The Awl

Pablo Dylan, "Top Of The World"

Dave Bry — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 16:30:11 +0000

"I mean, really, my grandfather, I consider him the Jay-Z of his time."
—Pablo Dylan, 15 years old, rapper. Jay-Z has a new song out today, too. It borrows heavily from Duckie from Pretty In Pink.

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Your Potential Existences, In Order Of How Tolerable They Would Make Your Still-Inevitable Servitude To Another (Be It Satan Or God)

Alex Balk — Thu, 26 May 2011 16:10:13 +0000

37. Bread subsister
36. Floor sleeper
35. Visually impaired individual
34. Possessor of a physical disability
33. Impecunious person
32. Milk drinker
31. Dome dweller
30. Firearms hobbyist
29. Hairstylist
28. Building-industry tradesman
27. Cotton fetishist
26. Law enforcement agent
25. Rug-cutter
24. Religious authority
23. Paramour
22. Overqualified larcenist
21. Pseudonymous expatriate
20. Participant in games of chance
19. Up-and-comer
18. Armored vehicle owner
17. Crooked municipal politician
16. Medical professional
15. Industry professional
14. Member of American diplomacy corps
13. Expectant beneficiary
12. Oversized-mattress reposer
11. Successful pugilist
10. Substance-addled musician with misogynist streak
9. Entertainment executive
8. Well-accessorized patrician
7. Mansion resident
6. Property magnate
5. Financial services proprietor
4. Caviar consumer
3. Silk aficionado
2. Whiskey imbiber
1. Extremely wealthy individual

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People Should Stop Saying Mean Things About Bob Dylan

Dave Bry — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 11:15:57 +0000

"I never liked him. He seems sort of unpleasant and uncomfortable."
—Bill "Smog" Callahan, in the (subscription-only) New Yorker, on Bob Dylan, who is having a tough week in the press. This kind of blows my mind. I mean, sure, I guess Dylan can come across that way. Like, his personality. It's been noted before. Lou Reed once said, "If you were at a party with him, I think you'd tell him to shut up." But still, he's the best at what he does, and it hurts me a little to hear other songwriters snipe like that. Though when Maureen Dowd (and/or whichever one or more of her friends wrote her column on Sunday) calls you a sell-out and a hypocrite and an idiot, that might be easily taken as a compliment.

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Rock Stars Need To Stop Writing Good Books

Dave Bry — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 14:30:11 +0000

Oh, man! Bob Dylan is going to write six more books for Simon & Schuster! That's great, because his first one was so totally excellent. But also, six more? Really? Six? When am I going to have time to read six more books by Bob Dylan? (Especially seeing as I have to spend so much time watching his old music videos on YouTube.)

I mean, I've just started Keith Richards' book last week. And so far it's as charmingly written as everyone says it is. But it's long—547 pages. And I'm hoping to get to Patti Smith's book next, which won the national book award. And Jay-Z's, with the cool Warhol cover. Sheesh! Rock stars need to stop writing good books. There's enough stuff you want to read from people who don't also make music you like to listen to.

(I thought for a long time that the first line of the second verse in that song was, "Sometimes I wonder what's going on with these eggs." I recently learned, from Dylan's big book of lyrics, Lyrics, that it's, "What's going on with Miss X." I'm a little saddened by that. I liked to think of Dylan sitting in a roadside diner, staring down at his plate, pondering a pair of undercooked sunny-side-ups.)

Speaking of this, according to Andy Greene's preview of the new Rolling Stone cover story, Lil Wayne told writer Josh Eells that he got through his recent stint in jail by reading a lot of rock biographies—Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Marvin Gaye, Joan Jett, Anthony Kiedis. He must be referring to David Henderson's 'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky, about Hendrix, probably. And Barry Hopkins and Danny Sugarman's No One Here Gets Out Alive, about Morrison. And David Ritz' Divided Soul about Gaye. And Wayne said he really liked Keidis' Scar Tissue. The problem is, what Joan Jett book was he talking about? Is there a Joan Jett biography? I don't know of it. Amazon doesn't either, it seems. Nor does Wikipedia.

