peeved but curiously detached; in “Ballad in Plain D” it is genuinely heartbroken.

Dylan here is also breaking up – or, at least, trying to (he wouldn’t be successful until his next album) – with a large portion of his fanbase.  It’s interesting to note that as far as attempted breakups go, Another Side of Bob Dylan is fairly gentle and understanding.  But it was also unsuccessful, and perhaps that accounts for the steps Dylan would take to make sure that the next time out, nobody could possibly misinterpret his meanings.

Honk’s rating: 3.5/5 spuds

To quote a great super -hero movie “I’m not happy Bob, do you know why I’m not happy”.

In my Director’s cut copy of Watchman Incidentally the only Blu Ray version I found a 10$ off coupon for Watchmen the Ultimate collectors edition the 5 count em 5 disk edition with “a whole new movie”  (it’s watchmen with Tales of the black freighter, and under the hood woven into the movie).  now understand me I will probably buy this version as well and keep my current version for when i do not feel like watching Watchmen of Arabia, but i really would have liked to been given the knowledge.

On a funny note a very similar thing happened with the DVD release of V for Vendetta.  yet another Alan Moore comic turned movie

The Times They Are A-Changin’ — released January 13, 1964

(1)  “The Times They Are A-Changin’ “:  Adopted by nearly every person who has ever heard it (including me) as a protest song, this one is unquestionably a classic … but, as I wrote in my last Dylan review about a different song, what is this one actually protesting?  Upon further reflection, I think I’d have to say it isn’t protesting anything: instead, it’s simply talking about a fact of life, which is that things change.  Old things die off and new things take their place, an eternally-in-process cycle of change and renewal.

Of course, there can be little doubt that the cause by which this song was adopted — the civil rights movement — would have been in Dylan’s thoughts when he wrote the song, and also on at least some of the many occasions he performed it live.  His genius was in not making it too specific; he avoided tying the song down to a single cause, instead opting for a sense of universality that has enabled the song to remain vital and relevant decades later.  That’s how it managed to sound like it fit perfectly in a movie about costumed crimefighters (Watchmen) and wow who knows how many people who might have never heard it before.

As for the song itself, it’s one of the many instances in which Dylan’s voice matches the song perfectly.  It’s an incredibly famous song, and it has been covered by a legion of guitar-playing singers, none of which has done the song better than Dylan does it on this recording.

(2)  “Ballad of Hollis Brown”:  This blues ballad is the story of a destitute farmer who, unable to bear his own hunger and the complaints from his wife and children, goes to work on them all with the seven shotgun shells upon which his last dollar was spent.  It is a terrifyingly bleak song, one that jolts you with its raw power.  Again, Dylan is in fine voice on this song, but this time I can think of one singer who did it justice at least as well: Nina Simone, whose dark voice and personality were well suited to the material.

(3)  “With God on Our Side”:  A rather Irish-sounding ballad, this one quite venomous in its castigations of the American human tendency to use religion as an excuse for atrocity.  Oddly, though I do like the song, of Dylan’s major works it is one of the ones I have the least affection toward.  And it’s not terribly well-played on this recording, either: pay attention to Dylan’s guitar work, and try and make any sense out of what he’s doing.

However, much as I hate to carp on this issue, Dylan’s singing, once again, is excellent here.  If you can, find a recording of Joan Baez performing the song, or, worse, dueting with Dylan on it.  Pay attention to how she chases the words, trying to elevate them into something that sounds religious in and of itself.  Dylan approaches the song from a more grounded place; he knew the lyrics did a perfectly good job of elevating the song, and had the sense to simply deliver them in an effective manner.  Dylan’s voice itself might sometimes be lacking, but the intelligence with which he uses it makes up for it and then some.

(4)  “One Too Many Mornings”:  A Freewheelin’-style lost-love ballad, this one is okay, but it’s nowhere near as good as either “Girl from the North Country” or “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.”  It’s very rough, and Dylan barely sings the song at all; it could have used some substantial work before being put into the world.  Lest I sound too anti-Baez in my take on “With God on Our Side,” I’d like now to mention that Joan’s cover of this song is simply sublime, and far better than Dylan’s.

(5)  “North Country Blues”:  Baez also did a bang-up job on this song when she covered it … but Dylan’s original, too, is a knockout.  Sung from the perspective of a mother whose life has taken a turn for the worse: her town is dying because the mine that formed its backbone has shut down, and as a result, she is faced with the prospect of her children leaving town (and leaving her alone) once they’ve grown … after all, with no work, what would hold them there?

Dylan, of course, was the child of a dying mining town, and while his mother was neither a miner nor a miner’s wife, she was certainly the mother of a child who left home to seek a better life elsewhere in the world.  This may have something to do with the incredible sadness in Dylan’s voice as he sings this song.

Musically, the song is a waltz, like several other tracks on the album (“The Times They Are A-Changin’,” “With God on Our Side,” and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”).  Dylan had used this format on Freewheelin’ with “Masters of War,” to great effect.

(6)  “Only a Pawn in Their Game”:  One of Dylan’s most overt protest songs (one of the few, in fact), this song for slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers is easily one of my least favorite tracks from Dylan’s entire career.  As on “With God on Our Side,” Dylan seems scarcely to know what to do with his guitar, and mainly uses it to just prop us his lyrics.  Unfortunately, the lyrics are nothing special, either; there are a lot of rhymes, most of them obvious.  This is the type of song Dewey Cox specialized in singing.

(7)  “Boots of Spanish Leather”:  Musically identical to “Girl from the North Country,” the song is more complex and ambitious lyrically.  There is no chorus, and of the nine verses, the first six represent a dialogue between two lovers, one of whom is leaving for Spain, and the other of whom desperately wants her to stay with him.  The final three verses are entirely from the point of view of the one who has stayed behind.  It’s a wistful song, one Dylan puts himself into fully.  I think I prefer “Girl from the North Country,” but if so, it’s not by much.

