impossible songs: I Might Redo This

impossible songs: I Might Redo This: Everyone struggles with Captain Beefheart because they expect music to behave. They also expect other people to behave at funerals, to back ...

From Here to There

Having considered a number of different things this is really all I have to say on the matter right now.

Back Home to Highway 61

Has anybody out there on the corner of some virtual Tin Pan Alley ever written a song with the title “Back home on Highway 61?” If not then why not? Just another passing thought that I’ve recorded here and will likely forget as quickly as it came to me. So ... which in the name of heaven, earth and sourdough is the better album; “Bringing it all back home” or “Highway 61 Revisited”? Never mind the rest of his output, because I’m writing this, and a simple comparison of two albums is way is easier than any other evaluation piece that’s looking across Dylan’s whole career. Also, on which album sleeve does he sport the better haircut? It was the 60s after all.

Bringing It All Back Home is transitional by design; half acoustic, half electric, Dylan testing the voltage. Highway 61 Revisited on the other hand is the album where Dylan’s zappy electric upgrade stops being a provocation and becomes a fully realised world. Highway 61 is him saying that he’s found a new language. That kind of artistic confidence matters. Blah blah.

Also the songs themselves are more expansive and mythic. “Like a Rolling Stone” alone proves that, it doesn’t just redefine Dylan, it redefines what a pop single can become; length, structure, attitude, psychological depth. But then you get “Ballad of a Thin Man,” which turns alienation into a gothic horror story, “Desolation Row,” which feels like a surrealist epic poem smuggled into a cranked up folk festival and “Tombstone Blues,” which is basically Beat poetry strapped to a freight train, (I’ve a nagging doubt that it’s an example of a song that’s not aged as well as the others) but all of these aren’t simply powerful songs. No. At the time, in some NYC/Greenwich Village kind of “La Belle Époque” they reprogramed the world of popular music.

On 61 the backing band are sharp and mean. Rowdy with a chance of screwballs. Mike Bloomfield’s guitar isn’t just accompaniment; it’s gritty and antagonistic, pushing back against Dylan’s vocals in a way that heightens the tension. The album feels like it’s constantly on the verge of flying apart, something that suits Dylan’s sneering and doomed yet still prophetic delivery perfectly.

Bringing It All Back Home is playfully brilliant, witty, and an absolutely essential listen. “Subterranean Homesick Blues” kind of invents urban rap, “Mr. Tambourine Man” is pure, floating transcendence and the acoustic side might be Dylan’s sharpest folky style writing ever. “It’s Alright Ma” a scary car crash of images and pain woven into the tortured lyrics. Structurally, it’s split in two, and you feel that split, well an LP record had two distinct sides back in the day - still does. BIABH is the sound of an artist in an early state of metamorphosis, Highway 61 Revisited is the sound of that metamorphosis thundering towards completion. Until the next album ...

Bringing It All Back Home Dylan is kicking down the door, Highway 61 Revisited is him walking into the room, setting all the old school rules of song writing on fire, and grinning broadly as they burn. That said if you value intimacy, slick wordplay, and the last gasp of the folk hero Mr Dylan, choose Bringing It All Back Home. (Big) but if it’s all about an album where Dylan becomes an icon rather than an artist, it’s Highway 61 Revisited. Och aye. It all took place a long time ago, many good people were lost on the way, so not much of this opinion matters now. Get on with your life. Work on Maggie's Farm.

LIFE + One

Life is brutal*. Man is a wonderful but brutal creation. What we create is often brutal. How we act is often brutal. Thankfully not always. There are many sides to the shapes of the things that make us who we are. 

People may find beauty in brutalism as a design statement. But nobody wants to live within a brutal regime - unless you're the ruler or have some powerful role in the regime. Then you're a brute. It's a strange world and brutal remains a strange word. 

Brutal.

Adjective -

Extremely ruthless or cruel.

Crude or unfeeling in manner or speach.

Harsh; unrelenting.

Like life.

*Photo by TB, Kraków, Poland.

Note to Self

Disposable Cities

Bored of Peace?

Just saw the wonderful and inspiring logo that goes with the newly launched "Board of Peace". The USA has set this up under the direction of some guy called Donald Tr*mp. Never heard of him. This marvellous piece/peace of design deserves to be shared widely. No expense has been spared in the race to the bottom. Also the golden map of the USA is certainly doing a lot of heavy lifting here and leaves the viewer in no doubt who's bully boy tactics are running wild here. Maybe next time they launch whatever vanity project they plan, they'll employ a decent designer. By the way I can't see Hawaii anywhere on the map. That's what a Poundland NATO gets you.

