- Posts tagged Bob Dylan
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"They say sing while you slave and I just get bored..." (I've got my own row to hoe and it ain't gonna be on Maggie's Farm)
When I moved to Australia in 2005, I took time off from work and went back to school to take on a full time MBA program. A lot was learned, but one of the courses I took had deep impact on me that made a fundamental change in my thinking: "Foundations of Management Thought". Forget about all the management and business bullshit for a minute. The gist of this course was about exploring centuries of philosophical theories and applying them to management practises (Blah, blah, blah...).
I was the only American in a group of twenty-two. American schooling is not like European or Eastern when it comes to learning about different world philosophies. The emphasis is just not there. It was never more evident to me until I took this course. Pretty much everyone else in the group had a much deeper knowledge of the philosophies we discussed, debated and challenged over the twelve week course.
The course itself was extremely well done. The link to the "management" was strong and well thought out. I wasn't all too concerned about how I could apply it to business as much as I was trying to grasp how this was effecting me personally. One of the philosophies we focused on was existentialism. This one grabbed me by the balls and hasn't let go since.
I wouldn't even think about trying to get into all of the different perspectives on existentialism from the different philosophers here and now. Shit, I still don't understand them all. That being said, I have done a lot of reading on the subject. My process for exploring this subject is this: read...read and learn as much as you can...you don't have to understand it all...instead, pull out the bits that are relevant to you and apply them to your process. That is what I do.
Existentialism, for me, boils down to this: live in the present, make choices and own the responsibility of the consequences (good or bad). Use the facticity of your life, combined with your personal values, to make these decisions and, if you act in good faith, enjoy the freedom that comes with being an individual. OK, that's enough of that here in this format. I love to talk about this stuff...but, it is best done over a few-four bottles of red, some good music and willing participants.
Back in 2007 when I was living in Sydney, Australia, I did a lot of reading about this subject. One of my fave things to do is to go to pubs, have a few beers and read. I find it to be so relaxing. Reading is a very solitary action, but it doesn't have to be a lonely one. I love the idea of sitting in a busy pub and being a character in the scene and reading: social and solitary in one go.
I take a lot of notes when I read. During my exploration into existentialism, I spent many a Saturday in pubs reading, leaning, building monuments, jotting down notes and putting back pints of my fave Aussie beer. I was reviewing those notes today. I thought I would share them here. These are the bits that mattered most to me at the time of my reading and research. Have a sift through them and find any nuggets that interest you...be they fool's gold or real deal Klondike truth.
If you have any thoughts, ideas or sparks you want to strike...leave them in the comment section below. In the last page, you can see the germ of something that I have been thinking about for a while: the "American Dream" and how Thomas Jefferson and Hunter S. Thompson are joined at this hip on this.
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Another aspect of "Juddlosophy" that is part of The 6149 is...the Individual or the Original. This subject itself is an entirely different post for a different day, but I'd like to touch on a few key things relative to what this blog is about. In the sidebar, I describe The 6149 to be about "making choices, being curious and challenging conventions (oh yeah...and a whole lotta music, too)". The title to this blog itself is a play on "choice". I am a blues man. I love the blues because of the music, but also because of the stories and legends that live within the music. There is no legend (whether you consider it timeless or worthless) more identified with the Blues than the legend of the Crossroads. The Crossroads: choice personified.
Here are three people who have helped me sing the song of The 6149: Neil Young, Hunter S. Thompson and Bob Dylan.
Have a look at the subtitle to this blog. It reads: 'I've got my own row to hoe". That is adapted from a line in a fave Neil Young song, "Thrasher". In the sidebar there are two quotes: one by Hunter S. Thompson and one by Bob Dylan. These two quotes, plus the line from the Neil song, mean the world to me:
"Got my own row left to hoe" - "Thrasher", Neil Young (full lyrics)
“To see life clearly, to live it like a champion, you have to develop your own set of rules.”- Hunter S. Thompson
“I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more...” - "Maggie's Farm", Bob Dylan (full lyrics)
I think about these three lines every morning when I pull my bones out of bed. I also think about the list of people on the "Honour Roll" (found in the sidebar to the right). These are the people that I admire most and who have made an impact on my life.
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Neil Young...he is my hero. The ultimate individual. "Thrasher" is one of my fave Neil Songs. When I hear it, I want to break molds and blaze trails.
In 2007, Hunter's window put out a book called, The Gonzo Way. This book is about Hunter's "wisdom". Have a read of a previous post about my thoughts on this book and how I came to make this video (below) and the reach it had (I got a tip of the hat from Hunter's widow for this on her blog and from the publishing company put it on their website to promote the book).
Maggie's Farm: have you ever really listened to the lyrics? Yes? Ok, then...you know where I am coming from. No...well then, listen again...(waiting)...Ok, you got it now? Excellent. Listen here to Maggie's Farm played by Bob and his "electric band" at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. The impact of the song and scene it was played cannot be understated.
Flipping Vinyl: A Lunch Hour Look in to London's Vintage Vinyl Bins
Click here to download:
flipping-vinyl-a-lunch-hour-look-in-to-london-s-vintage-vinyl-bins-jcfohwnecChsoImGnIFh.zip (8122 KB)
Lunch breaks aren't just for eating...unless you use them to gobble up the best of London's vintage vinyl.
I have recently discovered that there are almost one dozen vintage vinyl shops near my office in London. I work off of Oxford Street, near Soho. I went for a stroll the other day and realised that I was smack dab in the middle of my London Record Shop Search map (find it here)!
