Yeah, Bob. And you could play Martin Luther King Jr. Geesh! What an idiot!

Happy New Year's, Folks!

I made myself a New Year's Resolution, after the last Bob Dylan album, that I would never buy another one - no matter how much the mindless music parrots of the media gushed about it. I have stuck to my guns. I have refused on principle to buy 'Modern Times'. (After reading through the lyrics to the songs, I know I made the correct decision. More about that later.)

As for Bubba Dylan's 'Chronicles - Volume One' of his autobiography? I said, 'No fucking way, I'm paying twenty-five bucks for Volume One. Then next year, it's another twenty-five bucks for Volume Two? What is this - the serialisation of Bob Dylan's memoirs? Some publisher is trying to bilk me out of my hard earned cash. Do they think I'm stoopidissimo? Why doesn't the old man write his autobiography down properly- and then publish it in one book: one twenty-five dollar price tag. Then I'll buy it. I can wait for that. So I refused - on principle - even though I was interested in reading it. 'Cause after all, Dylan has been famous for not talking, or talking in Riddlesville - so of course, I wanted to hear him talk like a normal person for a change.

Well, someone gave me the bloody book for Christmas. (Thank you, sincerely!) So I started reading it. Then I stopped. I don't believe a word he says about anything anymore. Dylan lives behind so many layers of B.S. that he is the LAST person that can tell me what happened during that magic time when he WAS a genius. He doesn't know. If he knew, he would be able to still do it now. He'd be writing even better songs. That's right. Better. Better than 'Mr Tambourine Man'. Better than ' Like a Rolling Stone.' The idea is: if you are a genius when you're young, than you have an obligation improve it by becoming a master craftsperson and more geniusier as you grow older - but not lose the genius part, stupid. Study Beethoven. Study Bach. Sylvia Plath. They got BETTER, as they grew older, as their technique and their experience improved - not worse.

So the time for glorifying mediocrity is All Over Now, Baby Blue.

I decided to download just the lyrics to 'Modern Times' yesterday from the internet and see what Bubba is raving about now. Just as I suspected: it isn't pretty, folks. Here's the site if you want to reference the songs: lyrics to Modern Times

The fact is this: I write better lyrics than Dylan now. And I'm not bragging. It's is just a fact. You know who else writes better lyrics than Dylan at the moment? Judy Small. Eric Bogle. Bruce Watson. Kath Tait. Lin Van Hek. Even Paul Kelly. (sorry, Paul, I just had to slip that in there!) And that's just on this side of the world. A hundred other contemporary song smiths if I stopped to think about it. Why can I say this in utter confidence? Because Bob has set the bar so low now that probably even YOU can write a better song than he can. I defy any thinking person out there to tell me WHAT the almighty vision is that is contained in Dylan's latest album, 'Modern Times' - an album that has topped the charts like no other Dylan album before it; an album that the slavering pantheon of Elmer Fudd music critic-ically ill critics are calling his best work since . . . . . . . well, probably since his last pile of crapola.

Dylan is so insincere, so cliche-ridden, and so BAD at putting language together that I can barely pick up my pencil to make notes. I really tried. I wanted to be fair. But it's useless 'cause the man himself is cheatin'. I started on 'Thunder on the Mountain.' I put my pencil down when I reached the line, 'I want some real good woman to do just what I say.' (A red flag went up: what is this waffle doing in my Bob Dylan song?) Further down, he says, 'Gonna raise me an army, some tough sons of bitches, I'll recruit my army from the orphanages, I've been to St Herman's church, said my religious vows, I've sucked the milk out of a thousand cows." That verse made me laugh out loud. I actually liked that . . . in a perverse sort of way. I could visualize him sucking down there under the cow. (Ok - I didn't like it that much.) Sounds more to me like he's been sucking the pig shit out of a thousand SOWS. Is this the same mind that wrote, 'In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand, at the mongrel dogs who teach, fearing not that I'd become my enemy, In the instant that I preach. My Back Pages? Please . . . anyone . . . just read the lyrics to 'My Back Pages' and tell me a Pod Person hasn't taken over Bob Dylan's body, with burrowing tentacles into his spine and grey matter, moving his lips and fingers. Bob Dylan has gone back to Stupid School - and been kept back a year.
The next couple of songs that I looked at - desperate to write some kind of comment - were so boring and filled with nothingness, that I just kept turning the pages until this corker stopped me dead: "I got troubles so hard, I can't stand the strain, some young lazy slut has charmed away my brains." Gag. Disgusting and pathetic. (But probably true. Not Woody Guthrie, alas, but et tu Woody Allen?) That little literary jewel of misogynistic Pedro H. Feelya was festering there in the middle of a verse of his song, 'Rolling and Tumbling.' The first line goes, 'I rolled and I tumbled, I cried the whole night long." Sound familiar? It should: it is plagarized word-for-word directly from Muddy Waters' great classic, 'Rolling and Tumbling.' So . . . did Dylan copy the title AND key images from Muddy's song for a REASON? To serve some larger PURPOSE? Read it over. There is no reason. There is no larger purpose. Just plain laziness and bad writing - and the fool thinks he can get away with it on account a he's Bob Dylan. WELL, HE AINT BOB DYLAN NO MORE. AND I AIN'T GONNA WORK ON BOB DYLAN'S FARM NO MORE. He's a husk of a shell of a vapour of a whiff of someone who shook the little finger of Bob Dylan. At least the Bob Dylan I was influenced by. So what's the opposite of influence? Outfluence. That's what this scrabble babble posing as song poetry does to me. It outfluences me.