Street Art

Picked this report up the other day from a guerrilla art website I happened upon - not sure quite what to make of it. 

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"Edinburgh street art in the raw: Some great colour choices and brave use of positional composition here and of course a well articulated final message for all the pedestrians to enjoy up close. It's a good example of elongated and slightly distorted Golden Ratio use. Something rarely seen in these parts. Obviously the work of somebody who knows their stuff. Love the angled cone arrangement and how it leads onwards and up to such a simple punchline in the sign. It fits in well with it's surroundings too, without looking peculiar or absurd at all. Nice to see. Some decent sniffing around too for Wagwell the friendly art hound. Now we're off to Dune now for a hot recovery Capa and a slice. Chin chin."

Funk & Wagwell - 2026.

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GSA and the Jealous Gods

Postcards from the edge: The burning down of a temple of modern academia twice in a row cannot be an accident. It can only be the act of a jealous or incompetent god.

By the way the following words are not mine.

"Strange anniversary (somewhere around) today. It was a year ago today that I was told that I had been fired for advising the Parliamentary Committee that Muriel Gray and the other Glasgow School of Art attendees were lying to them about their own failures that led to the loss of the Mack. Also in my letter of dismissal they mentioned that I had told the press that the school had lied about the cause and spread of the first fire and that they had misappropriated charitable donations meant for rebuilding the Mack towards the buying of another building."

"What is funny about the whole episode was that in the letter of dismissal they did not claim that I was wrong. What I had evidently done wrong was to tell the truth about how corrupt and incompetent they were. What was sad about it was that I had to be got rid of before Muriel Gray came back to retake her post after her second period of hiding from her duties since the fires. So I was fired in the middle of term, in the middle of teaching my bespoke course, which negatively impacted on the education of around 250 kids."

"Move forward a year and honest and loyal staff of considerable tenure are still being hunted down by senior management and fired for mentioning their misdeeds. Senior staff are still leaving (two department heads in the last two months). However, strangely all those responsible for the disasters and the fallout, including Muriel Gray, still hang on for some reason. And we have the longest fire investigation in history still ongoing, with no information available on the outcome or its timing, while at the same time all the participants who can do so, are presently preparing to sue."

"Against this murky backdrop, the insurance money will surface and a Mack-like building will be rebuilt. However it won't be our Mack. With their vile hubris and their patent negligence, they let it go up in smoke, along with their parties inside the construction site, their squandering of resources on trips abroad, their pretend research (nothing authoritative was ever written), their silly redesign trifles and their attempts to subjugate the Mack to their will. And so it is gone and the reputation of the institution is sullied."

"So why are they responsible? They were wandering in and out of the building. They were using a vulnerable historic building when it was a building site. They signed up to a fire plan that relied upon a single watchman finding a fire in a void before it got out of control, in a historic building with ten levels within it. They had no sprinklers working in either of the two fires in 2014 and 2018. They should have put in sprinklers ten years before they did, when they were told to do it."

"They said they couldn't do it because they didn't have the money, while paying for the over-budget Reid Building monstrosity, and subsequently they never got round to doing it until it was too late. And then to add insult to injury, after the first fire and half way through the rebuilding project, the GSA Board decided to instruct the ripping out of the operable but unfinished sprinklers. And then they lied about it. Those sprinklers would have isolated and doused the fire and would have saved the building."

"Perhaps, after all, the Mack just died of shame."

- Professor Gordon Gibb (first posted 2021)

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Vitrified Demon

A demon in glass. 

Perhaps he has a name.

 Perhaps he is aware, alive and listening.

 In the glass. 

In the glass prison. 

Five hundred years. 

Caught in glass after an exorcism.

Vitrified 

He listens ...

-:-

Don't break the glass. 

You may be first. 

You will be last.

What fate do demons deserve?

I can't say.

Mirror Talk

Driving me backwards: I may or may not enjoy a day out or even this day out in May provided I can get my diary fixed and my forward planning head on. I might just sleep late and not bother at all. Slippy performance expected. Been there and done it. Bring a picnic. It might rain. It could be busy. Things can happen. I got lost once ... but I made it.  Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

All Just Cosmic Soup

Another chance to say the obvious. So what.

I heard someone on Instagram talking about artists who don’t fit. Bands that won’t sit still inside a genre. They slide past the names we give things. That sounded right. Most artists would choose that, if they could. To float. To stay loose. To drift in the cosmic soup.