Lil Wayne might be excused, I think, for a certain cloudy-headedness. But I wonder what he thought he was talking about. Maybe Todd Oldham's photo book. That's probably it. Or maybe he meant Cherry Curie's book, Neon Angel, which was about her time in the Runaways with Joan Jett and probably had lots of stuff about Joan Jett in it? It was probably one of those. I really like Lil Wayne. I'd hate to think...

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Brave Korean Folk-Hero Bear Captured After Nine Days Of Freedom

Dave Bry — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 11:40:45 +0000

"A mountain climber told us that a dozen aluminium cans of beer and other beverage cans were torn apart around the cart. We are positive that the bear was responsible for it."
—A Seoul Zoo official tells the story of Kkoma, or "The Kid," a sun bear who escaped from his cage on December 6th, apparently because he didn't like being cooped up with a crabby older member of his species, and headed for the hills. Eluding hundreds of bear trappers with dogs and a helicopter, the brave young antiauthoritarian became a national media sensation—celebrating his freedom with a few well earned frosty cold ones before being caught on a mountainside in Gwacheon, four miles away. They'll write poems about this bear some day. And make movies about him. Your children's children will sing songs about "The Kid." Song like these songs.

Billy Joel has a song about Billy the Kid, too. "The Ballad of Billy the Kid," it's called. And it even has a line about "a boy with a six-pack in his hand..." But I can't bring myself to post a Billy Joel video. So just, you know, noted.

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It Sucks To Agree With Will.I.Am

Dave Bry — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 13:10:53 +0000

I have mixed feelings about Will.I.Am protesting Sony's release of Michael Jackson's unfinished work. The new single came out this weekend, with a new album (the first of many, apparently) due in December. Will says:

"Whoever put it out and is profiting off of it, I want to see how cold they are. He just wasn't any ordinary artist. He was a hands-on person. To me, it's disrespectful. There's no honoring. Michael Jackson songs are finished when Michael says they’re finished. Maybe if I never worked with him I wouldn’t have this perspective. He was very particular about how he wanted his vocals, the reverb he used ... he was that hands-on."

I mean, I agree with his point. It's like what Joan Didion said about why it was wrong to publish any of Hemingway's work posthumously: "You care about the 'ands' and the 'buts' or you don't, and Hemingway did." For this reason, I am generally against releasing any artist's unfinished work after he or she has died. So much bad Tupac music has come out that never should have. (Though I've been listening to Elliot Smith's New Moon and From a Basement On a Hill a lot recently, and they're both great and I'm very thankful I have access to them. So... it's difficult.)

But to hear Will.I.Am talk about the subject of "honoring" versus being "disrespectful"—especially while he works in the pukily self-congratulatory notion of how he worked with Michael and so therefore knows hims so much better than most everyone else—is incredibly hard to do! Though, I guess I have to accept it: what I consider to be the debasement of songs I love by Bob Dylan and The Who—well, I suppose those guys signed off on Will.I.Am's interpolations. Why, I'll never know. But they are still alive.

Anyway, here's the new song. It's very catchy, but very treacly to me on first listen. I'm not much of an Akon fan. But some people (some people who I like very much!) love it.

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Bob Dylan: Neither A Cheeser Nor A Grinner

Alex Balk — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 12:33:51 +0000

"Here's what I love about Dylan: He was exactly as you'd expect he would be. He wouldn't come to the rehearsal; usually, all these guys are practicing before the set in the evening. He didn't want to take a picture with me; usually all the talent is dying to take a picture with me and Michelle before the show, but he didn't show up to that. He came in and played 'The Times They Are A-Changin'.' A beautiful rendition. The guy is so steeped in this stuff that he can just come up with some new arrangement, and the song sounds completely different. Finishes the song, steps off the stage – I'm sitting right in the front row – comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his head, gives me just a little grin, and then leaves. And that was it – then he left. That was our only interaction with him. And I thought: That's how you want Bob Dylan, right? You don't want him to be all cheesin' and grinnin' with you. You want him to be a little skeptical about the whole enterprise."
-President Obama, Dylanologist.

