Modern Times: The Levee's Gonna Break
Sunday evening afforded classic TV moments. Tropical Storm Ernesto was "gathering force" said the talking heads. It might reach "hurricane strength" and there were "fears" that it could hit the Gulf Coast. After all this guff came the money shot: New Orleans, a ruined house and outside it a fashionably storm-clad reporter going on crocodile-like about "levees" and the "Ninth Ward". Alas, for the TV alligators, but luckily for Louisiana, Ernesto has bypassed the Big Easy so a repeat of last year's devastation orgy cannot be served up by the medium that's opted for emotion instead of information. You can watch Katrina anniversary footage these days for days without once hearing anything about the history of Mississippi flooding, and you'll certainly never hear the word "biblical" when it comes to describing the damage that's been inflicted on the region or how the people affected imagine their fate.
Bob Dylan's new album, Modern Times, is the second straight recording on which he has invoked the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, and his song, "The Levee's Gonna Break", pick ups from where Memphis Minnie left off 80 years ago with "When the Levee Breaks". With its "people on the road . . . carrying everything that they own", Dylan's song will be read as a reflection on Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged New Orleans a year ago this week, but this is too narrow a view of the composition.
Incidentally, the same misfortune befell Love and Theft, Dylan's previous album, which was released on 11 September 2001. It became impossible to listen to "High Water" the day after the atrocity without visualizing the destruction of the World Trade Center: "High water risin', six inches 'bove my head / Coffins droppin' in the street / Like balloons made out of lead." The imagery was eerily appropriate but the interpretation was a stretch too far. Ultimately, the key to understanding these deluge songs is to be found somewhere else; somewhere far from television's maw. The Book of Revelations, with its prophecy and tragedy, is where we need to turn for the metaphors of the Great Mississippi Flood. Those who live with the big river have long regarded the Mississippi as biblical, bringing not just death and devastation but life, baptism, rebirth, hope and the guarantee of redemption. As Dylan sings in "The Levee's Gonna Break", some people don't get this, but some do:
If it keep on rainin', the levee gonna break
If it keep on rainin', the levee gonna break
Some people still sleepin', some people are wide awake
This is Bob Dylan in end-times mode. He's not saying, by the way, that you need to get religion to deal with what happens when the levee breaks, but you'd better have something to fall back on.
Comments
For decades now, I've tried to understand what people see in Dylan. Just answer this question. Is it his:
a) Singing
b) Musicianship
c) Melodies
d) Lyrics
Singing. I've run out of similies of the form "He sounds like a ___". Fill it in yourself. Barking dog? Vacuum cleaner?
Musicianship. He sticks a harmonica in his mouth and blows in and out. When he ties it to his neck he looks like a San Fran street performer. He only needs cymbols tied to his knees.
Melodies. They're forgettable. He seldom writes a bridge. Just a single verse repeated 5 or 6 times.
Lyrics. I think this is what gets most people, but I'm still lost. Quote something you consider genius. Even his use of the Mississippi doesn't stand up to "Ol' Man River".
I just found this on the web: "He's probably the best and most important songwriter the country's ever had. Not just more important: better, more talented and more generous with that talent than Stephen Foster, or Gershwin, or even the great Ellington."
I really, really, really, don't get it.
Posted by: Dom | August 30, 2006 4:15 PM
If you don't understand, you never will, but spend a while with this and it might help you. In 1978 Dylan was interviewed by Ron Rosenbaum for Playboy, who eventually got around to the subject of Dylan's sound. The singer said that the closest he ever got to the sound heard in his mind was on the "Blonde on Blonde" album. "It's that thin, that wild mercury sound. It's metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up. That's my particular sound."
Rosenbaum: Was that wild mercury sound in "I Want You"?
Dylan: Yeah, it was in "I Want You." It was in a lot of that stuff. It was in the album before that, too.
Rosenbaum: "Highway 61 Revisited"?
Dylan: Yeah. Also in "Bringing It All Back Home." That's the sound I've always heard... It was the sound of the streets. It still is. I symbolically hear that sound wherever I am.
Rosenbaum: You hear the sound of the street?
Dylan: That ethereal twilight light, you know. It's the sound of the street with the sunrays, the sun shining down at a particular time, on a particular type of building. A particular type of people walking on a particular type of street. It's an outdoor sound that drifts even into open windows that you can hear. The sound of bells and distant railroad trains and arguments in apartment buildings and the clinking of silverware and knives and forks and beating with leather straps. It's all--it's all there. Just lack of a jackhammer, you know.
Rosenbaum: You mean if a jackhammer were...
Dylan: Yeah, no jackhammer sounds, no airplane sounds. All pretty natural sounds. It's water, you know water trickling down a brook. It's light flowing through the . . .
Rosenbaum: Late-afternoon light?
Dylan: No, it's usually the crack of dawn. Music filters out to me in the crack of dawn.
Rosenbaum: The "jingle jangle morning"?
Dylan: Right.
Posted by: Norman Rubin | August 30, 2006 8:36 PM
This is in response to Dom's comment above ("What is it that you see in Dylan"). First of all I couldn't agree more with Norman when he says, "if you don't understand, you never will." But here is a humble attempt to try to begin to make you understand what all the "hub-bub" has been about for the past 45 years. Dom, you conveniently provided a multiple choice style group of four qualities to choose from: a) Singing
b) Musicianship
c) Melodies
d) Lyrics
The answer of course is e) all of the frickin' above. His royal Bob-ness combines the four to form a style that is uniquely his. Mix in prodigious songwriting of music so unforgettable and so timeless; you hear him everywhere you go, pay attention. I really don't want to explain anymore. I will however make a suggestion. If you want to really dive in and try to find out what the fuss is, put on a pair of headphones, print out the lyrics, pop in "Another Side of Bob Dylan," turn it up and try to sing along. It could change your mind.
Posted by: Claudio Baumann | September 14, 2006 5:12 AM
You can try to understand what people have tried to see in Dylan for years, but you will never get it. What I see in Dylan????? "When I Paint My Masterpiece" Simple enough???
Posted by: Justin Shimer | September 17, 2006 5:26 AM