Category: Reviews

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Reagan (2024 Movie)

Yours truly is rarely to be found at the multiplex, but I guess it was spiritually impossible for me not to go see the new Reagan film, given that Bob Dylan recorded a special tune for it (Cole Porter’s “Don’t Fence Me In”). It’s conceivable I would have gone out to see it anyway, but more likely would have waited to check it out some time in the future in the quiet and comfort of home.

All in all, I’m very glad I went. The film is somewhat unconventional and hard to define, but one thing it offers is a review of a key thread of 20th century history that Ronald Reagan was at the center of, however unlikely that might have seemed to many at the time (and to some even now). I think many viewers will also find it to be a reminder, like any such review, of the ways in which history repeats itself, and is in many ways repeating itself right now in America. The underlying and opposing currents remain much the same, though the leading protagonists change. The triumph of one current of history over another at any given juncture is very much linked to the strength of those protagonists. Certainly, this film unabashedly makes the case that Ronald Reagan was an essential man of his era.

The film seats its portrayal of Reagan on four legs: his quiet but profound religious faith; his love of America and its freedom; his remarkably clear-eyed and unwavering view of the danger of communism; and lastly, the very deep and special love between him and Nancy Davis.

Biographers and commentators have long been frustrated by their inability to uncover any deeply hidden thoughts and motivations in Ronald Reagan. He was always, it seems, a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy: his beliefs were right there on the surface, and he really believed them. For many, this merely added to the reasons to despise him; for others, Reagan’s straightforwardness, clarity and relative lack of guile were together seen as virtue and thus a cause for admiration. It should not be forgotten (and the relevant scenes in this movie remind us) that it was this same directness and dearth of guile on Reagan’s part that led to the breakthroughs with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. In their personal meetings, Gorbachev simply couldn’t doubt that Reagan meant what he said, both in terms of his willingness to outspend and overmatch the Soviets militarily, and (conversely) in terms of his openness to peace and nuclear arms reduction.

To my eyes at least, Dennis Quaid looks rather weird in whatever make-up and such was applied to help him resemble Reagan. This can be somewhat shrugged off given that Reagan himself had a funny kind of semi-artificial look to him; he always looked very Hollywood, unsurprisingly enough. But I do think Quaid succeeds in getting under Reagan’s skin and evoking, albeit subtly, the waters beneath that carried him through life.

The movie is extremely ambitious in that it tries to tell—at least glancingly—Reagan’s whole life story, including childhood, young adulthood, movie career, leadership in the Screen Actors’ Guild, early political life, governorship of California, and then presidential candidacy and presidency. This entails a lot of cut-up chronology and flashbacks, and also involves real historical footage spliced in (sometimes in the same frame as the actors). Does it all succeed? Well, I think purely as a film it’s unwieldy and imperfect, but to an audience open to the story, it brings it all home in the end. Indeed, in the theater where I watched, people applauded not once but twice: first, at the end of the movie proper, and then again after the last notes of Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Fence Me In” faded away, along with the slideshow of actual photos of Ronnie and such that make up the long outro.

Whatever its flaws, I found myself unexpectedly a bit choked up on a number of occasions, and delivering real tears at the end (which I won’t spoil by describing here).

I have to admit that I am myself, to some extent, still trying to understand why this onscreen review of Reagan’s life and associated history had that kind of effect on me. When Reagan was in office in the 1980s, I was just a kid and then a teenager, living on the other side of the Atlantic in dear old Ireland. I’m aware, of-course, that Reagan was despised and mocked in the U.S. in the usual quarters (i.e. by everyone but the voters), but, the way I recollect it, it had to have been worse in the European milieu. The first strike against him, after all, was simply that he was an American. And he was so shamelessly American that the obvious thing was to caricature him as an uncultured, unnuanced, simple-minded wannabe cowboy who was going to start World War III. Being an ignorant young idiot reflexively adhering to many of the fashionable leftist poisons of the time, I happily went along with the mockery. Even when the Berlin wall came down ten months after he left the White House, followed shortly by the whole “evil empire” that Reagan had dedicated himself to defeating, I didn’t directly link it to Reagan’s stances and actions in office. It took growing up a little bit more, seeing how the world really worked, and beginning to count through the lies and unlearn some of the comfortable garbage I’d taken for truth.

So I think the source of the tears for me (and I would speculate for others in the audience) was the very best source you can have: that is, gratitude. I’m grateful that Ron stood up on all those occasions when it mattered, in his early life and finally in the Oval Office, when some of us lacked either the insight or the spine or both. I’m grateful he took the slings and arrows from both the malignant and those (like me) too dumb to know better, and that he stayed true. He did not create Heaven on Earth with his presidency (nor ever will anyone) but through his clarity and courage he destroyed one particular kind of Hell on Earth, breaking the Iron Curtain, and enabling at least a chance at freedom for hundreds of millions of people. He lifted America and the world out of the rut of the Cold War which had lasted for over four decades, and which some entrenched interests would no doubt have been happy to see continue (just as some have been happy to help revive it).

He pulled this off with his intelligence, his charm and, in the end, his straight-shooting. Like all the greatest cowboys.

…

The recording Bob Dylan made for the movie did not disappoint. His take on “Don’t Fence Me In” is simultaneously light and poignant, stirred by that special alchemy Bob provides. Add it to the long list of tunes from the Great American Songbook that Dylan has covered (and uncovered) during these golden years of his career.

