The Monk's Record Player by Robert Hudson

Author:Robert Hudson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

The American Villon

As promised, Ed Rice’s package contained the three records: Bringing It All Back Home, Another Side of Bob Dylan, and The Times They Are A-Changin’, precisely as listed on the back of Highway 61 Revisited. But the package also contained a surprise, a fourth album that Merton hadn’t been aware of. Although no name or title appeared on the cover, the photo said it all. When the gatefold cover was spread open, it displayed a slightly blurred, three-quarter-length photo of the musician staring disdainfully into the camera. He sported a brown-suede double-breasted coat with a scarf cinched at the neck. Inside the gatefold, in small type, were the titles of the album’s fourteen songs and a collage of nine black-and-white photos, with Dylan in all but two of them. Noticeably heavier than the others, this album contained two vinyl records instead of one. Upon inspection, Merton would have discovered that words were indeed printed on the outside cover, small letters along the thin spine of the gatefold, right across the right breast of Dylan’s coat: Bob Dylan—Blonde on Blonde.

At that point, a smile must have crossed Merton’s face. For a second time, one of Dylan’s album titles was making a sly, almost imperceptible allusion to someone Merton knew personally. Just as Highway 61 Revisited was a playful echo of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, the title of this new record was surely a tongue-in-cheek reference to Ad Reinhardt’s notorious “black-on-black” paintings,1 one series of which was even titled Black on Black.2 Merton would soon discover that one of Dylan’s songs on Bringing It All Back Home refers to a mysterious woman who can “paint the daytime black.”3

Dylan’s song titles on the four albums provided playful appropriation of the device used by many modern artists of numbering their artworks in a series. On Another Side, for instance, Dylan calls one of his songs “I Shall Be Free No. 10”; on Bringing is “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream”; and the opening track on Blonde is “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.”

There was also poetry. Except for Blonde on Blonde, each album offered original poetry by Dylan himself. The back cover of Times provided the first four poems in a series called “11 Outlined Epitaphs,” which continued on a sheet inserted into the record sleeve. The back of Another Side featured five poems under the title “Some Other Kinds of Songs.” On the flip side of Bringing was an untitled, dissociative prose-poem, which began, “i’m standing there watching the parade/.” Merton could now study some of Dylan’s poetry while waiting for the memoir to be published.

Merton immediately took a deep dive into the music. By the next day, Friday, September 9, he had heard enough of Blonde on Blonde for one of its songs to become an earworm. While Merton was in Louisville for spinal X-rays, “I Want You,” the first track on side 2, continually “rang through [his] head.”4 One can imagine why: with an infectious riff and doggedly symbolist lyrics, the song expresses the desperate longings of every lover.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.