Peter Case

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Jokerman

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Let’s see, it was October 1983 and I was still in the Plimsouls, but we had come in from the road, and  had wound down, and I was just knocking about, living alone in a tiny pad up in Laurel Canyon (in the same cottage the Melvins eventually moved into, after I split). I  was writing songs for what was gonna be my first solo LP, and felt like I was on the moon, ’cause I was living at night, isolated, kinda living in my dreams & musical ideas, and I didn’t have to show up anywhere or for anything, it was woodshed time.

It was a good time, I was 29 years old, freed up for the first time from a lot of things that had been bugging me.

So I picked up the new Dylan LP at Tower on Sunset, and took it straight back home, and threw it on, and was completely transfixed by “Jokerman.”

The first thing that got me about it was the Sly and Robbie groove, unlike anything I’d heard before: it’s not rock or reggae either, but something new, very open. As usual with a Dylan record you hear every word. He delivers that very clearly.

On first listen the song hits you with a strong sense of life, of what it’s like to be alive in the world at that moment, a sense of NOW. The complexity, color, seductive sensual lure, sense of danger, of freedom, of possibility that one feels in the world, call it the Modern World, is all communicated so vividly, that the flash of recognition I felt upon hearing it, EVEN THOUGH I HAD NO REASONABLE IDEA WHAT HE WAS ON ABOUT, gave me a rush of Companionship. So that’s the first thing about the art of his songwriting, he wins you with the representation of what it’s really like to be alive. And you feel that before you understand it.

I think “Like A Rolling Stone” did that for it’s time. And the song “Dignity” hit me with that kind of force, when I first heard it on the radio, and had to pull the car over. And it’s a hugely exciting thing.

I’m not sure to this day that I could say I understand the song really. But I find it really moving.

The lines about ships, mist, snakes, glowing eyes, all were like kindling and I went up in flames when he hit “freedom just around the corner for you — but with the truth so far off what good will it do?”

That’s what I mean about him reflecting the true complexity of being alive, instead of the party line, which would be something like,  ‘”Gotta get free!” or ‘”I’m free — but with freedom comes responsiblility.” You know, “freedom good!”

I was in a period of my life when I felt a bit of freedom, but the nagging thoughts about the validity of what I was doing were unexpressed, kinda murkily swimming about in my mind, then PRESTO! Dylan’s said it, and I’m pushed into a new dimension of thought. All of this I just felt though on that first listen.

“So swiftly the sun sets in the sky…” yeah especially if like me you’re getting up in the afternoon and turning night into day, “You rise up and say goodbye to no one.” Check.

“Shedding off one more layer of skin, staying one step ahead of the persecutor within.” He does it again with this one, shedding off skin, sounds good, that’s what I was trying to do, reinvent myself, renew my musical vision, evade the weights and mistakes of my past. “One step ahead of the persecutor.” It was like he was reading my mind, I’d been guilty for my impulse to ditch the band and go solo, though it seemed necessary from a purely artistic point of view. So, those lines hit me too, and grilled me. As they would anybody I think, who was actively going through the kind of changes life threw on individuals at that time, which is still THIS TIME, by the way. The struggle of freedom, guilt, knowledge, power, foolishness that we all experience.

It’s a good song; there’s just so much in it. It seems alive, almost.

The chorus is so stripped down, it’s more tricky. “Jokerman,” that’s him singing about himself, and maybe about Jesus in verse three, and maybe about the silence of God at the end. But it’s also anybody, the Fool, jokers, trying to get serious, by that I mean, living with their eyes open, not “asleep neath the stars with a small dog licking your face” an image of a childish, maybe foolish sort, but also attractive in a way, hmm. The nightingale’s tune, it’s been pointed out that that’s like Keat’s Nightingale, the muse, or Imagination, flying high by the moon, that is, almost in the dark, moony, lunar, almost lunatic inspiration, like the subconscious, or unconscious (I mix them up!) which it always seems like Dylan relies on. For example, he always used to insist the songs come “through him” and the creation of his early work had to do with “power and dominion over the spirits.”