…

PS: Just found this in the archives. The hat makes the man!

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Swing Fever with Rod Stewart and Jools Holland

Swing Fever by Rod Stewart with Jools Holland

Swing Fever by Rod Stewart with Jools Holland

How should you rate the importance of any new album release (to the extent any album has any importance at all in this benighted era)? Will it lead to riots in the streets, protests at the barricades, or a new musical trend that sweeps the world? Will it inspire a popular new haircut or a new clothing fashion? Will it break all-time records in sales?

Swing Fever by Rod Stewart with Jools Holland and his big band, it’s safe to say, will do none of those things, and it won’t do plenty of others besides. But if you happen to be open to it, it just might be the most exhilarating thing that gets between your ears in 2024.

Rod Stewart needs no introduction, and in any case I’m not the man to give him one, as I’ve never been a special fan (though nothing against him, you understand). What you need to know is—based on this album and associated performances—he appears to be the most energetic 79 year-old this side of Moses. If you don’t believe me (or even if you do), you might watch the clip below of the ensemble’s take on “Pennies from Heaven.”

Jools Holland came to relative fame as the keyboardist with the British pop group Squeeze (more decades ago than even I would care to count) but in more recent epochs he’s been a mainstay on British television, hosting the essential live music show in that part of the world, providing both up-and-comers and old fogies with a place to get their music in front of the public. In many cases he accompanies them with his own big band, elevating their game considerably. It’s a band he also tours and makes records with, and that’s no small thing to pull off in this day and age.

Rod’s made five “Great American Songbook” albums in the past 20 years, and I’ve heard quite a bit of those tracks on my local Easy Listening station, and, while they’ve never been offensive, they have also never much grabbed me. I tend to agree with a view I recall Bob Dylan expressing, to the effect that rock singers are better off not getting in front of enormous string-filled orchestras to do those kinds of songs, but ought instead to do it their own way. Of-course it makes sense that he would say that, given that he took on that kind of material with his own small guitar-based combo and created a unique new treasure out of it.

However, even Bob (in his sacred wisdom) added some horns when he took a stab at a few up-tempo tracks on his final “American Songbook” opus, Triplicate. When you want to swing, it’s good to have something extra.

The proof, in the end, is in the performance, and there is zero audible incongruity in Rod Stewart’s singing in front of Jools Holland’s big band. But then why would there be? Swing is an indispensable antecedent to rock & roll, and indeed a lot of these tunes are much closer to rock & roll than the stuff you’d be liable to hear in a big stadium with monumental guitar chords, synthesizers and a huge light show.

Rod and Jools clearly know all that, and they further illustrate the connectivity between all these musical threads by including songs that rarely wear the swing label, like “Frankie And Johnny” and “Tennessee Waltz,” that latter taken at an exuberant clip.

Exuberance is the order of the day here, with a healthy portion of pure joy, and on first hearing the early teaser “Pennies from Heaven” I was reminded of that King of Exuberance from days gone by, Louis Prima. Rod’s voice with this material isn’t a million miles from his, after all, and not many other people could pull off such a blasting take on such a sweet song. With the album’s release, it became clear that Louis Prima’s spirit had been a primary presence in the studio, with the second track being Prima’s own song, “Oh Marie.”

Stewart and Holland fittingly don’t mess with “Oh Marie” at all, except to pour even more gas on the fire bequeathed by Louis. And if a curmudgeon were to criticize this album, they’d probably say the arrangements are “too busy.” But it’s the very lust and abandon of the playing that transmits the ecstasy here, and so I believe it is well placed.

* * *

Coming across one of the interviews Rod and Jools were doing on the back of this release, I witnessed one talk show presenter actually ask them if the songs were cover versions or originals. To their credit they gave a straight answer instead of falling over in laughter. But it hit me that some people just haven’t heard this music at all. If you’re my age or younger (born in the Summer of Love) you might not have much encountered this stuff unless your parents had good taste and a record collection to match, and even then you would likely have rated it uncool. Much younger than that, and most people would have had even less exposure to it. I got interested in music from this era only in adulthood, just through following one connection or another, in a process otherwise known as the grace of God. It was overwhelming and has ever since been a source of immeasurable pleasure. I can’t imagine still being confined to the post-50’s pop and rock I grew up with (albeit that I continue to love that too).

And ever since then, it’s been a thing of joy to hear this music continue to be revived and rediscovered. It’s a reassurance that maybe the good stuff really does ultimately rise to the top. It kind of redeems the whole human race. It actually puts a smile on my face.

Why, it’s almost like being in love.

Swing Fever by Rod Stewart with Jools Holland is released on the Warner Records label

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Frank Sinatra’s Come Swing with Me!: A Revelation in Mono

vinyl LP Frank Sinatra Come Swing with Me

vinyl LP Frank Sinatra Come Swing with Me

Who says there’s any such thing as settled science? And it’s where science and art meet that we find ourselves, in a collision of controversies where we may ultimately prove that no fact is ever too old to be upended.

