Jag fruktade en platta full med Lonesome Day Blues när han omtalade den som en samling med variationer över blues-scheman, men även där håller det, tack vare att de enklare blues-rock-låtarna alla har nån liten grej som lyfter låtarna och ger det repetitiva ett slags egenvärde (licket i Tweedle Dee, rytmförändringen i Cry Awhile, som perfekt matchar det överspända i texten (eller för in nåt överspänt i texten)).
General points
1. For the first time there is virtually no trace whatsoever of Dylan's guitar on the album - he has left the guitar parts to his very accomplished sidemen. Not that he hasn't had that earlier, but his own guitar has always been audible, even prominent, regardless of who plays the solos. Not so this time. In part that would have to do with the kind of complexity of the songs - Dylan hasn't played this kind of things before, m7-5 chords and all, the big difference being, of course, that this time that Dylan records an album that he as a musician is not familiar with (although he certainly is as a listener).
2. Piano based. For a piano based album, there is remarkably little piano on it. It has been suggested that it was written at the piano, but I can't really see anything to support this: the two main styles on the album are both idiomatically guitaristic - the blues-rock songs don't differ much from what he has done earlier and what he does daily on the road, and even the swing songs have an unmistakable guitar sound. Besides, there is no similarity with Dylan's own piano style, as far as I can see.
3. Dylan's fight against the dominant, and the confines of the 12-bar blues continues. For a man who has been playing the blues throughout a 40-year carreer, there are remarkably few "straight" 12s in his production; he is a master at varying the simple blues patterns - it's like it is a self-imposed set of confines, that he keeps fighting. So is the case on this album as well: in most of the songs where a dominant chord is to be expected, an evasive maneuvre is done, either a modification of the relevant chord, or by leaving it out altogether. Sugar baby: third measure of the intro, where the A (sounding: G) is played, it is not a full chord, but only the tones of the bass figure. Mississippi/Po'Boy: at the same place at the end of the bridge, the G chord is played in several different ways at the same time, to produce a characteristic, dylanistic, anti-dominant clash (or blur). And the rock numbers: Tweedle dum and Cry Awhile: no dominant whatsoever, Summer days: a Bb in the verses, but no "turnaround", and in none of these songs is there any sophistication in the way the chord progressions are handled: they become "stations" rather than "progressions", if you see what I mean.
Tweedle dee: the "figure" is usually cut off - building up some expectation, but emphatically disregarding them. Cut off in different ways in each verse.
Cry Awhile: that's the beautiful thing about this song (one of the beautiful things, I should say - the rhythmic changes are another): the dominant chord (B7 in this case) is never even touched upon, but precisely by being absent, it makes its presence very much felt, since it is usually a dominant feature (hehe), not only of the blues, but of just about any piece of from the western history of music. So: the more you expect it, the more you feel it when it's not there. (I could go on talking about life now, or love, but I guess my point has already been made.) Double dialectic: both the
4. The swing songs follow the same pattern, more or less, even using the same key (Bb).
5. The tune of Floater is taken from "Snuggled On Your Shoulders" by Lombardo/Young (it's remarkable how fast this kind of information is dug out in the Net community). That makes me wonder if other of the songs have similar sources. What then about the bridge in "Bye and Bye", which is very similar to the bridge in Floater? I don't *really* mind that much. It's good music, and it is definitely Dylan, whoever wrote the tunes - he appropriates them quite well and give them credibility as "his" songs, albeit "stolen". The only thing that annoys me is that it would have been so cool if someone today had sat down and written perfect 40's hits, and the only person around that could have done so, with conviction, is Dylan. Now, it turns out, they're perfect 40's hits because they were written in the 40's and that changes that picture a bit...
Comparison with TOOM
I agree with what you say about TOOM - and yet I'm not sure L&T is the better album. It's difficult to compare, since TOOM seems such a long time ago... (funny - that's when my site started, so for me, Dylan's entire production comes between those two albums...!). You're right that Dirt Road Blues and Lonesome Day Blues are the weakest tracks of the two albums. I never really like DRB, but reading what you wrote (and in the comparison with LDB), I began to think more fondly of DRB, precisely because of the soundscape, which brings in the rest of the album too, since it's the same 'scape that is inhabited by Doorway, NDY and Highlands. And although TOOM was live, it was in a way more produced than L&T - the vocal sound was more filtered (or enhanced), less raw and raucous.
