605. just like Tom Thumb’s blues

“The people I feel sorry for are the ones who try to make definitive sense of a Bob Dylan lyric, particularly the stuff from his pre-motorcycle-crash-peak-amphetamine (and whatever else) period. I mean, take the first two lines of Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues. When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez and it’s Eastertime too – And your gravity fails And negativity don’t pull you through. You can go anywhere from there. Or nowhere. Which is the whole point, of course. Maybe. What I mean is, I first heard it when I was maybe fourteen, three decades ago now, and I’m sure I’ve heard it hundreds of times since, but I still couldn’t tell you what any of it’s actually about. Not a single line. And I don’t care. It takes me regardless, maybe nowhere at all. And if you don’t get the appeal in all that, then there’s someone you need to meet. His name is Mr. Jones.” (Philip Random)

dylan-1966-03

758. raunchy

“According to my friend Jason who knows everything, the Ventures lack credibility because they were never a proper surf band. They just ripped off the surf sound and, being top notch musicians with access to top notch studios, their stuff often killed the originals in recorded form. Jason, all I can say is, purity is boring, particularly when applied to something as impure, mongrel, fuzz and raunch infested as surf infused rock ‘n’ roll. And anyway, Raunchy shouldn’t even be on the list as it was released in 1964, a year before the cut-off, which I only just figured out, so whatever, call this whole initiative impure, mongrel, raunch infested. Or maybe surf music is capable of transcending the laws of space and time, even if it’s impure.” (Philip Random)

759. think for yourself

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDxRx01xkJ0

“Another potent reminder of just how unbelievably f***ing good the Beatles were, and how dumb our commercialized culture continues to be — that a song this good (another one of George’s nuggets) could still somehow be under-exposed. Not that I’m really complaining.” (Philip Random)

Beatles-1965

914. hey gyp (dig the slowness)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BiuwZ67Sq0

Donovan b-side from before he started up with smoking banana peels, going all sunshine superman. The image is of a young back country Scottish guy doing a pretty solid early-Dylan-beat-vagabond thing, then stumbling into London just in time to catch things at the brink of starting to swing, trying to make sense of it, digging the slowness.

donovan-1965