In other words, I came across, in a local thrift store, a monophonic LP edition of Frank Sinatra’s Come Swing with Me—as opposed to the stereophonic version I was familiar with—and reality will never be the same. The album is one from Sinatra’s golden era at Capitol Records; it’s arranged and conducted by Billy May, and was released in 1961. Sinatra never put out mere random collections of songs, least of all at Capitol Records, where he effectively invented the notion of concept records, beginning with Songs for Young Lovers in 1954. Come Swing with Me, then, has a marked approach. It is self-evidently a swinging record, with a positive and energetic mood, featuring a lot of songs that Frank had recorded in his younger days with Columbia Records, now given the full treatment with his more mature, aged-in-a-whiskey-cask voice. Billy May also supplies instrumentation and arrangements that are quite novel and distinctive. There are no strings on the album; there is only brass and rhythm, and a LOT of brass: eight trumpets, four French horns, tuba, six trombones, and two bass trombones.

According to Will Friedwald in his authoritative Sinatra! The Song is You, Frank had heard and liked Billy May’s Big Fat Brass instrumental album, and it was his idea to take a similar approach with Come Swing with Me. (Friedwald also notes that May, being overstretched by other projects, actually called on fellow musician/arranger Heinie Beau to write seven of the twelve charts, albeit in the Billy May style. He assuredly succeeded because there’s no telling the difference.)

Another novel aspect was the rather dramatic use of stereo separation. So, there is something of a call and answer effect, with some horn sections or subsections coming entirely from the left speaker and some entirely from the right. The intention was … well, I assume it was to create for the listener a sense of being front and center of a stage where the musicians were performing, some to the left and some to the right. It adds dynamism, as they say. But here’s the thing: for yours truly, it has always been kind of annoying. Although I can recognize that Come Swing with Me is a unique album, with great material, peerless singing and witty, vivacious arrangements, I just have not listened to it nearly as often as the comparable Come Dance with Me or Come with Fly with Me albums. The bleating of some horns from the left and the blaring of others from the right has always struck me as a distraction, and the album just sounded kind of harsh to my ears (which is not a word that comes easily to me when characterizing any Frank Sinatra recording). And to be clear, what I’m describing is the experience of listening to the regular old CD edition of the album, on a fairly regular stereo system; so, not any hi-falutin’ hi-fi room, and not any esoteric remastering of the album—your mileage may vary in those respects.

Back to the thrift store: Vinyl records are usually 50 cents at this place, but they had a half-price sale, so it was a quarter per platter. Someone had recently donated a raft of Sinatra LPs, in relatively rough condition, but at 25 cents each, it was hard to turn down any of them. I mean, you never know. And the truth of that maxim has never been more soundly vindicated.

I believe it wasn’t until I was back home that I noticed the Come Swing with Me LP was a mono edition. You can tell with these old album covers when they write “High Fidelity” and other praise upon it but don’t explicitly say “stereo.” Stereo was something to advertise back then. So, obviously in 1961 they were still pressing records in mono—even when originally recorded in stereo—for the many folks who still had monophonic turntables. (Indeed, in my benighted childhood I was limited to a mono record player even in the 1980s … but please don’t get me started on that.)

So, let’s get to it: I cleaned the dust as best I could from this 60 year-old vinyl record, and put it on. It looked rather worn, but it played well enough, with little noise and no skips. I always find that miraculous, when it occurs with these old records that have clearly not been kept in archival conditions. But more miraculous to my ears was the absence of all that tooting and bleating from one speaker to another. The album just sounded right. Where before there was harshness to my ears, now all was soft and relatively salve-like. Strong and muscular, to be sure, but smooth. In fact, I marveled that had I not known that the album was all brass and no strings, I probably wouldn’t have cottoned on to that fact. It was all arranged and played so well; there was nothing to jar the listener from just enjoying it.

I was taken to such an extent with how wonderful it sounded, compared to the stereo-separated version, that I thought this must have been the original that Frank approved, and later they jiggered it with the new-fangled effects. But history reports this is not so. Sinatra was apparently as excited by the chance to use the stereo in this dramatic way as anyone. It surprises me in particular because I thought Frank was not fond of overbearing or showboating musical distractions from his voice; yet, to me, that’s exactly the ill effect that is achieved by the excessive stereo separation.

Well, what can you say? Can we dig up Sinatra and Billy May and bawl them out? They were human, after all. Actually, I don’t think they’re making humans anymore the way those guys were made, and it’s our loss.

So it seems I’m commending to you, dear reader, something which you may well find impossible to acquire. (You’re welcome.) I don’t know that Come Swing with Me was ever officially issued in CD or any digital format in mono. (With Sinatra it’s a bit hard to keep track of all global releases.) You might find a “vinyl rip” of the mono LP in the dark webs, but of-course we at THE CINCH REVIEW do not advocate lawlessness. Just be assured that if you do come across this mono LP (Capitol W 1594) in your local thrift store, secondhand shop or elsewhere, it’s likely to be well worth the 25 cents to you, and perhaps considerably more.

Frank’s not putting out much new stuff these days. Come Swing with Me, in mono, is unquestionably the best new album I’ve heard all year.

…

For the record, the track list is:

(Side One) Day by Day
Sentimental Journey
Almost Like Being In Love
Five Minutes More
American Beauty Rose
Yes Indeed!
(Side Two) On The Sunny Side of The Street
Don’t Take Your Love From Me
That Old Black Magic
Lover
Paper Doll
I’ve Heard That Song Before

They’re all total winners. Despite the fact that Sinatra at this time was running out his contract with Capitol and extremely eager to move on to his own new label (Reprise), his singing here is pure dynamite. For the ages.

