The Jester Sang for the King and Queen

As you may well be aware, today is Bob Dylan's 70^th birthday. The tributes are pouring in: wonderful protest singer (a label he hated even for the relatively short time it was actually applicable), inspiration to many (grumpy, stodgy git), revolutionised the music industry (all right, that one's more or less inarguable). As you may know, I'm a huge Dylan fan, and have been for years; several of his albums are among my favourites, and I'm Not There is one of my favourite films (if you're looking for some celebratory Dylan-related viewing, you can't go wrong there). The best way to pay tribute to the man is simply to talk about his music. Let's face it, though; more than enough has been said about 'Like a Rolling Stone' (a whole book, in fact. Seriously.) and 'Blowin' in the Wind'. Even the more specialised favourites ('Desolation Row', 'Simple Twist of Fate') have received plenty of attention. So I thought I'd put together a top 10 (in chronological order) of my favourite lesser-known Dylan songs. These aren't exactly obscure; some are from his most famous albums, but they're all too easy to overlook. And, for the record, I started writing this post before I read this Rolling Stone article. Those damn Rolling Stone folks can see into my brain... and is 'Like a Rolling Stone' really his best song? Grumble, grumble, grumble...

Sorry for the lack of videos, by the way. Dylan videos are not easy to find on YouTube; they're purged lest people should gain some enjoyment from his music.



'I Shall Be Free' (from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan)

One aspect of Bob that gets overlooked all too often is his offbeat and often surreal sense of humour. It's probably best encapsulated in this song, along with 'Talkin' World War III Blues', from the same album. The song is probably best described as a kind of stream of consciousness, bookended by his sexual encounters with a terrifying woman (possibly a man?) and Elizabeth Taylor. In between, we've got a drunken Dylan, an oiled-up "football man" coming from the shower and Bob's advice to JFK on how to make the country grow: "Bridget Bardot, Anita Ekberg, Sophia Loren".



'One Too Many Mornings' (from The Times They Are a-Changin')

Whenever I hear the name of the excellent new Irish film 'One Hundred Mornings', this song gets stuck in my head. As Dylan showed with the seminal Blood on the Tracks, he excels at writing melancholy love songs, of which this is a great early example. It's a lovely moment of personal reflection amid the occasionally didactic ballads of the rest of the album. In addition, I often consider it a precursor to the regretful acceptance of the final verse of 'Idiot Wind'.



'Bob Dylan's 115^th Dream' (from Bringing It All Back Home)

As the 60s wore on, Dylan's work became less didactic and more introverted; to put it another way, he became less concerned with what his songs were saying, and more concerned with the songs themselves. This is a good early example of the trend, with its bizarre surrealist poetry pointing the way forward to Blonde on Blonde (as well as providing a kind of successor to 'I Shall Be Free'). It's also an early example of Dylan's habit of laughing while recording, exemplified in 'Rainy Day Women Nos 12 and 35'.



'Queen Jane Approximately' (from Highway 61 Revisited)

Some say this was written for Joan Baez, which does seem plausible. It talks about the inevitable rejection of the titular Queen Jane from all that surrounds her, which is followed in each verse by "Won't you come see me, Queen Jane". What makes the theory even more plausible is that the song was written as Dylan and the folk revival movement were becoming estranged, and released shortly after his infamous electric performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Even if it's not specifically for Baez, it's certainly a nice summary of the bitterness that surrounded Dylan at the time. What? Dylan bitter? Who'd have guessed?!



'Buckets of Rain' (from Blood on the Tracks)

Jumping forward some ten years here. While the place of Blood on the Tracks on "100 best albums"-type lists is always assured, I can't help but feel that the closing track doesn't get as much love as it deserves. I've always had a particular soft spot for Dylan's finger-picking accompaniments ('Don't Think Twice, It's All Right' being another obvious candidate), and this is a real beauty. It has the sad romantic tinge that characterises the album, but mostly it's just what Dylan does best: beautiful, understated poetry.