Is that clear at all? It does seem like he is singing, at least in part about himself. And it’s relevant to you and me, to the degree you want to apply it.

There’s a great difference between his best work and his other stuff. “Jokerman” is one of his great songs, right in there with the best of the early work, and the best of the ’70s. “Neighborhood Bully” doesn’t have this kind of impact, whatever you think of its message. “Man Of Peace,” likewise. I think “Union Sundown” is a great piece of work, but as a song lyric, though it’s good, maybe someone else could have written it, he merely covers the subject. Another song like that, from a later album, is “Everything’s Broken” from O Mercy. It’s strong, complete, but not necessarily “Dylan-esque,” in that it’s not communicating that super-vivid and 360 degree sense of life, of what it’s like to be alive at that moment. And when you hear the songs that have that quality, it’s like a mirror, or a trick window, you almost feel as if you’re looking through reality, getting a glimpse “behind the screen” and that’s what makes it so valuable.

So some of it is cold, detached, etc. but people need to hear his great stuff. His Greatest Hits, Vol 3 is pretty powerful, for that reason.

If you don’t get Bob Dylan, you don’t get much, in my opinion. Complaints about his voice are a sure sign of ignorance of music and history. It’s not really a matter of taste. It’s a matter of mind or not. I know as time goes on it may be harder for younger people to get in on. But it’s worth trying to find the door in, a whole universe opens up.

A lot of it is down to words. Can you relate to another mind, as related in language. Beyond the either/ors of binary choice. Dem or Republican? Hot/Not? Young/Old? Yes/No on this or that.

Bob Dylan uses roots music to tell his story, his way. That’s what I try to do as well. But you have to know your limits. Dylan is the best at that, he’s got that “bullshit- detector” that lots of people talk about. It better be real or forget about it.

I grew up in a house when blues and jazz and early rock and roll were just coming out, and the records were comstantly being played on our record player, and my sister and her friends (who were all about the same age as Dylan) were attempting to play the music,too, on piano and other instruments. And that ’50s music was all blues-based, or country. And then there was Elvis, who I experienced as a three year old. And he had the feeling on the Sun Records, and the early RCA, and I just soaked it up, but also the Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry, Link Wray (the first HEAVY guitar) Richie Valens, Fats Domino, the great Little Richard and Jerry Lee on TV shows like Bandstand, and all of that is blues.

Then Dylan and the Stones, Beatles too, and I followed the streams and first heard Muddy Waters, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Carl Perkins, and Buddy Holly.  I just loved all of that so much. And it got deeper from there, Howlin’ Wolf, and Robert Johnson, McTell, Gary Davis, etc.  I just loved it and listened endlessly. And kept TRYING to play and sing it, and I HATED what I sounded like at 17, 18 years old, so young and white and reedy. It was EMBARRASSING.

The story of all this is in my book, As Far As You Can Get Without A Passport, which I’ve been posting bit by bit for the last few months.

Somewhere in there it all opened up to me, but you still gotta keep a sense of humor, and the bulllshit detector trained on yourself, so look out!

And then you gotta work to be YOURSELF,  to sing through the influences.

I think I need to write a part two of this!

 

(all rights reserved peter case 2005)

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The Gifts (some notes on Bob Dylan’s 80th Birthday)

