This is El Caminito del Rey, located in the mountains about an hour from Malaga, Spain. The walker is Daniel Ahnen, who filmed it in 2008. Ahnen died in 2011 while hiking in the Himalayas.
More recently, the path has been tamed to make it safer though it still looks quite intimidating.
For the background on the path, constructed in the early 20th century, read this.
News today that Charles McGonigal was arrested for his ties with a US sanctioned Russian oligarch. What's significant is that, until his retirement in 2018, McGonigal was Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of counterintelligence in the New York field office of the FBI where he worked on the Trump Russia collusion investigation, and the oligarch McGonigal has worked with since then is Oleg Deripaska, tied to Vladimir Putin, and who is intertwined with many threads of the Russia collusion story.
McGonigal was working to get US sanctions, imposed on Deripaska in 2018, lifted, faces money-laundering charges as well as allegations of sanctions violations. McGonigal's name shows up on documents involving the investigation of Carter Page, though the full extent of his involvement in the collusion matter is unknown.
UPDATE: McGonigal was the FBI agent who sent the email to FBI HQ conveying the allegations from a foreign source that triggered the Crossfire Hurricane investigation (Russia collusion) back in July 2016. McGonigal is also the subject of a second indictment alleging he illegally worked for Albanian nationals while still employed by the FBI.
SECOND UPDATE: Haven't seen convincing evidence McGonigal was involved in the Russia investigation, beyond passing on the email mentioned above. It is the Deripaska connection threading through this that is the intriguing part.
Deripaska's name has been mentioned several times in my posts on Russia collusion. Christopher Steele worked for Deripaska from 2012 to 2017, at the same time as he was creating his fake dossier on Donald Trump. Deripaska is also the guy whose dispute with Paul Manafort over whatever they were up to in Ukraine/Russia eventually led to the investigation resulting in Manafort's indictment and conviction.
Deripaska also shows up in connection with Democratic Senator Mark Warner. In 2017, Warner, ranking minority member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, attempted to reach Deripaska in order to obtain the testimony of Christopher Steele. Warner went to great lengths to keep these communications secret to Republican committee members. Warner's approach to Deripaska went through Adam Waldman. Waldman, a DC lawyer and lobbyist (and Democrat) representing Deripaska in the U.S. from 2009 to 2018. In June 2009, Waldman filed Foreign Agent Registration (FARA) paperwork with DOJ stating he would be representing the oligarch on "legal advice on issues involving his U.S. visa as well as commercial transactions". For these services, Waldman's firm was paid $40,000 a month, plus expenses.
In October 2010, Waldman filed FARA papers to represent Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, for "gathering information and providing advice and analysis as it relates to the U.S. policy towards the visa status of Oleg Deripaska" (which was ultimately granted by the Obama administration). Lavrov remains in the same position today and is a vocal supporter of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
In early 2017, Waldman became involved with Julian Assange, visiting him nine times at the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he'd take refuge. In a 2018 article Mother Jones reported:
Many of Waldman’s visits to Assange seem related to his effort to broker a deal between Assange and the US government, under which Assange would be allowed safe passage to the United States if he discussed past and future WikiLeaks releases with senior US officials.
In his 2017 texts to Warner, Waldman indicated that Assange hoped to use a stolen archive of documents detailing CIA hacking operations as leverage to win concessions from the United States. “Just want to underscore my opinion and the reason I got involved – this guy is going to do something catastrophic for the dems, Obama, CIA and national security,” Waldman wrote Warner on February 16, 2017. “I hope someone will consider getting him to the US to ameliorate the damage.” Waldman was hinting at a deal: If the US government played ball with Assange, then maybe this material would stay secret.
But there was no deal. And on March 7, WikiLeaks released the CIA material. After these documents were posted, Waldman, while seeking a meeting with Warner, warned the senator that WikiLeaks had additional material: “There is more to come.” Waldman’s warnings apparently worried Warner. He immediately informed the FBI of the messages, according to a Senate aide.
Via Waldman, Assange offered to come to the U.S. and testify as to what he knew about the alleged Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee, in exchange for dropping existing charges against him. That offer was ultimately refused.
I'm not sure what to make of all this, except that the straight forward narrative regarding the Russia collusion story promoted by the Democrats and media has passed into the realm of satire.
We already knew that FusionGPS, which retained Steele to create the dossier for the Clinton campaign, was, at the same time, working on behalf of yet another Putin-connected oligarch to overturn the Magnitsky Act.
