Sign on the Window

Words & Guitar continues to understand we aren't the Sleater-Kinney podcast you need, while striving to remain the one that you want! In case you forgot: each episode, we randomly select a Sleater-Kinney song, live with the song for a week (or two) and then get together to discuss. This week, episode 97, "Ironclad" off 2000's All Hands on the Bad One. 

We discuss the song's context (4:00) and comparisons to The Hot Rock and Dig Me Out; Daniel talks us through the Monitor-Merrimack ironclad battle referenced in the song (8:45) and talk about the song itself as metaphor and guide for your daily life (17:00). Recommended this week: Daniel won the lottery to see Hamilton in Portland (!!!) and talked briefly about the experience. Kelly is in the middle of Jessica Jones' second season on Netflix. 

As always, full show notes at our website. You can also follow along with our weekly real-time Spotify playlist – See That My Playlist is Kept Clean – and join the conversation on Twitter, message us on Facebook, and like on Instagram. And if you're loving us, consider our Patreon. For as little as one dollar you get early access to every episode we do as soon as they're edited (and a dedicated feed just for you) and exclusive content that'll only ever be on Patreon. Thanks!

Happy April Fool's Day!!! 

Next week: a trip to the woods.

Sign on the Window is your Bob Dylan podcast! This episode features the one you've all been waiting for - 1965's Highway 61 Revisited! Because we know you may have some favorites, we've time-coded the songs below. 

After a special announcement, initial thoughts (5:00), context (6:00), Highway 61 (8:00), accolades (9:00), and an overview of 1965 in music (16:00), we get to the songs. "Like a Rolling Stone" (25:00) "Tombstone Blues" (30:30) "It Takes A Lot to Laugh" (34:30) "From a Buick 6" (40:00) "Ballad of a Thin Man" (43:15) We take a break there for the Harmonica Award Nominees (47:00) "Queen Jane Approximately" (49:30) "Highway 61 Revisited" (55:00) "Just Like the Tom Thumb Blues" (1:01:00) "Desolation Row" (1:06:00) And close with the final ceremonies for the Harmonica Awards (1:16:00) 

As always, full show notes at our website. You can also follow along with our weekly real-time Spotify playlist – See That My Playlist is Kept Clean – and join the conversation on Twitter, message us on Facebook, and like on Instagram. And if you're loving us, consider our Patreon. For as little as one dollar you get early access to every episode we do as soon as they're edited (and a dedicated feed just for you) and exclusive content that'll only ever be on Patreon. Thanks!

In two weeks: I've got a date with the fairy queen

Mixed Up Confusion is our vehicle to discuss the culture that surrounds our weekly conversation about Bob Dylan. This week, we dive into 1965! Before you begin, have a look at our 1965 playlist.

This episode, we begin with Billboard's Top 10 of songs of 1965 followed by which songs were impacting the culture that was just beginning to boil over. We spend a good deal of time on The Impressions' "People Get Ready," James Brown's "Papa Got a Brand New Bag," The Byrds "Mr. Tambourine Man" and The Rolling Stones "I Can't Get No Satisfaction." From there, we talk Simon & Garfunkel, The Who, Phil Ochs, Jackson C. Frank, The Beatles, The Kinks, The Shangri-La's, Otis Redding, and finally, the great Nina Simone. 

As always, full show notes at our website. You can also follow along with our weekly real-time Spotify playlist – See That My Playlist is Kept Clean – and join the conversation on Twitter, message us on Facebook, and like on Instagram. And if you're loving us, consider our Patreon. For as little as one dollar you get early access to every episode we do as soon as they're edited (and a dedicated feed just for you) and exclusive content that'll only ever be on Patreon. Thanks!

Sign on the Window is a Bob Dylan podcast where we listen to a random Dylan song or album, sit with it for a week, then come back to talk about it. This week, we listened to "Odds and Ends" from The Basement Tapes. 

As always, full show notes at our website. You can also follow along with our weekly real-time Spotify playlist – See That My Playlist is Kept Clean – and join the conversation on Twitter, message us on Facebook, and like on Instagram. And if you're loving us, consider our Patreon. For as little as one dollar you get early access to every episode we do as soon as they're edited (and a dedicated feed just for you) and exclusive content that'll only ever be on Patreon. Thanks!

Next week: **50th anniversary police whistles at the ready!**

Sign on the Window is a weekly podcast that randomly selects a Bob Dylan song each week then comes together to discuss. This week is "What Good Am I?" off 1989's Oh, Mercy. 