'Sara' (from Desire)

Probably the most open and honest song Dylan wrote about his relationship with Sara Lownds comes from the album immediately following the "divorce album", Blood on the Tracks. The song's lyrical structure (the relationship's end mourned through anecdotal images of a happier time) was later borrowed by Nick Cave for his own divorce song, 'Where Do We Go Now But Nowhere?' (incidentally, that video has to win a prize for "least appropriate picture of the artist"). It remains one of the most arrestingly direct and honest melancholy love songs ever written.



The Man in the Long Black Coat (from Oh Mercy)

(This version is from I'm Not There, and is a cover by Mark Lanegan; one of the few covers which I prefer to Dylan's original)

Jumping forward thirteen years this time; let's face it, the man can be a little patchy sometimes. Returning to his folk ballad roots, Dylan created this western-style tale of a shadowy figure who appears and disappears mysteriously, taking a woman with him and leaving only rumours. Where it differs from most songs of its type is the air of mystery; the "man" is never named and has no apparent purpose in the town. The dark, Old Testament-influenced air of the song is reminiscent of much of Nick Cave's early work.



'Most of the Time' (from Oh Mercy)

There's no rule against two from the same album, and I've always found Oh Mercy to be a distinctly underrated album. It tends to get lumped in with the rest of his overtly Christian 80s output, but it differs in that the religious themes are scaled back (not that they're necessarily bad, as in the sublime 'Ring Them Bells'). This is yet another melancholy love song, something Dylan does incredibly well, but for which he garners relatively little recognition. It depicts the attempts to "get by" after the end of a love affair, with each confident verse undermined and bookended by the heartbreaking refrain "most of the time".



'Death is Not the End' (version by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds; from Murder Ballads)

All right, I'm cheating here. The fact is that a Dylan song from his religious period which was average at best was made brilliant ten years later by Cave, along with PJ Harvey, Shane MacGowan, Kylie Minogue and the Bad Seeds. A simple, hopeful song about the afterlife is made incredibly sinister and menacing. In fairness, when you give the line "When the cities are on fire with the burning flesh of men" to Blixa Bargeld, it's obvious that happiness will not be forthcoming. Then, of course, there's the wonderful black humour of putting the song at the end of the hideously violent album Murder Ballads. I'll stop talking about Nick Cave now, because I fear I'm in danger of mentioning him more than I do Dylan.



'Love Sick' (from Time Out of Mind)

(I love this video for the dancing hipsters in the background. Obviously Dylan was the coolest, most obscure thing going in 1997.)

It seems strange that Time Out of Mind is almost 15 years old; I still think of it as "recent Dylan". Regardless, it's one of his best albums, filled with blues-influenced melancholy love songs (yes, them again). The vaguely threatening-sounding 'Make You Feel my Love' has recently gained new life, thanks to Adele. Probably one of the best songs on the album, and certainly one of the more underrated, is this, the opening track, with its wonderfully-punned title; it sets the tone for the whole album.



Happy birthday, Bob (I'm sure you're reading this). For the record, though I didn't include anything from them, I've loved the last couple of albums. No-one in the canon of popular music has had anything like the influence of the man born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota. Others have written plenty about how he has inspired artists since the early 60s; all I know for sure is that his sheer brilliance has inspired me in many ways. For that matter, I've even been known to defend his voice.

Garret the Gentleman

Garret at 80

Yesterday morning, as you probably know, saw the death of former Taoiseach Dr. Garret Fitzgerald. My shock and sadness at hearing the news may be surprising; the former because this was a visibly frail 85-year-old man who had been ill in hospital for weeks, the latter because not only did I not know the man, I was born four years after he ceased to be Taoiseach for the last time. Yet I believe I can explain both. I was shocked because Garret (and, like many people, my calling him "Garret" is a sign of affection, not disrespect), despite his age, had seemed in the past few years to have boundless physical and mental energy, constantly making public appearances on television and radio, and promoting the Lisbon Treaty (both times). My sadness stems from the deep affection I had for his character; a necessarily nebulous description, but one on which I hope to shed a little light.