This is dangerous for many reasons. In the next few months I see three things happening as a result of my lunch break discovery...I will get skinnier, my wallet will get lighter and my vinyl collection will get much fatter. The other problem I see is that I will have to come up with excuses as to why my lunch hour has turned into a lunch hours.
Damn the problems! I have mass vinyl at my fingertips!
I am going to use this post as a photo album for my lunchtime vinyl hunt exploits. The album will keep updating as I send pics frm my iphone (via the PicPosterous app). I'll update the comments so that you can see when new vinyl haunts have been properly hunted.
To kick things off, let me tell you a bit about what I saw today:
The first shop I stopped in was"On the Beat". This shop has been alive and owned by the same guy for 31+ years! He not only had the coolest old vinyl, but he was playing great tunes...RL Burnside was blaring out from the shop into the streets when I approached the shop. He had all kinds of old Melody Maker, Creem, Rolling Stone original copies hanging on the wall; tons of artifacts and souvenirs, framed, autographed pictures; many racks of obscure, bootleg and special release vinyl.
I need more time in this shop. Too much to take in just thirty minutes. I found a gem here though: an original pressing of Bob Dylan & The Band's, "Basement Tapes". There'll be good rocking at my place tonight for sure.
The second shop I stopped in was "JB's Records". JB's was a bit smaller, certainly did not lack in volume of cool vinyl. The shop itself has been there for almost 30 years; the current owner has had it for the last ten.
Here I picked up two classics from two fave acts:
- Booker T. & The MGs: "Green Onions"
- Keith Richards: "Talk is Cheap" (first solo album)
Stay tuned for more vinyl bin flipping fun...
- Posted from Camden Town, United Kingdom
"Some are building monuments and others are jotting down notes..."
"Some are building monuments and others are jotting down notes...((Tags: mind map, blog posts, Bob Dylan, London, Cafe, mobile, Twitter, Simply Tweet))
via SimplyTweet
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Update: This is a note for all you twitter/posterous users.
I started using a new Twitter client on my iPhone: Simply Tweet. Simply Tweet works well with Posterous (The 6149's blogging platform). It allows you to post long tweets to Twitter that are simultaneously posted on your Posterous blog. The Tweet ends up being the title of the post as well as appears in the body text.
In my first post, I used email subject syntax to add tags to the post on posterous. The tags showed up as I wanted them too, but they also showed up in the body text (see above). I didn't want that.
SImply Tweet responded to a tweet I made about this and gave me a solution...within 5 minutes of my posting this. Here is what they said:
@Judd6149 ah. So you want to set Posterous tags? Use hashtags. #SimplyTweet converts hashtags to Posterous tags automatically so you don't need to use the email subject syntax. The advantage is if they appear early enough, they are included as hashtags in the tweet text.
That solves that. Great customer service from @simplytweet. Give them a try if you need a (new) mobile twitter client.
And now back to our regularly scheduled program...
The picture in this post was taken at a cafe around the corner from where I am staying in South Kensington, London. I was on the way home from the gym and decided to stop off for a double-espresso and some early morning sunshine inspiration.
I mapped out a flew blog posts ideas for The 6149 (do you think my blog knows I am talking about it in the third person?). When I was doing this, I started singing the lyric that is the title to this post. It is from Bob Dylan's "The Mighty Quinn". It is off his second volume of "Greatest Hits".
Dylan in his autobiography Chronicles Volume One (published 2004), makes further reference to the song: "On the way back to the house I passed the local movie theater on Prytania Street, where The Mighty Quinn (film) was showing. Years earlier I had written a song called "The Mighty Quinn" which was a hit in England, and I wondered what the movie was about. Eventually I'd sneak off and go there to see it. It was a mystery, suspense, Jamaican thriller with Denzel Washington as the Mighty Xavier Quinn a detective who solves crimes. Funny, that's just the way I imagined him when I wrote the song The Mighty Quinn, Denzel Washington"
Indeed, Bob. Indeed.
Tune Tags
As mentioned in a 6149 post yesterday, I am introducing Tune Tags. I have dropped in a Tune Tag playlist here for you to put your ears on. This one is chock full of different versions of "The Mighty Quinn".
- The Bob version is really from sessions in the basement of Big Pink with the band. I love the lazy, slurry, jangle-y feel to this one.
- The Dead's version is a reminder of how much fun it was to go to their shows and anticipate what cover they were going to play. Great times at those shows (from what I can recall...I think everyone did dose when Quinn showed up.
- The Hollies? Yes, the Hollies did a folksy version of this, too. Can you hear Gram Nash in there...?
- Speaking of cover tunes...the curators of the cover tune, Phish do their best Dead doing Bob.
- I had to include Manfred Mann, right? There version is the widely know version. Smart move covering Bob & Bruce.
Note: Apologies to @wolfgangsvault. Mate, I'll get the Tune Tags up higher in the post next time (heh heh)
The Goods
Here is another new feature I am going to use on The 6149. The Goods is the section where I will add links that reference the post contents. It will be links, images, footers, etc. I'll give this a go and see how it works in conjunction with Tune Tags. Let me know if it is "Too Much Monkey Business".
- Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. 2 (personally, I think this is his best 'collection" of the dozens out there)
- Full Lyrics to "The Mighty Quinn"
- Wikipedia page on the story behind "The Mighty Quinn"
p.s. another technical note: I did not add the Tune Tag playlist via Simply Tweet. I did it in the editing of the post.
