My thoughts on Dylan & "Murder Most Foul"

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So here’s my gut reaction to “Murder Most Foul,” Bob Dylan’s divisive new 17-minute song primarily about the Kennedy assassination.

• It’s like listening to four mediocre Bob Dylan songs strung together.

• Might as well call it “Pee Break Most Foul” because if he ever plays this live, every concert goer will at the first notes head straight to their designated restroom.

• The idea of riffing over an era with evocative phrasing has already been done and done better by Billy Joel with “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” only Billy scattered his observations over four impactful decades — and he only needed 4 minutes, 51 seconds to get it done! Even better, albeit more narrowly focused, is Don McLean’s “American Pie.”

Of course in 30 years, I might disavow this judgment, and declare the song utter genius, an essential stitch in the American fabric.

It is my contention that everyone who becomes a Dylan devotee starts out by mocking him. That’s how it started with me.

In fact, for me to begin appreciating Bob Dylan he had to cease being Bob Dylan and become some one else entirely.

He became Lucky Wilbury.

Yes, it wasn’t until I heard him with the Traveling Wilburys that a light went off. He didn’t take himself as seriously as every one else did.

And if you’re today having a bad day (welcome to the club!), realize that once upon a time Jeff Lynne, George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan were sitting around and one of them said, “I have an idea. Maybe we should start a band.”

And they all agreed!

Petty said: “The whole experience was some of the best days of my life, really, and I think it probably was for us all ... The thing I guess would be hardest for people to understand is what good friends we were. It really had very little to do with combining a bunch of famous people. It was a bunch of friends that just happened to be really good at making music.”

Okay, enough sunshine. Back to disparaging “Murder Most Foul.”

Some of the rhyming is just lazy, and the song contains what to me is the single worth lyric he’s ever composed. Maybe worst in history.

Wolfman, Oh, Wolfman, Oh Wolfman Howl!

Rub-a-Dub-Dub

It’s Murder Most Foul!

This is not satire. It’s not a put on. This is factual.

This from the man who on “Thunder on the Mountain” managed to convincingly rhyme “Sons of Bitches” with “orphanages.” So I expect more from him.

I know many people disdain the idea of a 16:57 song (everyone feels obliged to round it up).

Not me. Some of my favorite Dylan masterpieces (“Desolation Row,” “Highlands,” “Brownsville Girl”) exceed 10 minutes.

This one just feels bloated. At least it’s a welcome reprieve from covering old Frank Sinatra tunes, a trend I’ve facetiously said was a factor in Petty’s accidental overdose.

So I don’t like “Murder Most Foul.”

But who knows?

Give me another two decades and I might change my mind and hail it as genius, just like I did with its composer.

Interested in spending roughly the equivalent time on three Dylan songs I contend are bound to break down the walls that separate mockery from appreciation?

Check out “When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky,” “Working Man’s Blues #2,” and “Where Are You Tonight?”

The songs are evidence of a transcendent artist who can be exasperating, tender, charming, infuriating and with every release volcanically compelling.

Just like a woman?

No.

Just like Bob Dylan.

Related …

My favorite Bob Dylan story

Bob Dylan’s the reason I’ll never remarry

Bob Dylan, multiple marrieds and me

Happy Birthday to Bob Dylan (& this blog)

Sound fathering at 22 mph

Hip questions on Tom Petty death report

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News that the great Tom Petty died from an accidental overdose closes the book for many who are satisfied that this answers all the relevant questions. Petty, 66, was self-medicating to alleviate chronic pain resulting from a broken hip.

So that’s that, right?

Wrong. I’m restless over what to me is the key unresolved question.

How did Tom Petty break a hip? I can’t find it anywhere.

What happened? Did he fall off a ladder? Slip on a spill in Aisle 6? For heaven’s sake, was Tom Petty out shoveling snow?

Each of those scenarios nearly befell me in recent years, scrapes that led me to after sticking the landing think, “Whew, that was close. I could have broken a hip. Oh, well. Better me than Tom Petty.”

At the time of his October 2 death, it was reported Petty was worth $95 million. He could have afforded a squad of guys whose round-the-clock job description was KEEP TOM PETTY FROM BREAKING A HIP!

He was such a national treasure he should have been encased in bubble wrap and moved in armored cars on a continuous loop from home to stage to studio. Keeping him safe should have been codified in any national health care plan

I wonder if we’ll ever learn how it happened.