More recently we learned in the course of the Danchenko trial, that Charles Dolan, a DC lobbyist with links to the Clintons, represented the Kremlin on public relations matters in the U.S. and was personally meeting with Putin's spokesperson, while at the same time being a source for the Steele dossier. And that Mueller team rejected an FBI agent recommendation to interview Dolan after she learned he was a source for Danchenko. Turns out that despite Mueller's Congressional testimony that the Steele dossier was "beyond my purview", he had a whole team looking at it.
It's all very curious.
Fascinating article in Antigone, a relatively new Classics journal on Greek and Roman times, about the rediscovery of ancient texts on Greek astronomy. The article, How Lost Secrets of Greek Astronomy Were Rediscovered, by Peter J Williams, describes how this all came about.
Originally the rediscovered text was thought to consist of:
Lines from Aratus' (315-240 BC) poem the Phaenomena, used to teach the constellations.
Drawings of the constellations
Stories from Eratosthenes (276-195 BC), the first person to accurately measure the circumference of the Earth, of how the constellations arose
Listing by Eratosthenes of the stars in each constellation
More recently the researchers have discovered parts of the lost star catalogue of Hipparchus (190-120 BC), regarded as the greatest astronomer of the ancient world.
The story of the rediscovery starts with two wealthy Scottish widows and twin sisters, Agnes Smith Lewis (1843–1926) and Margaret Dunlop Gibson (1843–1920). The sisters were residents at Cambridge University and also traveled widely in the Middle East. While in Egypt they purchased an ancient manuscript, Codex Climaci Rescriptus, which likely originated at St Catherine's Monastery, located at the foot of what was reputedly Mt Sinai. The Monastery has been the source of many ancient manuscripts in the form of palimpsests. A palimpsest is a document on which something has been written over an existing manuscript, a common practice in the first millennium because of the shortage of papyrus and lack of paper.
When brought back to Cambridge it was visibly apparent that writing existed beneath the more recent literary work written in Syriac. Scholars determined that it contained about 100 pages in Aramaic and Greek of biblical and philosophical texts. But nine pages remained indescipherable with the techniques of the time.
This changed in 2010 when the Cambridge college sold the manuscript to the Green family (founders of the Hobby Lobby chain) who donated it to their new Bible museum in Washington DC. In 2012 the author of the Antigone article, who is Principal of Tyndale House in Cambridge, the UK's largest institute dedicated to the research of the Bible, agreed to assemble a team to work on the undertext. The museum undertook rounds of digital imaging, including multispectral imaging to help the researchers.
Over the next five years, painstaking progress was made in deciphering the text. Then, in 2018, as Williams writes:
" . . . in 2017 the museum commissioned imaging and processing provided by a combination of the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library, the Lazarus Project of the University of Rochester, and the Rochester Institute of Technology. 42 images of each page were captured using different wavelengths and light filters and then programmers processed the images to make particular text more visible to researchers. In 2018 the image-processing specialists joined our textual scholars for a week at Tyndale House and we were able to give real-time feedback on the particular pixels or ink we wanted enhanced. Progress sped up.
One of the programmers, Vasilis Kasotakis, using Principal Components Analysis and Independent Components Analysis struck on exactly the right formula, so that suddenly a creature like a fish appeared on his screen where nothing significant had previously been visible. He let out an exclamation and everyone in the room crowded round to see his discovery."
The researchers began to understand they were reading an integrated text in which when the Aratus poem mentioned a constellation, Erathosthenes text about that constellation was inserted.
But it was not until 2021 that Williams was able to decipher key passages which turned out to be previously unknown text from the work of Hipparchus - the oldest known astronomical measurements!
Who knows what else awaits discovery? Williams writes:
There may also be more parts of the manuscript still in St Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai, where there are at least 160 palimpsests, most of which have not been studied.
Two photos I've taken in recent years. The top one is in Monument Valley, on Navajo land along the Utah-Arizona line, about a five hour drive from our house. It was along the 17 mile drive you can take on an unpaved, very bumpy road through the valley. Definitely worth a visit. We'll be returning.
The photo on the bottom is taken on Great Cranberry Island in Maine, which is only a few hundred yards off of Mount Desert Island. It looks across the channel connecting the Atlantic with Southwest Harbor. On the far side is Seal Harbor. The mountains, all in Acadia National Park are, starting on the far left, Norumbega, Park, Sargeant, Penobscot, the Bubbles, Pemetic, and Cadillac.