Frank Sinatra Come Swing with Me

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“Jesus” Is Not Bad At All

The movie Jesus Revolution continues a pattern of Christian-oriented films that have far exceeded box office expectations. We in the CINCH REVIEW household don’t often go out to the theater to see movies these days, as merely being pummeled by the previews has been a near-fatal experience in the past, but having been charmed by a few things we heard about this film we made an exception. (Deviously, we lurked in the hallway outside the theater proper, peeking in to see when the previews had ended. For the record, they went on for 25 whole minutes.)

The film was assuredly a pleasant surprise. This story of a Christian revival bursting out amongst hippies in southern California as the 1960s bled into the 1970s is told with a light touch, intelligence and sensitivity by the filmmakers. Jesus Revolution is very light indeed on theology or preaching, to the point where I think that viewers need not be believing Christians to appreciate it. On a certain level, it works as a more general story of people who are lost, damaged and on the edge of a precipice coming together and finding reason for hope and achieving some real redemption through their sharing of love and of mercy.

An interesting aspect of the film is how it seemed to me to successfully convey—without being at all didactic—the distinction between faith in God and faith in religious leaders. The leaders are portrayed as flawed men, making them as such pretty normal, but their failings don’t succeed in discrediting the goodness of God. Putting one’s faith in the perfection of any minister, pastor or priest is naturally only going to lead to disillusionment; this may be a danger that appears obvious, but that doesn’t prevent it from occurring continually.

Since, as said, the film is overall very light on theology, a seriously religious person might even question its value. Is it really a Christian movie, anyway? Where is Jesus, other than in the distorted shadow of the hippie preacher Lonnie Frisbee? Well, maybe he can be found. As the movie progresses, there are turns in the plot which hinge on changes of heart, and on small instances of forgiveness. They are small, that is, in the context of the wide world, but I think that prayerful believers learn that there are no more transformative miracles than those which come about in a true change of heart or in an act of genuine forgiveness. If Jesus lives (and that is what Christians believe) than this is surely where he manifests himself.

Kelsey Grammer delivers what seems a very heartfelt performance as Pastor Chuck Smith, and Jonathan Roumie is excellent as the volatile Lonnie Frisbee. Joel Courtney stars as the young Greg Laurie, struggling to get beyond a shattered upbringing, and Anna Grace Barlow stars as his girlfriend. Portraying high school age kids, a lot of the younger actors seem a little, well, old, but, after all, one must leave one’s disbelief at the door.


In case anyone would get the wrong idea, yours truly is not proposing that Jesus Revolution is filmmaking on the level of The Searchers or Rear Window or anything like that. It is a nice movie, made with deftness, humor and a good heart.

These days, it seems to me, that’s saying a hell of a lot.

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The Philosophy of Modern Song – Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan’s new book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, gives us his take on 66 different songs, delivered by means of a variety of quasi-poetic riffs and short essays. And that’s certainly what it is: his take. This is an intensely personal collection of writings. Dylan’s always been known for being guarded (although I think that theme’s been overdone at times). It is striking, however, that he seems here at his most relaxed and open, just writing about songs and what they mean to him, in addition to following some of the tangents they proffer.

The stream-of-consciousness pieces toss out images, characters and scenarios that the songs evoke for Bob, and these are quite rich and far reaching (as great songs can be when they work in our soul). The prose essays generally make for spirited good reading, with amusing and sometimes ornery digressions from the topic of the song in question. On occasion, however, there are lines that are jarringly boilerplate in nature.

Bob Dylan is clearly a consummate fan of popular music, and other brands as well. That was revealed for anyone who needed to know it years back when he hosted the delightfully contrived radio show, “Theme Time Radio Hour,” putting a hundred odd episodes in posterity’s can. Doubtless the commentary he came up with for the records he played then led to the idea for this book (and indeed a number of the people involved with the production and packaging of the book are former collaborators on “Theme Time Radio”).

Later, he recorded those Sinatra songbook albums: five LPs worth of popular songs from the pre-rock’n’roll era, put down with breathtaking passion and a stunning level of artistry.

Dylan can in fact be presumed to have the kind of gargantuan music collection—accompanied by books about his favorite performers—that, after he kicks the bucket, will cause his next-of-kin to curse him as they have to haul it out to the sidewalk for the Sanitation Department to pick up. He’s obviously one of those people who can listen to music in the morning, the afternoon, the evening and the deep dark night. As music fans ourselves, we can relate to that. Songs, records, favorite performers: they’re with us through bad times and good, through our childhood, stormy adolescence, love affairs and heartbreaks, successes and setbacks, the dreams realized, and the ones hopelessly lost. Many of the same recordings sound subtly different to us as the years and decades pass; this is due, perhaps, not only to the loss of frequencies in our hearing, but also our ever-deepening appreciation, through life experience, of what those songs were and are about.

Dylan, naturally, is the same. “The Philosophy of Modern Song”? (Not even “a” philosophy, mind you, but the philosophy.) The portentous title is a diversion and a gag, very typical of Bob. I would suggest that a more accurate (but somewhat less amusing) title would be, “The Joy I Have Found in Music”—by Bobby Zimmerman. He could have written this book if he’d never become Bob Dylan (although he is very unlikely to have found a publisher). It is not an attempt to offer a definitive or objective take on anything. It is not some deeply researched and scrupulously footnoted tome that would be part of a college curriculum on popular music (not that those can particularly be trusted either). It certainly is a love letter to the music that has meant so much to him.