There is one chapter, however, in 'Chronicles - Volume 1' that seems to shed some light (or lights some sheds. Boom boom!) on the 'Bob Dylan Method' of songwriting that goes a long way to explain why he's an egg short of a chicken-crossing-the-road these days. When Dylan teams up with the remarkable Daniel Lanois who produced one of his albums for him, he arrived at the session with a bunch of lyrics. Lanois asked him if any of his new songs were like 'With God On My Side' which Lanois liked. Dylan said, 'Not much.' They spent all day working on 'Political World'. Trying different rhythms. Melodies. By nightfall, Dylan left and took a tape home with him. He wasn't happy. The next morning, Lanois played for him what he had done to the song after Dylan had left. His trademark atmospheric and funky stuff. Dylan told him, 'I think we missed it.'

What this little chapter tells me is that Dylan has not only lost the Plot but misplaced the Book. He wants to be in a band, not write songs. That's the walk he's walking. A songwriter-performer has something called VISION. They do not ask a producer to determine the course of their vision. They steer. Hell, they PRODUCE it themselves! There is no 'we missed' anything. There is only 'I missed', and man, you should know if you missed it BEFORE you even get to the studio and leave those 'missed' things back at home. Once you HAVE the song, then you can't miss, if you BELIEVE in what you've written - if it is important - if it has to be heard - if you HAVE to record it. It's just a matter of going into the studio and simply telling the story. End of story. Everything else is a rich man's wank. Dylan does not have the songs. He no longer has the vision. He doesn't believe. Therefore, he distracts himself with a continually changing array of gifted producers and fresh sounds and hopes that someone else can fix his problem for him. In that case, I would suggest his next producer should be Doctor Phil. Bubba looks like a repressed little Scottish terrier to me, but sitting on a thousand stories that really do need telling - but no clear way for him to reach them. I suggest it's about time he retired from the Mindless Tour-ette Syndrome, (and take Willie with him) and live off his millions for the next ten years or so, and work on his REAL life and some real relationships. Maybe then he'll have something worth writing about. 'Till then, put a cork in it and stick it down in the cellar.

FAVOURITE LETTERS OF THE WEEK

Hi Joe,
RE: NEW YEAR'S TRADITION
Just wanted to ask you if you have a .mp3 version somewhere we could buy of your song "Shaddap You Face". Ideally the version live where you say:

"I sing 'what's the matter you'"
Then you sing "Hey!"
And I sing the rest of the song
And then we all sing "I Shaddap at you face"

The reason I'm asking is because (don't ask me how it happened) but it's a tradition in my family to listen to your song on the Jan 1st of each year. We've been doing this since so many years and my Uncle had this on an old cassette tape and it just broke last night. I would like to send him a copy of the song so this tradition could keep going. It may sound weird for a tradition, but the only important thing to me is that everybody is having fun at this. Even my kid are starting to ask "When do we listen to the songs" :) Happy new year to you! Ed, USA

Gday Joe D,
Nobody seems to mention your song "I Ain't In No Hurry", the memorable B-side to "Shaddap." This tune comes to me most often when I'm driving and tailgaters are pushing a couple of inches too close to my rear end, or giving me road-rage vibes. Then, the chorus stays with me for half a day or night, way after any driving "incidents". This same phenomenon happens with another song, but only when I'm shutting down a computer. That's the song "Shut Down" by Australian Crawl. Save me from my long memory. . . STU. D