So what is a genre? It’s a way of sorting things. Music. Books. Sounds. It’s a box with a label on it. Some artists don’t belong in any box except their own. Zappa. Beefheart. The Velvet Underground. The Fall. Primus. Tool. The Cure. You can argue with that. I won’t stop you. This is only how it looks to me.

Do genres matter? They still do. But not the way they used to. They matter as much as you want them to. Enough for a pub argument. Enough for a look. Enough to feel right for a night.

Genres are useful. They’re a shared code. A language everyone half understands. Artists. Listeners. Shops. Anyone who’s worked behind a record counter knows this. It keeps things moving.

They set expectations. You hear “jazz” or “metal” or “folk” and you brace yourself. You expect a sound. A mood. A posture. It helps you step inside quickly. Or walk away just as fast. "Free jazz is rubbish. Dad rock is hopeless. Boy bands are beyond saving". You know where your bias comes from. Or you think you do. Try to exercise your self awareness muscles, just a little.

They carry history. Blues from hard lives and a broken gospel. Punk from anger and refusal. Country from fields, roads, and loss. You get a shortcut to why the music sounds the way it does. What it’s pushing against. What it’s holding onto. Sometimes that shortcut lies to you. Sometimes it doesn’t.

They build tribes. People don’t just listen. They commit. Scenes form. Clothes. Haircuts. Attitudes. Tattoos. T-shirts. Obsession. The kind that frightens people who don’t feel it.

There’s the practical side too. Playlists. Radio slots. Festivals. Shops. Marketing. It all needs labels. Even when the labels don’t quite fit.

But genres fail too. Modern music is scattered. Fractured. Often tired. Bedrooms replace studios. Experiments pile up. AI makes noise without any blood in it. Everything runs through its lifespan and fades.

The lines blur. Rap meets rock. Folk meets electronics. Jazz meets hip-hop. The old names start to wobble. They feel thin. Outdated.

Now machines sort music by feeling in playlists. They do the heavy lifting for you. By use. Chill. Focus. Workout. Sad. It’s less about where music came from and more about what it’s for. Emotion as product. Convenience as king.

Artists borrow from everywhere now. Traditions cross oceans. A single label can’t hold all that weight. Some people care about that. Some don’t.

Some artists reject genres on purpose. They make a point of it. They see it as freedom. Or identity. Or importance. Often they still fit just fine. Flesh and bone wrapped in ego.

Do genres help us understand what any of this means? Probably. I don’t have much more to say on that right now.

They try to explain the hidden language. The intention. The tradition. The rebellion. How we ended up here, awkward and loud and still listening.

So kick out the jams - if you can.

That’s enough for now

January 2nd

I stood looking into the same old void that always waits after the first rumblings of a new year. It was the second of January. We agreed it was time to take the Christmas things down. We said we would do it carefully. Without panic. Without pain. When the urge comes, it is best to act. Waiting never improves it.

The great season of excess and indulgence had passed. It had been loud and soft at the same time. Full and empty. Meaningful and meaningless in equal measure. It showed, perfectly, how lost we are, though not in any new way. There is no going back from it. So we buried it where it belonged. It wasn’t a bad Christmas. It was ordinary. A fair measure of the familiar things our small world always manages to produce.

With the right frame of mind, the hard work does not feel hard. We treated it like a task worth doing well. The lifting. The folding. The careful removal of tinsel and ornaments. Outside, the tide came in and erased our tracks and foot prints. The pale winter sun sat low and tried its best. It almost warmed us. Almost was just enough.

We breathed in, slowly.

We sang a Joan Baez organising song, softly and without irony.

We stopped and thought about things, then let them go.

I climbed a step ladder and felt better, in every sense.

We exchanged observations that did not need answers.

We untangled the cables. We did it patiently.

We breathed out longer than we breathed in.

We noticed there was less to pack away than last year and felt a quiet victory in that.

We freed the real tree from its stand and carried it back to the real garden, into the real cold. Everything felt unusually solid and true. As if the world, for once, was not pretending.

We spread brandy butter on baked things and ate them without ceremony.

I ate the blue cheese, though it had gone a little too far.

I used the dustpan instead of the hoover. 

Silence mattered.

I wore plimsolls.

We kept the room calm. We kept ourselves calm.

When the boxes were full of wires and gnomes, paper and stars, baubles and switches, we sealed them and sent them away to wherever such things wait. They will not return until around the thirteenth of December, 2026. I thought that sounded like a long time. I thought, briefly, that I might join them there.