Most of us will never get to sit down and have a conversation with Bob Dylan about music, or anything else, but much of what is in this book evokes those conversations we may have with longtime friends and fellow musical aficionados, oddball or otherwise. We share favorites, we trade takes, we make some statements that are serious, and others that are for laughs. We recall details and trivia that we read somewhere in a book that’s no longer in print, or that we heard someone say on the radio who-knows-how-many years ago. We share some of how a record affects us, where we were when we first heard it, why this version of the song is so much better than someone else’s version—what it all may mean. We argue and BS and laugh and come out of it all a little bit expanded, somehow.

Along the way, we might feel moved to jump on top of the couch and forcefully advocate for something we know no one else will agree with, just because we feel called in the moment to do so.

“Perry Como lived in every moment of every song he sang […] When he stood and sang, he owned the song and he shared it and we believed every word.” (page 13)

Other times we’ll slip in something deep and meaningful to ourselves—then quickly move on lest we choke up.

“The greatest of the prayer songs is ‘The Lord’s Prayer.’ None of these songs come even close.” (page 184)

And other subjects will come and go and we’ll take them on with our pearls of wisdom and one-liners.

“People keep talking about making America great again. Maybe they should start with the movies.” (page 317)

We might get passionate and genuinely angry.

“But divorce lawyers don’t care about familial bonds […] They destroy families. How many of them are at least tangentially responsible for teen suicides and serial killers?” (page 118) Then we sip our drink, light a cigarette, and propose our ingenious solution to the entire problem of divorces and broken families: polygamy! For both sexes.

Then a record comes on—“Your Cheatin’ Heart”—and we go back to the music, and to contemplating just why this particular record is so damn good.

“The song seems slower than it is because Hank doesn’t let the band lead him. The tension between the chug of the near-polka rhythm and the sadness in Hank’s voice drives it home.” (page 166)

I think that you could approach this book just as that kind of conversation with Bob, where he is speaking to you as his intimate friend. Sometimes he’s being serious, and sometimes he’s winding you up. Except here you’re only getting his side of the conversation. You can feel free to interject your responses and/or objections. Bob won’t hear you, but he’ll be glad you bought the book.



Absent the photos and other paraphernalia, this would be a lightweight tome, and I imagine some critics will dismiss the content as lightweight too. Still, some very lovely things can weigh very little: a butterfly, a snowflake, a fine cigar. For those who appreciate it, there’s plenty to enjoy in this very personal little book by Bob, and all the more if one doesn’t squint painfully at it and take it all too seriously. The breathless declarations by the publisher along the lines that it is “a momentous artistic achievement” may be doing it a disservice in that respect, but so goes the never-ending hype machine.

Dylan does know a lot of stuff about music, of-course, and so there are some genuinely revelatory moments. And, unlike most of us, he actually has met and been friendly with quite a few of the artists he writes about here. It’s notable, however, that he never leans on that personal experience in the text. There’s no: “as Frank Sinatra confided to me when he had me over for dinner,” or: “I have it on good authority from Johnny Cash himself …”. He limits himself to the evidence of the songs and recordings themselves, and what is, generally speaking, the public record.

Will anyone learn “the philosophy of modern song” by reading this book? Well, taken as a whole, you probably would soak up some of whatever that is, because it’s surely in between the lines here somewhere. But I also think it’s the same thing you’d soak up by just listening to the truly great popular music of the past one hundred years: living with it, learning of it, crying with it, moving to it, and treasuring it as the dear and faithful friend it can surely be through time.

That’s what Bob Dylan did.

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Bob Dylan – Fallen Angels (and Rising Prayers)

FALLEN ANGELS by Bob Dylan Review

Review of FALLEN ANGELS by Bob Dylan

Darling, down and down I go, round and round I go
In a spin, loving the spin that I’m in
Under that old black magic called love

A few months from this time of writing, Bob Dylan will be performing at a big music event in California, sharing the bill with his contemporaries–and fellow septuagenarians–the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney. No doubt the Stones will be singing “Satisfaction” and “Paint it Black,” and no doubt McCartney will be singing “Yesterday” and “Band on the Run.” And no doubt Bob Dylan will be singing … well, “Autumn Leaves,” “All or Nothing at All,” and “That Old Black Magic.” You have to pause a moment to contemplate how wonderfully absurd and amazing that actually is. In his most recent shows, more than a third of the titles in his set list have been what we might call these “Sinatra” songs, and of the “Bob Dylan” songs in the show most have been from the past decade and a half or so, with only 3 dating back to the 1960s or 70s. And although some concert attendees have been heard griping (and when has that not been true at a Dylan show?), the most notable fact is that he’s actually been getting away with it in quite fine style. Dylan is conspicuously deriving great joy from singing the standards and puts his whole body and spirit into the effort. Singing these gorgeous old tunes (from songwriters he had some significant role in putting out of business) seems undeniably to be making his own heart feel young. Continue reading “Bob Dylan – Fallen Angels (and Rising Prayers)”

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Bob Dylan, “Melancholy Mood”

Bob Dylan "Melancholy Mood"

Bob Dylan "Melancholy Mood"
It is (in the sense of those things these days) Bob Dylan’s hot new single: “Melancholy Mood.” The song is best known from its recording by Harry James and his Orchestra, with brand new boy singer Frank Sinatra, in 1939. It was the B-side of “From the Bottom of My Heart.” Neither side charted, though both are masterful and lovely records and show the promise of the Sinatra to come. Bob Dylan’s version is embedded below here via YouTube, with a little more on the song and his own quite lovely take on it coming under that.