Microcredit and Microfinance
Breaking the Cycle of Poverty

Without donating a penny, you can help to break the cycle poverty in a very real way. Microcredit investments are not donations or charity. Like other investments, the money is always yours. You even earn a small amount of interest. Yet for every $1,000 you invest, several entire families in the developing world can be pulled out of poverty every year. That is part of the reason why the United Nations declared 2005 to be the International Year of Microcredit and why the individual and group who originated the microcredit concept were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

Below is an examples of how microcredit works:

Example 1. Mariate Banda runs a small beauty shop in Zambia near the South Luangwa National Park. Visitors to the park flock through her town, but few tourists venture into her shop, as it lacks the modern hair dryers travelers expect. Her small income makes saving difficult. "My life's ambition is to have my own equipment" she says-even a dryer for tourists (see photo & description of Mariate in the Sept 2005 issue of National Geographic, p. 120). Using your investment through the growing international microcredit movement, Mariate can take out a microloan of $100, small by western standards, but more than enough to pay for a modern hairdryer in Zambia. With the increased tourist traffic to her shop, Mariate can pay back her loan within a year. Once the loan is repaid, she has now greatly increased her income and can afford to keep her children in school, give them good medical care, and build her business further. You pulled this family out of poverty! article

Several major media articles have sung the praises of microcredit, also known as microfinance and microlending:

New York Times: Tiny Loans Make a Big Difference in Lives of Poor article
USA Today/Associated Press: Microcredit pioneers win Nobel Peace Prize article
Wall Street Journal: A new way to do well by doing good article
BusinessWeek: Microfinance funds lift poor entrepreneurs-and benefit investors article
The Economist: Microcredit in India, High finance benefits the poor article

Strawberry Pop-Tart Blow-Torches

Strawberry Pop Tarts may be a cheap and inexpensive source of incendiary devices. Toasters which fail to eject Pop Tarts cause the Pop Tarts to emit flames 10-18 inches in height. article
(thanks to Justine Stewart)

HORROR STORY GENERATOR

Here's a nifty site where you just type in some names at random and answer some questions and it writes you a little horror story. Try it yourself with friends and family. Here's my first try. I just typed in whatever came into my mind at the time. (Bob Dylan ought to try using this on his next album.)

"Bubba Jean Dylan was having a happy normal day in Stupid School. She had lunch with her best friends Leonard Cohen and Paul Kelly, and completed her work for Doctor Phil. It was all going wonderfully, until she discovered 'songlings' in her locker - she had a terrible fear of them, and wondered who could do such a cruel thing.

'I bet it was Josephine Dolce,' said Leonard Cohen. 'She's been jealous of you since she heard that you were going to 'The Inspired Shaddap You Face Contest' with Woody Guthrie.' Bubba Jean Dylan sighed.

'Did you read the The Daily Brown Eye?' said Paul Kelly. 'There was an article about George W Bush, who shocked everyone when he slipped on the banana peel of his ass cheek .'

'Really?' said Bubba Jean Dylan. 'Can I read the article?'

Paul Kelly gave it to her.

" Bulletin!! The Daily Brown Eye has heard rumors that George W Bush is back after the shock of many years ago when he slipped on the banana peel of his ass cheek . This is not true. George W Bush is in Geelong."

Bubba Jean Dylan scanned the article and was startled to discover that she and George W Bush were alike - they found that both of their heads had become stuck up each other's aspirations.

Bubba Jean Dylan walked home feeling very troubled. When she got home, there was a note on her doorstep. She opened it and screamed. It was full of 'songlings'. There was also a letter.

To Bubba Jean Dylan. Watch your step. Ha ha ha. Signed, George W Bush.

Who could it be? Was it really George W Bush or someone closer to her? Bubba Jean Dylan suspected everyone - Josephine Dolce, of course, who always sneered at her. Woody Guthrie, even though he was the dreamiest boy in Stupid School. She even suspected Paul Kelly who had a great love for 'songlings' and had been acting strangely recently. The only person she could trust was Leonard Cohen who had been her friend since they were small children.

