"Yeah, what Jack said!"

I'm going to take an opportunity to back up a coblogger with this post. A couple of days ago, JackM lit into Peggy, Katherine & Christopher by citing Dylan's "Positively 4th Street". I thought it was a good piece, but I found myself yesterday saying "Damn, Jack WAS onto something here!"

While I was driving from jobsite to jobsite yesterday, I had the Rolling Stones' "Stripped" disc in the player. It's acoustic versions of old Stones songs & covers from small club gigs and rehearsal sessions, and they do a version of "Like a Rolling Stone" on it. If I remember correctly, this song was on the soundtrack for the Sly Stallone/Antonio Banderas movie about assassins from the late 90's. A couple of verses jumped out at me:

You said you'd never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He's not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to make a deal?

They might not have any idea who the "mystery tramp" is, and what he'll do when and if he comes to power, but they're more than willing to talk to him, since his voice causes orgasmic leg cramps among the Beltway insiders (all except Krauthammer - I guess not being able to feel your legs just might have ONE advantage).

You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain't it hard when you discover that
He really wasn't where it's at
After he took from you everything he could steal.

But what the Hell, right? After all, he's a Hah-vahd man. That qualifies him to run the country, right?

Looking for meaning in Dylan lyrics does seem a little like combing through all of Nostradamus' quatrains looking for clues to the antichrist and the final resolution of the designated hitter's place in baseball, but it's GOT to be more exciting than going through Obama's donor database looking for more "Mr. Doodad Pro" contributions.

Dylan's version of "Like a Rolling Stone" from the "Hard Rain" concert. Not exactly faithful to the album version, but it's good anyway.

Anyway, it's Sunday morning, and if you can come up with any other significant Dylan lyrics, post 'em in comments. Good luck wading through Dylan's catalog of songs. The man has a body of songs bigger than the pile of skeletons in Congressman William Jefferson's closet.

posted by Russ from Winterset at 01:07 PM

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