Word: songful
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...DOCK OF THE BAY (Volt). The title song, Otis Redding's first million-selling single, was recorded a few weeks before his death in a plane crash last December. One of his catchiest and most reflective songs, it has none of the torrential outbursts and piston rhythms with which he electrified his audiences from Paris to Monterey during his brief reign as the crown prince of soul. But the album has other cuts of more typical pounding blues (I'm Coming Home and Don't Mess with Cupid), as well as some lighthearted badinage with Carla Thomas...
Side two of the album is the straight side. Dylan isn't hiding anything. "I pity the poor immigrant when his gladness comes to pass," is the last line of a beautiful song that rings true as one of the most accurate social observations of our time. "And I do hope you receive it well depending on the way you feel that you've lived," is one of several great lines in Dear Landlord explaining a philosophy of interaction between two dependent individuals. There's the suggestion that Dylan is talking about his relation to God (the landlord...
...want a doze." The last is a pun on "want a doze." and "want a dose." Of course the whole scene is a lot like Waiting for Godot, which brings in God and religion and which sounds right for Dylan. And maybe H can be a religion. What this song's got in common with the other two is the message in the following lines: "Everybody's building ships and boat; some are building monuments; some are jotting down notes. Everybody's in despair. Every girl and boy. But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here, everybody's going to jump...
...Much of Nothing, sung by Peter, Paul, and Mary is another song Dylan wrote. The Nothing is the same nothing Dylan saw in Frankie Lee and Judas Priest. "Too much of Nothing," Dylan writes, "can turn a man into a liar. It can cause some men to sleep on nails, the other men to eat fire. Everybody's doing something, I heard it in a dream." Sleeping on nails and eating fire are obvious acts of faith, and are at least some kind of answer to a life where a man who "don't know a thing" can be made...
...Minim justice. What makes its 21/2 hour running-time seem one-tenth as long as the uninhibited zaniness that keeps the performers flying through their material. They do everything and anything. In one sketch, medieval knights running around in cloaks bearing the peace symbol suddenly break into a ludicrous song about a chastity belt. Ten minutes later a thumping South African chant turns into a wild dance accompanied by a myriad of homemade instruments. When they aren't singing, the company takes turns playing whites and blacks shooting each other. (The politics of Wait a Minim are strongly anti-apartheid...