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CounterPunch
December
14, 2002
Dylan's Thunder
You Will
Not Die, It's Not Poison
by RON JACOBS
I'm
listening to Bob Dylan's newest release, Live
1975. This CD/DVD collection is culled from his Rolling
Thunder Tour of 1975. This tour consisted of Dylan, Joan Baez
and a traveling troupe of musicians that included guitarist Mick
Ronson, folk guitarist Bobby Neuwirth, guitatist T. Bone Burnett,
violinist Scarlet Rivera, bassist Rob Stoner, and a few others
who came and went over the course of the tour. Allen Ginsberg
lent his presence, poetry, wit, and hand cymbals to several of
the shows, as well. It was a cultural phenomenon in its day.
Dylan was getting ready to release the Desire album, which included
the anthem "Hurricane." For those who don't know, this
song was an impassioned call to release the boxer Hurricane Carter,
who had been falsely imprisoned for a murder he did not commit.
It was another song in Dylan's series of songs about Black people
who had been denied their humanity thanks to America's bloody
legacy of racism. Three other songs in this vein that come quickly
to mind are "Emmett Till", "The Lonesome Death
of Hattie Carroll", and "George Jackson."
The tour was not just another rock band
on the road. It was a traveling circus with a purpose-that purpose
was to free Hurricane Carter and, by doing so, remind the rock
and roll nation that racism had not disappeared. Indeed, it was
as bad as it ever was. The only difference was that it was harder
to see now that America's legal apartheid had lost its sanction,
thanks to the civil rights and black liberation struggles  of the
previous twenty years. The other role this tour would play would
be to remind the rock and roll nation that our music was more
than just a goodtime sound-it was our talking drum, the way our
message reached each other and the powers that be. Free Hurricane!
Free our minds! Free our country! That's what the civil rights
movement was all about. Unfortunately, that movement itself was
in disarray. Many of its most militant and identifiable individuals
and groups had been murdered or jailed-Martin Luther King and
the Black Panthers, to name two. Others had lost their way via
drugs, drink, and despair. Others had succumbed to the many temptations
that capitalism offers. Some were just plain tired. Still other
had rendered themselves virtually irrelevant by picking up the
gun or the bomb and going underground, occasionally making a
small noise by blowing up part of a building or by robbing a
bank. Those who were left and were still thinking politically
were joining communist sects that seemed to spring up weekly
like mushrooms after a rain. It was a dismal time in terms of
the revolution.
Culturally, the momentum had been lost.
The Rolling Stones and their imitators were either capitalist
clowns or trying hard to be. The Grateful Dead had ended the
first round of their thirty year countercultural journey and
not even the Deadheads knew what lay ahead for them. The rock
promoters were the rising stars in the scene. In fact, it was
no longer a scene, it was an industry. Like it does to everything,
capitalism had commodified the counterculture. It had become
something you went to a head shop to buy. Even the food coops
were closing down because of competition from health food stores
that operated for profit and because their clientele was choosing
to shop at Safeway.
So, Dylan hit the road. By doing so,
he made rock and roll relevant again. The songs were more than
tales of vanity, lust, and hedonistic pleasure, and the performers
were on a mission of truth. For those who can remember, truth
was in pretty short supply in 1975. Richard Nixon had left the
White House in ignominy only a few months before. Gerald Ford,
America's first president who had not even gone through the charade
of an election, sat in his place. The war in Vietnam, which had
been started on a series of lies and mistruths, had ended in
May 1975 with a victory for the Vietnamese. Already, that victory
was being rewritten. Somebody who was unafraid to speak (or sing
in this case) the truth was sorely needed. Bob Dylan and the
Rolling Thunder Revue fit the bill.
Two weeks before the Dylan 1975 CD was
released, The Other Ones began their Fall Tour. For those who
don't know, The Other Ones are the Grateful Dead without Jerry
Garcia, and with new members Rob Barraco and Jeff Chimenti on
keyboards and Jimmy Herring on lead guitar. They play many of
the same songs and naturally approach the music as the Dead did-long,
extended jazzy, blues jams and incredibly danceable rhythms.
The guitar snakes its way amongst the rhythms like a six-foot
black snake in the Eastern woods of North America. The bass playing
makes the musical ground underneath those guitar runs pulsate
like the desert heat on a lonesome stretch of interstate.
I found myself at this band's November
16th show in Albany, NY. Like everyone else, I had no idea what
to expect, but I was hoping for the best. That's what I got.
Musically, the show was far above expectations. The blues tune
"Cold, Rain and Snow" opened the first set while I
waited outside to get in. From there, the music just continued
to improve. The band mixed Dead tunes with blues and folk standards,
never missing a beat. >From the surreal "Crazy Fingers"
off the Dead's 1975 album Blues for Allah to Willie Dixon's "Little
Red Rooster", almost everyone in the sold-out hall danced
their asses off.
I looked around during the intermission.
Audience members smiled and smoked lots of weed. After all, it's
harvest time in the Northeast. A pretty young woman near where
I was standing was with a group of her friends, one of whom had
a baby who was wearing earplugs and giggling. Mama and her friend
both wore t-shirts that said "Make Love Not War." Their
male friends' t-shirts were more direct-both stated "Fuck
War" in bold red and black letters. As I looked around more
I saw more peace buttons and antiwar slogans adorning the audience
members then I had seen since I was in D.C. on April 20, 2002
for the big antiwar march that Saturday. There is something happening
here. I hope Mr. Jones (oops, I mean Mr. Bush) takes notice.
The second set began with "Scarlet
Begonias" from Mars Hotel-not a political song, by any means,
but very danceable. Of course, the Dead (and the Other Ones)
don't write many political songs. They choose, instead, to help
the audience create a world where the politics are of joy. That
doesn't mean they weren't political-they played more benefits
for more varied causes than any other rock band during their
heyday. From the Black Panthers to the ACLU to the Berkeley Food
Bank to the defense fund for those arrested during the 1969 People's
Park insurrection, the Dead put their money where their heart
was.
I left the show feeling better about
the world than I did when I went in. The last time I felt that
way after a rock concert was when I saw Bob Dylan and his Band
at Madison Square Garden in November 2001. These two groups do
more than play music. They carry on the cultural traditions of
the real American culture-the culture of the inner city and the
tenant farmers' shacks, the bohemian urban enclaves and the green
hills of Vermont and Virginia, the farmworkers' lean-tos and
the hobo's open highway, Desolation Row and Shakedown Street.
Commercialism is alien to the condition this music creates, despite
commercialism's continuing attempts to form the music into its
image. Why? Because commercialism shrinks the consciousness.
This music expands it.
Ron Jacobs
lives in Burlington, VT. He can be reached at: rjacobs@zoo.uvm.edu
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