The night before the 'The Inspired Shaddap You Face Contest', Bubba Jean Dylan went with Leonard Cohen to the Men's Toilet, and they discovered it was empty. Bubba Jean Dylan was pleased to have Leonard Cohen with her, because she was very nervous about George W Bush, as well as avoiding Woody Guthrie, Paul Kelly, and Josephine Dolce. 'Isn't it strange,' said Leonard Cohen. 'How much we have in common?'

Bubba Jean Dylan remembered that they found that both of their heads had become stuck up each other's aspirations. She became uneasy. '

'Leonard Cohen . . . . don't you have family in Geelong?'

Leonard Cohen laughed manically. He threw some 'songlings' at Bubba Dylan, then attacked her with a Hand Full of Wood, and Bubba Jean Dylan was forced to fight back as everyone scrambled to pick up the soap. She ran away and was found by Woody Guthrie and Paul Kelly, who had a perfectly rational explanation for her strange behaviour.

'We came to save you from Leonard Cohen,' said Paul Kelly.

The next day they discovered that Leonard Cohen had choked horribly on a dangling participle. Bubba Jean Dylan was sad - Leonard Cohen had been her friend for years, and becoming a crazed psycho in the space of a few days could happen to anyone. But she placed her trauma firmly behind her and went to the 'The Inspired Shaddap You Face Contest' with Woody Guthrie, much to the dismay of Josephine Dolce. " The End. Horror Story Generator (thanks to Frank Dolce)

JOKE
 
The Cheating Wife

A man, returning home a day early from a business trip, got into a taxi at the airport. It was after midnight. While en route to his home, he asked the cabby if he would be a witness. The man suspected his wife was having an affair and he intended to catch her in the act. For $100, the cabby agreed. Quietly arriving at the house, the husband and cabby tiptoed into the bedroom.  The husband switched on the lights, yanked the blanket back and there was his wife in bed with another man. The husband put a gun to the naked man's head. The wife shouted, "Don't do it! This man has been very generous! I lied when I told you I inherited money. He paid for the Vintage E-Type Jag I bought for you. He paid for our new cabin cruiser. He paid for your Football season tickets. He paid for our house at the lake. He paid for our country club membership, and he even pays the monthly dues!"
Shaking his head from side-to-side the husband slowly lowered the gun.  He looked over at the cab driver and said, "What would you do?" 
The cabby replied, "I'd cover his ass up with that blanket before he catches a cold."
(thanks to Jim Testa)

MUSIC

SONGWRITING WORKSHOP SAMPLE

Here is an interesting site where one songwriter's song is taken apart and looked at by another songwriter. While I am not such a big fan of this kind of calculated deconstruction, other songwriters out there might find this process interesting. Click on: 'How We Evaluate Your Songs.' - site

CREATE YOUR OWN GOOGIE ERROR MESSAGE
MakeBobDylanHistory.com Error Messgage

The Difference Between Bob Dylan & Joan Baez

Let's say a young aspiring songwriter named Bob Dylan is attracted to a woman singer named Joan Baez. He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.

And then, one evening when they're driving home, a thought occurs to Joan Baez, and, without really thinking, she says it aloud: "Do you realize that, as of tonight, we've been seeing each other for exactly six months?"

And then there is silence in the car. To Joan Baez, it seems like a very loud silence.

She thinks to herself: gee, I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he's been feeling confined by our relationship; maybe he thinks I'm trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn't want, or isn't sure of.

And Bob Dylan is thinking: gosh. Six months?

And Joan Baez is thinking: but, hey, I'm not so sure I want this kind of relationship, either. Sometimes I wish I had a little more space, so I'd have time to think about whether I really want us to keep going the way we are, moving steadily toward... I mean, where are we going? Are we just going to keep seeing each other at this level of intimacy? Are we heading toward marriage? Toward children? Toward a lifetime together? Am I ready for that level of commitment? Do I really even know this person?

And Bob Dylan is thinking... so that means it was... let's see... February when we started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer's, which means... lemme check the odometer... Whoa! I am way over due for an oil change here!

And Joan Baez is thinking: he's upset. I can see it on his face. Maybe I'm reading this completely wrong. Maybe he wants more from our relationship, more intimacy, more commitment; maybe he has sensed -- even before I sensed it -- that I was feeling some reservations. Yes, I bet that's it. That's why he's so reluctant to say anything about his own feelings. He's afraid of being rejected.