From a young age, I enjoyed following politics and mom brought me to some meetings, including in the legendary smoke-filled rooms of the times, was a member of Youth for Kennedy as a 9 year old, and present at JFK's November 6, 1960 campaign rally at the Bridgeport railroad station which I wrote about in A Cruel and Shocking Act.
The most common buttons are for Abe Ribicoff who served as governor and senator from the state in that era. You can also see a button for Adlai Stevenson. The Ella button is for Ella Grasso, governor during the 1970s. Kowalski was a Democratic congressional candidate from our district. The Jackson Means Jobs button was for Scoop Jackson, the senator from Washington who was a candidate for the 1976 presidential nomination and, of whom, mom was a fan. And, in the interests of political diversity, you can see her buttons for Nixon and Reagan.
Today's news of the passing of guitarist Jeff Beck reminds me of the pivotal role he played, while in The Yardbirds, in creating the new sounds that so influenced pop and rock music in the mid-60s and specifically during 1966.
The British Invasion of 1964 brought a new sound and spirit into popular music and the next set of changes in '66 turned the music in a new direction. Below are 6 songs from that year, arranged in chronological order of release, of which three are from The Yardbirds and Jeff Beck. Five of the six were singles, but none were smash hits in the U.S., although four reached the top 20 on the charts.
February 1966 marks the release of Shapes Of Things by The Yardbirds. Which reminds me, I need to check the 45s I have in storage as I think I still have the three Yardbirds singles. Shapes was unlike anything I heard before, with the crazy guitar solo in the middle, the way they hit reverberating chord at solo's end, and the guitar sputtering out at the end.
The next month saw Eight Miles High by The Byrds. This was a very heavy song for the time with the bass and rhythm guitar recorded loud, the odd, enigmatic lyrics, and the dissonant jazz-tinged lead guitar by Roger McGuinn.
The Yardbird's next single, Over Under Sideways Down, was released in July, with its unique sinewy guitar threading throughout.
That same month 7 And 7 Is was released by Love, an L.A. band. Another first of a kind sound and ending.
In August, The Beatles released Revolver. The last song on the second side, and the strangest on the entire album, was Tomorrow Never Knows, which was actually the first song recorded for the album back in April. Things would never be the same.
And finally, in October, came Happenings Ten Years Time Ago from The Yardbirds, lyrically and sonically distinctive. A word on Yardbirds guitarists is appropriate here. The band's first guitarist was Eric Clapton, who quit in 1964 because he thought the band was becoming too commercial. His replacement was Jeff Beck. In the spring of '66, Jimmy Page joined the band and, until the fall, both Beck and Page served as guitarists. Over Under and Happenings feature both. That fall, Beck quit the band, leaving Page to carry on until Jimmy left to form a new band which became Led Zeppelin.
New House Speaker McCarthy announced that Adam Schiff would not be allowed a spot on the House Intelligence Committee which he chaired in the last two sessions of Congress. The right move.
In June 2017 the Committee began hearings on Russian interference in the 2016 election, which continued until March 2018. Though Representative Schiff was only the ranking minority member of the committee at the time, he effectively ran the hearings, as gutless wonder Paul Ryan had given into a bogus Democratic complaint regarding Chairman Devin Nunes which removed him from the hearing. Transcripts were submitted to the Director of National Intelligence for review before being released to the public because officials such as Susan Rice and Samantha Power were among those testifying. The transcripts were cleared for release at the beginning of 2019 but by that time the Democrats had taken control of Congress and Schiff refused to release them until, finally, DNI Grenell threatened to do so on his own initiative, leading to their release in May 2020.
So, for nearly three years, Schiff was able to leave the hearings and make pronouncements about the dire, indeed criminal activities unearthed in the testimony (the committee also had access to witness emails and telephone records). He provided a series of juicy stories to his accomplices in the media, all of whom promoted the Trump collusion narrative. The problem was that everything Schiff said was a lie including, to quote Mary McCarthy's take on Lillian Hellman, "even 'and' and 'the'.
How do I know this? Once the 5,977 pages of transcripts were released I read them all, unlike the media stenographers reporting Schiff's every word. It's all there, Alfa Bank, Deutsche Bank, Trump in Moscow, the Trump Tower meeting in NYC, the Ukraine platform at the GOP convention, etc, and there was nothing there. Schiff knew it all along, and just lied, knowing well his audience and knowing he would never be held accountable. I wrote up my conclusions in the 53 Transcripts series.
