Present (XXII) Big Pink 50th Anniversary : Back Pages - Brown Notebook – Memories of the Future

 Memories of the Future

Juli 1, 1967

The day will come

when our house will shine

around the music of its name

Spring Tour 2018 : An Outline in Twenty Frames

Spring Tour 2018 : An Outline in Twenty Frames

(No Rhyme Required)

 

A worried man with a worried mind

Never weak but always strong

 

A thousand telephones that don’t ring

With a neon burnin' bright

                     I know a place where there’s still somethin’ going on

 

As a man who has always had the wand'ring ways

I’m not sorry for nothin’ I’ve done

I been all around the world, boys

The world was sweeter than we knew

My conscience is clear, what about you

Lord knows I’ve paid some dues gettin’ through

                          It’s now or never, more than ever

                          I ain’t dead yet, my bell still rings

                          Between the windows of the sea

I can't go to paradise no more

Look into my heart and you will sort of understand

Tonight I'll use the magic moon to wish upon

Sometimes the silence can be like the thunder

How many ears must one man have ?

Who is that man ?

Present (XXI) On Tour - Spring 2018

      From Lisbon

     to Verona

                 . . .


   I’ll come followin’ you

   

Caravan (18) August in Christmas

     First, it comes in through the window, sort of a breath of wind. You barely notice it until it tousles your hair. That is when you lift your head from the keyboard and see your reflection in the glass, and you stare at yourself and try to draw what looks like a smile. You grab a pencil and gaze at the way your fingers encircle it, and you start turning it around, trying to understand how that wind takes a hold of your inner self. You write scattered words, keys with aerial chords—or that is what you think, perhaps it’s only what you’ll imagine later... Notes from Rick’s bass float from the basement, intertwined with Garth’s newly-created harmonies and Dylan’s laugh. You try to capture everything: that air, the open window, your reflection, and the casual feel of those purposeless sounds, of that joy—you try to bind them to that melody you have been chasing the whole summer... And then, the wind slams the window shut, and it startles you, and the pencil falls down to your feet. When you lift your head up again, you know that all those things will play a part in a song that mentions tears... And you realize that it is already gone.

      Richard tells me so while sitting at the wheel of my caravan, looking out the windshield as if driving through the snow. When I’m about to inquire after that absence, he finishes his story with three sad and short words, an unseasonal farewell he mutters as he lights a cigarette:

       “Merry Christmas, Nar.”

      We are in the middle of August, and he smiles at me, as if he knew that we won’t be living at Big Pink when the year is over, because, by then, the miracle of the basement will be over too.

Present (XX) On Tour – Salt Lake City

       I have had to come to this city called Salt Lake and with a two-tier silhouette of jagged buildings set against a mountainous background sculpted with canyons, to reconnect with the desire that drove me to start this story three years ago. And last night’s Dylan concert at the Eccles Theater was something of a dreamlike movie, a film from another time edited upon a familiar soundtrack, embroidered with a host of little lights that shone like stars over the auditorium. It was I who added the final surprise to the plot.

     I had bought a ticket in the central section of the first row, slightly to the left of the piano, to see how, on yet another night, Dylan takes cover behind it as if cloaked in a glass robe. And with a bit of luck, to try to get a photograph of him with some rare expression. I waited until the second encore, and as the chords of the Ballad Of A Thin Man struck up, I opened the bag whose contents when I came in had caused such amazement at the security checkpoint. During the fourth verse, I put the top hat on.

      Several voices behind me complained, but I managed to stand still until, on taking centre stage for the “final bow”, Dylan spotted me. It would have been the perfect moment to take the perfect photo; that snapshot of time standing still and an expression of astonishment that took both of us back to that summer night in 67 on which a biblical bet allowed me to win that tall black hat. Then Dylan called me innocent, and idiot too. I don’t know what he must have thought last night on recognizing that old trophy on my head. When I began to raise it in a gesture of greeting, he had already turned round to leave the stage. I didn’t even get my camera out.

      Perfect pictures never get to be taken, not with any kind of device, but they are tattooed behind our eyelids. Like Dylan’s voice.

      Tonight I’ll go back to the Eccles Theater to attend his second concert in Salt Lake City, this time in the first box on the left. I’ll try to get a message to him beforehand, perhaps some of his favorite flowers too.

Oh, what a lonely soul am I,
Stranded high and dry
By a melancholy mood

 

Back Pages - Brown Notebook - Triadic Lullaby (11.7.1967)

                 Triadic Lullaby

                             Say hello to Anna Lea
                             Say hello to BBAnn !!

                                  It’s all been written in the book

                                  ten thousand nursery rhymes

                                                         I'd rather sing her a warm nook

                                                         Lord, protect my child

                                Someday little girl, everything for you is gonna be new...

                  

             

(To My Newborn Daughter, 11.7.1967)

Present (XIX) The Basement Tapes : 42 Years Young

   

Bob Dylan & The Band

THE BASEMENT TAPES

(Columbia)

Released June 26, 1975

Side 1: Odds And Ends; Orange Juice Blues (Blues for Breakfast); Million Dollar Bash; Yazoo Street Scandal; Going To Acapulco; Katie's Been Gone.

Side 2: Lo! And Behold; Bessie Smith; Clothes Line Saga; Apple Suckling Tree; Please Mrs. Henry; Tears Of Rage.

Side 3: Too Much Of Nothing; Yea! Heavy And A Bottle Of Bread; Ain't No More Cane; Crash On The Levee (Down In The Flood); Ruben Remus; Tiny Montgomery.

Side 4: You Ain't Goin' Nowhere; Don't Ya Tell Henry; Nothing Was Delivered;  Open The Door, Homer; Long Distance Operator; This Wheel's On Fire.

LINER NOTES

“Beneath the easy rolling surface of The Basement Tapes, there is some serious business going on. What was taking shape, as Dylan and The Band fiddled with the tunes, was less a style than a spirit -- a spirit that had to do with a delight in friendship and invention.

[...] The Basement Tapes are a testing and a discovery of roots and memory; it might be why The Basement Tapes are, if anything, more compelling today than when they were first made [...]”

Greil Marcus

  

Bob Dylan -- Acoustic Guitar, Piano & Vocals
Robbie Robertson -- Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Drums & Vocals
Richard Manuel -- Piano, Drums, Harmonica & Vocals
Rick Danko -- Electric Bass, Mandolin & Vocals
Garth Hudson -- Organ, Clavinette, Accordion, Tenor Sax & Piano
Levon Helm -- Drums, Mandolin, Electric Bass & Vocals

Recorded in the basement of Big Pink, West Saugerties, NY., 1967
Recording Engineer -- Garth Hudson
Mixing Engineers -- Rob Fraboni, Nat Jeffrey, Ed Anderson & Mark Aglietti
Mixed at Village Recorders & Shangri-La Studios
Mastering Engineer -- George Horn
Photography -- Reid Miles
Design Consultant -- Bob Cato
Compiled by Robbie Robertson
Produced by Bob Dylan & The Band