BACHHAUS MIT FRAULEIN

(c) paul heidelberg

This is the house in Weimar, Germany where the great composer and musician JS Bach lived; two of his 21 children were born here.

Bob Dylan: Tempest/Update 10/14/16 Salud to Nobel Prize in Literature recipient Bob Dylan

　
previously known as Robert Zimmerman...


Yes,  to dance beneath the diamond sky
with one hand waving free...


that is from memory -- line endings and such might be off.


As an honor to Senor Dylan here is a poem this poet wrote in honor of the great Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca. I wrote it soon after visiting his birthplace near Granada and the spot about 10 miles away where he is believed to have been killed at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Senor Lorca, like Senor Dylan, knows a thing or two and more about diamond skies...(knows in present tense as all great artists, visual and literary and musical, live on long after their deaths through their ARTE). Also, Lorca knew much about the associations between verse and music as he was an exponent of Flamenco music and helped organize a Flamenco festival the decade before his death.


............................................................................................................................






POR FEDERICO, AGOSTO 2004


　


　


Hola Lorca:


I was there


at the Fountain of Tears


yesterday,


and today


I can imagine


your spirit


in the clear, cool waters


between


plants of


brilliant shades of green,


standing and swaying


alive in the water,


moving with the bubbles of tears;


it is a pretty place,


one could have


a worse place –


and,


you have your mountains


and olive trees,


moons,


when the nights are right.


You died


ten miles,


as the eagle flies,


from your birthplace,


where your younger spirit


erupted from the mirror


by the piano –


a huge arc


of light


shooting across


your photograph,


and,


a ghostly image


of a face,


forever frozen


on the wall.

..............................................................................................................................................................


Previously I had written:

Do yourself a favor and get one of Bob Dylan's best albums EVER: Tempest, his first new work in three years.

Some of the best stories Dylan has ever told during any parts of his long career are on Tempest.

The title cut does not involve Shakespearean allusions (not repeatedly, anyway) but is a dramatic telling of the Sinking of the Titanic saga.

The last track, Roll On John, is a spiritual ode to Dylan's friend John Lennon.

That tune is enough to make you cry, even if you are listening to it "sober as a judge."

Dylan has to be feeling the supreme elation felt by the most successful artists late in life -- if one can continue to create good art later in life, it helps put up with negatives of aging, such as having to deal with health matters.

Also, the musicianship of Dylan's supporting band of the last few years (see photo for names) is, as usual, superb throughout Tempest.

PH/NM

Madame George and A Day In The Life: "The Sixties" Two Greatest Songs



"Painter Photographing Sculpture" (c) Paul Heidelberg

...Tell 'em PH said that.


Also, Van Morrison's Astral Weeks (Madame George is the sixth track on that album) is at least among the top five albums from "The Sixties," right up there with Sgt. Pepper's.



Note: I first went to see Van Morrison perform in the Fall of 1971 in San Francisco at Winterland (this was five years before The Last Waltz was held, and filmed, at that venue). I later saw Van the Man perform a great concert in Granada, Spain in February, 2006.



The Granada concert was a very good one: everything from Brown Eyed Girl to Your Cheating Heart to his familiar tunes about "the wind and the rain." (After I purchased Morrison's great C&W work Pay The Devil, I recognized several of his C&W covers I had heard in Granada.)



A note on that concert: Morrison was backed by about 15 musicians -- they were all hitting it that night, as I yelled to them as I saw them boarding their bus after the concert, gave them the thumbs up and yelled, "Yeah," sounding much like Morrison, I think, like many of his "Yeahs" on many of his works. When he went into "Your Cheating Heart, I yelled "Yeah" and I swear I saw him looking up to me in the balcony, probably wondering, "Who is that person who sounds like me."



And, a strange note: At the time Spain was suffering through a severe drought. I don't know how long it had been since it had rained in Granada, but guess what was occurring, as if tribute to Morrison, as audience members and Van's musicians left the venue: the wind and the rain, that what was occurring.



I was standing in the rain when I gave my thumb's up to Van's band: my succinct music review, you might say. In reply, they all just beamed. They knew they had all just nailed it -- Van included, of course.



Before the concert, I went to a cafe to have a drink while I waited. I listened to an English-speaking woman ordering in English, and assumed she was one of the many British expats who were living in Spain and were also waiting for the show to start.



I thought, "Learn the language of the country you are living in."



Well, one of the highlights of the concert, besides Morrison's great singing, his great Sax work, and others' great Sax work, fine piano work, fine guitar work, was this woman's backing vocals along with another female backing vocalist and a male backing vocalist.



Oh, that is why she doesn't speak Spanish well, I thought. She doesn't live here -- she was probably performing in Sweden the night before, etc.



After the concert, I asked one of the crew if the concert had been recorded.



He asked, suspiciously, "Why?"



I answered, "Because it was a great concert."



He then held up a small black object. It had been recorded. I have thought Morrison ought to release an album culled from that night's tunes. (This was far in advance of the live Astral Weeks album.)



I went to the concert to treat myself for completing my novel-written-in-the-highest-mountains in Spain, when I lived there from 2004 to 2006; I lived "sud de Granada" for two years, two months. In my novel CHASING FREEDOM, REMEMBERING THE SIXTIES, I fictionalized my "Night At Winterland" in 1971, which might be best described as harrowing.



Read the book to find out what I mean by harrowing, and to find out what "The Sixties" was really about. FYI, The Sixties was circa 1965-1975. Musically speaking, the early 1960s was a continuation of the 1950s, with songs by such persons as Bobby Vinton and Gene Pitney (Gene Pitney was good, let it be noted: Check out The New Riders Of The Purple Sage's version of his Hello Mary Lou).