Comparing Dylan’s to the Harry James/Frank Sinatra side (also on YouTube at the moment) reveals that it is the very same arrangement, as adapted by his five piece guitar-based band. You would think that someone like Dylan would do it as a song, rather than in the style of a big band, where the singer comes in only after the band has gone through the tune already—but you would think wrong. Where Harry James played his trumpet, we have beautiful solo guitar, and on it goes to about the one minute and seven second mark (just as on the James side) and then Bob Dylan steps to the microphone—the most grizzled boy singer you’d ever want to see—and caresses the lyric the rest of the way.

That has been the modus operandi of Dylan on these “Sinatra covers;” that is, to take one of Sinatra’s original recordings (in a lot of cases there were multiple Sinatra versions to pick from) and to simply try to recreate the arrangement with the five piece combo (and occasional extra). In so doing, and in each case, they come up with something beautiful of their own. Dylan’s singing, of-course, is always his own.

And as with his previous interpretations of these old popular songs, Dylan brings resonances to “Melancholy Mood” beyond the boy/girl love theme that would have been the given way of hearing it before. This song, from a lonely soul, even has something to say along those lines, which sounds so right in Dylan’s gentle and aged voice:

But love is a whimsy
And as flimsy as lace
And my arms embrace an empty space

The singer’s soul is “stranded high and dry”—all he can see is “grief and gloom / till the crack of doom.” Still, he prays for release from his melancholy mood, and in Bob’s voice it seems to me this has less the sense of a boy praying for his girl to come back and more the sense of the creature praying to his Creator for an infinitely greater kind of release.

Dylan’s gift to these songs is to show just how deep they can go, without changing a note or a word.

“Melancholy Mood” was written by Vick Knight and Walter Schumann.



Bob Dylan’s forthcoming album, from which “Melancholy Mood” is taken, is titled Fallen Angels, and is to be released on May 20th. The full track listing is as follows:

1. Young At Heart
2. Maybe You’ll Be There
3. Polka Dots and Moonbeams
4. All The Way
5. Skylark
6. Nevertheless
7. All Or Nothing At All
8. On A Little Street In Singapore
9. It Had To Be You
10. Melancholy Mood
11. That Old Black Magic
12. Come Rain Or Come Shine

And to all that I can only say: Golly! It’s a great time to be alive.

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A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra

A Jolly Christmas Frank Sinatra

Review of A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra

There’s a communal feeling about most Christmas music. Maybe this is because we generally hear the songs in the company of others, whether it’s as we’re elbowing our way down the aisles of the department store or perhaps singing along with them in church. I think that the most special thing about Frank Sinatra’s A Jolly Christmas (Capitol Records, 1957) may well be how a very particular mood is created, quite different to that of the run-of-the-mill Christmas album. It is not so much a mood of lonesomeness (although Sinatra was well-skilled with evocation in that area) but a more nuanced and less inherently-sad sense of simply being alone at Christmas. Not miserable, and not necessarily overjoyed either, but simply contemplating and appreciating the season apart from the crowds and the relatives.

In the course of his long career Sinatra recorded plenty of Christmas music, from the sides with Axel Stordahl in the 1940s on Columbia (some very lovely stuff) to The Sinatra Family Wish You a Merry Christmas on Reprise in 1968 (predictably kind of cheesy). And these Christmas tracks get repackaged and resold over and over again. However, A Jolly Christmas is, to my mind, quite distinct. In 1957 when he went in to record it (during July in Los Angeles), Sinatra was truly at the peak of his artistic powers. Not only was his vocal ability (both the quality of his voice and his sense of how to use it) the best it had ever been or would ever be, but he was also at a peak of good taste. My theory is that Sinatra always personally had good taste, but later in his career he came to believe that his potential audience did not, and he dumbed things down at times in an effort to woo them. At this time, however, in the mid-1950s, Sinatra had a clear idea of what he wanted to do, musically-speaking, and what he was capable of, and he was able to work with arrangers and musicians of great excellence and taste themselves, and together they were able to put out records of a very high standard that in turn reached an appreciative and welcoming audience. All of these factors would never come together simultaneously again, and this is why Sinatra’s albums for Capitol Records in the 1950s stand as his greatest, and indeed as some of the most perfect examples of refined popular music that exist.

To put it in context, A Jolly Christmas was bookended by A Swingin’ Affair! (a sterling Nelson Riddle set) and Come Fly With Me (a masterpiece with Billy May). And released in exactly the same month (September of 1957) was Where Are You?, one of Sinatra’s great sets of lovelorn ballads, this one arranged by Gordon Jenkins, who likewise is the arranger for A Jolly Christmas. Jenkins had his strengths and weaknesses as an arranger, but there’s no doubting that his particular style is crucial in making A Jolly Christmas the unique kind of Christmas record that it is. Continue reading “A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra”

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Andy Statman at Charles Street

Andy Statman Charles Street

Andy Statman Charles StreetIf you’re ever visiting New York City (or indeed if you live in the area) and are looking for a truly only-in-New-York thing to do, you could most certainly do no better than to check Andy Statman’s concert schedule and see if you can catch him at his home base of Charles Street, in the West Village, where his trio plays informal gigs in the basement of a humble synagogue. Andy Statman plays clarinet and mandolin; in fact, that’s exactly how he was described to me when I first heard of him, and naturally (me being me) I pictured in my mind’s eye a man playing a clarinet and a mandolin at the same time, and I thought to myself, “That’s pretty amazing.” Continue reading “Andy Statman at Charles Street”

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(Review) Bob Dylan – Shadows In The Night

bob dylan shadows in the night review

Review of Bob Dylan Shadows in the Night

I’ve long harbored the sense that it’s a bit farcical of yours truly to “review” a new Bob Dylan album; being as much of a fan as I obviously am, my enthusiasms tend to run over: I get carried away (especially absent any humorless editor to beat me down). Why pretend to offer an unbiased review? On the other hand, everyone has his or her own biases, declared or no. A review is most useful or interesting to a reader to the degree that the reader either shares those biases or at least appreciates their presence.

