Sure, it’s about time I got back to putting up something relatively current on this page, but you’re not the one that has to come up with subject matter, are you? There is something I want to mention, so now is the time. In fact, now is a good time because a new movie concerning this subject has just been released, the Bob Dylan bio. I saw Dylan when you could see him very close up and for free, 1961 I think, at Gerdi’s Folk Village in NYC, a club in Greenwich Village. If you stood at the bar, you could watch the show for free, as I recall. I don’t like to think of myself as a freeloader, so I bought a beer. Probably a Budweiser, for a buck, although I don’t care for light bodied lagers and would much have preferred a Ballantine India Pale Ale, which might have been the only decent beer on the East Coast at the time. The West Coast had Anchor Steam Beer. Other than those two, were there any other decent, flavorful beers with remaining with any body after Prohibition pretty much wiped out the industry? By the way, I’m 100% positive that I was not at Gerdi’s to see Bob Dylan; I had never heard of him, nor had many other people outside his family and personal friends. Gerdi’s was a place to hang out and see some new performers and some older ones. Jose Feliciano performed there (he was clearly very talented) and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. I think he rambled in to Manhattan all the way from Brooklyn. I’m surprised nobody on the subway knocked that cowboy hat off his head.
Beer choice, however is not the subject of this story, so back to Dylan. I was recently visiting with a dear, dear old friend (we met in the 7th grade, in 1954) and Dylan’s name came up…maybe because of the movie. It turns out that he also saw Dylan when that performer was newish, and he had the same opinion, more than less, that I had upon viewing and hearing him, which is that he wasn’t very good. My first response when he got on stage and started singing and strumming his guitar and trying to blow on the harmonica was ‘this must be a joke.’ He couldn’t do any of those three things proficiently and the thought of him making any money at all, let alone a living as a performer, seemed impossible. Well, you can certainly ask, from the position of what has transpired, what did we know? Not a lot, but I do find it interesting that we independently came to the same conclusion upon seeing him unprejudiced by sycophantic reviews or teen mania. Is he, at bottom, a fraud? Over the years, much of my initial opinion has remained unchanged. So many of his songs seem to be the puerile whine of somebody who feels wounded and shunned by others and only wants to get even. Having said that, I do very much like his Nashville Skyline album. I still listen to that from time-to-time. Maybe he could have made something of himself had he become a country and western singer.
Marty
I’ll leave this quote from The Portable Curmudgeon right where it is; it is so very appropriate this election year.
Then we can continue on to Principles.
”President”
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I’m beginning to believe it.” Clarence Darrow
“Principles”
You can’t learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
W. Somerset Maughm
Principles have no real force except when one is well fed. Mark Twain
It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them. Alfred Adler
I like persons better than principles and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
Oscar Wilde
“Progress”
What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance. Havelock Ellis
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Samuel Butler
Progress celebrates Pyrrhic victories over nature and makes purses of human skin. Karl Kraus
Progress is the mother of problems. G.K. Chesterton
“Promiscuity”
A promiscuous person is someone who is getting more sex than you are. Victor Lownes