On Twitter yesterday, I referred to him as "the last of the gentleman politicians". I've since come to rethink that label, mainly because it implies that there were others of his breed. While politicians of the generation prior to Garret's (including his father, Desmond Fitzgerald) were often men of good manners and breeding in public life (and they were, of course, almost solely men), they lacked Garret's many virtues. The importance of gentlemanly virtues, and what exactly constitutes a "gentleman", is something of a personal obsession. I would not dream of providing an exhaustive definition (though I am increasingly considering addressing the concept in a future post; until then, vir beātum is an excellent guide), but I fear that the label of "gentleman" is one that is increasingly viewed as old-fashioned, which is nonsense. A true gentleman does not seek to recapture the past, but applies himself to the present day, and this certainly sums up Garret.

So how was is that Garret was a gentleman? Let me count the ways. Firstly, he was an academic and an intellectual; a man to whom the overused word "genius" could perhaps be appropriately applied. His feats of memory are legend; from his single-handed calculation of schedules (and occasionally, anecdotally, flight paths) while working for Aer Lingus to his dinner-party conversation, well into his eighties, on topics from economics to culture. Garret was also a diplomat; polite, considerate and, in his own kindly but firm way, intransigent. First as Minister for Foreign Affairs at the time of the Sunningdale Agreement, then presiding over the Anglo-Irish Forum as Taoiseach, he was one of the first Irish politicians to genuinely recognise and appreciate the perspective of unionists. By all accounts, he was a lovely man in private; approachable to any who wished to discuss the issues of the day, and always with words of advice for all who sought it (Maria Farrell's wonderful personal account is well worth a look). I don't think any of these terms can be realistically applied to his great rival, Charles Haughey.

Garret the Ladies' Man

Naturally, I couldn't have gotten through this tribute without mentioning Haughey; the two appear as looming figures in each other's biographies. I've often thought they represent two major contradictory approaches to leadership; the firebrand populist and the sedate academic. From their time in UCD, the two were often set up against one another; in the documentary Seven Ages, Garret rather wryly notes that he tended to spend time with girls, while Haughey spent his with boys (note: I don't think he was actually claiming Haughey to be gay, but the image of Garret the Ladies' Man is one I'm not getting out of my head any time soon). Twenty years on from either of them being at the head of government, and posterity has already rewarded Garret. Few have anything good to say about the man who landed the country in debt and swindled money into his own private coffers (as well as handing those tricks on) – even after his death in 2006, the obituaries were generally rather equivocal. In Garret's case, no such equivocation has been forthcoming, and obituaries have duly listed out his achievements.

It has been noted across the board that Garret should have been at the table with Queen Elizabeth on Wednesday, given that he helped pave the way for her visit to a great extent. That he died mere hours after the Queen of England spoke Irish seems almost like a fitting end to his life. It was, after all, Garret who managed to face down Margaret Thatcher and her "Out, out, out" policy, and get her to sign the Anglo-Irish Agreement. That he was able to "turn" the Iron Lady without any Irish cruisers being sunk surely deserves several statues in Dublin city centre. On a more local level, he was instrumental in instituting a more secular state, as well as what Alex Massie calls a "social revolution" – referenda on divorce and abortion, though both were defeated, opened up the debate on these issues. Garret was also given the unenviable task of rescuing the country from economic oblivion, largely at the hands of Fianna Fáil. No doubt Enda Kenny identifies with this notion of having to clean up FF's mess. In doing so, Garret was forced into bailing out the banks; a controversial decision, though it was dwarfed by the attempt by Brians Cowen and Lenihan to outdo it two decades later.

After retiring from office, and unlike almost every other Taoiseach in Irish history, Garret did not retreat from public life (a clear demonstration both of his genuine talent and desire to make the world better with his expertise). He was widely sought after as a commentator, and was a fixture on RTÉ's election analysis programmes from the first of these in the '70s right up to the last election a couple of months ago. In addition to this, his columns in The Irish Times were always essential reading. He used his unique perspective to weigh in on the issues of the day, often freely admitting to mistakes from during his own tenure, and his incredibly detailed and cogent economic and political analysis was often a breath of fresh air in the loud and crowded world of the opinion pages.

I believe that, in a few decades' time, the history books will praise Dr. Garret Fitzgerald as the great Taoiseach who was unsung in his own time. Certainly, he was one of the most loved political figures of the last decades, with his passing attracting the kind of unequivocal praise that is normally reserved for the relatively inoffensive figures of presidents. The British newspapers have been celebrating him as a great partner; the Irish ones as a great statesman. Perhaps we will see his like again; there are too few men and women of real learning and good manners, like Garret, in public life now. In difficult times, we need a role model like him, and he will be sorely missed. Ar dheis Dé go a raibh a anam.

