Bob Dylan's Desolation Row - A Masterful Masterpiece Of Misery and Misadventure

'Highway 61 Revisited' was the first Dylan album I owned. The first side began with 'Like A Rolling Stone' and ended with 'Ballad of A Thin Man.' Breathlessly, I flipped the vinyl over to listen to the second side. I thought to  myself, how can we top that first side?
'Queen Jane Approximately' starts the second side off well. Then it just kept getting better. When the acoustic guitars launched into Desolation Row, I was exhausted. I just laid back and listened, already treated to the most amazing musical experience of my young life.
'They're selling postcards of the hanging, they're painting the passports brown.'
Wow, that's how the song started. After a blind commissioner and a restless riot squad, we get to the refrain 'as Lady and I look out tonight from Desolation Row.'
Cinderella and Romeo inhabit the second verse, ending with Cinderella 'sweeping up on Desolation Row.' The song continues with a cast of characters culled from the Bible, Shakespeare and Classic Literature. The penultimate verse begins with a nod to Roman/Greek Mythology 'Praise be to Nero's Neptune, the Titanic sails at dawn.' The Poets Pound and Eliot are invoked and 'nobody has to think too much about Desolation Row.'
The last verse lets us in on the joke 'I had to rearrange their faces and give them all another name.' The weariness and depression sets in as the writer states 'right now I can't read too good, don't send me no more letters, no, not unless you mail them from Desolation Row.'

I had forgotten about this song for years until I watched the brilliant, dystopic movie 'Watchmen.' The soundtrack featured a version of Desolation Row by the band My Chemical Romance. The song did not feel out of a place in a movie that reminds us that the American dream is really a nightmare.
I gravitate toward the dark and the deep. Pop mainstream Top 40 music makes me ill. Cotton candy for the brain. I need music that feeds the soul and stimulates the gray matter. I can't tell you what 'Desolation Row' means. But it seems to capture some basic elements of the human condition, hopelessness and helplessness.
Rather than sugarcoat how awful life can be, this song stares into the abyss and triumphs through sheer will power. Listening to it allows us to do the same.

Top Five Bob Dylan Songs - 'Like A Rolling Stone'

This is the one you hear on the radio all the time. Written in 1965, it still resonates. Here's a link to the lyrics.

http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/like-a-rolling-stone

When I heard it on the radio yesterday, what blew me away was how good Dylan's vocals are. I have gotten so used to his now 70-year old scraggly voice that to hear the 20-year old at full throttle was a wonderful reminder that he had one of the best rock voices ever.
The rhyming schemes are incredible as well 'juiced in it - used to it'; 'didn't you - kiddin' you'; 'princess on the steeple and all the pretty people.' Musically, it was directed by Tom Wilson with the best studio musicians Columbia records had. The song just rocks. It has become part of our culture 'when you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.'

I still have the vinyl lp that 'Like a Rolling Stone' is on. To say it is a classic is trite.One of the reasons I am the way I am is I grew up reading the liner notes to Dylan's albums. If you have read them, you understand. If you haven't, well then, you haven't.
Legend has it that on the day Dylan recorded this song in the studio that Tom Wilson used the same musicians later to record the electric version of Simon and Garfunkel's 'Sound of Silence' that became the breakthrough hit for them.
This was an easy pick, the other's are harder. Stay tuned!

Bite Lower Lip, Spend More Time With The Family, Maybe Shed A Few Tears

What is it with these guys who get caught with their pants down that they think they have to look like old men who can't find their dentures? In press conference after tearful press conference, this is what you see:

Bite that lower lip, dude, till it hurts. Till it bleeds. I guess you have to pay for your sins by looking as stupid as possible. Is that look supposed to show remorse?
And it's not just politicians. Here's a football coach:

Grandpa lose his dentures?
And yet another. Here's a former governor:

That's painful to look at. What, a TV station hired him?! You gotta be kidding!! It has been said that people in California are more laid back. It's true. Here's a former CA Gov. with his soon to be ex:

Did anybody really think that Arny and Maria were anything but a political arrangement? Really? There is a reason that actors become governors. Don't feel sorry for Ms. Shriver, she will get paid quite well for playing her role.
What I want to know is who is the PR person advising these jerks on how to look when they get caught behaving the way politicians and celebrities behave. Does anybody really think they are genuinely remorseful?They are sad but only because they got caught.
But these lip biters have no worries. They can go into Rehab or find Jesus. Maybe both.  Just to be sure. Just to cover all the constituent bases.
In the meantime, our country is involved in military operations in three locations that we know about, our drinking water is almost undrinkable, our air is almost unbreathable, most of us have crappy jobs with crappy benefits and now we are going to lose our social security. It's enough to make you want to bite both lips, ain't it?

Weiner Texting and the Emergence of the American Surveillence State

I don't believe in coinicidences. I believe powerful people create events. I believe powerful people have agendas. I undertsand most of us react to events and leave things to chance. We go with the flow. We let things happen.
A lot of us have reacted to Congressman Weiner's texting scandal. Myself included. But I also believe things happen for a reason. So I pay attention and read everything I can. Sometimes within a week, often times within a day when a scandal breaks, an agenda emerges and we can see clearly the reason for the scandal.
The scandal makes the front page and leads the news, but the agenda story is buried. You have to look for it. In my case, I know it's coming within a week and I have never been disappointed.
Congressman Weiner has been a pervert for a LONG time. The timing of the the release of the scandal is the real question. A question which the media rarely, if ever asks. The media is too busy concentrating on the sensational aspects of the scandal. That's their job, to prepare an environment where the agenda can be carried out with minimal dissent.

