EARLY ROMAN KINGS
Thanks to Harold Lepidus for this:
‘Early Roman Kings,' the first single from Bob Dylan's upcoming album Tempest, will be made available for download beginning August 7, but fans can listen to almost half the track in a video advertisement for season two of the Cinemax series Strike Back... The two minute promo prominently features the Dylan track behind clips from the show. Dylan, as expected, does not appear in the video.
In addition, another song from Tempest, ‘Scarlet Town, will premiere on the program August 17. The album will be released on September 11
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That TV show doesn't look at all violent, does it? Slightly macho for my tastes but I can see how well the song fits. It's not a new tune, but I kind of like on-the-fly lyrics, his voice sounds good and the band are scorching...
ReplyDeleteI don't want to muddy the waters ........but
ReplyDeleteHope the 12 bar blues format is limited to this track or alternatively isn't too dominant on the album. This would sound at home on TTL, at least musically, which is not to diss that album (I remain fond of it) but I'm looking for a bit of a musical shift at this stage. The pieces in Uncut, RS and the LA Times do sound very promising in fairness.
ReplyDeleteRegards,
Judas Priest
After reading the intriguing song titles, I was hoping for something fresh and original, which was one of the things that excited me when hearing of the release of a new Bob Dylan album. I feel disappointed just another Muddy Waters cover, with words from a cliched, fixed attitude/worldview, method and formula.
ReplyDeleteI am grateful for all the great, inspiring & challenging work he did in the past. (He still seemed to have some of his fire when I saw him in concert in Nottingham)
Jack
Reputedly lyrics from Tempest:
ReplyDeleteMothers and their daughters
Descending down the stairs
Jumped into the icy waters
Love and pity sent their prayers
Give that man a Nobel Prize for Literature.
Further thoughts following my earlier comment:-One aspect of Bob Dylan's moving, honest reflections on his life in 'Time Out of Mind' seem to be verified by his recent work. For example: - "The party's over and there's less and less to say, I got new eyes, everything looks far away.":- He does not seem to have anything new to say, sounds far away and is trying to use this experience of life as a stance and a riff. Very different attitude to the one he expressed in 'Standing in the doorway', 'Not Dark Yet' and 'Highlands'. Jack
ReplyDeleteI like what I've heard of the song. It's a little deflating that it's a riff on a previous song(s). However, I cannot say that I dislike the song (I like the lyrics and the delivery)or that I think that Dylan does not have anything further to say. I'm looking forward to the album, and I hope that this song is a small nugget in a goldmine.
ReplyDeleteHas it come to this?: "I cannot say that I dislike the song"...
DeleteRobert Hilburn has also published some highly encouraging tweets about the album in general...I know he tends to wax lyrical about most modern Bob albums but still, even despite the clip of ERK's, one can't help but feel this work is going to have some real substance to it.
ReplyDeleteIf 'Tempest', some of whose peerless lyrics are quoted above, is based on a Carter Family song, I'm hoping 'Tin Angel', which according to the LA Times is a "remarkably straightforward ballad of romantic betrayal and retributionion", is based on Mark Dinning's classic teen tragedy song,'Teen Angel':
ReplyDeleteThat fateful night, the car had stalled upon the railroad track
I pulled you clear and you were safe then you went running back
Tin Angel can you hear me
Tin angel can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And am I still your own true love?
Can even the Nobel Prize for Literature Nominee improve on that?
In fairness to Bob Dylan, he doesn't nominate himself for the Nobel Prize. I agree with Jack above about whether or not Bob has anything new to say, and how he continues to work in the face of that. Also, there's the usual conflict between fan expectations and his own obligation to his work.
ReplyDeleteI'm not getting hyped up or disappointed in advance of this albums release. The previews we've seen have come from a chosen few who are highly unlikely to slate what they've heard. They were hand-picked for a reason. But that doesn't mean they're wrong. The 12-bar blues have followed Bob around from his earliest albums, albeit in less obvious choice to the riff in Early Roman Kings, but like the quotes above, I do hope for a bit more range in the music. Won't be long now before we find out...