My Thanksgiving dinner prayer included all the graceful staples about lost loved ones, culinary blessings and that the Almighty would lend a holy hand on climate change since it was looking like we’d do nothing at all, but the conclusion was more personal.

“ … and please tell Tom Petty how much we miss him.”

Amen.

I really do miss him. I’m normally immune to grieving over the deaths of men and women I’ve never met. I think it was different for so many of us with Petty. It felt like losing a brilliant friend. Someone we counted on for most of our lives was gone.

And it was all because of a broken hip. Such a shame.

I always thought Petty had plenty hip to spare.

Related …

Echoes of loss: Missing Mom & Tom Petty

Petty wants me to buy vinyl (& who’s better, him or Springsteen?)

Whitney, Petty, Willie & weed

Mylie, Tom Petty & MLK: I have a dream

My medical bills, issues & the $10,000 DAT scan

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Mary had a pleasant, patient phone voice, non-antagonistic and experienced in knowing if I got TOO testy she could always pass the buck.

Or bucks — $820 of ‘em to be precise. That’s how much anesthesia cost for the August removal of half my thyroid gland and a potato-sized (non-cancerous) lump.

I’m contesting the fee because I never asked for anesthesia and would never have dreamed of having any had I known they were going to charge me a whopping $820 for something I could do myself with salt, lime and a bottle of cheap tequila

“That’s not an approved reason for refusing payment,” she said.

Not approved, but perfectly reasonable.

Should I have to pay for something I didn’t ask for?

It’s a violation of what we can call the Pizza Delivery Code: If you order a large pizza with pepperoni and sausage, but they deliver you a pizza with pepperoni, sausage and green peppers you get to keep the mistake and eat it for free.

Shouldn’t we expect at least as much from our nation’s health care providers as we do from our nation’s pizza makers?

The poets say you never know how much you love something until it’s gone. I guess that means I loved the left lobe of my once-whole thyroid.

It’s taken five months for me to feel almost like my old self. That’s how long it’s taken to properly adjust the medications to eliminate a restless anxiety that was making sleep impossible.

At least I think the missing thyroid was to blame. It could very well be that restless anxiety is an obvious side effect of just me being me, a perpetually under-employed writer prone to sublime bouts of laziness.

I should have known I was in for a bad year when when I woke up in March with an engorged tick embedded near my right testicle. If waking up to a tick nibbling your nut’s not a bad omen, I’ll eat my Ouija board.

Besides the infernal tick bite and the thyroid removal, this year also saw the deaths of my Mom and Tom Petty, losses that affected me deeply. I miss Mom, but Petty was still so essentially vital, still headlining Bonnaroo. 

Mom? In the grand scheme of things, it was like she’d been consigned to doing Branson matinees. She’d stopped touring. Hadn't had a hit in years. We were prepared for her passing. Not Petty’s.

To top it all off, I now have a Jan. 30 appointment for a $10,000 nuclear MRI — don’t worry; it’s covered — to try and determine the cause of a vexing weakness that’s been plaguing my left arm for two years.

I have difficulty lifting a stack of plates onto the cupboard shelf. I have trouble buttoning my shirts and putting my deadened arm into winter coats. A limp in my left leg from hip pain may or may not be related.

It’s all mostly on the nuisance level of life’s annoyances, the biggest being the left hand is becoming near useless when it comes to crisp typing. That which was once second nature is now chore.

Because another symptom is an occasional mild shaking mostly when it’s cold (and right up to this morning it’s always been cold), a neurologist ordered a so-called DAT scan to see if it’s Parkinson’s Disease. I’m not exactly sure all that the $10,000 test with medicinal nuclear injections includes, but for $10,000 it had better include a complimentary hooker.

My doctors are all optimistic about the outcome. There’s no pain. It doesn’t seem to be getting worse. I’m otherwise fit and the symptoms are more annoying than troubling. A summer MRI and other anecdotal tests show nothing of concern, which leads me to wonder if we’d be better off using the $10,000 to make level the Fun House 3rd floor here at the Tin Lizzy where I come to type. 

My posture’s gone to hell since I started writing here in ‘15. The floor’s so damned uneven it’s like trying to type on the deck of a pitching ship.

So that’s some of why I was glad to see 2017 ebb. My fear, however, isn’t that I’ll look back on ’17 as a really bad year.