Adam Schiff, along with Hillary Clinton, the Intelligence Community, the New York Times, and the Washington Post could not have done more damage to this country and trust in its institutions if they had been paid agents of the Kremlin. The same goes for Donald Trump based on his actions since the November 2020 election.
From The Cultural Tutor, a thread on twelve of the most extraordinary bridges in the world. I've only been on one, the Millau Viaduct in France. Here's the picture from thread:
The Viaduct is the tallest bridge in the world (1,104 feet), and being French designed it is also stunningly beautiful. Located in the south-central part of the country, when opened in 2004, it completed France's equivalent of its interstate highway system, bridging a gap across the Tarn River Valley which, until then, required a tortuous, twisting, and slow detour on local roads.
On a trip in 2015, I made sure to make our own detour in order to drive the bridge, which I did three times, much to the annoyance of Mrs THC. We then drove down into the river valley, staying at a hotel that afforded us a perfect view of the entire structure.
It's worth taking a look at the bridges in the thread, as well as those suggested by commenters, including some built 20 to 30 centuries ago.
Along with the Millau Viaduct, the others selected by The Cultural Tutor are:
Menai Bridge, Wales (1826)
Chenab Bridge, India (2022)
Oresund Bridge, Denmark-Sweden (1999)
Allahverdi Khan Bridge, Iran (1602)
Forth Bridge, Scotland (1890)
Bridge of Sighs, Venice (1603)
Ping Tang Bridge, China (2019)
Caravan Bridge, Izmir, Turkey (9th Century BC)
Stari Most, Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina (1566, rebuilt 2004)
Lake Ponchartrain Causeway, USA (1969)
Duge Bridge, China (2016)
On January 8, 2021 I wrote a post including this tweet, containing President-elect Biden's comments on the January 6 riot.
Biden: "No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn't have been treated very, very differently than the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol. We all know that's true, and it is unacceptable. Totally unacceptable." pic.twitter.com/TfWa25VzEt
— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 7, 2021
In that post I characterized Biden's remarks this way: "This is as inaccurate, misleading and inflammatory as anything said by Donald Trump."
Recently going back and linking to this post in the course of writing another post, I realized my statement was in error and wanted to acknowledge it on the second anniversary of the post.
Biden's statement was actually accurate. If it had been a BLM group, or any other group opposing the election of Donald Trump, they would have been treated very, very differently from the mob which stormed the Capitol. We all do know that is true and it is totally unacceptable.
We know Biden's statement was accurate because if a white Capitol police officer had shot and killed an unarmed black woman attempting to enter the Capitol through a broken window we would have had an immediate national outcry, we would have quickly known the name of the officer, public investigations would have commenced, and drumbeat of media coverage. Instead a black Capitol police officer shot and killed an unarmed white woman attempting to enter the Capitol (the only person killed that day) and the overall reaction was that she got what she deserved, it took months to identify the officer, and details of the DOJ "investigation" were never revealed. The New York Times was upset that her body was not left on the Capitol steps as carrion for the crows as an object lesson to others (yes, that is sarcasm, but not far off). Talk about privilege.(1)
We know Biden's statement was accurate because, unlike what many people seem to believe, only one Capitol police officer died in the line of duty during 2021, and it was not on January 6. On April 2, 2021, 19 year veteran William (Billy) Evans, who was white, was killed when struck by a vehicle deliberately driven into the barriers surrounding the Capitol. When the driver emerged wielding a knife he was shot and killed by other police. If you were on twitter that day or watching the news wire there was a brief moment of palpable excitement in the news media, as they speculated a MAGA type was attempting another assault on the Capitol. You can sense the disappointment when it turned out the attacker was a black nationalist follower of Louis Farrakhan and the story quickly disappeared because it had the wrong narrative and perpetrator. Talk about privilege.
We know Biden's statement was accurate because the story has reappeared and made to fit the desired narrative. By none other than President Joe Biden! Two days ago, speaking on the second anniversary of January 6, the President stated that Officer Evans was killed as a result of "threats by these sick insurrectionists". So, even an officer killed by a black nationalist was really killed by MAGA types! Talk about privilege.