And Bob Dylan is thinking: and I'm gonna have them look at the transmission again. I don't care what those morons say, it's still not shifting right. And they better not try to blame it on the cold weather this time. What cold weather? It's 87 degrees out, and this thing is shifting like a darn garbage truck, and I paid those incompetent thieves $600.

And Joan Baez is thinking: he's angry. And I don't blame him. I'd be angry, too. God, I feel so guilty, putting him through this, but I can't help the way I feel. I'm just not sure.

And Bob Dylan is thinking: they'll probably say it's only a 90-day warranty. That's exactly what they're gonna say, the scumbags.

And Joan Baez is thinking: maybe I'm just too idealistic, waiting for some Lawrence of Arabia dressed in white to come riding up on his camel, when I'm sitting right next to a perfectly good person, a person I enjoy being with, a person I truly do care about, a person who seems to truly care about me. A person who is in pain because of my self-centered, school girl romantic fantasy.

And Bob Dylan is thinking: warranty? They want a warranty? I'll give them a warranty. I'll take their warranty and stick it right up...

"Bob," Joan Baez says aloud.
"What?" says Dylan, startled.
"Please don't torture yourself like this," she says, her eyes beginning to brim with tears. "Maybe I should never have... Oh God, I feel so..." (She breaks down, sobbing.)
"What?" says Dylan.
"I'm such a fool," Joan Baez sobs...
"I mean, I know there's no Lawrence of Arabia dressed in white. I really know that. It's silly. There's no Lawrence of Arabia, and there's no camel."
"There's no camel?" says Bob Dylan.
"You think I'm a fool, don't you?" she says.
"No!" says Dylan, glad to finally know the correct answer.
"It's just that... It's that I... I need some time," she says.

There is a 15-second pause while Bob Dylan, thinking as fast as he can, tries to come up with a safe response. Finally he comes up with one that he thinks might work.

"Yes," he says.

Joan Baez, deeply moved, touches his hand.
"Oh, Bob, do you really feel that way?" she says.
"What way?" says Dylan.
"That way about time," says Joan Baez.
"Oh," says Bob Dylan. "Yes."

She turns to face him and gazes deeply into his eyes, causing him to become very nervous about what she might say next, especially if it involves a camel. At last she speaks.

"Thank you, Bobbie," she says.

"Thank you," says Dylan.

Then he takes her home, and she lies on her bed, a conflicted, tortured soul, and weeps until dawn, whereas when Bob Dylan gets back to his place, he opens a bag of Doritos, turns on the TV, and immediately becomes deeply involved in a re-run of a tennis match between two Czechoslovakians he never heard of.

A tiny voice in the far recesses of his mind tells him that something major was going on back there in the car, but he is pretty sure there is no way he would ever understand what, and so he figures it's better if he doesn't think about it. (This is also Dylan's policy regarding Iraq.)

The next day Joan Baez will call her closest friend, or perhaps two of them, and they will talk about this situation for six straight hours. In painstaking detail, they will analyze everything she said and everything he said, going over it time and time again, exploring every word, expression, and gesture for nuances of meaning, considering every possible ramification.
They will continue to discuss this subject, off and on, for weeks, maybe months, never reaching any definite conclusions, but never getting bored with it, either.

Meanwhile, Bob Dylan, while playing racquetball one day with a mutual friend of his and Joan Baez's, will pause just before serving, frown, and say:

"Norm, did Joan Baez ever own a camel?
(from a story By Dave Berry, sent by Stephen Ross, and adapted by You-Know-Who.)

RECIPE

Whole Stuffed Camel

1 whole camel, medium size (Ask your butcher.)
1 whole lamb, large size
20 whole chickens, medium size
60 eggs
12 kilos rice
2 kilos pine nuts
2 kilos almonds
1 kilo pistachio nuts
110 gallons water
5 pounds black pepper
Salt to taste
A large pot. (boom boom!)

Skin, trim and clean camel (once you get over the hump), lamb and chicken. Boil until tender. Cook rice until fluffy. Fry nuts until brown and mix with rice. Hard boil eggs and peel. Stuff cooked chickens with hard boiled eggs and rice. Stuff the cooked lamb with stuffed chickens. Add more rice. Stuff the camel with the stuffed lamb and add rest of rice. Broil over large charcoal pit until brown. Spread any remaining rice on large tray and place camel on top of rice. Decorate with boiled eggs and nuts. Serves friendly crowd of 80-100.
Shararazod Eboli Home Economist,
Dammam, Saudi Arabia