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Of all the strange happenings of the last 12 months, one of the oddest had to be the reawakening of Bob Dylan. Like some sort of sleeping giant, Dylan - one of the old gods of songwriting - emerged from whatever haunted forest he's been hiding in and said "here: I wrote you a 17-minute rhapsody about the Kennedy assassination. I called it 'Murder Most Foul'. Enjoy."
Weirder still? It was good.
If we're being honest, however, there's a part of me that's a little embarrassed to admit I've listened to the whole thing. More than once. I'm like most Dylan fans (or, at least, most I'd care to talk to) in that I'm just as enthusiastic in taking potshots at Bob's worst work as I am in gushing about his best. He's released plenty of albums either overly indulgent, completely phoned-in, or, somehow, both. Still, to my mind, Dylan is still the undisputed king of long songs. He has enough 6+ minute songs to make your eyes roll out of your head, not to mention a borderline disturbing number of tracks clocking in over the 10-minute mark. This resume is even more impressive (or, perhaps, terrifying) when you realize that all of these songs last this long by virtue of their lyrics and not just by jamming (not to cast aspersions on jamming, of course, but more on that later).
I know that, for plenty of folks, a 13-minute run time is not so much a credential as an obstacle to be overcome. This is fair. I have one close friend who has expressed on multiple occasions that every second after the 5-minute mark is nothing more than a requirement that the song be that much better. And, in some ways, I'm inclined to agree. Still, I hold a certain affection for long songs that I cannot entirely explain. "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands," the 12-minute opus that comprises the entire fourth side of Blonde on Blonde, is my favorite song off that album (not to mention one of my favorite Dylan songs ever). "Desolation Row," which closes out the 1965 classic Highway 61 Revisited, remains one of my favorite pieces of songwriting ever despite its equally-impressive run time (11:21!).
I think there's just something gutsy about just putting it all out there like that, almost like a personal stare-down from the songwriter themself. "What? You're still gonna listen to it, aren't you? Yeah, that's what I thought." There is also something unshakably self-aware about any song that breaks the ten-minute mark, or at least in the good ones. This, in the end, is my primary dispute with most of the extra-long songs I don't enjoy. Any song over seven minutes has a real obligation to acknowledge its own ridiculousness or else sink into a sea of self-indulgence.
This self-awareness is exactly what makes the aforementioned Dylan songs so great: the absurdity of the track's length mirrors the surreal imagery of their lyrics. The song's content is validated by its length and vice versa. "Familiarity," the 10-minute track that opens the Punch Brothers' 2015 masterpiece The Phosphorescent Blues, serves as a sort of thesis statement for the rest of the album. It introduces every sonic and lyrical theme covered in the rest of the album in a single track, one that has been intentionally and purposefully crafted to serve this purpose. "Madame George," Van Morrison's impressionistic trance of a track off of 1968's Astral Weeks, uses every second of its 9:45 run time to get across what it's trying to say. The meaning of "Madame George" is conveyed, not through the content of the song, but from the actual experience of listening to it, and therefore only such a lengthy song could have gotten this across. Don't even get me started on Hot Buttered Soul.
Self-awareness is exactly what's missing from, say, "Tempest," Bob's 14-minute eulogy to the Titanic, released in 2013. It's definitely lacking in the Decemberists' "The Island: Come and See/The Landlord's Daughter/You'll Not Feel the Drowning" (the title alone ought to show you what I mean)., and there's not a scrap of it in "Supper's Ready", Genesis' catastrophic 23-minute Peter Gabriel-era epic.
The strange thing is that all this knowledge of thy self, when followed to its logical conclusion ultimately just results in silliness. This is where jam bands come into the fold. Full disclosure: I'm not a jam band guy. I love the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers, don't get me wrong. But I would argue that these bands, along with certain electric blues artists like Taj Mahal and Cream, are more proto-jammers than legitimate Jam Bands. Once Phish enters the picture, however, that's when things get sketchy for me. Widespread Panic is alright, I suppose. Pigeons Playing Ping Pong? The String Cheese Incident? Twiddle? I'm sorry, that's where I'm out.
On one hand, these bands are nothing if not self-aware. They know it's ridiculous to play the same song for 47 minutes, trading solos until the audience has all gone home or fallen into some sort of psychedelic haze. They know it's silly to name their band things like "Umphrey's McGee." They just don't care. And, yet, I can't shake the feeling that maybe they should. There is a line that gets crossed, somewhere, when it no longer feels that an artist is choosing to be like this: they just can't survive without that subtle armor of insincerity wrapped around everything they produce. There are bands (like, say, the Dead or the Allman Bros) who can not only manage to go on for hours but to make all those hours good. Not many, though, and fewer with every slap of the bass.
The ideal long song, then, has to skate on that razor's edge. It must walk on a thin tightrope, knowing that, on one side, ignorance of its own nature has the potential to tear it apart, and, on the other, there's the risk of being swallowed whole by silliness and insincerity.
Which, I suppose, brings us back to "Murder Most Foul." Dylan threads this needle expertly as only he can, with the confidence of a man who's tried it before, screwed it up, and had the chance to work out the kinks. "Murder Most Foul" knows that its very existence is an insane proposition. It is, by its very nature, bonkers. And, yet, listening to the lyrics as they float past on a lazy river of piano and strings, there's a lot there. Lyrically, Dylan has delivered. And the music, though mind-numbingly repetitive and almost laughably simple, somehow suits the rest of the song. As Dylan's voice crackles through lyrics at once absurd and poignant, it's clear he's in on the joke. The question is, are we?
In One Ear
A brief check-in as to what I've been listening to lately:
El Avion Sobre El Mar - Trouble Peach
If you pitched this album to anybody, it would sound nuts. "An Australian Psych-Rock band covered In the Aeroplane Over the Sea - one of the most notoriously bizarre albums ever - entirely in Spanish, and it's great." And, to be fair, it is pretty nuts. It also happens, however, to be completely awesome.
Without A Sound- Dinosaur Jr.
I never could get the hang of skateboarding. I got a board at around age 11, and I gave it some real effort, but I never quite managed to progress past the "standing on a stationary board and not falling off" phase. Balance was not my forte, as my dual wrist braces could attest. I must learn to be satisfied, I suppose, with living vicariously through this album. In my dreams I can kickflip, but in the daytime I suppose Dinosaur Jr. will do.
The Low End Theory - A Tribe Called Quest
This one is, of course, a classic, and it needs very little introduction from me. Lately, this has been my go-to bedtime album. There is something so entrancing about this album, so enrapturing, I can't help but give it my full attention as I'm drifting off to sleep. The lyrics, dense and fascinating, make this make this album difficult to read or write to; it simply demands all your focus. But when you've got the time to devote to a dedicated listening, there's no better way to spend an hour.
Whatever This Is
This Week's Mixtape
Each edition of Nightswimming will come complete with a companion mixtape. Some of the songs relate to this week's newsletter, others not at all. As with any mixtape, listening in order is recommended, but if you don't have Spotify Premium or - heaven forbid - you just prefer to shuffle, then don't worry. The songs are still great, and nothing's set to self destruct.
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David Lefkowitz is a writer, musician, and former Latin NHS president. His work has been featured by Melted Magazine, The Outbound Collective, and Vinyl Tap Magazine, among others.