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Thanks to Bob Dylan, on his 80th birthday for all the gifts he gave to us. Personally, I always feel like it’s Christmas on Earth (as Rimbaud coined it) when I experience Bob singing, speaking, writing, acting, painting and drawing, most whatever he does has been illuminating. I learned about American music and America itself. For me, time stopped when I heard Mr. Tambourine Man for the first time, and shortly after read “Folk-Rock: the Bob Dylan Story” in paperback, (which was very misleading in, but also enlightening in some ways.) By the time I was 14 I’d heard his first several albums, read the poems enclosed with the third album, 11 Outlined Epitaphs, started learning the songs in the Bob Dylan Songbook I received as a gift in 1966, listened over and over to HWY 61 through John Wesley Harding, then read Tarantula from a mimeograph while high on mescaline, and weeping, in 1971, in my first room away from home, with the Dont Look Back poster on the wall, hidden when the door opened, that movie, then companionship on the bank of sand Watching The River Flow, later the generational tale of Tangled Up In Blue, and all the others—Dignity–I pulled the car over when I first heard it on the radio—Jokerman–I brought home and alone listening was transfixed—it was riveting—so alive—earlier he taught us that all the American folk music belongs together—that the sound of the words is as important as anything—somehow it led me to Shakespeare—Kerouac also a part of this—the WORD—to Eliot when I was a kid—Stevens–Ginsberg–Kaufman—now Notley–Tongo Eiesen-Martin-—that life is an adventure, an opportunity, is important.    Life—is holy—Death so powerful—the mystery—anima—the invisible world—the champions of civil rights—the dignity and value and stature he brought to rock n’roll and folk—music, etc—is no small thing—he made me want to live, to strive, to contend—wisdom of the street—the vision, the powerful sweep and scope—Chimes of Freedom—It’s All Right, Ma—Baby Blue—he sang for freedom of the spirit and the soul—”the guardians and protectors of the mind”–“it is not he or she or them or it that you belong to”– ““an’ mine shall be a strong loneliness dissolvin’ deep/t’ the depths of my freedom/an’ that, then, shall/
remain my song.”

–“don’t put on any airs when you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue”—“when you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose” —“she’s got everything she needs she’s an artist, she don’t look back” —“she never stumbles, she’s got no place to fall”–  like Bob in ’64-’65—(“he never stumbled” said Penny)– when I was a teen—“somebody got lucky but it was an accident”–  “goin’ back to New York City I do believe I’ve had enough”– (marvelling at the chaos of life and New York.) The beauty of Girl From The North Country—Went To See The Gypsy hit me in my 1971 isolation—at my biker friend Rose’s Cadillac dealership, waiting in the parking lot for her to get off work– in the days before I left town for good—the last song that moved me like that for a while—’til Billy—which also I loved and identified with–Billy’s trouble as I was on the lam 70’s style—so vivid and finally got that great inscription in the pink lyrics book perused at the SF bookstore two thousand miles from my home—“to all those high on life—from all corners of the wild blue yonder.”

–PC 2016

*  Long Time Gone, an early Dylan song, from my cd “HWY 62” on Omnivore Recordings, 2016.

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The First Review (Hamburg, NY, 1970)

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I was the lead singer of this band:

From the Hamburg Sun, April 23, 1970

The Silent Minority ‘ Chaperones appear to be the silent minority at ‘ Hamburg High School dances: At the dance Friday, April 17, something unthinkable occurred. Vulgarity and obscenity. The first vulgar thing to assail the sight of the youthful patrons, was a sign on the bandstand. A middle finger upended. ‘ – Then, as the dance progressed, the group from Pleasant Ave. known as “The Pig Nation” began an audience participation “thing.” They said it was not unlike a Football cheer. It continued till a chant was yelling the most obscene four-letter word, concluded with the words “Hamburg High School.” Unbelievable. Yet, corroborated by nine reputable witnesses, who related this to Photo News. “They were high on grass,” was one absurd excuse. One can’t help but wonder if the recent breakdown in unity in the High School faculty could account for the breakdown in discipline. Why was this excused, condoned and unpunished. Where were the chaperones? T. A. Ehrnke, Publisher .

 

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The Plimsouls With Horns!