In the episode, we talk context (4:30) and the song itself (7:00). We talk artistic worth (20:00) and look at two examples of other people asking those heavy questions Bob is posing (26:30). This is one of our favorite episodes and we hope, if you're new, or have been listening since the beginning, you'll enjoy! 

As always, full show notes at our website. You can also follow along with our weekly real-time Spotify playlist – See That My Playlist is Kept Clean – and join the conversation on Twitter, message us on Facebook, and like on Instagram. And if you're loving us, consider our Patreon. For as little as one dollar you get early access to every episode we do as soon as they're edited (and a dedicated feed just for you) and exclusive content that'll only ever be on Patreon. Thanks!

Next week: Lost time is not found again.

Two white horses carried us past the last week and into another new episode of Sign on the Window, the weekly Bob Dylan podcast that picks at random and lets it consume their very existence. This week we look at Dylan's rendition of the Blind Lemon Jefferson classic, "See That My Grave is Kept Clean" from his debut Bob Dylan. 

We talk song, we compare classic versions, we talk burial practices and rituals. 

As always, full show notes at our website. You can also follow along with our weekly real-time Spotify playlist – See That My Playlist is Kept Clean – and join the conversation on Twitter, message us on Facebook, and like on Instagram. And if you're loving us, consider our Patreon. For as little as one dollar you get early access to every episode we do as soon as they're edited (and a dedicated feed just for you) and exclusive content that'll only ever be on Patreon. Thanks!

Next week: We'll try not to turn our backs as you slowly die...

Sign on the Window is a weekly podcast where we randomly select a Bob Dylan song, sit with it for a week, and then confer about it with mics in our face. This week, because there's two hosts, it wasn't up to anyone by themselves, "Up to Me." 

We talk alternate Blood on the Tracks, compare "Tangled Up in Blue," Kelly rearranges the verses into an epic you'll need to hear, and listen to baby Daniel's cover of this song, recorded over a decade ago! (Which you can find on our Twitter, or, if you're not there, our Soundcloud.) 

As always, full show notes at our website. You can also follow along with our weekly real-time Spotify playlist – See That My Playlist is Kept Clean – and join the conversation on Twitter, message us on Facebook, and like on Instagram. And if you're loving us, consider our Patreon. For as little as one dollar you get early access to every episode we do as soon as they're edited (and a dedicated feed just for you) and exclusive content that'll only ever be on Patreon. Thanks!

Next week: Bringing cleaning supplies to the local cemetery

Sign on the Window is like that necktie and your Panama hat... it helps you look good in the face of utter destruction. Each week we listen to a random Bob Dylan song and this week, from 1976, "Black Diamond Bay." 

We talk context (5:45), the merits of traveling over staying in LA drinking a beer (12:00),the song itself (23:00, theories (30:00) and storytelling. We talk Conrad, Achebe, and Kendrick Lamar so buckle up. 

As always, full show notes at our website. You can also follow along with our weekly real-time Spotify playlist – See That My Playlist is Kept Clean – and join the conversation on Twitter, message us on Facebook, and like on Instagram. And if you're loving us, consider our Patreon. For as little as one dollar you get early access to every episode we do as soon as they're edited (and a dedicated feed just for you) and exclusive content that'll only ever be on Patreon. Thanks!

Next week: No one else could play that tune...

Sign on the Window is like that necktie and your Panama hat... it helps you look good in the face of utter destruction. Each week we listen to a random Bob Dylan song and this week, from 1976, "Black Diamond Bay." 

We talk context (5:45), the merits of traveling over staying in LA drinking a beer (12:00),the song itself (23:00, theories (30:00) and storytelling. We talk Conrad, Achebe, and Kendrick Lamar so buckle up. 

CONTEXT (5:45)

“Black Diamond Bay” was recorded at Columbia Studios in New York City on July 29, 1975 in 12 takes, then on July 30 in 5. There is a connection to Joseph Conrad, namely the 1915 novel Victory, as Ian Bell notes:

There is no hero, certainly no epic journey, least of all a spiritual rebirth. Instead, the song owes everything to Conrad’s use in Victory of doubled perspectives, physical and moral, and to the idea of fate, blind and mute, that permeates Blood on the Tracks. In ‘Black Diamond Bay’, good and evil contend; people scurry around on their plots, affairs and petty human errands; the volcano explodes regardless. The End. — Ian Bell, Time Out of Mind: The Lives of Bob Dylan

This song was played only 1 time. Or was it?!?!