We know Biden's statement was accurate because on May 31 and June 1, 2020 rioters protesting the death of George Floyd tried to storm the grounds of the White House, injuring sixty Secret Service and police, sending eleven of them to the hospital. The focus of the media and the Democrats was on criticizing the effort to defend the White House grounds and also in taking great glee in pointing out President Trump was "hiding" in the White House command center. In contrast to January 6, the media and Democrats expressed horror when efforts were made to clear out the "mostly peaceful" protestors and simply paid no attention to the injured law enforcement personnel. And, if the protestors had been successful in entering the White House, the media and Democrats would have treated it as a "day of reckoning" sparking "needed conversation" about American history. Talk about privilege.
We know Biden's statement was accurate because of the experience of 2020's "Summer of Mostly Peaceful Protests", which left 30 dead and $2 billion in property damages. When it turned out that cities run by Progressives for decades were cesspools of racism, in which generations of minority children had been condemned to serve time in failing schools, their response was to order police to stand down, while the Progressive paramilitary wing was allowed to run wild, ransacking and destroying the properties of law abiding citizens,
mostly minorities, destroying livelihoods, with the longer term consequences of increased crime and violence in these vulnerable communities. And those
who tried to object were threatened with the loss of their jobs and
careers and shut down by social media. Talk about privilege.
We know Biden's statement was accurate because, during the summer of 2020, the media went out of its way to pretend it wasn't even happening, claiming the protests were "mostly peaceful" and 93% non-violent (by that standard, I don't know why anyone would be concerned about Covid since the best estimates are more than 99% of those infected will survive). Here's a report from an honest progressive about what's happened in our cities. Talk about privilege.
We know Biden's statement was accurate because when Antifa
spent 50 nights trying to break into the Federal building in Portland
(and did the same in other cities though not as persistently) with arson
and other violent attacks, outlets like the New York Times studiously
avoided reporting, except to blame the Trump administration when it
reacted to protect the buildings.
We know Biden's statement was accurate because during the campaign Joe Biden denied that Antifa was a real thing and Biden and Harris staffers contributed to bail funds to allow these thugs to go free while Progressive mayors and judges dropped charges against these creatures. Kamala Harris actually used her twitter feed to encourage followers to contribute to a Minnesota bail fund to spring members of the Democratic Party's paramilitary wing from jail. Talk about privilege.
We know Biden's statement was accurate because, in contrast to the summer of 2020 rioters and protestors, the January 6 rioters and protestors have been vigorously prosecuted, and often held for long periods without bail, and generally sentenced much more severely than the 2020 lawbreakers. One example - a January 6 protestor who was not accused of any violent act, entering the Capitol through an open door, who went into the Senate parliamentarian's office and stole a bottle of brandy and a coat rack was sentenced to three years in prison. Meanwhile, the two people of color who during the Floyd riots in New York City, threw a Molotov cocktail into the back of a police car, were sentenced to only fifteen months, after the Department of Justice took the unusual step of changing their earlier guilty pleas and repleading to lesser charges. Talk about privilege. (2)
I'm glad my recent post caused me to re-examine the post of January 8, 2021 and realize my characterization of Biden's remarks was inaccurate, prompting this corrective post. The President-elect was spot on and, as noted above, we have many proof points in support of his claims.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) Regarding January 6, I made my views clear in a post of that date, and, in the January 8 post referenced above, the first part contains additional comments on those events while later in that same post I wrote "The bottom line is you should be shocked by yesterday's events and repulsed by Trump's behavior" and that I "would have supported Capitol police firing on anyone who attempted to enter as part of that mob".
(2) We find further confirmation of Biden's statement in his appointment of Kristen Clarke as chief of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. Ms Clarke does not interpret the provisions of the Civil Rights Acts as being applicable to white people. Talk about privilege.
I've never reviewed a book while still in the middle of reading but am making an exception for Bob Dylan's new one, The Philosophy Of Modern Song. I can't remember having so much fun reading a book. The title is deceptive - it's not really about a common philosophy, nor is it about the techniques of music making and recording. You won't find much about musical techniques and instrumentation, how to go about structuring interesting melodies, or how to build harmonies. And it's more than fun. This is a great book, full of wonder and contemplation, by an 81 year-old guy with an encyclopedic knowledge of modern song, reflecting on those eighty one years.
The book consists of 66 chapters (I've finished 35), each featuring a song by a specific artist. Some I know well like Blue Bayou, London Calling, Mack the Knife, and Strangers in the Night. Some I've never heard of like Without A Song (Perry Como), Poison Love (Johnnie and Jack), and The Little White Cloud That Cried (Johnnie Ray). Some by artists I know well, like the Elvises (Presley & Costello), The Temptations, and Little Richard. Some by artists I'm learning about for the first time; The Osborne Brothers, Jimmy Wages, and Webb Pierce.