Yes, Nigel - this at least is true - that as Kieran says: "In fairness to Bob Dylan, he doesn't nominate himself for the Nobel Prize."
DeleteThe fear I have for the album is based on the length of some of these new tracks. Will there be enough lyrical meat to support them? Will there be enough musical variation to sustain them? Is 45 verses and 14 mins of his current voice too much? Time will tell. Actually, Early Roman King's, at a relatively short(!) 5 mins and a return to the familiar 12 bar blues model may work better in its sequential position on the album in between weightier tracks.
ReplyDeleteJudas.
All Blues songs are riffs from older blues songs. The real roots no doubt predate recorded music. Dylan has always made Blues one of his primary sources. I suspect people who complain about Dylan "stealing" riffs from Muddy Waters have not listened to much Blues music from the '20s and '30s. I love Blues music, and would be very disappointed if a Dylan album did not contain at least a few Blues songs.
ReplyDeletePatrick Ford
Yes, but there's blues and blues, and as Brent White says below: "In his younger days he explored the blues in more creative ways than he does now." I'd say mostly in immensely more creative ways. I discuss this in my live performance "Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues" in relation, for examples, to 'She Belongs To Me' and 'Pledging My Time', and in "Song & Dance Man III" (and to a lesser extent in "The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia") I look long and hard at that aching blues from the "Blood On The Tracks" sessions, 'Call Letter Blues'. Yes, he's always made the blues one of his primary sources. But he used to contribute creatively to the form, and in the process achieve something new.
DeleteBob's later blues work, more obviously indebted to the earlier (pre-Elvis) blues works, are much truer to the blues tradition than the (lovely) works you name. They are also more modest works, but not lesser or less rich works. Marrying Rimbaud to the blues was a nice trick bur certainly not one worth repeating (as the riff from "Rolling and Tumbling" is) but does not finally improve upon the blues. It simply offers a different take and Bob is directing us to the true masters of the form.
DeleteI am sorry to say that, but I'm nothing but disappointed, By the song (which sounds like a left-over, too mediocre for Together Through Life) as well as by the means of presenting it. Selling it to a lousy TV series ... how much uninterest can an artist show for his work? Neither Neil Young nor Tom Waits or even Mick Jagger would have done this!
ReplyDeleteI don't want to hear another variation on a traditional blues riff from Bob Dylan, either. Been there, done that. In his younger days he explored the blues in more creative ways than he does now—by all means. But what I want to hear even less is all this belly-aching from fellow Dylan fans. We must think that Dylan has become some kind of senile crank or something. He hasn't "stolen" this Muddy Waters riff because you can't steal this riff. We all know exactly where he got it from. Do we think he's trying to fool anyone? Do we think that Dylan thinks that anyone is going to hear this song and think, "What a daringly original song this is!" Shouldn't we give him more credit than that? If he wanted to disguise his influences a little bit more, I'm sure he could do so, but he doesn't, for some reason. He must really want the riff to sound just like this, in this very traditional form. I'm kind of bored with it, but Dylan has never made records to suit my taste—thank God!
ReplyDeleteNeither Neil Young nor Tom Waits would have sold a song to a TV show? Who cares? They're not nearly as good as Dylan, either! Although I'm sure Mick Jagger has and would again.
I agree with much of your first paragraph (and you may well have a point as regards Mick Jagger - though he's often proved a pretty good blues singer, and the possessor of more than one vocal sound, himself. But you want it both ways in complaining of others' "belly-aching". They've only said what you make sure you say too: ie. "don't want to hear another variation on a traditional blues riff from Bob Dylan". Just because it's your preamble doesn't mean it's any less or more of a "belly-ache".
DeleteOf course, Michael. I almost said, "I'm talking to myself, too." I'm definitely a belly-aching fan. I love Mick Jagger. My comment regarding him wasn't a criticism. I don't care about selling out.
DeleteFull version now available on Youtube. That lyric just gets darker and darker verse by verse. Given Hidalgo's accordion and the wheezy take on Muddy Waters, the music sounds a lot like TOGETHER THROUGH LIFE, but the lyric is from Bob's darkest apocalyptic locker.
ReplyDeleteKingsley Bray
Many thanks for the info re the full track being on YT. It's appreciated.