My fear is I’ll look back on it as my last really good year.

Please join me in being defiantly cheerful about the New Year.

I won’t back down.

Neither should you.

Related …

Update: Me 2, tick 0

RIP Mom: why feeling sad is so elusive

Echoes of loss: Missing Mom and Tom Petty

Surgery today! Kissing my thyroid goodbye

My new Tin Lizzy office!

Results of my 1st physical … in 18 years

Twick 'r Tweet! Best of October

Following me on twitter @8days2Amish is like spending time deep inside my head only without all the hangovers.

• It’s unfathomable to imagine how much better off the world would be if every time we felt moved by a good intention we acted on it.

• Trump 1st lady kerfuffle ratifies wisdom of Willie Nelson who said, "There are no ex-wives. There are only additional wives" 

• I’m on a quest to read the nutrition label on communion wafer package to learn calorie count for body of Christ.

• What did the Kansas vulture say when his long lost son came home and asked what’s for dinner? “Carrion, my wayward son!”

• My most earnest wish is to impress upon my daughters the devout importance of being empathetic for the struggles of our fellow man. Instead, all I've done is to impress upon them the devout importance of trying new items on pizza. #WorldsBestDad

• If "Papadopoulus" were a drinking game I'd have been all gooned up hours ago. 

• Paul must be confused. When I was young and my heart was an open book, I never said live and let live.

• Those who prophesize celeb deaths come in 3s can rest easy. Tom Petty's greatness qualifies in triplicate.

• Difference between Petty and Springsteen: Petty had one really bad song ("Wasted Life." Springsteen had one really bad decade.

• Our dreams of ever seeing a Traveling Wilbury's reunion tour have suddenly become even more remote.

• The last Tom Petty song on the last Heartbreakers album is "Shadow People," a song about disaffected loners shooting up a bunch of strangers.

• Ever since his April death, any time a celeb like Petty dies find myself wondering "So, what'll Don Rickles have to say to him?”

• An AK-47 is capable of shooting 600 bullets per minute and right now someone is in the name of progress working to develop the AK-48.

• This is part of Vegas investigation where whole country breathlessly awaits news whether shooter's car did or did not have a Trump bumper sticker.

• I wonder how many clever headline writers from the '60s included the word "unhinged" when describing Jim Morrison & The Doors.

• Reason Mick Jagger sometimes seems bitchy is coz while he's 1 of 10 coolest people on planet, he realizes he's only the 3rd coolest Stone.

• I’ll no longer tolerate so much social media ignorance from so-called "friends" who should know better. They're not cookies. They're bakies.

• It contradicts logic that a man whose name is pronounced Vin SKULL-y would shun a decent hair piece.

• If you're livin' in New Orleans and your nickname ain't Fats then you ain't really livin'. #RIPFatsDomino

• I’m not saying I believe in ghosts, but I no longer go on the 3rd floor of the Tin Lizzy after dark.

• I’m pioneering a new parenting technique where I only love child being nicest to me at the time. I call it "Conditional Love.”

• Peace will remain elusive until humans recognize the ironic folly of calling most intensively defended regions "De-Militarized Zones.”

• Good morning Facebook! Looking forward to another day of you bringing the world closer together while simultaneously tearing it apart.

• Harvey Weinstein reportedly in sex rehab. It'd be funny if all the counselors were smokin’ hot.

• Everything I read about Trump's call to soldier's widow reminds me of scene when Sgt Frank Drebin tried to console Nordberg's wife.

• I know we're raised to believe when we die we go down to hell or up to heaven. Me? I hope when I die I get to where I'm going by waterslide.

• The last phone number humans will collectively remember is 867-5309.

• I hope Harvey Weinstein is around to see the movie they make about Harvey Weinstein & I hope it stars Paul Giamatti & wins a bunch of Oscars.

• We now have verified audio admission that #HarveyWeinstein is a pig who mistreats women. Boy, am I glad I didn't vote for him for prez.

• In order to lend precision to your putdowns, descending order of IQ stupidity is Moron (50-69), Imbecile (20-49) & Idiot (below 20) #moron 

• True confidence is to be 65, look like this & think, yeah, beautiful young women sleep w/ me 'cause I'm just so damn sexy. #HarveyWeinstein

• Dallas has a grassy knoll. St. Vincent College Bearcats in Latrobe have Noll-y grass. #ChuckNollField.