The Anglo-Irish Agreement

Dante... Bruno... Vico... Seinfeld

It would appear that Derek, like me, is procrastinating study like a champion, to which end I present this new article by him.



A bee a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, ecc.

The film Bee Movie has long gone unnoticed in the world of Marxist theory, perhaps due to its less than impressive Rotten Tomatoes performance, but more likely due to the social stigma regarding political commentary in the medium of animated children's films.

I, however, have no quibble with the packaging Mr Seinfeld selected for his dose of socialist filmmaking. The corporation that funded the project, the obscenely overpriced Beatles song rights, the faint "God Bless America" rhetoric that wraps the red beating heart of Seinfeld's production are all part of an intricate layer of irony that cocoons the progressive message that bleeds from this happy little children's film. Almost.

Bees, in this fable, are given a voice, an adept voice, masterfully toned by a capably comic Jerry Seinfeld, adding hues of wit to the sans-voix. The bees, though generally perceived as heathen, miscreant stingers as a class, are allowed blossom beyond this marginalised, detestable position, while at the same time being devilishly funny. He shows us that these insects, not known for their one-liners, only resort to their infamous stinging when provoked by obese legal types, which allows their more-humane-than-man nature come to the front, boasting a portrait of the bee as a hero-comrade for modern times.

BUT, while Seinfeld excels in his lambasting of the capitalist means of production and the bureaucracy of the legal system, the movement falls magnificently short in its conclusions, leaving the viewer with the faux-happiness of a cheery Beatles number while there is a presumed reinstitution of the system that Seinfeld so heartedly railed against throughout the film. Here Comes the Sun I think not.

The bees, when swayed by the ethics of consumerism, losing sight of the individual's pivotal role in the community, become idlers of the most contemptuous breed (not students), revelling in their amassed fortunes but then they triumphantly return to production for the good of the world, joyously proclaiming the prospect of working overtime. Barry becomes a pollen jock, someone sings a Beatles cover, all is gaiety and life is bliss. No. The emphasis here has improperly fallen on the necessity of production. This is but one half of the Social Contract. Beatles-blinded Barry flits away into the merry sky making flowers and assumed interspecial love with his lady counterpart, without reference to the bees slaving away under corporate labour camps around the city. Their plight was shown, but their revolution never came. The notion of painting his pretty name on his new legal firm shopfront distracted young Barry from his primary task of liberating the masses.

I note that upon Barry's lamented turn to the legal profession*, jars of non-corporate honey are to be seen, but this is no more than a cursory lip service to what should be the centrepiece of Seinfeld's allegory if a positive message is to be extracted. It's almost insulting to the struggling classes of bee less fortunate than Barry with his notions of manhood. The corporations still drive honey production as far as we know, except now the workers believe they have been enlightened, but have only come close to actual revolution. The bees of the world united, but forgot about the revolution.

Bee Movie should be seriously considered as a film (despite the name) of repute and as a candid reflection on consumerist society. Equally, if we allow Seinfeld the benefit of the doubt, the film is a realisation of the corporate hold on the media and how moneymaking Beatles derail the bee revolution doing their best to dismiss the correct emphasis of the movement. Thinking we are getting true revolution, we are merely left with a trippy Beatles capitalism and not the red bee liberation that seemed to be on the horizon.

It remains to the viewer to either grant Seinfeld genius in his creation of an anti-fairytale where he parodies modern "revolution" (i.e. stability after a brief ruction) or to dismiss him as another blow-in comic out to turn profits with a trite salute to conventional society. I have allowed this article the above title in good faith that Seinfeld knowingly crafted an anti-hero, showing a bee movement that falls short, tightly wrapt in pricey music rights, corporate funding and most remarkably a will to continue to be oppressed to avoid boredom.

* facetiously stinging in its implications: bees earlier seen to sting in response to these crooks, and I severely doubt this bee to have been busy reforming the trade, which would require the efforts of a bachelor (or spinster) and Barry is seen to have the lady on the side.





