Sign on the Window isn't the Bob Dylan podcast you need, but it's definitely the one that you want! Each week we select a Dylan song at random, live with the song for a week (or two) and then get together to discuss. This week, our first from Love & Theft since our very first episode, "Cry a While."
Next week: Bad Luck Hand
CONTEXT (5:00)
"Cry a While" was recorded on May 18, 2001 in two takes at Clinton Recording Studios in NYC. It was his tenth for what became "Love & Theft". Dylan first played "Cry a While" a month after the record dropped: October 10, 2001. He last played it December 1, 2018 (as if recording and notes). He also played in-between those dates, 156 times total.
Before "Love & Theft" was released, Dylan said:
these so-called connoisseurs of Bob Dylan music... I don't feel they know a thing, or have any inkling of who I am and what I'm about. I know they think they do, and yet it's ludicrous, it's humorous, and sad. That such people have spent so much of their time thinking about who? Me? Get a life, please. It's not something any one person should do about another. You're not serving your own life well. You’re wasting your life.
SONG ITSELF (8:30)
We begin with the music (apparently, the first four bars are played with straight eighth notes in Delta Blues style á la Charley Patton and Tommy Johnson while the rest of the verse uses the swinging rhythm with dotted eighths) and its connection to our very first episode, Honest With Me (001).
This song is filled with allusions we try to unpack: from Tommy Johnson's "Big Road Blues (1928-29) to the standard "I Cried For You (Now It's Your Turn to Cry Over Me)," from Lonnie Johnson and Victoria Spivey's "The Dope Head Blues" (1927) to the Mississippi Shieks "Stop and Listen Blues No. 2" (1930), from Donizetti's Don Pasquale to "Your Funeral and My Trial" by Sonny Boy Williamson (and Otis Span on piano and Willie Dixon on bass).
DOES IT WORK IN 2019?
Do those allusions elevate the work? Does it distract? A bit of both. It works, but it isn't the most dynamic. Maybe it's the intervening 78 episodes between this and our first episode, but maybe we've covered too much.
Jürgen Kloss has better presence of mind:
Generally 'Cry A While' works on two levels. First it is a compilation, an inventory of Blues motives and lines. Here Dylan's way of constructing songs is clearly derived from how writers from that genre have built their songs. It's as if he intended to integrate as much related motives as possible. Additionally it's a journey through music history, giving a glimpse of how these kind of songs developed and how black and white performers and writers exchanged and borrowed ideas and topics. Dylan surely has enough knowledge of the history of the revenge song to be able to construct — by purpose or not, I have no idea of course — this kind of 'lesson.' All these songs mentioned resonate somewhere in the background of 'Cry A While' and add meaning and context.
THE EPISODE’S BOOKLET & PLAYLIST (32:30)
RECOMMENDATIONS (34:00)
Kelly listened to lots of TV on the Radio this week.
Daniel watched The Wire and celebrated the 10th anniversary of Bomb the Music Industry!'s SCRAMBLES (and newly released demos!).
McNulty: Let me understand. Every Friday night, you and your boys are shooting craps, right? And every Friday night, your pal Snot Boogie… he'd wait til there's cash on the ground and he'd grab it and run away? You let him do that?
Man On Stoop: We'd catch him and beat his ass but ain't nobody ever go past that.
McNulty: I gotta ask ya: If every time Snotboogie would grab the money and run away, why'd you even let him in the game?
Man On Stoop: What?
McNulty: If Snotboogie always stole the money, why'd you let him play?
Man On Stoop: Got to. This America, man.
ENDINGS (39:00)
Remove #54, "Cry a While" from our list. There's 432 songs left. Kelly guessed #103. We could have had "Too Much of Nothing" from the Basement Tapes. Instead, we are going to "Kingsport Town," unreleased, off TBLS Vol. 1-3.
We close with Jenn Fiorentino's cover of A Wilhelm Scream's "Die While We're Young."
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079 – "Cry A While"