DeleteGlad to be of help! There are one or two lines you think 'why didn't he tighten that up?' - but nothing especially new in that. Otherwise, I think the lyric is vivid, compelling stuff, not in any sense tired or second-hand. And that's after half-a-century of Bob's apocalyptics. Extending the blues still seems a fair concept for a song like this.
ReplyDeleteKingsley Bray
The full track reveals itself.... Much better than I hoped. Sure, it's sound is nothing new but there is a snarl and a commitment to the delivery and more than a few tasty lines. Not revolutionary but if this turns out to be one of the lesser tracks on the new album, we are surely in for a major treat.
ReplyDeletePS Comparing it to other similarly structured blues oriented tracks since L&T, one of the best? Right up there I would have thought
Judas Priest
I've listened to the entire song a few times now. I like the song. If the rest of the album is better than Early Roman Kings, it will be a worthy addition to Dylan's body of work. I'm not as down on Together Through Life as some, but, not to damn it with faint praise, after a few listens, Early Roman Kings sounds more related to Love and Theft.
ReplyDeleteI listened a few times to the full version of ERK, and the more I listen, the more conflicted I become. I agree with Brent - Bob knows his songs are examined so he isn't trying to get away with anything. But against this, it might be that he writes that way knowing we'll give him credit for doing something that we don't fully understand - and all the while he actually has no new idea and is just creatively bust or uninterested!
ReplyDeleteLast week I read John Steinbeck's Cannery Row, wonderful book, and I was surprised to see there was a sequel called Sweet Thursday. When I read Grapes of Wrath I would have loved a sequel - what happened to Ma? What happened to Tom? But I preferred not knowing. I started to read Sweet Thursday last night and clearly Steinbeck has some ideas he wants to pursue in this novel - but the characters of Cannery Row don't sound the same. Mack strikes a false note when he speaks. The naturalness is gone. He should have taken the ideas elsewhere.
Or else maybe I'm wrong and just reading it warily Cannery Row was perfect and I suspect his reasons for revisiting it.
I feel this same suspicion with Bob, that he's producing sequels to TOOM and L&T, trying to make the same record, trying to achieve the same effect, but that the kernels he has might fit better elsewhere. And at the same time I'm thinking, no the problem lies with me...
In a famous episode of the British sitcom The Likely Lads, the two pals spend most of the day trying to avoid hearing the score of a football match before they watch the recording of it that night on television. Which is until now how I’ve been feeling about Tempest, but the full version of Early Roman Kings on YouTube has proved too much of a temptation.
ReplyDeleteFirst Dylan song built around, or using a lot of, ‘-ings’ rhymes? (That’s not a rhetorical question – I’m trying to think...)
Rambling Gambling Gordon
(PS: Feeling seriously persecuted by the new Blog system – I keep getting told that Rambling Gambling Gordon 'contains illegal characters'. Well, really...
Are you looking forward to the album?
ReplyDeleteWas that a test question?
DeleteI was looking forward to the album until I heard Early Roman Kings. Oh dear oh dear. Yes, alright, there might be better stuff on the album but honestly...what a lazy piece of appropriation. The lyric? Formless, meandering rubbish about how savage the world is. That's not insight. Bob, you should have toiled and laboured and given us that religious album you wanted to make. Stop trying to sound like the current idea of who Bob Dylan is and go back to shapeshifting like you used to.
ReplyDeleteThe song should really go, "We were so much younger then; we're older than that now." Things don't sound as fresh because we know a lot more about music, and Dylan's sources. Thanks for that is personal experience, and tremendously towards people like Michael for demystifying what Dylan knew before we did.
ReplyDeleteI love the music he made then, and what he's doing today. I'm sure his current methods would not surprise Dave van Ronk in the least. I can't imagine what it is people are upset about when it's pointed out he's using old riffs and melodies. All music I've ever heard (indeed all art) is like that. If you hear or see something which seems to be completely new, well then the sources just aren't familiar.
http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/2008/08/travel-to-exotic-locations-meet.html
Patrick Ford
Thanks for this comment, Patrick. In songwriting, there is no new thing under the sun.
Delete