Reading Chroniclies Volume One

[manho]

- "I killed Tin Pan Alley." -Bob Dylan, 1985 -


yet again he's talking subconsciously about the beatles. lennon killed tin pan alley when he refused to release 'how do you do it' as a follow up to 'love me do' and insisted on releasing only original songs. turned out great for them cos they were great. unfortunately every useless cunt in the world copied him.

[owen]

lennon - "we wanted to be the next goffin and king"

dylan started out wanting to write songs with meaning in them. the tin pan alley type melodies didnt fit with those kind of lyrics.

lennon/mccartney concentrated on the music. i think theres just about everything from 55-63 in there - buddy holly, elvis, tin pan alley, everly brothers, chuck, little richard. they also came up with great lines.

dylan knew he was hitting a musical dead end after writing "ballad in plain D"

[manho]

- dylan knew he was hitting a musical dead end after writing "ballad of plain D" -

not only a musical dead end but also a lyrical one. the folk influence finished with that song. after that it was only blues. who knows, maybe subconsciously that's what dylan was saying in that song. ballad in plain d(eath).

[Poke]

The Beatles were to Tin Pan Alley as Jesus was to OT Law. They came not to do away with Tin Pan Alley, but to fulfill its promises.

[manho]

2.

Three or four pages further up that dusty old road we find Dylan just about to break through to a regular gig at the Gaslight and sleeping on sofas in the Village. He's listening to the radio:

"I moved the dial up and down the line and Roy Orbison's voice came blasting out of the small speakers... Orbison... transcended all the genres... no pollywog and no fledging juvenile... There wasn't anything on the radio like him... next to Roy the playlist was strictly dullsville... gutless and flabby.

Well, Dylan discovers Orbison. Bit late but give the guy a break, he's trying to hate pop music and break into the funky folk scene. The rest was "gutless and flabby."? Let's take a look at some of those flabby guys. Same time Orbison was charting there was Sam Cooke singing Cupid. And there was Runaround Sue and The Wanderer. And there was the Crystals with He's a Rebel. Oh, and remember Be My Baby? And "Will you love me tomorrow"? Gary Bonds, Quarter to Three? Runaway, Del Shannon? Hit the Road Jack, Ray Charles?

Some Flab.

Oh, and he's reading books:

"There was a book by Sigmund Freud, the king of the subconscious... I was thumbing through it once when Ray came in, saw the book and said, 'The top guys in that field work for ad agencies. They deal in air.' I put the book back and never picked it up again."

Yeah right, Ray from the Village says Freud sucks so Dylan spends the rest of his life trusting krystal magyck kunts, white witches, tarot twats, bug eyed goons from the planet Ikea.

Freud could have helped Dylan out, too. Check out these phrases:

"Robert E Lee had grown up without a father. Lee had made something of himself, nevertheless"

"... how to deliver a baby, how to perform an apendectomy in the bedroom. The stuff could give you real hot dreams."

But I guess Freud was just another pollywog, right?

Cracking the code

Dylan gives a friendly nod to Bobby Vee and Rick Nelson so I'm guessing that every person he mentions in a positive light had absolutely no influence on him whatsoever. The guys he completely ignores he was ripping off.

Ray Charles, Unchain My Heart (1962):
www.sendspace.com/file/fqlpno

Photos: Freud's couch. The Ronettes.

[owen]

the clancy brothers were at the height of their fame in America in 62

[dino]

yeah but the ronettes were another "kind" of fame -

[owen]

yeah i know, but dont get me wrong. i wasnt comparing them. i was giving another example.

the clancys would have been played on the radio quite a bit then. bob was listening intently to them. patriot game, brennan on the moor, and parting glass were all lifted. he also did roisin the bow and banks of the royal canal on basement tapes. and eileen aroon of course..

[manho]

owen makes a good point which i didn't quite understand at first. dylan trashes the charts but even groups he admired (read, ripped off) were having hits so the popular music scene was pretty good all round. there was blues, jazz, folk as well as the classic brill building stuff.

were the clancey's records selling that well, though?

[owen]

well, thats what i wasnt too sure about. im only going from what i hear, which is that they were hugely popular in America. wiki supports this view:

"The Big Time
On March 12, 1961, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem performed for 14 groundbreaking minutes in front of a televised audience of 80 million people on The Ed Sullivan Show. The televised performance instantly attracted the attention of John Hammond of Columbia Records. The guys were offered a five year contract with an advance of $100,000, a huge sum in 1961. For their first album with Columbia, the now nationwide stars in the Clancy brothers and Tommy Makem enlisted Pete Seeger as backup banjo player for the live album A Spontaneous Performance Recording It included songs that would soon become classics, such as "Brennan on the Moor," "Jug of Punch," "Reilly's Daughter," "Finnegan's Wake," "Haul Away Joe," "Roddy McCorley," "Portlairge" and "Moonshiner." The album was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1961.

By the end of 1961, they had released two more albums, one final one with Tradition Records, and another with Columbia, Hearty and Hellish: A Live Nightclub Performance, and they were playing Carnegie Hall. Additionally, they were making appearances on every major radio and television talkshow in America.

"The 1960s continued to be a successful decade with the release of approximately two albums per year, all which sold millions of copies. They continued to peak with television appearances in front of President John F. Kennedy in 1963."

[manho]

[dino]

like this?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=htBR3imbFfI

[owen]

nice find.

but i cant find any clancy brothers hit singles in the charts. im thinking they were similar to the kingston trio:

"At one point in the early 1960s The Kingston Trio had four albums at the same time among the Top 10 selling albums, a record unmatched for nearly 40 years. In spite of this, they had a relatively small number of hit singles."

[david]

The Clancys weren't even half as popular as the Kingston Trio. The Kingstons had a massive hit with Tom Dooley. The Clancys were big in the niche market of Irish Americans, but they never came close to cracking the singles chart.

[manho]

from the cashbox top 50, october 1961:

1 RUNAROUND SUE - Dion
3 HIT THE ROAD JACK - Ray Charles
6 CRYING - Roy Orbison
8 YA YA - Lee Dorsey
10 I LOVE HOW YOU LOVE ME - Paris Sisters
12 PLEASE MR. POSTMAN - Marvelettes
17 SWEETS FOR MY SWEET - Drifters
19 LITTLE SISTER - Elvis Presley
20 TOWER OF STRENGTH - Gene McDaniels
24 YOU MUST HAVE BEEN A BEAUTIFUL BABY - Bobby Darin
26 STICK SHIFT - Duals
30 TAKE FIVE - Dave Brubeck Quartet
31 DON’T BLAME ME - Everly Brothers
32 BIG JOHN - Shirelles
36 MOON RIVER - Jerry Butler
38 SO LONG BABY - Del Shannon
40 WHAT A PARTY - Fats Domino
41 IT’S GONNA WORK OUT FINE - Ike & Tina Turner
46 CRAZY - Patsy Cline
49 (Marie’s The Name) HIS LATEST FLAME - Elvis Presley
50 SEPTEMBER IN THE RAIN - Dinah Washington

[manho]

the duals, stick shift:
www.sendspace.com/file/f9ewto

[manho]

one of the great myths of pop music lore is that the beatles came along to save us from a culture which was in serious decline.

truth is it was never healthier.

truth is boby had cloth ears.

[david]

A few crap songs on the list, but there always is, and at least 15 classics. It was all part of the Pete Seeger-ish snob attitude toward mainstream pop culture and commercial success.

[cripes]

Marie's The Name was the B side of Little Sister. I guess they could chart separately.

[dino]

yep, that chart is the proof that pop music was better than ever