The book is really four things rolled into one. In each chapter Dylan writes about the song itself, usually in a very impressionistic way. In most chapters he also adds a piece about the artist or something tangentially related to the artist. Dylan's writing is often non-linear, captivating, amusing, insightful. At the end of the post I've included some excerpts but they really don't due the author complete justice. Dylan has a certain rhythm to his writing and it all flows together, so mere excerpts drain some of the rolling rhythm away.
The book is also filled with wonderful, often enigmatic (mostly) unlabeled photographs and images, leaving you to figure out why they've been selected, (a few examples follow):
An extra added attraction is, as I am reading, going to YouTube and listening to every song I've not heard. I've already added several to my playlists:
Without A Song (Perry Como)
I can't believe I've downloaded a Perry Como song! The most unhip guy I remember on TV from my childhood (other than Lawrence Welk). This is what got me to listen:
Perry Como was the anti-Rat Pack, like the anti-Frank; wouldn't be caught dead with a drink in his hand, and could out-sing anybody. His performance is just downright incredible. There is nothing small you can say about it.
Perry is also the anti-American Idol. He is anti-flavor of the week, anti-hot list and anti-bling. He was a Cadillac before the tail fins; a Colt .45, not a Glock; steak and potatoes, not California cuisine. Perry Como stands and delivers. No artifice, no forcing one syllable to spread itself thin across many notes.
Perry Como lived in every moment of every song he sang. . . When he stood and sang, he owned the song and he shared it and we believed every single word. What more could you want from an artist?
Take Me From This Garden of Evil (Jimmy Wages)
Nelly Was A Lady (Alvin Youngblood Hart; couldn't find Hart's version on YouTube or ITunes so the link is to a version by Charles Szabo)
Ruby, Are You Mad? (The Osborne Brothers) - Amazing!
Old Violin (Johnny Paycheck) - How have I never heard this before?
It's now close to sixty years since I first heard Dylan. In the 60s and into the 70s I listened to him quite a lot, but by the mid-70s that had lessened considerably. For many years thereafter I listened very little to the old stuff and remained largely ignorant of his output since the late 70s. It was only when, for reasons I can't remember, I decided to read his 2004 autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One, that my interest was rekindled. Chronicles is the finest autobiography by a musician I've read. Like many of Dylan's songs it is not linear, "first I did this and then I did that". Rather, it is episodic, focusing on a very few points in his career, it is both vague and precise using engaging language and, also like much about Dylan, you're never quite sure if what he is telling you is true. It's myth making in action while, at the same time, self-aware and reflective.
In recent years, I've started relistening to the old stuff but have also engaged with his releases since the late 70s and there is so much that is good there. Lyrically his later work is quite different but strong in its own way. In Chronicles, Dylan writes of the making of his "comeback" album in the late 80s, when the producer, who had worked with U2 and others, urged him to write some songs "like Mr Tambourine Man" and Dylan says "I'm not that guy anymore, I can't do that".
It's how Things Have Changed, his song from the 2000 film Wonder Boys (worth watching, by the way), ended up as the name of this blog, with its chorus on the front page. I've done posts on many of his post 1977 songs and more will be coming. I've come across many outstanding covers, often better than the originals. Here's an example - Ring Them Bells by Sarah Jarosz. Oddly, one of the few exceptions is Make You Feel My Love. Adele's version is perfectly fine and her voice 100x better than Bob's but his version (and this version) are better.
The quality of his output over the decades is incredible. My respect for him has grown greatly in recent years.
Excerpts from The Philosophy of Modern Song.
Blue Suede Shoes (Carl Perkins)
There are more songs about shoes than there are about hats, pants, and dresses combined. Ray Price's keep walking back to him, Betty Lou got a new pair, Chuck Willis didn't want to hang his up, Bill Anderson nailed a pair to the floor and the Drifters got sand in theirs. Sugar Pie DeSanto sang about slip-in mules and Run-DMC about their Adidas. There's songs about new shoes, old shoes, muddy shoes, runnin' shoes, dancing shoes, red shoes by the drugstore, and the ol' soft-shoe.
Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, a.k.a. Iron Felix, trusted consort to both Lenin and Stalin, led the early Soviet secret police organization known as the Cheka. During the Red Terror, the beginning of the Russian Civil War in 1918, Lenin asked him how many executions the Cheka was responsible for. Dzerzhinsky suggested they count the number of shoes and divide by two.(1)
On why Elvis Presley had the bigger hit with the song than Perkins, who wrote it and released it first:
Carl was too much the country boy for the rock and roll crown. Elvis, on the other hand, was all sullen eyes and sharp cheekbones, backwoods-born but city-livin', hip-shakin' with a feral whiff of danger. Carl wrote this song, but if Elvis was alive today, he'd be the one to have a deal with Nike.
Take Me From This Garden of Evil (Jimmy Wages)
What you'd like to see is a neighborly face, a lovely charming face. Someone on the up and up, a straight shooter, ethical and fit. Someone in an attractive place, hospitable, a hole in the wall, a honky-tonk with home cooking. Nobody needs to be in a quick rush, no emphasis on speediness, everybody's going to measure their steps.
But you're in limbo, and you're shouting to anyone who'll listen, to take you out of this garden of evil. Get your away from the gangsters and psychopaths, this menagerie of wimps and yellow-bellies.
Ball Of Confusion (The Temptations)
Dylan writes "This is a song about the human condition, and rules don't apply". Praising the Motown song writing team of Barrett Strong and Norman Whitfield for writing "one of the few non-embarrassing songs of social awareness", he points out "Writing a song like this can be deceptively easy . . . But in less sure hands one might as well write about the periodic table of elements with built-in-rhymes about calcium, chromium and lithium."
You can see the pattern to their type of writing. Social issues, human nature issues - they could hide what they were trying to say and say it anyway . . . Everything they wrote is meaningful and true to the way things really are. They saw it and told it, relentlessly. They look into the darkness and shine the light.
Ball of Confusion is pre-rap. If you're just walking around drunk and carefree, this song will sure sober you up. The reality of this song is that it's just as true now as the day it was recorded.
My Generation (The Who)
You're in an exclusive club, and you're advertising yourself. You're blabbing about your age group, of which you're a high ranking member. You can't conceal your conceit, and you're snobbish and snooty about it. . . You're looking down your nose at society and you have no use for it. You're hoping to croak before senility sets in. You don't want to be ancient and decrepit, no thank you. I'll kick the bucket before that happens. You're looking at the world mortified by the hopelessness of it all.
In reality you're an eighty-year-old man, being wheeled around in a home for the elderly, and the nurses are getting on your nerves. You say why don't you all fade away . . . You haven't any aspirations to live in a fool's paradise, you're not looking forward to that, and you've got your fingers crossed that you don't. Knock on wood. You'll give up the ghost first.
You're talking about your generation, sermonizing, giving a discourse.
Straight talk, eyeball to eyeball.
Pete [Townshend] would probably be the first to tell you. He has a front-row seat for the history of his generation. He could read the picket signs against hatred and war. Well, that certainly ended that, thank you for your service. Each generation seems to have the arrogance of ignorance, opting to throw out what gone before instead of building on the past. And they have no use for some one like Pete offering the wisdom of his experience, telling them what he has learned on the similar paths he has trod. And if he'd had the audacity to do so, there's every chance that person would have looked up at Pete and told him that he couldn't see him, he couldn't hear him.
And that gave Pete another idea.
Dirty Life and Times (Warren Zevon)
The song of the wretch, the contaminated life - a song that corrupts itself and corrupts others - a deathbed confession. . . An obstinate life, unhampered by constraint, you're settling things up and packing it in.
You're saying a long farewell to greatness, piling the ashes of your life into the corner. In view of all this you still have the backbone and audacity to look the endgame straight in the eye, and carry on with bravado. Untroubled and tough as nails, you're not mournful or morose, you're standing tall, cool, still gritty and filled with spunk. You're lifting up a life that's been shot full of holes, going for broke this time, undaunted and unafraid.
This is a song with head turning beauty. This is a daredevil of a song.
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(1) When I say Dylan's writing can be impressionistic, that includes his grasp of history, which can be shaky. I've no idea if the anecdote about shoes and Dzerzhinsky happened, though he certainly had a lot of people shot, many just to make an example of, and there are other historical references in the book might be near, but not in, the circle of truth.
Quentin Tarantino has always struck me as an odd duck and between 1997's Jackie Brown and Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (2019), which is a great movie, I didn't care for any of his films. But I've always enjoyed listening to him talk about movies and his new book, Cinema Speculation, is a treat to read.
