On Bringing It All Back Home's 50th Anniversary

Dylan goes electric is one of the most famous musical controversies and it still doesn’t make sense 50 years later.  It would be one thing if he turned on an electric guitar and started making bad or derivative pop music, but that didn’t happen in the spring of 1965.  For fans and some critics to call his electric/ folk-rock music a complete sellout says to me that they simply weren’t listening.  How could anyone listening to “Subterranean Homesick Blues” consider that a selling out of style?  Even the lyrics to the more romantic songs (“Love minus Zero/ No Limit” and “She Belongs to Me”) sound like nothing that had ever been recorded.  Where has anything similar to the phrase "She knows there’s no success like failure and that failure’s no success at all” ever been uttered in a love song?  Doesn’t sound much like “she loves you yeah” does it?  The language used on these songs just never existed in popular music. 

For an album regarded as the epicenter of the Dylan goes electric firestorm, I find it ironic that the best songs on his sellout album are the acoustic numbers.  Songs like “Mr. Tambourine Man”, “It’s Alright Ma (I’m only Bleeding)”, and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” (a contender for my favorite song of all time) are so good that I actually considered that the folkies had a point in booing electric Dylan.  Then I went back to Side 1 and quickly cleansed my mind of such a blasphemous notion (what a drag it must have been for Dylan to see them).  It’s funny to see how music controversies have changed over the years.  We’ve moved from the sellout of musicians changing from acoustic to electric styles to the sellout of musicians going from playing instruments to creating music on computers.  I would venture that this is my generation’s Dylan goes electric controversy, but it seems to press harder on the minds of those from the generation prior to mine.  I guess ours might be making sure that a musician’s lyrics and song styles perfectly match up with our ideology and whether they challenge us in ways that we deem acceptable.  Still Dylan goes electric just seem so crazy 50 years later.  This album brought forth the greatest year and a half in musical history and for people to be mad at such genius just sounds insane.  Oh to have attended all his concerts from 1965-66 where people would booing, run around on stage, and antagonize their former hero would have been a sight to behold.  Funny that in around 4 years’ time these same rabble rousers would be wildly applauding the very same songs at the Isle of Wright, and 10 years later would be requesting them from the rafters.  It just goes to show how far ahead some people can be over the rest of us.

So on this March 22^nd, listen to at least one of the songs off “Bringing It All Back Home”.  Gaze at its intoxicating cover and get lost in the magnificent wordplay of “Gates of Eden” and “Bob Dylan’s 115^th Dream”.  This album brought to the public the image of Bob Dylan as the coolest motherfucker on the planet.  Type Bob Dylan 1965 into Google images and try to disagree with me.  It is a foolish exercise indeed.  Sit back, turn on this masterpiece of pop music and always remember that the pump don’t work because the vandals took the handles.  

House of Cards Season 3

My thoughts on the latest season of House of Cards.  Spoilers ahead because duh.

I will always love Kevin Spacey’s accent and asides to the audience.  They will never grow old to me.  This season used his fourth wall breaking device a lot less of them then before and most of them were in regards to when people went after Claire.  If anything Francis Underwood is a devoted husband.  I liked the lessened use of audience asides because it sharpened the impact of the few times he talked to the faithful viewer.  You could hear the venom when he threatened to throw President Petrov down the stairs or end Heather Dunbar after her sleazy abortion stunt.  The asides welded more gravitas and presented Frank his only real moments of unchecked power.  Only in his talks to the audience this season was Frank cock of the walk as he spent the rest of the year dealing with leaders who weren’t utterly stupid (remember President Walker) or susceptible to train collision (do I have to say who this was).  So it was pleasant to see Frank Underwood go up against real adversaries and to remember what it’s like to lose.  I do wish we had another Meechum sex scene.  That absence is unforgivable.

