Bob Dylan's Carnival Jukebox: Musical Textures of Blonde on Blonde (1966)

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by HominyRhodes, May 24, 2015.

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  1. HominyRhodes

    HominyRhodes Forum Resident Thread Starter

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    Chicago
    Wonderful, wonderful...thank you.

    +1
     
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  2. HominyRhodes

    HominyRhodes Forum Resident Thread Starter

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    Chicago
    [Forgive my ignorance, and please be patient with me as I search for it online..:whistle:]
     
  3. RayS

    RayS A Little Bit Older and a Little Bit Slower

    Location:
    Out of My Element
    I read it in high school (pre-"Visions") but I certainly never put the pieces together until you pointed it out. While doing some Keats googling I also examined the Nightingale's Ode. :)
     
  4. HominyRhodes

    HominyRhodes Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Chicago
    Whew, some tough acts to follow here. It's thrilling to read such wonderful posts. They make my own entires seem like third-rate drivel, but I'll try to contribute something.

    re: Visions of Johanna
    The "final" version of Freeze Out/Visions of Johanna, released on Blonde, was one of the first tracks Dylan recorded after arriving in Nashville, probably because he'd been performing it for over two months by that time, and it was already fully formed. Compared to the NY studio versions, the album cut takes more of a minimalist approach, with Dylan on acoustic guitar and harmonica, his regulars Robbie Robertson on electric lead guitar and Al Kooper on organ, with just two of the Nashville cats on hand (Kenny Buttrey on drums and Joe South on bass) to form the rhythm section.

    Johanna is one of the Blonde tracks that inspires a lot of debate about the various mono and stereo versions released over the years on vinyl and CD. Expert sorter Roger Ford has identified eight separate mixes of the song, and opinions vary as to which is the best. I grew up listening to the "revised stereo mix" (as Mr. Ford calls it) on vinyl, and to me, that's how the recording should sound. I also have several of the remastered stereo mixes on CD, as well as the mono mix, which some people rave about, but to my ears, pushes the instruments too far into the background. (I tried to find the mono mix on YouTube, but had no luck.) This was done intentionally, according to some of the experts, to mask a few minor musical imperfections. To quote a post from a different thread by one of the SH Forum's own audio authorities, MLutthans:

    "...If we are talking 1960s rock mixes, in many cases, the mono mixes have better instrumental balance and a smoother tone overall, with more bass. Also, because for a certain time period the mono mixes were the "primary" mixes, more care was given to details within the mix, so they may have a degree of refinement missing in the stereo mix. For instance, on Dylan's BLONDE ON BLONDE album, the stereo mix has some wrong notes and wrong cymbal hits on VISIONS OF JOHANNA. Those were carefully mixed OUT on the mono mix -- a nice touch..."

    http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/questions-about-mono.262907/#post-6956536

    To be honest, some of those little off-beats and sour notes that are present on so many of Dylan's recordings have never really detracted from my enjoyment of them, unless they stand out like sore thumbs (i.e., out-of-tune instruments on some of the Highway 61 tracks). Basically, I need to hear Kooper's organ and Dylan's acoustic strumming clearly to absorb the full experience of Johanna, and the stereo version does it for me.

    Regarding the overall sound of the recording, it's clearly a fully original Dylan composition. This is one song that doesn't "remind" me of anything that came before it*. It's not very complex musically, or difficult to play on the guitar, but Dylan's phrasing and vocal are truly remarkable, as writer Sean Wilentz pointed out:

    "...By turns sibilant, sibylline, injured, cocky, sardonic, and wry, Dylan’s voice on Blonde on Blonde more than made up in tone and phrasing what it gave away in range. It was even more challenging to sing out than it was to write out, “But like Louise always says/‘Ya can’t look at much, can ya, man’/As she, herself, prepares for him,” in “Visions of Johanna,” but Dylan pulled it off. .."

    * NOTE: One contemporary hit single, Homeward Bound, by Simon and Garfunkel, a follow-up to their highly-successful Sounds of Silence, entered the lower reaches of the Billboard chart on Feb. 5, 1966, just a week before Dylan's first trip to Nashville, when Johanna was recorded. The case could be made that the acoustic guitar and snare drum sound in the slow-paced verses of Homeward Bound could have influenced the sound of Dylan's Nashville recording, but that same "folk rock" flavor was present on Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home album a year earlier, a record which launched the whole movement, and which S & G were clearly emulating at that point in their career. [BTW: I like Homeward Bound quite a bit, but one line always makes me laugh: "...my love lies waiting silently for me." As I've said, I'm not much at dissecting lyrics, but in Dylan's Love Minus Zero, his "love, she speaks like silence," or "speaks softly," but she apparently doesn't wait for him in total silence.]