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(The first track on our first album, “Lost Time,”  featured legendary arranger/ musician Harold Battiste leading a horn section that also included Jackie Kelso from Gene Vincent & the Bluecaps. The horns at one point in the tune backed up a screaming feedback solo from Eddie Munoz. The Plimsouls were hard to categorize but they always rocked. Below is the story of our first ever session with the horns, played by Steve Berlin, and Marty Jourard)

Out in Paramount—south of the city–rain in torrents—sandwiched between Downy’s old school working-class and Compton’s black working class & struggle—the main drag—Rosecrans Avenue—on an industrial mini-mall—a rented shell of a room we shared with a band called the Apples—driving in the slanting rain with the wipers full blast dry in the car but all my clothes are damp—from the backseat of Eddies VW bug—Steve Berlin our friend with the tight pants and the tucked in shirt—serious—& Marty from the Motels—each with golden brass saxophones—and we stood in a circle & began to play—Otis & Wilson & the sound of the horns was big & bright & fat & full of wind & force of pride & power—the music came up from under my ribs & lower & burst full color into the rain soaked atmosphere—the humidity which made the whole experience that much heavier—the smell of cigarette smoke & wet hair—the lack of any comfort in the room mattered not—the water was rising in the parking lot, coming up over the sidewalk—a flood—but the band with horns—blasting—crying—calling in glory of a sound we made that amazed us—heart beats quickened—playing on and on—‘cause it just sounded so big & good & real—the antidote to everything—every poison—forever.

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The Nerves On Folsom and Third–1975

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Folsom St.   Nerves —’70’s

a beat up building on Folsom Street

cars rush by late for the freeway

late for the bridge

trash in the street cracks in the window

& every player in the band

lives on a separate floor

aligned by the window well

A bass amp on the floor

pressed into service as a coffee table

linoleum asbestos & an old junk tv

tuned to the all night movies (movies ’til dawn)

a beat up record player & speakers

& my kitty cats torment the puppy

(who howls when they slap him

with their claws outstretched)

& Jack & Connie are yelling again fighting again

round & round shouts down the well

I had an onion Paul had a spud

& we fried ‘em up in oil

with catsup borrowed from Clown Alley

San Francisco—the ’70’s—a city of outlaws

the West—drifters & outsiders

rents are cheap & we’re passing the days

in a basement

hours of rehearsal while

the clock tower on a downtown bank

ticking the hours by   ten or sixteen

nothing in the fridge  nothing in the cupboard

no books on the shelf

no money but time

dreaming up songs that somehow limp back

we laugh together it works sometimes

working hard for hours but it’s a lonely group

something out of nothing that’s how to write songs

it’s always amazing when something happens

& I hear them laughing.

 

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songwriting quotes

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“Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager, stay eager.”

A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.”  –Susan Sontag

——

“Every hundred feet the world changes.”   –Roberto Bolano

 

1) ” WHOSE KID IS THAT?”

songs language must be at least that powerful.

2) development: something happens

3) writing practice that draws from

experience of the concrete world

—–

“Negative Capability”

 

” I IS SOMEONE ELSE”

 

–from the second verse of “long, good time”

Sweet little flowers called snowdrops

in the backyard with the fresh mint leaves

A cherry tree with a rope to climb

& robins nests under the eaves

My band was playing in the basement

driving folks out of their minds

Mother called down from the top of the steps

“Boys, play that nice song about suicide”

 

 

Songs can be written so you can walk into any place in the country and sing them and people will “get it.”

 

Is songwriting an art, or a craft?

Either way, the words have a double meaning.

 

Art is many things, but one definition would be: Art is the sum-total of techniques we use to get people to care about something. By people, I not only mean an audience, but also ourselves.

 

There are a couple of levels to look at:

1) Formal & technical aspects, that is, structure, rhyme, melody, harmony, rhythm, harmony, & the uses of repetition.

2) Content, depth, meaning.  “Only emotion endures.”   Concrete vs. abstract language.

 

“I like music where something happens.”    — A & R rep, 1985

 

The comments I make in class don’t mean I “like” or “don’t like”  : they are meant as “probes,” to stimulate the discussion.

 

“Now…well for one thing, the music, the

rhyming and rhythm, what I call the

mathematics of a song, are more second-

-nature to me. I used to have to go after a

song, seek it out. But now, instead of going

to it I stay where I am and let everything

disappear and the song rushes to me. Not

just the music, the words, too.”

–BD, 1965

 

the beatles: improvising

melody + lyrics

over chord changes

 

“it’s what you don’t play.”