Related …

The political tweet that cost me a sensitive old buddy

Twick ‘r tweet! Best tweets of Oct. ’14

Oct. ’13 tweets of the month

Echoes of loss: Missing Mom & Tom Petty

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The admission will cause some to label me a real SOB, but I’m having trouble deciding who I’m missing more, my Mom or Tom Petty.

Mom, 84, died July 7. Petty, 66, died too soon.

Petty wrote “The Waiting,” “Refugee” and “Free Fallin’.”

Mom wrote grocery lists with detailed brand instructions involving feminine hygiene products.

I’m missing Mom more than I thought I would. I thought I’d feel relief that her demise was tidy and involved none of the negative hypotheticals I’d indulged the last years as her mind bit-by-bit began floating away. 

I miss laughing with her even as toward the end her punch lines were unintentional. Remember, her last best joke was when they were wheeling her off the porch to the ambulance parked outside her senior living home (she’d fallen and shattered her wrist). Her neighbors asked her what was wrong.

“They’re taking me to the hospital. I’m gonna have a baby!”

I think she was joking, but who knows?

I find myself driving past her old place at odd hours. One of her favorite things to do her last year was for me to take her on long rides in the country while Broadway show tunes played on the radio.

I still sometimes make the rides, but now I’m all alone. She was right up to the end the most persistently sweet person I’ve ever known and the reason no one who’s ever met her would ever dare call me or my brother a son of a bitch.

I miss her.

But I miss Petty, too. I just didn’t see that one coming.

A friend, another steadfast Petty fan from way back, said “he’s the only artist who never even once embarrassed me with a look, a period, a statement, or song, much less an album.”

Heck, even his Christmas song is good.

SNL’s 10 p.m. show last week was from ’79 when Petty & The Heartbreakers were the musical guests. They played “Refugee” and “Don’t Do Me Like That.” I hope you caught him, all thin, snarl and sneer. 

He made looking cool so effortless. Same with his songwriting. His knack for writing compelling, catchy hits is unmatched.

How many artists have their last album (“Hypnotic Eye” ’14) be as stellar as their first four decades previous? And with zero lulls. Drop the needle on any song from any album and your pulse will begin to hum.

My favorite album? It was his least favorite.

It’s “Echo” from ’99.

I remember hearing the first notes from “Room at the Top of the World” and feeling I’d just been introduced to a new best friend. It would be there with me for the rest of my life. And it has.

It was like that with every Petty album.

He hated “Echo,” I’ve read and never played any of it in concert. You’d never know it from the often-raucous songs, but the album was for this soulful man an anthem of defeat. His marriage was ending and he was fighting a heroin addiction, the same scourge that was simultaneously killing Heartbreaker Howie Epstein.

I urge you to download the “Echo” title track. It’s an exquisite lament. Knowing its enigmatic message so pained this beloved and gentle man only adds ache to the inherent poignancy.

I like what Val said when I told her the news. “Oh, that’s too bad. He seemed like such a delightful guy.”

I like that she didn’t mention his music. Because he was truly delightful. It shone through in his songs, his videos and his funny cameos in movies like Kevin Costner’s “The Postman,” “King of the Hill,” and “The Larry Saunders Show.”

His joys, even in the face of woe, were irrepressible. I love in the “Runnin’ Down a Dream” rockumentary when he’s asked about his addictions during the “Echo” period. He in hushed tones, very serious, says how drugs can devastate lives and kill creativity. And, clearly, he means it. He’s felt its unholy ravages

But then his blue eyes begin to twinkle and a small grin appears. He asks the interviewer, “You don’t happen to have any drugs, do you?”

And he cackles unrepentantly. It’s very funny.

I read him saying this summer was going to be his last big tour. He had a 4-year-old granddaughter he was looking forward to spending time with.

Thus, the Heartbreaker leaves us broken hearted. 

Ah, life can be a such a bitch.

Especially when you lose the ones who weren’t.

Related …

RIP Mom: why feeling sad is so elusive

Mom’s fallen & may not get back up

Whitney, Petty, weed & Willie

Petty wants me to buy vinyl (and who’s better, him or Bruce?)

Happy Birthday, Jeff Lynne! Our essential Wilbury

Listening to classic rock with my senile Mom