However, the special way in which it is impossible for me to pretend to offer a coldly objective review of Bob Dylan’s Shadows In The Night is this: I happen to know that he recorded this album for me. That has to affect things on some level. You see, while I like to think that I have eclectic taste in music, a quick glance at the CDs on my shelves or the gigabytes on my external hard drive would reveal that the music I’ve collected from two particular artists far exceeds the music I’ve collected from any other. Although I’m not into making lists of favorites—top ten favorite female singers, top ten favorite country songs, blah blah blah—there’s no necessity to sit back and wonder who my two all-time favorite musical artists are. They are Frank Sinatra and Bob Dylan. Continue reading “(Review) Bob Dylan – Shadows In The Night“

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Cerys Matthews – A Child’s Christmas, Poems and Tiger Eggs

Reverend Eli Jenkins Prayer

A Child's Christmas, Poems and Tiger Eggs Cerys Matthews

What the heck is a tiger egg?

Well, once, in an interview, Dylan Thomas said of himself (as a younger poet):

I wrote endless imitations, though I never thought them to be imitations, but rather wonderfully original things, like eggs laid by tigers.

Those tiger eggs might not be so well known, but A Child’s Christmas in Wales most certainly is; it has traveled around the world many times over, and is one of the most beloved of all literary evocations of Christmastime. In it, a man of uncertain age tells some small children gathered at his side of what Christmas was like when he was a boy … and in so doing captures the most wonderful kind of magic that human memory can make, bringing to life an idealized Yuletide landscape, fashioned with the kind of reckless joy of language and humanity that defined Dylan Thomas. It is at once so very particular to a seaside town in Wales and so amazingly universal (which explains its perpetual popularity). Continue reading “Cerys Matthews – A Child’s Christmas, Poems and Tiger Eggs“

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Bob Dylan Live at the Beacon Theatre, New York


Last night Bob Dylan played the first of a series of five concerts at New York City’s Beacon Theatre, the final stand of his current tour.

I thought I’d probably seen my last Robert A. Zimmerman performance a few years ago. I’ve seen him live quite a bit over the years, and that last show was a good one, and for a variety of reasons I just felt it best to leave it at that. (One also has the impression that Dylan really enjoys playing to the new faces in the crowds, rather than old fogeys like moi.) However, through the intervention of a very kind friend, myself and the missus found ourselves last night once again breathing the same air as Bob and his five superb sidemen: Tony Garnier, George Recile, Stu Kimball, Charlie Sexton and Donnie Herron. Continue reading “Bob Dylan Live at the Beacon Theatre, New York”

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Taylor Swift – “Welcome to New York”

The Cinch Review

Review Welcome to New York Taylor Swift
Boy, do I love songs about New York City. It’s a helluva town. From the good old “New York, New York,” to the less old “Theme from New York, New York,” from the lovely Dinah Washington singing Rodgers’ and Hart’s “Manhattan” to the rather dorky Paddy McAloon singing his “Hey, Manhattan,” from Paul Simon strolling up Broadway with diamonds on the soles of his shoes to Lou Reed waiting for his man at Lexington and 125th street, there’s so many things to sing about and so many great songs that have been sung.

It’s a challenge today, however, to suggest that one more has been added to the list. Certainly, “Welcome to New York,” the new tune by Taylor Swift, is a song about New York, but that’s where Continue reading “Taylor Swift – “Welcome to New York””

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“When Death Comes Creepin’ (Whatcha Gonna Do?)” – Bob Dylan and a Few Good Questions

Whatcha Gonna Do When Death Comes Creepin' Bob Dylan
“Death Comes Creeping” is a song which originated as a Negro spiritual and has had many incarnations over the eons. One version of it is actually titled “Soon One Morning,” with verses including these:

Soon one morning
Death comes a-creeping in the room
Soon one morning
Death comes a-creeping in the room
Soon one morning
Death comes a-creeping in the room
Oh my Lord, oh my Lord what shall I do

You may call your father
Your father will be no use
Call your father
Your father will be no use
Call your father
Your father will be no use
Oh my Lord, oh my Lord what shall I do

(Hear a version on YouTube from Fred McDowell, 1959, recorded by Alan Lomax)

Bob Dylan picked up on the song from someone somewhere, and recorded a number of different versions, changing the lyrics as he went. The song was ultimately published as a Dylan original under the title “Whatcha Gonna Do?” but no recording was officially released until 2010 on The Bootleg Series Vol. 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962–1964. And the officially released performance is of the very same lyric as in the published version (right there in the original Writings and Drawings book). That performance, being a Witmark demo, was precisely for the purpose of publishing. Continue reading ““When Death Comes Creepin’ (Whatcha Gonna Do?)” – Bob Dylan and a Few Good Questions”