Note: the cover illustration to my novel that you see a representation of on this blog was created by using modern computer software to alter a 35 mm transparency taken "in the bowels" of The San Francisco Art Institute, the best art college in the USA "hands down" during The Sixties.



The title of the artwork is: "Painter Photographing Sculpture." (The work is suitable for framing, as they say; I have had paintings and photographs exhibited at many galleries and I must say there is no way I would sell this work in a gallery for the price of this book; my idea is you buy two copies. Take off the cover of one book to frame, and keep one edition of the book intact.)



(The book is available at such places as http://www.amazon.com/ and http://www.bn.com.)/


Regarding the SFAI -- I attended, and graduated from the college, and it was no easy task. The first year reminded me of boot camp in the U.S. Air Force (four years service -- Honorable Discharge).



It took a long time for people there to accept you, including one strange dude who used a painting studio corner as his home. He was a mascot of sorts I guess, but was one strange dude with a very strange look in his eyes, all the time.



As I write in CHASING FREEDOM, Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead studied at the SFAI and, "before she made it big," Janis Joplin worked in the school cafe for "bread" -- the kind you spend, not the kind you eat.



Get Astral Weeks. I have the original and the live version recorded in Los Angeles and released in 2009, and prefer the original (sans irritating crowd noises, for one thing; for another, great drumming by Modern Jazz Quartet drummer Connie Kay).



Astral Weeks is not Psychedelia. When I first heard the album in a small, and I mean small, cafe in Matala, Crete, in 1969, I thought: "What a great combination of jazz, folk and rock."



Cover Illustration for CHASING FREEDOM (c) Copyright Paul Heidelberg.

You want to hear some Good Music? Do not delay, and get Muddy Waters Woodstock Album

Some Cold Ones To Go With The Blues

Recorded in Woodstock, New York, in 1975, this fine work shows you how good musical, literary or visual art is TIMELESS.



To Paraphrase Muddy (aka Mckinley Morganfield), don't be a cheapskate -- spend some money and get this great music. It is one of the best albums I have ever bought, and that includes Bob Dylan's first 11 albums (and plenty more since), about 19 CDs by Van Morrison, not to mention other works by such people as John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, and Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner.



I got my CD "cheap off amazon.com."



I think my www pen pal Bob Margolin, a longtime guitarist with Muddy and his band, first told me about "The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album." (Bob plays on the album.)



You might start with track six, Muddy's tune "Love, Deep As The Ocean."



In the song, Muddy is telling the woman he really loves her when he sings such lines as:



"I loves you honey, like a schoolboy loves his pie."



For all you guitarists out there, on this tune Muddy is showing you how to play slide guitar. He is backed on the work by such great musicians as Levon Helm on drums, Paul Butterfield on blues harp and Pinetop Perkins on piano.



Go out and get yourself some of this pie, brothers and sisters.



(I just checked -- www.amazon.com has the The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album priced at a buyer-friendly $6.17.)



Get it and open up your ears: You won't be disappointed.



(Here is a photo of 20 half liters of Lowenbrau Oktoberfest beers, purchased in Germany the month after they were created; you can have some cold ones vicariously to help you enjoy Music at its Best. Photograph (c) Copyright Paul Heidelberg.)



-- PH

Jakob Dylan's Women + Country: Good Music

With this work Jakob Dylan is saying, "I'm not just Bob Dylan's son, I'm my own man."

(That's probably what "Papa Dylan" told him [and what Ginsberg probably would have thought, also].)

Note: I learned that ([ ]) at The Miami Herald, just as Papa Dylan learned a certain guitar riff in England (the song is on his Another Side Of Bob Dylan album). Am plugging in now that until hearing the work again recently, I thought he had picked it up in Italy, prompting me to write: Re: Italia, I've been there, done that, as in living there for a year and a half and making 10 visits to Roma, five to Firenze, three to Venezia, trips to Ischia, Capri, Sicilia, etc., and a month traveling Europe, including a week each in Amsterdam, London and Paris.

And this came while serving in the U.S. Air Force; I knew men -- no, make that boys -- who never left the base in that time. Unbelievable.

One more thing: I just searched the Internet and discovered Jakob Dylan is 40; sometimes it takes that long "to come out from under the shadow" of a famous parent. This is similar to a remark by a well known American novelist when he said at a literary seminar in Key West that he was still being referred to as a "rising young novelist" when he was well past age 40.

Thoughts and True Wild West/True American Southwest/True Country (check out the dirt road in the middle of this town) photo work (c) Copyright Paul Heidelberg, MMX.

(Add 1 on October 13, 2010, the first full day of the miners being brought to the surface in Chile. I had thought this weeks ago, after listening to the Women + Country They've Trapped Us Boys tune (Track 9) about three times: at first I thought the words were metaphorical but then I realized he is singing about miners trapped in a mine. Jakob Dylan wrote this tune, and released this CD, long before the Chilean miners were trapped, prompting me to think -- we have another prophetic Dylan; it must run in the family.)

Musical Note: Johann Sebastian Bach, Domenico Scarlatti and George Frederic Handel were all born in 1685/Also... (See Below)

...Each died in the 1750s: Bach in 1750, Scarlatti in 1757 and Handel in 1759.

So, 1685 was a good year for musicians, and music.

This photo, taken in Weimar, Germany, was shot at the house where J.S. Bach lived from 1708 to 1717; two of his 21 children were born here.

Photograph Copyright (c) Paul Heidelberg

John Pickering (Revisited): The man who sang on Buddy Holly's "Oh Boy"

sings again.

(For a story about Pickering and the great Lubbock, Texas, native, scroll down to earlier post in 2009.)