 

a friend of mine used to say, that professional songwriters always have three songs: the one they just finished, the one they’re working on in the present, and the next one they’re going to write.

 

at some point I began to feel that whenever you had a problem in life, the best thing was to write your way through it.

 

as a singer/songwriter, don’t forget the “singer” part of the deal. work on your singing.

 

turn your secrets into songs, then sing them for strangers. tell everybody you just make them up out of the blue.

 

make a list of your fifty favorite words, then write a page in your notebook, exploring each one. discuss them in terms of things, the sensual world. or write a short poem for each one.

 

ideas can be your friends.  existentialism, dreams as a mirror of reality, economic justice, environmentalism, human rights, grass roots democracy, beatitude, the grotesque. seize on clarifying the ideas you are actually living by–your philosophy.

 

every word, every note, every beat is important.

 

figure out who your biggest influences are. then figure out what about their work you would improve on if you could. then set to work at doing it.

 

if you get stuck, move on.

sometimes, if you are stuck in your writing, just try to put down one honest line.

 

play with the techniques we’ve studied: reversals; haiku; american sentences; setting Blake and other well written poetry to music; nonsense; desire; people-place and time writing, kerouac sketching;  collecting and writing from titles; song portraits; list songs;

 

learn all of your favorite songs, and sing’em.

 

“no ideas but in things”: “close to the nose”

 

“develop a friendly attitude towards your own thoughts and ideas.”

 

if you don’t get it right the first time, try writing the song again, as a new song. do this as many times as you need.

 

William Blake–“Without unceasing Practice nothing can be accomplished

Art is Practice. Leave off Practice and you are Lost.”

 

William Burroughs: Kerouac… he was a writer. That is, he wrote.

 

William Carlos Williams: “It is in things that for the artist the power lies, not beyond them. Only where the eye hits does sight occur”

 

Andy Warhol : “You think too much. That’s ’cause there’s work you don’t want to do”   –quoted in Lou Reed’s song Work, from Songs For Drella.

 

Leonard Cohen: On his relatively paltry recorded output and how he sets about the creative process, he is blithely dismissive of his talents. “Writing an album, it always feels like I am scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get the songs together,” he says. “I’ve never had the sense that I’ve had a multitude of choices. There is no sense of abundance – I’m just picking at what I have. It’s like what Yeats said about working in ‘the foul rag and bone shop of the heart’. I do get discouraged by the work.

“It is a mysterious process, it involves perseverance and perspiration and sometimes, by some grace, something stands out and invites you to elaborate or animate it. These are sacred mechanics and you have to be careful analysing them as you would never write a line again. If you looked too deeply into the process you’d end up in a state of paralysis.

“People ask about the imagery all the time but sometimes it’s enough to say that the imagery has its own validity.”

He does confess to a troubling kind of perfectionism. “I wrote 80 verses or something for Hallelujah . That song was written over the space of four years and that’s my trouble – I can’t discard a verse. I have to work on it and polish it. I can work on a verse for a very long time before realising it’s not any good and then, and only then, can I discard it.”

Bob Dylan on Woody Guthrie: “You could listen to his songs and actually learn how to live.”

 

Tom Waits: “We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. We are monkeys with money and guns.”

 

‘ Just the right phrase can go a long way.’  -Chris Rock

 

invention: the finding of suitable topics. ‘a finding, a reaching into oneself to find what comes next.’

 

William Carlos Williams: So most of my life has been lived in hell–a hell of repression lit by flashes of inspiration, when a poem such as this or that would appear. What would have happened in a world similarly lit by the imagination?

Charles Baudelaire: ” To use a language with superior knowledge and skill is to practise a kind of conjuring.”

 

Plato–“He who approaches the temple of the Muses without inspiration, in the belief that craftsmanship alone suffices, will remain a bungler and his presumptuous poetry will be obscured by the songs of the maniacs.”

Robert Graves–“Poetry is rooted in love and love in desire, and desire in hope of continued existence.”  Also, “The poet must learn to think mythically as well as rationally.”