     
  5. HominyRhodes

    HominyRhodes Forum Resident Thread Starter

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    Chicago
    According to Clinton Heylin, Dylan was talking about the heat pipes at the Chelsea Hotel. Is that where your "old apartment" was? :)
     
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  6. RayS

    RayS A Little Bit Older and a Little Bit Slower

    Location:
    Out of My Element
    I think "Visions of Johanna" is certainly "impressionist music" (or, at the very least, impressionist lyrics). It reminds me in a way of the manner that Dylan himself described "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" - that rather than presenting a cohesive narrative, each line (or perhaps verse, in the case of "Visions") suggests an entire other song, an entire other line of thought. Trying to add all the pieces up into a whole will only lead to failure. It is a series of impressions ... even a series of starting points (sort of like Bob saying "Well, here's something else for you to think about, but I'm not telling you anymore, it's for you to figure out and decide").
     
  7. RayS

    RayS A Little Bit Older and a Little Bit Slower

    Location:
    Out of My Element
    I remember it well.
     
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  8. DmitriKaramazov

    DmitriKaramazov Senior Member

    Omaha Nebraska!

    :cool:
     
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  9. janschfan

    janschfan Senior Member

    Location:
    Nashville, Tn. USA
    OK, guys, here's a shameless plug...Please come see our new exhibit at Nashville's Country Music Hall Of Fame & Museum, called Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash & the Nashville Cats.Part of my job is standing in the middle of this wonderland, answering questions from our guests. The exhibit tells how Bob Johnston used Charlie McCoy to lure Dylan to record in Nashville. All it took was Mr. McCoy's fantastic lead acoustic guitar on Desolation Row to convince Bob that the players in Nashville could give him something approaching that "thin wild, mercury-like sound" in Dylan's head. After Blonde On Blonde, the musical topography of Nashville changed quickly and dramatically.The end result of this exhibit is to give some credit to some very creative musicians and players who have contributed so much to our music!I think that Blonde On Blonde was the result of a collision of the music, literature, art, and changing times in Bob's head...just my opinion. Anyway, our exhibit is up and open till December 2016. You wouldn't believe the folks who have dropped by to see it.....
     
  10. HominyRhodes

    HominyRhodes Forum Resident Thread Starter

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    I read the SH Forum thread with GREAT interest:
    http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/dylan-cash-and-the-nashville-cats-a-new-music-city.423488/

    If I could go, I certainly would, and I'm anticipating the CD, which is coming in June. Thanks!!

    EDIT: I hope to incorporate a lot about Charlie McCoy & the Escorts into this thread, too.
     
  11. RayS

    RayS A Little Bit Older and a Little Bit Slower

    Location:
    Out of My Element
    In Paul's defense, his love was pretty darn quiet when she was sleeping in "Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.", which was released before "Love Minus Zero". ;-)
     
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  12. Moth

    Moth fluttering by

    Location:
    UCI
    I agree with RayS on the function of the lyrics, although I think I would call them "imagist" (like the works of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot) - but I'll meet you halfway and say that the lyrics "impress" an "image" upon the listener. I find that lines like "And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin’ you to defy it" don't have a clear meaning and they don't have an obvious effect on the narrative, but they leave you with vivid pictures that help to illustrate different points in the song. These are probably the types of lines that Bob decided to cut down on during the writing of John Wesley Harding when he said "There's no line that you can stick your finger through, there's no hole in any of the stanzas."
     
  13. Fender Relic

    Fender Relic Forum Resident

    Location:
    PennsylBama
    I'm on the carnival cruise with you. The first verse line of Johanna about sitting here stranded though we're all doing our best to deny it ,in my mind,ties into the Mona Lisa museum deal later on. The song is dark and desperate,defeatist,no comfort in your own skin. Like you're dammed if you do,damned if you don't . We are all trapped in our mortal existence between life and death but maybe the after life even the best result might not be cracked up to be all that we think. Meanwhile all of life's events go by and we try to make the best sense out of love,relationships,music,art,etc. and we get irritated,annoyed with life in general and other people's pettiness and our own as well. Sometimes visions of Johanna are the only respites that get us through this mess . Or a good spin of Blonde On Blonde that salves as we trudge on. I'm making mine first press mono,what's your pleasure?
     