And yet, this is what troubles me a bit with TOOM - it has, as you say, an atmosphere, but if you don't share that atmosphere (and woe on he who does that all the time!), it becomes prescriptive rather than inspired. That, I think, is the main difference with L&T: it may create an atmosphere too, but it isn't exclusive (in the literal sense). This goes for the lyrics as well: some of the TOOM songs are so "big" they are finished and almost stand in the way, whereas L&T is sheer exuberance, a Basementian overflowing of the joy of words, ranging from bad on-the-road jokes to the eternal values.
I notice that I keep contradicting myself (and you) concerning which is the better album. It's probably unavoidable, since they're both great. Right now I perfer L&T, but I think I'll have to go home and put on TOOM, dance around to Dirt Road Blues.
Basement Tapes
Texterna påminner mig om nån sorts stämning från Basement Tapes: ordglädje (jo, översvämning är ett bra ord: både på längden och tvären ("She says, "You can’t repeat the past," I say "You can’t? What do you mean you can’t? Of course, you can.” " måste vara Dylans mest överfyllda rad - och det funkar!), och en absurd, förvrängd syn på verkligheten (eller: en syn på en absurd, förvrängd verklighet) förklätt till skämt ("Politician’s got on his joggin’ shoes / He must be runnin’ for office, got no time to lose" kunde ha varit ett av hans konsert-skämt).
Mississippi
The simplistic answer is that the ascending bass line works by going upwards... It is not just a joke - The two ascents in the song: C to G in the "verse", the full octave from G to G in the bridge, are both ambiguous, by taking place over an unchanging sonority, which in both cases are rudiments of the start chord (g-c and d-g respectively), and which makes it possible to regard them as "surface-ripples" over a sustained, implied chord, or as changes in the foundation, carrying with them implied changes in the chords that are built above the bass notes. It is possible to rewrite the ascents with chord formations similar to those in LARS, going back to standard cadential progressions (e.g. C - G/d - C/e - F - G - C and G - Am - G/b - C - G - Em - F - G, leading back to the C of the verse part). The second case is the most complex of the two: although the whole passage centres around G, by emphatically *not* using f# but f, Dylan emphasises the "C major"-ish character of the passage: the whole thing can be reduced, functionally, to a prolongation of the G step as a dominant - preparation - to the following C. The constant presence of the starting chord adds to this effect, but it is blurred or contradicted by the fact that it is in fact a *passage* leading from one point to another (which happens to be the same...), and which presupposes the elements involved in the passage itself to reach the effect (by recourse to the principles of functional harmony). So to conclude: there are chord formations that correspond to what is played here, but they will not entirely "do it", since "it" depends upon the ambiguity of conflicting implications, which would be "un-ambiguiated" (hey, I think I made up a new word...) by the substitution of chords for bass line.
En låt har jag svårt för (Lonesome day blues) - den är lite för lång med för
lite intressant musikaliskt. De andra straighta blues-låtarna är ok, de har alla nåt
speciellt, med Cry Awhile och Tweedle dee som de bästa, tycker jag.
Sen är ju swing-låtarna (eller vad det nu är) sagolika. Po' Boy - sättet han sjunger
"Po' boy" i första versen... ah. Moonlight och Floating är inte långt efter
heller. Highwater och Sugar Baby är givetvis höjdare - kanske bäst, tillsammans med
Po'boy. Mississippi vet jag inte... jag saknar energin från Sheryl Crows version.
Production
Rösten stör mig inte ett dugg, tvärt om: om den vore mindre skrovlig, skulle vi aldrig ha fått höra klangen på "Po' Boy" (första versen), som är höjdpunkten på skivan. Den röstklangen kan inte produceras, den måste komma "naturligt".
Beträffande produktionen har jag bara en invändning: hade instrumenten varit bättre åtskilda i mixen, så hade det varit lättare för en stackars tabbare att höra vad de enskilda spelar...