Hart Crane– “An artist, I think, is nothing but a powerful memory that can move itself through certain experiences sideways and every artist must be in some things powerless as a dead snake.” –quoted by John Berryman

Bob Dylan–“I always try to turn a song on it’s head. Otherwise, I figure I’m wasting the listener’s time.”

 

‘potential… of a single vibrant word’ to create a world, to release infinite energies’

 

“The nucleus of my solar system is ADVENTURE “

— Roberto Bolano

“Journey of the act of writing through zones not at
all favorable to the act of writing”

—Roberto Bolano

“push the dragon out of the way…
& walk in!”

 

‘the void, charged with potential’

 

” It has to come naturally, you know…you’ve got to do it just like you talk & walk..”

—John Coltrane

 

“Every hundred feet the world changes.

—Roberto Bolano

 

“The only war is the war against the imagination.

—Diane di Prima

 

“Imagination is nothing but the springing up of
reminiscences. And ingenuity, or invention is nothing
but the working over of what is remembered”

—Gaimbattista Vico

 

“The sound in your mind/ is the first sound that you could sing.”  —JK

 

“It is by folly alone, that the world
moves, + so it is a respectable thing
upon the whole.”

– Joseph Conrad

 

“…the duty of a poem in his mind was to be as good as possible when ever possible…”

—Mark Van Doren

 

” In true plain words, by thy true telling friend.”

-Jacques-Pierre

 

“Astral Weeks, insofar as it can be pinned down, is a record about people stunned by life, completely overwhelmed, stalled in their skins, their ages and selves, paralyzed by the enormity of what in one moment of vision they can comprehend.

It made me realize that so much of what makes music great is courage, and up to that, what I thought made music great was practice and study…This album says there’s more to life than you thought. Life can be lived more deeply, with a greater sense of fear and horror and desire than you ever imagined.”—Lester Bangs

 

“Van Morrison is interested, obsessed with how much musical or verbal information he can compress into a small space, and, almost, conversely, how far he can spread one note, word, sound, or picture. To capture one moment, be it a caress or a twitch. He repeats certain phrases to extremes that from anybody else would seem ridiculous, because he’s waiting for a vision to unfold, trying as unobtrusively as possible to nudge it along…It’s the great search, fuelled by the belief that through these musical and mental processes illumination is attainable. Or may at least be glimpsed.” -Lester Bangs

William Carlos Williams:

Life is absolutely simple. In any civilized society everyone should  know EVERYTHING there is to know about life at once and always,  there should  never be permitted, confusion– 

There are difficulties to life, under conditions that are impasses, life may prove impossible–But it must never be lost–as it is today–

The inundation of the intelligence by masses of complicated facts is not Knowledge. There  is no end–

And what is the fourth dimension? It  is the endlessness of knowledge–

It is for this reason I have always placed art first and esteemed it over science–in spite of everything.

Art is  the pure effect of the force upon which science depends for its reality–Poetry.

The effect of this realization upon life will be  the emplacement of knowledge into a living current–which it has always sought–

In other times men counted it as a tragedy to be dislocated from sense–today boys are sent with dullest faith to technical schools of all sorts–broken, bruised

few escape whole–slaughter. This is not civilization but stupidity–Before entering knowledge the integrity of the imagination–

With decent knowledge we can tell what things are for

There is no  confusion only difficulties.

 

” I was drawn to the traveling performers passing through. The side show performers – bluegrass singers, the black cowboy with chaps and a lariat doing rope tricks. Miss Europe, Quasimodo, the Bearded Lady, the half-man half-woman, the deformed and the bent, Atlas the Dwarf, the fire-eaters, the teachers and preachers, the blues singers. I remember it like it was yesterday. I got close to some of these people. I learned about dignity from them. Freedom too. Civil rights, human rights. How to stay within yourself. Most others were into the rides like the tilt-a-whirl and the rollercoaster. To me that was the nightmare. All the giddiness. The artificiality of it. The sledge hammer of life. It didn’t make sense or seem real. The stuff off the main road was where force of reality was. At least it struck me that way.”  

                                                                                                          -Bob Dylan

 

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