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 we explore our first song off Dylan, among other records, "Spanish Is the Loving Tongue."
Kelly and Daniel talk context (2:00), Spanish Facts™ (3:00), Charles Badger Clark and "A Border Affair" (17:30) and Dylan's various renditions to close the episode. We talk our playlist for the week, our recommendations and pick next episode's song.
Next episode: You came down on me like rolling thunder!
CONTEXT (2:00)
Dylan has recorded this many times over his career. From his summer in Big Pink (featured on TBLS Vol. 11: The Complete Basement Tapes to a B-side with “Watching the River Flow” (put to tape on June 2, 1970) to being featured on Dylan (with a April 24, 1969 attempt during Self Portrait sessions). He'd record it during the Blood on the Tracks sessions as well (appearing on TBLS Vol. 14: More Blood, More Tracks).
Dylan has performed this song once: May 11, 1976 in San Antonio, TX.
SPANISH FACTS (3:00)
Daniel, perpetually studying Spanish, hits Kelly up with SPANISH (and Romance language) FACTS. No spoilers here! Listen to the episode for more! And check out the music featured in this section below.
CHARLES BADGER CLARK (17:30)
The song is based on "A Border Affair" by cowboy poet Charles Badger Clark.
Clark was born in 1883 in Albia, Iowa. His father preached across South Dakota (where he'd be named Poet Laureate in 1937) including Huron, Mitchell, Deadwood, and Hot Springs. Badger would travel to Cuba in his youth but return to Deadwood after contracting TB. He moved to the drier air of Tombstone, Arizona for his illness. Once he felt better, he returned to Deadwood and promptly contracting TB again.
In 1925, Clark moved into a cabin dubbed "the Badger Hole," in today's Custer State Park, and lived there for 30 years writing poetry. You can visit the cabin today.
"A Border Affair" was written in 1907 and published in Pacific Monthly. It's a realistic approach to a cross-border romance, commentary on the borders of race and class we adhere to. It's convention to cite it being set to music in 1925 by Billy Simon.
*Spanish is the lovin' tongue Soft as springtime, light as spray There was a girl I learned it from Living down Sonora way Now I don't look much like a lover Yet I say her love words over Late at night when I'm all alone "Mi amor, mi corazon"
There were nights when I would ride She would listen for my spurs Fling that big door open wide Raise those laughing eyes of hers And how those hours would get to flyin' Pretty soon, I'd hear her cryin' "Please don't leave me all alone Mi amor, mi corazon"
Then one night I had to fly I got into a foolish gamblin' fight I had a swift goodbye In that black unlucky night And traveling north, her words kept ringing And every word I could hear her singing "Please don't leave me all alone Mi amor, mi corazon"
Well, I ain't never seen her since that night I can't cross the line now She was Mexican, and I was White Like as not, it's better so And yet I've always sort of missed her Since that last wild night I kissed her I left her heart, but I lost my own "Mi amor, mi corazon"*
Listen to Daniel read the poem in the episode!
SONG ITSELF (21:30)
Dylan has a special relationship with this song (along with plenty of others). In terms of preference, it's difficult to not take the "Watching the River Flow" B-side (also featured on TBLS Vol. 10) as Dylan's best. The piano is gorgeous. Compared to the earlier version used for Dylan, the music of which Eyolf Østrem as Dylan Chords notes is a "contender to the title “Dylan's most tasteless arrangement," it is a triumph that never seems to get the love it deserves.
We discuss the alterations from "A Border Affair" to Dylan's versions.
DOES IT WORK IN 2019?
'Spanish Is The Loving Tongue' is another Western, a scene that plays like film, set in a place long precious to Dylan: bordertown. He loves the spaces in between, places where lines are made and crossed, where unlikely people meet and part.
— Michael Gray
THE EPISODE’S BOOKLET & PLAYLIST (35:15)
RECOMMENDATIONS (39:00)
Kelly recommends Budos Band, Quelle Chris and the Netflix show Dead to Me.
Daniel recommends the new Bad Religion Age of Unreason as well as Vampire Weekend Father of the Bride.
Kelly and Daniel — huge fans of Modern Vampires in the City (2013) — talk about their history with Vampire Weekend and how it's shading their outlooks on the new album. Rob Harvilla, in his feature at The Ringer, "How Vampire Weekend Became the Last Mega Indie Band Standing," sums this feeling up well:
Generally speaking, happiness doesn’t make for great art; at the very least, it isn’t as combustible as misery, desire, or any other feeling rooted in what we lack rather than what we have. Listening to Father of the Bride, I hear songs of contentment sung by people who have tended to feel agitated, songs of belonging by people who have tended to feel as though they don’t belong. I miss the restlessness of Contra, the grandeur of Modern Vampires, the way the band used to sound anxious and self-examining about their privilege but now seem oblivious. Still, it takes a certain kind of bravery to feel the weight of lightness, to admit that things are okay. “I used to freeze on the dance floor, I watched the icebergs from the shore,” Koenig sings on “Stranger,” “But you got the heat on, kettle screaming/Don’t need to freeze anymore.” Corny, but that’s life sometimes. And with that, the wallflower peels away from the wall and starts to dance.
Mike Powell, in his Pitchfrok review for Father of the Bride, cites Dylan cira-Self Portrait and New Morning:
But Vampire Weekend have never been that legible, nor is being legible any better than being a little obscure. More than anything, Father makes me think of something like Bob Dylan circa Self Portrait and New Morning: The sound of an artist trying to backpedal, in a fascinating, sometimes antagonistic way, on the gravity they had worked so hard to cultivate. — Mike Powell
ENDINGS (47:00)
There's 422 songs left in this experiment. Kelly guesses #18. That would be "Ballad of Donald White." Nope. Incorrect. It's #223 — "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You" from 1969's Nashville Skyline!
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085 – "Spanish Is the Loving Tongue"