Reinforcing his odd duck image, the book is about the movies he grew up seeing in the 1970s and early 1980s, with the first he tells us about being Joe, which he saw when he was seven (and if you haven't seen Joe (I did), it may explain why Quentin grew up like he did). Quentin was raised by his single mom in L.A. who, as he tells us several times, only dated black guys, and she would take him with her dates to the movies, often to see double features.
Tarantino is very insightful about movies and actors and a great storyteller. He has chapters on movies that remain well-known like Bullitt, Dirty Harry, Deliverance, The Getaway, Taxi Driver, and Escape From Alcatraz, as well as lesser known films such as Sisters, Daisy Miller, The Funhouse, Paradise Alley (Stallone's followup to Rocky), The Outfit, and Rolling Thunder, the last two of which I now want to watch. In each chapter he combines his memories of seeing the movie, with whom and under what circumstances, tells us about any number of related films of the time, and often gives us more reflective takes from his older perspective and often after speaking with the directors many years later.
His digressions are as entertaining as his main threads. In the chapter on Dirty Harry he also writes of director Don Siegel's 1956 film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, remade in 1978 by Philip Kaufman (outstanding film), and in an extended footnote gives us his alternative reading of the film which is, uh, unique, noting that "the movies try to present their [the pod people] lack of humanity . . . as evidence of some deep-seated sinisterness. That's a rather species-centric point of view. As human beings it may be our emotions that make us human, but it's a stretch to say it's what makes us great."
Here's a taste:
And then there's Steve McQueen as Frank Bullitt.
The reason why we're here.
The reason we're watching.
The reason the whole f------ thing works.
Rarely in the entire history of Hollywood movie stars being movie stars has a movie star done less and accomplished more than McQueen with this role in a movie. The part is nothing and yet he makes it a great role. He practically does nothing, but nobody in the history of movies did nothing like Steve McQueen.
As great as McQueen could be, this is the role he needs to be remembered by. Because it's in this role he demonstrates what he could do that Newman and Beatty [his great rivals] couldn't.
Which is just be.
Just fill the frame with him.
I'm not saying McQueen was playing himself. Steve McQueen in real life was decidedly not like Frank Bullitt.
In real life everything suggests Steve McQueen could be a real hothead.
But McQueen's Lt. Frank Bullitt is no hothead. He is the epitome of cool.
And when I say cool, I don't mean just the charismatic he-man bad-boy cool McQueen was famous for.
I mean, emotionally, Frank Bullitt is as cool as a reptile.
What's a sweetheart like you
Doing in a dump like this?
Asks Chrissie Hynde in her warm and enveloping voice. Recorded in 2020. Composed by Bob Dylan and recorded on his 1983 album Infidels.
Discovered in 1973, the Vindolanda Tablets have provided a unique insight into Roman life on a frontier post during the early Empire. Following the general line of what would be later Hadrian's Wall (constructed during the 120s AD), the Roman built a series of forts in Northern Britain in the 80s, 90s and first decade of the second century AD, of which Vindolanda was one.
Soil conditions led to the preservation of what are now almost a thousand wooden writing tablets containing duty rosters, supply lists, and personal correspondence from that era, all composed at a lonely outpost on the most northern part of the empire.
Perhaps the most well-known tablet is an invitation to a birthday party sent by Claudia Severa, wife of the commander of a fort near Vindolanda, to Sulpicia Lepidina wife of Flavius Cerialis, commander of Vindolanda and prefect of the 9th cohort of Batavians, which reads:
Claudia Severa to her Lepidina greetings. On 11 September, sister, for the day of the celebration of my birthday, I give you a warm invitation to make sure that you come to us, to make the day more enjoyable for me by your arrival, if you are present. Give my greetings to your Cerialis. My Aelius and my little son send him their greetings. I shall expect you, sister. Farewell, sister, my dearest soul, as I hope to prosper, and hail.
Though Cerialis (Cerealis) is the author or recipient of several dozen of the tablets we know little more about him. Some historians believe he was a Batavian (from the area that is now the Netherlands) whose family was granted Roman citizenship by Vespasian (founder of the Flavian dynasty) for its loyalty during the Batavian revolt of 69-70.
We also know little of the Ninth Cohort, which probably consisted of up to 500 auxiliaries. There is evidence that all, or part of the unit, participated in the Dacian Wars (102-6) but the unit is later attested to still in Britain at Hadrian's Wall.
As for Hostilius Flavianus, all we have is his name on two of the tablets and nothing more.