Robin Wright is the other highlight of House of Cards but I didn’t like her character’s ending arc.  House of Cards is never subtle and I hated how everybody she ran into all but told her to leave Frank and set out on her own.  Her leaving Frank at the end of the season makes no sense.  What is she going to do other than oppose him for President or run for congressional office?  Their evil efficient pairing was so cool and for them to split was very disheartening.  I have to agree with Frank on this argument.  Claire knew what she was getting into when they set off to make Frank President of the United States.  She would have to take the backseat for a bit because her husband is, oh I don’t know, the most powerful man in the free world.  You’d think that somebody attached to the goal of ruthless pragmatism would understand this.  Plus, he gave her so many opportunities as UN Ambassador and she failed nearly every tasked assigned to her (aside from her awesome bathroom victory over the Russian Ambassador).  She made things so much worse, especially when anybody with a Russian accent was involved.  She is at fault for her performance and they took a huge political hit when she failed at her job.  Hopefully they get back together because other than the fact that I want to see more Meechum sex scenes, I really enjoy seeing them work in tangent as a pair.  Their devious Lady Macbeth wheeling and dealings are always a pleasure to watch.  Plus, I believe that Claire Underwood would go down as one of the most fashionable first ladies of all time.  She probably has inspired millions of Buzzfeed articles in her universe about how she is a fashion icon and “flawless” along with a million other articles on how she is a feminist queen.  Her term as first lady will probably be regarded very well.

It’s hard to care about the relationship between a novelist and a reporter when the President of Russia and the United States are about five minutes from fighting each other to the death in the Jordan Valley.  The stakes for a trite love affair do not concern me when you have the ultra-compelling characters of Frank and Claire Underwood.  Everything else is just small potatoes.  Also why does Frank think that a novel on America Works will turn the tide?  He’s better off making a Funny or Die video like Obama did for healthcare or doing a ton of viral videos.  Who wants to read a book when you can see Frank Underwood using a selfie stick while talking about how you are entitled to nothing.

And another thing, when would a Democrat ever be against entitlements?  Cutting entitlements is a Republican thing so I find it hard to believe that he wouldn’t have all the Republicans on his side for his America Works program.  Sometimes I think they made Frank a Democrat so not to attract criticism about House of Cards being another Hollywood show mocking conservatives.  Frank Underwood is at best a blue dog Democrat and at worst a full on Republican.

Doug Stamper continues to be the creepiest fucking person in the world.  Everything about him is creepy.  His apartment is bland, grey, pristinely clean, and a step away from having a refrigerator full of severed heads.  His two timing of Heather Dunbar was fun to see but enough with the Rachel plot, my goodness.  The whole hacker guy plot was doubly pointless as well.  Nobody cares what happens to Rachel unless she went up and confessed about Peter Russo.  Still though, Doug killing Cassie/Rachel was one of the best shots of the finale.  That quick cut from car coming down the road to him burying her was cold, brutal, and efficient.  They transitioned so fast I didn’t even have time to react.  Plus it’s always nice to have your Chief of Staff go missing for a week before the all-important Iowa Caucus where you’re neck and neck with a challenger.  Great planning.

I really enjoyed the debate scene between Frank Underwood, Jackie Sharp, and Heather Dunbar.  It felt like a Republican primary with how brutal they all went at each other (you go Jackie Sharp).  Just great stuff and it was a welcome change to see Frank Underwood dominating in a political arena.  You can’t beat him in the political arena; you can only stoop down to his level as Heather Dunbar saw with her extortion attempt.  His line “you’rr finally one of us” was great.  Pit-bull Frank Underwood is a force to be reckoned with.

I’d like to see them check in on Remy next season and see him as a monk or working some blue collar job but loving life.  The more clichéd the better I say.

Overall, this is the perfect show for bingeing because you don’t have time to think about how dumb the politics of the show really are.  It’s enjoyable and campy and every episode feeds seamlessly into the next.  I enjoyed how they were a bit more flexible in episode running times this season as the shows ran from 40 minutes to an hour.  There is no need to pad out an episode to an hour if the story doesn’t demand it.  I felt that they didn’t stretch out as much this year and let the stories have the length that they deserved.  Here’s to a yearlong wait to the best binger online.