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Moonshine Enjoys Resurgence In Popularity: 'Moonshiner' Still a Great Song

Dave Bry — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 10:30:04 +0000

"It's a symbol for us. The way the Confederate flag used to be. But the flag today has taken on so many unfortunate associations, nobody feels good about showing it anymore. So we've embraced moonshine: making it, moving it, drinking it. Moonshine has become a point in our identity. It's a way of saying, â€˜I'm from here.'"
-The resurgence of moonshine brings to mind the nice article on the history and production of the stuff Garden & Gun magazine did last year. And also, the many versions of the classic folk ballad that goes with it. Here are six more, in ascending order of my preference.

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Bun B, "Let 'Em Know," And Aging In Rap

Dave Bry — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 13:10:42 +0000

The new song from Bun B really does seem, as the venerable MC says at the outset, to have been "a long time coming." It was produced by Gangstarr's DJ Premier, and so brings together two of hip-hop's very most revered practitioners. Bun and Premier are both from Texas, too, though Premier made his name after moving to Brooklyn in the late '80s. What's most interesting about the song to me today, besides the mesmerizing beat and the jaw-dropping rhymes ("When I get to gladiatin' on haters like Leonidas/Niggas just gonna have to admit that he the tightest..." Triple exclamation points) is how old these guys are. Premier is 44, Bun is, at the very, very least 37 or 38. (He was recently quoted talking about having children aged 24 and 25.)

I wrote last week about how surprised I was to hear Schoolly D, who is also 44, sounding as strong as he does on his new album. (And... 44? Really? So he was only 19 when "P.S.K." came out in 1986?) I've always been okay with the idea that rap music was a younger man's game. Like rock music before it, it started as a form of youth culture rebelling against older stuff. Parents were not supposed to like it. It's weird of course, when such a form itself gets to be twenty (or now, in the case of rap, thirty) years old, and its original creators and fans become parents themselves. It makes sense to me, in that regard, that I dislike the autotune-rap of popular new artists like Young Money and Drake. Also like rock music before it, there's something about vitality being an essential part of rap (it's supposed to be "fresh," right?) so that it made sense that older people wouldn't do it as well.

This notion has been proven wrong when it comes to rock. And it's been a progression. People were surprised when the Rolling Stones made an album as great as 1981's Tattoo You when they were in their late 30s. People were really surprised when Bob Dylan made one as great as 1997's Time Out of Mind when he was 56. As great artists get older, I guess, they figure out a way to make music that sounds honest to their age and still stay true to the essence of their chosen form. (I've been wishing that the Stones would accept their aging and sit down and make the masterpiece of rocking-chair country honk I've known they have in them since Keith wrote "Thru and Thru" in 1994. I've pretty much given up hope at this point. They're like the housewives of New Jersey or something. Not that I won't love them forever.)

So I guess it shouldn't be that surprising to see Bun and Premier and Schoolly D charging so forcefully right through middle age.) Along with folks like Scarface and Wu-Tang and, of course, Jay-Z-who, at 40, is still basically ruling the roost. Rappers are like rockers in many ways, after all. And like they've always said, it don't necessarily stop.

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Thoughts On The New Bob Dylan Video

Alex Balk — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:10:24 +0000

"Bob is the ultimate bad boyfriend, always so cool because he's so completely uncool, and always desperately desirable because he's never what you want him to be. So to the true Bobbista this video is just great. For a horrible moment you think the dude on the squeeze-box at the beginning is Bob in his final metamorphosis (he's got that Bob head angle, looking upwards and kind of quizzical, like a dog who's not quite sure if he's going to bite you or jump over your shoulder), but then you get a glimpse of Bob side-on. Yes, it's really Bob. You think, cool, Bob hasn't turned into an accordion artist. Cooler: he hasn't died."

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