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Elaine Stritch and “Two’s Company”

The Cinch Review

Elaine Stritch & Two's Company

Mentioning to my better half this morning that actress Elaine Stritch had just died, she asked, as people do in these situations, how old she had been. (The day before someone dies, no one cares how old they are, but, once they kick the bucket, it’s an important fact for us to obtain.) I said that the paper reported she was eighty-nine years-old, but that this had surprised me: I would’ve thought she must be at least one hundred and twenty, because when I watched her on TV many decades ago she already seemed older than the Devil, at least to my eight-year-old eyes. But my wife hadn’t seen her on TV back then. I, unlike she, was residing in Ireland when Elaine Stritch starred in a sitcom called “Two’s Company” on a British television network, which we picked up over the airwaves. The series was likely rebroadcast in the U.S. somewhere at some point but apparently had not become terribly well known.

The media is full of those paying articulate tribute to Stritch as a legend of Broadway and the stage, but I can’t do that, having never seen her perform live. I do have a lot of respect for those who pour their chief energies and talent into live performances that exist in the moment and live on only in the memories (and reviews) of those who saw them. Elaine Stritch did some other screen work (recently a role on a show I’ve never seen named “30 Rock”) but all I really know her from is this English sitcom, and, while I was not writing reviews back then, I guess her presence and performance was sufficient so that I always remembered her name and her face. Continue reading “Elaine Stritch and “Two’s Company””

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Hendrick’s Gin

Hendrick's Gin review

Review of Hendrick's Gin

When some Scotsmen, already distillers of Scotch, decided in 1999 to begin distilling a gin, they had the good sense not to name it something like MacAlastair’s or MacFarlane’s. I think this counts as a case of mind over matter: no matter what the gin tasted like, with a name that evoked Scotland and Scotch whisky, it would simply not taste right. Instead they christened it Hendrick’s, a name seemingly well chosen for its lack of a very obvious national character. It sounds like a name from the British Isles, to be sure, but from where within them, precisely? It stands fairly solidly on its own, a fate that the distillers may well wish for their gin. Continue reading “Hendrick’s Gin”

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The Charlie Daniels Band – Off the Grid: Doin’ it Dylan

The Cinch Review

Review of Charlie Daniels Off the Grid Doin' it Dylan
Charlie Daniels and Bob Dylan have more in common than some might think. Don’t take it from me, though, take it from Bob Dylan in these extracts from his memoir Chronicles, where he’s talking about how much he enjoyed having Charlie Daniels around during recording sessions for Nashville Skyline, New Morning and Self Portrait.

I felt I had a lot in common with Charlie. The kind of phrases he’d use, his sense of humor, his relationship to work, his tolerance for certain things. Felt like we had dreamed the same dream with all the same distant places. A lot of his recollections seemed to coincide with mine. Charlie would fiddle with stuff and make sense of it. … When Charlie was around, something good would usually come out of the sessions. … Years earlier Charlie had a band in his hometown called The Jaguars who had made a few surf rockabilly records, and although I hadn’t made any records in my hometown, I had a band too, about the same time. I felt our early histories were somewhat similar. Charlie eventually struck it big. After hearing the Allman Brothers and the side-winding Lynyrd Skynyrd, he’d find his groove and prove himself with his own brand of dynamics, coming up with a new form of hillbilly boogie that was pure genius. Atomic fueled—with surrealistic double fiddle playing and great tunes like “Devil Went Down to Georgia” …

Charlie Daniels also wrote about Bob Dylan in one of his books (so that makes them both authors too): Ain’t No Rag: Family, Freedom & the Flag. He describes being interviewed by one of Dylan’s many biographers, Howard Sounes, and then being very disappointed that the book did not turn out to be the upbeat work he had expected. Continue reading “The Charlie Daniels Band – Off the Grid: Doin’ it Dylan“

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Bob Dylan in the 80s (Volume 1) – Various Artists

The Cinch Review

Review of Bob Dylan in the 80s Volume 1

Tribute albums, or albums dedicated to the songs of one particular songwriter, come and go, and probably no living musician has had more such albums made in his or her name than Bob Dylan. This new one, however, called Bob Dylan in the 80s (Volume 1), seems unusually pure in its fundamental motivation. It does not purport to contain the best ever Bob Dylan songs and certainly not the most popular ones. It does not feature artists who are household names, and no one could be expecting it to sell in enormous quantities. Its clear motive instead is to lift up songs from Bob Dylan’s most maligned and least hip decade. There was no perennial critical favorite like Blonde on Blonde from Dylan in the 1980s, no classic of heartache like Blood on the Tracks, no universally lauded return-to-form like Time Out of Mind, and no chart-topper like Modern Times. There was Saved, to start out with, and Under the Red Sky to end with. Both albums (though more the former than the latter) have their advocates, but when they arrived they seemed to disappear promptly into deep pools of opprobrium. And the albums in between generally didn’t do a whole lot better in terms of popular or critical reception. Bob Dylan in the 80s (Volume 1), then, seeks to help people listen freshly to some of the lesser-known work of America’s most remarkable living songwriter, and enjoy aspects of it that they might not know about or might have missed. In this, and in just being fun, it succeeds. Continue reading “Bob Dylan in the 80s (Volume 1) – Various Artists”