Bob Dylan dot com, your home for most things Bob Dylan, says that the song was performed in Salt Lake City, Utah, on May 25, 1976, at the end of the Rolling Thunder Revue. Ian Bell mentions a 2003 collection by **Les Kokay (Songs of the Underground: A Collector’s Guide to the Rolling Thunder Revue 1975–1976)which notes the supposed performance but accepts that the claim is based on a single unsupported report of a show with no bootleg extant.

TRAVELING OR STAYING IN LA WITH A BEER? (12:00)

This song was written with the end in mind. The closing line makes it clear: there’s always another hard luck story that you’re gonna hear. Dylan told Neil Hickey in 1976:

I don’t feel that to live in this country you have to watch the TV news. You learn from talking to other people. You have to know how people feel, and you don’t get that from television news.

And in the end I never did plan to go anyway to Black Diamond Bay. As two traveled people who can conceptualize nameless, faceless people far away living lives of imagination and passion, do we relate to Dylan’s apathy?

SONG ITSELF (23:00)

Definitely a hidden gem in the Dylan catalogue, as ambitious as “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts” and “Changing of the Guards” as a stand alone fiction. It’s got this old movie kind of vibe, the “movie-spinning” as Michael Gray calls it. You can almost see this in black and white while present day schlub, drink in hand, is vividly, embarrassingly, in color.

The narrative is engaging and the chord sequences complement the mood. The level of detail is astounding as are Dylan’s casual flexes with the songs internal rhyming (“veranda” with “necktie and a;” “open” with “rope and;” “second floor” with “Ambassador;” “vous plaît” with “fly away;” “the basement blew” with “je vous aime beaucoup”).

Dylan populates this islands with memorable characters. Our main character, the woman in the Panama hat, is trying to start her life over before it’s too late. The Greek tries to kill himself, fails (?, or doesn’t), but the volcano goes off anyway. The desk clerk reassures everyone the rumblings “happen everyday.” The soldier and the tiny man, the loser and dealer. The Soviet ambassador. It just goes on!

Which makes the end of the song wallop. Daniel likened it to the end of Chinua Achebe’s masterpiece Things Fall Apart. The novel, which focuses in Okonkwo in nineteenth century Nigeria, closes with this passage (imagine the Commissioner in LA drinking a beer on some sofa):

The Commissioner went away, taking three or four of the soldiers with him. In the many years in which he had toiled to bring civilization to different parts of Africa he had learned a number of things. One of them was that a District Commissioner must never attend to such undignified details as cutting a hanged man from the tree. Such attention would give the natives a poor opinion of him. In the book which he planned to write he would stress that point. As he walked back to the court he thought about that book. Every day brought him some new material. The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger. — Chinua Achiebe, Things Fall Apart

The irony that we just read an entire book on a man who will be reduced to a paragraph resonated. All those hard luck stories that you’re gonna hear are worthy, even if we concede that we don’t have the capacity to hear them all. Achiebe, and Dylan, challenges our perception and empathy for others.

THE EPISODE’S BOOKLET & PLAYLIST

RECOMMENDATIONS

Kelly “discovered” the back catalog of Kendrick Lamar. ‘Bout time. Daniel played Great Collapse Neither Washington Nor Moscow… Again (and The Redskins Neither Washington Nor Moscow… from 1986.

ENDINGS

Kelly guessed #402. “Let’s Stick Together.” Would be our first from Down in the Groove. It’s #451. The classic "Up to Me," which originally premiered on 1985’s Biograph.

Next week: No one else could play that tune...

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This is Sign on the Window. We listen to a random Bob Dylan song every week and talk about it, among other things. This week was off 1983's Infidels, "License to Kill." 

We talk going to the moon! We talk what it would cost to sell your body like you would a used car! We talk CRISPR! We just have a good time here, and you will too. 

As always, full show notes at our website. You can also follow along with our weekly real-time Spotify playlist – See That My Playlist is Kept Clean – and join the conversation on Twitter, message us on Facebook, and like on Instagram. And if you're loving us, consider our Patreon. For as little as one dollar you get early access to every episode we do as soon as they're edited (and a dedicated feed just for you) and exclusive content that'll only ever be on Patreon. Thanks!

Next week: Another hard-luck story that you're gonna hear