  14. posnera

    posnera Forum Resident

    The shouts in the background of Rainy Day Women have more in common with Muddy Waters' Mannish Boy than a "party record", in my opinion.
     
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  15. HominyRhodes

    HominyRhodes Forum Resident Thread Starter

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    Chicago
    You know me -- I have a "keen eye for the obvious," so I went straight to Jack Kerouac, whom Dylan has often expressed admiration for, and found this line in Visions of Cody: "It no longer makes me cry and die and tear myself to see her go because everything goes away from me like that now — girls, visions, anything, just in the same way and forever and I accept lostness forever." It does remind me of "...and these visions of Johanna are now all that remain."
     
  16. RayS

    RayS A Little Bit Older and a Little Bit Slower

    Location:
    Out of My Element
    As a former Beat Literature teacher, I should know this stuff off the top of my head, but my memory is shaky at best. I believe that while "Visions of Cody" was written long before "Visions of Johanna", it was not released until long after it. Considering his connections, though, that's no proof that Dylan didn't read it, or even possess a personal copy.
     
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  17. HominyRhodes

    HominyRhodes Forum Resident Thread Starter

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    Chicago
    Maybe Ginsberg gave him a copy. :)
     
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  18. eeglug

    eeglug Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago, IL, USA
    Great thread. Can't contribute much I'm afraid but will enjoy reading. I must say though that I'm a bit disappointed that the thread is being diverted back to Dylan's words on their own instead of the music, which I thought was the mandate laid out in post #1 and in the thread title.
     
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  19. HominyRhodes

    HominyRhodes Forum Resident Thread Starter

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    Chicago
    I agree with the impressionist characterization. To me, Visions of Johanna, Pledging My Time, 4th Time Around, and Temporary Like Achilles are the four tracks on the album that exude a lonely, claustrophobic, three a.m, smoking, drinking (possibly drugging) and vision-inducing vibe, and they're all full of abstraction, but seem darker than the absurd humor of Memphis Blues Again, or the combination of humor and pure desire in I Want You.
     
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  20. HominyRhodes

    HominyRhodes Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
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    You're right, this thread is all about the music, but we make room for Lyric Discussion Time, as I mentioned in post #1. In many instances, the vocals and lyrics can't be separated out from the overall musical "feel" of the songs, so I think it's OK. But I will certainly try to concentrate on the sound of the music.
     
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  21. streetlegal

    streetlegal Forum Resident

    I think the urban--urbane--claustrophobia is both the attraction and repulsion of BoB. I see the bucolic New Morning, in particular, as the antidote--the rush of a breeze through an open window!!
     
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  22. eeglug

    eeglug Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago, IL, USA
    There's something in those 'rough' versions of Freeze Out/Visions of Johanna which seems maybe a little too neat and well-defined when you compare them to the final arrangement. All of the players seem to be hammering away at all of these chords and unison lines together. Whereas the official version has almost vague and lost quality about it - and going with the impressionistic idea, the official version seems to imply a sound whereas the early versions seem to all-to-carefully delineate it.

    (I must admit to being someone occasionally bothered by the bass player's mistakes - does he get any of those section changes right? LOL)
     
  23. Excellent points and thinking, I agree, he obviously thought a lot about the song and how he wanted it to come out. Slight disagreement re: the bass, I like the 'wild hair' it contributes to the music.

    One small note on the lyrics, when Joan Baez's Diamonds and Rust came out, there was much speculation that Johanna was Joan Baez.
    I say, both yes and no, as Dylan probably considered her role in his life as inspiration, then mentally cancelled it - and ultimately both thoughts simultaneously are there because that's an essence of his being Bob.
     
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  24. HominyRhodes

    HominyRhodes Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
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    The version on No Direction Home was only recently remixed and remastered, so I don't think Bob concerned himself with the way it sounds. He may have supervised the mix of the other alternate take, but he never released it. I believe that both of them had too much instrumentation for his liking, and he settled for the more unencumbered take on Blonde.

    Joe South's bass playing, missed changes and all, now just seems like part of the track to me, although I can see how those off-notes might annoy some people.
     
  25. StephenDedalus

    StephenDedalus Forum Resident

    Location:
    Belfast, Ireland
    "This English (American) language, who knows entirely what it is? Maybe two people this decade Bob Dylan and John Berryman" - good quote right there
     
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