For my own part (this is Ciarán again by the way; hello), I would like to submit that the allegorical nature of Bee Movie is strengthened by its presentation via Brechtian theory. By presenting a society of bees, the world of the story is defamiliarised to the audience, and thus its nature and effects can be seen more clearly, as in Brecht's famous Verfremdungseffekt. By presenting modes of production in a manner that resembles Brecht's epic theatre, Mr. Seinfeld is clearly trying to provoke rational criticism, and empathy with the plight of the proletariat.

Campaign

The power of the masses is, as King Louis XVI, Tsar Nicholas II and Hosni Mubarak will tell you, not to be underestimated. It's with this in mind that I present a proposal to all you masses out there. The Twitter hashtag #yearsoftrainingwithbbguninthebackgarden has been sadly underused; only one use, as far as I could detect, in the history of Twitter. Clearly, this is a travesty in our modern culture. Thus, I ask anyone who is on Twitter to make use of this hashtag as much as possible, and bring it to the glory it so richly deserves. Posterity will thank you for it.

A Day That Will Live in Fame (for a Shockingly Long Time)

I'm told, by people who know about such things, that there was some wedding or other on Friday. Apparently, it attracted quite a bit of interest, and... oh, I give up. I'm not even going to bother pretending humorous ignorance, because it's really far too preposterous. In point of fact, there was no getting away from the blasted thing all day. The BBC had intermittent coverage all day, including in the evening. What exactly they were covering at that point, I have no idea; I can only assume they had all their cameras trained on Buckingham Palace, in the hope that they might spot someone of some importance through a window or some such. In fairness, though, the Beeb is the national broadcaster, so obviously they were bound to devote a lot of time to something that attracted such national interest. The same could tentatively be said for Sky and, perhaps, ITV. But Living TV (or Sky Living or whatever the bloody hell it is now)? RTÉ? TV3? At least More4 had the decency to show Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, so I could lose myself in a world of snarky outlaws for a couple of hours, until the hullaballoo had died down a little.

That said, the Guardian were kind enough to provide an excellent antidote to all of this, in the form of their "Not the Royal Wedding" live blog, dedicated to absolutely everything else that happened on the 29^th of April. On their home page, meanwhile, they rather brilliantly had a "republicans click here" button, which hid all the royal wedding news from view. For any repentant ex-republicans, the news could be magically restored with a simple click of the corresponding "royalists click here" button. Sadly, both are now down, but trust me; they were entertaining. Thankfully, Andrew Sullivan noted it too, as if to prove that I'm not entirely insane.

I spent much of the day on Twitter, noting various reactions to the royal couple. Comedians, as usual, were all over the thing; serial tweeter Chris Addison, in particular. Most of them, naturally, were rather snarky and cynical (in fairness, I can't really exclude my own contributions from that); plus a bit of pushback against that (in which I, erm, also sort of participated. Never rely on me in any kind of civil war situation). My favourite contribution of the day, though, was from the Manic Street Preachers (or, more likely, their press office) in the form of their "best anti-monarchy songs". Funnily enough, number 2 of 5 on the list was the song "Repeat" from the Manics' first album Generation Terrorists. In fairness, it is a great song, but even so...

Naturally, there was a great deal of live-blogging going on too, even apart from the Twitter folks. Most of them were nice, straightforward, stately affairs. I understand the Telegraph's started around Monday or Tuesday; I can't quite recall (which just goes to show how bloody long ago it was). My favourite, though, was definitely Steven Baxter's wonderfully satirical affair (echoed, naturally, enough, on his Twitter page). It did remind of the abject failure of my past live-blogging events, though. I'm going to see Thor soon; perhaps, as a big comics fan, I should live-blog that.

And there you have it. Yes, for someone who didn't care much about the wedding, I did pay an awful lot of attention to the coverage of it. The fact is, though, I have a great interest in popular culture, so it was fascinating to me. I also spend an awful lot of time on the Internet, especially with exams coming up. Besides, there really was nowhere to run to on Friday. The tendrils of media coverage snaked everywhere. If that image disturbs you, well, now you know how I felt.