(8)  “When the Ship Comes In”:  An energetic song in the mold of an Irish drinking ditty, “When the Ship Comes In” is a tale of righteous retribution due to be delivered at the doorstep of the narrator’s foes.  In the film No Direction Home, Joan Baez makes the (highly credible) claim that the song was written on the fly, dashed off in a fit of pique by Dylan when a surly hotel attendant refused him a room due to his unkempt appearance; the more presentable Baez had to vouch for him, and in the movie, she seems amused, and more than a little envious, that such an event gave rise to such a song … and gave rise to it almost immediately.  In a couple of places during this review, I’ve railed on Dylan for his guitar playing.  Well, no such worries on this song; he plays furiously, and while I’m not qualified to assess it from a technical standpoint, I know it sounds great, and that’s good enough for me.

(9)  “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”:  Practically dripping with righteous indignation, this is a much more successful attempt at protest — and at songwriting — than is “Only a Pawn in Their Game.”  Based on the real-life death of Hattie Carroll at the hands of William Zantzinger (Dylan calls him “Zanzinger,” which is either a cagey gambit to avoid getting sued or a bad sign about how much Dylan actually knew about the case), the song is a strong example of Dylan’s storytelling skills.

(10)  “Restless Farewell”:  Yet another one that makes me think of Irish drinking songs, this is a pretty good song, but falls a bit short of being much more than that.  Dylan makes the mistake of singing a bit too forcefully in several places.  Listen to the way he belts out the word “farewell” in the last line of each verse; his voice simply isn’t strong enough to pull it off.  (In her excellent cover of the song, Joan Baez’s voice is much better suited to the challenge.)

FINAL THOUGHTS:  Not nearly as strong an album as Freewheelin’, this one nevertheless has about half a dozen great songs on it, which is better than a lot of musicians will manage during their entire careers.  Dylan, with songs like “Only a Pawn in Their Game” and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” seemed to be getting closer toward actually taking on the mantle of Protest Singer, and he doesn’t sound totally comfortable with it.  As such, this was the last time until the mid-’70s that he would tackle An Issue head-on in one of his songs.  To the extent he remained political at all, he would continue from this point forward to bury his politics inside of his art, rather than burying his art inside of his politics.  On this record, you can practically hear him learning that lesson.

Honk’s rating:  4/5 spuds

Honestly, I wish he’d died twenty years ago, before his image and career collapsed.  And collapse they did, as spectacularly as that of anyone who has ever lived.  Here is a man who was, as literally as it is possible, on top of the world.  He was a cultural giant … a behemoth whose name, for a while, belonged right up there with Elvis Presley and The Beatles as being amongst THE most influential and important entertainers in American history.

Now that his body has joined his artistic and cultural reputations in death, perhaps we can all get back to remembering why this man was such a titan.

What I remember about Michael Jackson is being given Thriller on a cassette tape for Christmas, and playing it until my cassette player broke.  Not having any means of obtaining another one, I would go and sit in my family’s carport, listening to the songs over and over in my mother’s truck … until the cassette finally gave out and stopped playing in certain sections because the thing had been played so often.

Somebody gave me a new copy, eventually, along with a K-Tel compilation of Jackson Five songs, which I loved nearly as much as Thriller.  Somebody else gave me Off the Wall, which I didn’t like very much at first, but eventually warmed to.

There were also Michael Jackson songs I had no access to: “Say Say Say,” his duet with McCartney from one of Sir Paul’s albums; “Somebody’s Watching Me,” the Rockwell song he sang the chorus on; “We Are the World,” which featured Jackson and about a gajillion other singers; all of the songs he did in The Wiz; the songs from the album he did with his brothers as The Jacksons when they all reformed.  In some ways, I treasured all of this music even more than I did, say, “Billie Jean” or “Thriller”, simply because I couldn’t listen to them whenever I wanted.  Remember, those were very different times from these.  I’d sit in front of the radio, listening anxiously for one of these songs (or for one by somebody else whose music I didn’t own), and getting positively jubilant when one of them would come on so I could hear it.

Very different times indeed.  There was magic in that kind of experience.  There’s still magic, today, of course; I’m not one of those old-fart types who’s railing about how much better it was back in my day.  Far from it.  No, the magic is still there today, it’s just different, and I’ll leave other people to talk about it. 

I’ll talk about sitting up late with my Grandma Clara, a died-in-the-wool Elvis fan who was cool enough to be interested in what was going on in music for me, even if she didn’t much like it; we’d watch the Top 10 Videos countdown on whatever channel it used to come on, and the Michael Jackson videos were always the best.  Even Grandma Clara got into those a bit … except for “Thriller,” which scared the piss out of me and didn’t do much to thrill her, either.

It all started to go downhill with Bad, which had some decent enough songs on it and sold well enough to keep his position as superstar intact.  But it was no Thriller.

Then again, what was?  It remains one of THE great albums in pop music history, and it’s important to remember that.  People seem to have mostly forgotten it, which is a shame, and if it takes Jackson’s death to get them to remember it, well, that’s a shame too, but it’s better by far than a future in which nobody remembers it at all.

It’s important to remember that for about five or six years, you simply couldn’t talk about american pop culture at large without Jackson’s name coming up.  Here was a guy who, when he made the Captain Eo film for an attraction at Disney World, was giving a big career boost for everyone else involved … including George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, and the Walt Disney Company.  That’s no run-of-the-mill starpower; that’s something you maybe see once in a lifetime.

My lifetime has seen the one, and I’m not at all sure it’ll see another.

Maybe it’s that Michael Jackson who can now start to be remembered again.