It was definitely within a week of the Weiner scandal breaking, maybe even the same day, that the FBI released the details of the new surveillance powers FBI agents will be trained to use. You can read the articles online, the gist is that FBI agents can search without any evidence. That's right, no evidence.
The Weiner texting scandal is designed to get us outraged so we will allow the government to monitor our conversations to prevent 'sexting.' The FBI can now search your databases, your trash, your trashy databases, etc, without there being any evidence that you are linked to any terrorist group. Only the ACLU appears outraged. The rest of us are chuckling over Weiner's weiner.
Remember former NY governor Elliot Spitzer? He also had been a pervert for a LONG time. The timing of the release of the scandal that led to his resignation was interesting. He was about to charge banks in New York with violating several state laws that led to the banking collapse.
Remember the movie Godfather II? The self-righteous US senator who despised the Corleone family? Remember what happened after he got in trouble? I know it's just a movie, but the Godfather movies were a pretty accurate depiction of the way things are.
Most, if not all, politicians and celebrities are perverts. They all have skeletons in their closets (some insist on staying in those closets). They are all vulnerable to blackmail. Especially in a surveillence society where the most powerful people have access to everybody's information.
Yes, I laughed at the jokes about Weiner. But I'm also paying attention. My liberal friends who thought Obama would return the civil liberties and freedoms the Bush administration took away were naive. The Obama administration has continued the trend, accelerated under Bush, of turning this once, great, proud nation into a surveillence state of wimpy tattle-tales and voyeuristic perverts.
Wave your flags, chant your slogans. It's all good.
Stay tuned for the next installment in "Your Government Cares About You and Wants to Keep You Safe."

A Family History - Half-Breeds and Heretics

I come from a long line of Republicans. The Grand Old Party was founded in 1854 with its principal platform opposition to the expansion of slavery. My ancestors, several of whom fought in the Revolution against the British, lived primarily in New England. My great-grandfather, Henry Freeman Barker (pictured above) was born in Naples, Maine in 1850. He moved to Minnesota in 1868, where he practiced law. He was a big supporter of Republican politician James G. Blaine, who was also from Maine.
Blaine led a faction of the GOP known as the Half-Breeds. The Half-Breeds were the moderate wing of the GOP, opposing political patronage and favoring civil service reform and a merit system. Blaine, an early supporter of Abraham Lincoln, opposed the Radical Republican approach to Reconstruction. He favored voting rights for freed slaves and was primarily responsible for the 14th amendment. But he was opposed to military occupation of the South, a position he shared with Lincoln.
Blaine was also primarily responsible for federal laws promoting separation of church and state. This support probably cost him the presidency in 1884, losing narrowly to Grover Cleveland. Though he never said it, the phrase by a minister labeling the Democrats as the party of 'Rum, Romanism and Rebellion' was attributed to him (much the same way Rev. Wright's diatribes were attributed to Obama in 2008).
My great-grandfather was elected to state house and then senate. He named his oldest son, my grandfather, after Blaine. Blaine Barker was elected to various county offices until the backlash against Republicans in the Great Depression ended his political career. He then worked as the Postmaster of Cambridge until he retired.
'Grandpa Blaine,' as we called him, told wonderful stories about Barker family history. He claimed we missed getting on the Mayflower because we overslept. He also claimed our family left England because we were horse thiefs on the lam from the law.
According to Grandpa, the Barkers were run out of Andover, Mass. on a rail in the 1640s because we opposed the Witch Trials. Some Barker women were also accused of being witches. Even way back then, our family was opposed to extremism. I come by this heretical stuff honestly.
Regarding theology, I remember Grandpa's saying that early Christians were Communists. As a Republican and Baptist, I interpreted Grandpa as being opposed to both early Christians and Communists. Today, I'm not so sure. I'd love to be able to talk to him about it. To talk about Half-Breeds and Heretics.
Sadly, he died in 1976 when I was too young to be aware of the full meanings of what he was sharing. I wish he could read my book and we could 'cuss and discuss' it. From one heretic to another.
I don't think my great-grandfather or grandfather would appreciate Michelle Bachmann today. Just a guess.

The Gumbys are in Charge in America

American leaders are a bunch of inbred, idiotic, elitists. That's on a good day. On a bad day, they are inbred arrogant, ignorant elitists.

This past week, we have had the chance to see a couple of American idiots in action. A congressman, by the name of Weiner got caught being a wanker. I expect that kind of behavior from the idiots-in-charge that run this country (more accurately, have run this country into the ground).

If congressman Wanker had admitted his mistake, we might have given him a pass. His family might not have. But then, he probably needs to spend more time with his family.

But no, he denied it. Lied about it. When he got called out, he held a press conference. He choked back tears, he apologized for being a wanker. Arrogant and ignorant.

Too late. You don't go on every news station, deny something, make stuff up and then the next day - whoops, my bad. I was wrong. I lied.

I love history. I understand that not everybody does. That's OK. That's fine. But most people who don't know anything about history don't go around the country making stuff up.
Unless you are an inbred, ignorant elitist. Half-term governor Palin made up some stuff about Paul Revere on her latest "Tour."  Rather than admit she made the stuff up when called on it, she proceeded to make her ignorance painfully clear by insisting that she was right.

Arrogant and ignorant.

We deserve better. But it's the same everywhere. Good decent hard-working people with morons for leaders.
My brain hurts. Brain-dead partisans on the left yell at brain-dead partisans on the right. The Gumby's are in charge. Congressman Anthony Gumby meet governor Sarah Gumby. Choke back tears, spend more time with your families, make stuff up. It's OK, USA! USA! USA!