PoMS Part 1:
Bob Dylan’s beautiful and amply-illusrated book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, published in 2022, is the focus of the September meeting of the Bob Dylan Book Club (September 8th, 2024, 2 pm Eastern (US), with the Zoom link to be sent out that morning). Six of us (see Discussion Leaders below) have “adopted” chapters, selected from the book’s 66 chapters, and we will each lead a porton of the discussion. If we don’t get to everything, we will also post thoughts to the Book Impressions part of the Member Pages…if we don’t get to all of your ideas, please do the same. (This was so successful, we are having a PoMS Part 2 for our October meeting.)
Discussion Leaders:
Henry Bernstein—Truckin'
Christopher Vanni—Beyond the Sea
Brain Walsh—El Paso
Jim Salvucci—Saturday Night at the Movies
Daniel Singer—Waste Deep in the Big Muddy
Peter White—Volare
An audio version is available (audible.com) and the readers, including Bob Dylan, are terrific! See the list above.
Click HERE for introductions to our discussion leaders with links to their work and contributions, for instance, you’ll find links to Henry Bernstein’s important Dylan podcast, “Songs of Experience”. AND you’ll find links to his mash-ups of Bob Dylan and Taylor Swift songs. You’ll also find links to Christopher Vanni’s writings on Dylan and Gene Clark, as well as take his Bob Dylan Quiz, a profile of the award-winning career of Cantor Daniel Singer and information on Brian Walsh’s fascination with Bob Dylan, Jim Salvucci’s many contributions, nd Peter White’s Annual Bob Dylan Party, as well as books on Trees and Wildflowers (“Purple Clover, Queen Anne’s Lace”, not to mention, the “Birdies Were Flying from Tree to Tree”).
Peter’s Overview of PoMS
Like Theme Time Radio, this book conveys a love of song and a delight in exploring the lives of the musicians and the historical and cultural contexts from which the songs emerged. Though there are 66 songs (thus, 66 chapters), averaging just over 5 pages (maximum 8 pages, minimum 2 pages), the universe that Dylan presents to us is much bigger than these 66—many other songs, many other composers, many other instrumentalists, many other vocalists, and many other cultural or historical figures come up in each chapter. I couldn’t find an exact count on Google, in terms of the number of people and songs that make an appearance, but one site said “hundreds to thousands”, by which the author, I am sure, meant “exactly” hundreds to thousands. It’s like Desolation Row which is populated with way more people than there are lines in the song!
Though Dylan is delighted by the diversity of personalities he covers, it’s not a story of heroes, per se, but rather of human beings struggling to create and to find an audience. And occasionally producing a masterpiece.
A second distinctive feature is that, like Dylan’s Nobel Banquet and Acceptance Speeches, PoMS stresses that performance (and let’s count studio recordings as a kind of performance) combines lyrics, music (melody and harmony), and arrangement (structure, key, tempo, instrumentation. voicing). How a song “works” comes from all three things, working together (see our book selection Listening to Bob Dylan: Experiencing and Re-Experiencing Dylan's Music by Larry Starr). OK, that’s true and I love Dylan’s innovative and rich musicality, but I am beginning to think Mr. Dylan protests too much when he steers us away from appreciationg the lyrics on the page alone. His lyrics are outstanding, the poetry therein invites us in to discover our own meanings, like the best poetry anywhere. “To dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free”, indeed. He produced the project Mondo Scripto which explores words-on-a-page.
As for the book’s title: “Modern” means mostly the music that predates and influences Bob Dylan and the other post-rockability giants of song writing (for example, Leonard Cohen, Joanie Mitchell, Tom Waits). These songs begin with the emergence of popular song, fueled by the invention of recording devices and radio. The earliest recording is Dave Macon’s Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy from 1924 but several songs date to the 1800s as compositions. The most recent recording is Alvin Youngblood’s recording of the Stephen Foster song, Nelly Was a Lady from 2004, but, ironically, that is likely the oldest song in terms of composition—Stephen Foster lived from 1826 to 1864. Sixty percent of the songs are from the early 1960s or earlier. The most recent song, in terms of date of release is Warren Zevon’s Dirty Life and Times (2003).
Laura Tenschert, the host of Defnitely Dylan, has made an interesting point about the “Modern” of the title, namely that Dylan is primarily seeking to distinguish the emergence of modern song from its roots in traditional song (Laura Tenscher, Patreon meeting devoted to PoMS), a transition that Dylan participated in and fueled.
As for geography, we are in America, almost entirely (Europe otherwise), and we are English speaking, though several chapters, particularly Volare, touches on songs that are in a language you don’t understand and Dylan makes a list of songs based on tunes from other countries (see the chapter My Prayer). Of course, the America of popular song is a melting pot, with genres (bluegrass, soul, rhythm and blues, rockabilly, classic country, old time, folk, piano bar, jazz, pop) influencing one another, making categories hard to defend. Dylan rants about categorization of music at several points. It is, of course, also America with its deep scar of slavery and a legacy of injustice that persists today and the mistreatment and genocide of Native Americans despite our country’s emphasis on freedom, equality, opportunity, and justice.
When I first read The Philosophy of Modern Song, I underlined my favorite quotes chapter by chapter in order to explore Dylan’s defintion of philosophy and to see if we could deduce his advice on song writing: Peter’s Favorite Quotes from PoMS.
During the September meeting, Book Club Member Craig Jamieson pointed out that the song Volare was inspired by a painting by Marc Chagall (below!)
PLAYLISTS
You should be able to find playlists for the songs in PoMS:
YouTube and Spotify!
Recent papers by Graley Herren
Professor Herren has written a series of deep analyses of chapters and themes in PoMS, HERE.
—Peter White (September 2024)
When The Philosophy of Modern Song (PoMS) was published, the discussion quickly exploded in many directions. Who are those three attractive people on the cover, photographed in 1957? [Answer: we know one was Little Richard (the artist referenced by Dylan’s famous ambiton, as stated in his senior yearbook at Hibbing High School (“To join Little Richard”) and the other two are Alis Lesley (billed as the female Elvis Presley), and Eddie Cochran who died in a car accident in England in 1960 while on tour with Gene Vincent.] What is the significance of Doc Pomus, to whom the book is dedicated (but see page 151 in the chapter on Old Violin—while on that chapter, check out the photograph of Albert Einstein playing the violin (is it electric?)). Does Dylan really frequent Dunkin’ Donuts (see “Special Thanks”)? Why these 66 songs?—they aren’t necessarily his favorites, they aren’t the “best of”, and they aren’t the most influential (one gets the sense he could have written the book on ANY 66 songs). What does Dylan mean by “modern” and “philosophy”? What hidden gems and meanings can we discover in the “nearly 150” photographs, presented in the book’s pages? Why aren’t more women artists represented and is the author misogynist (see links below)? What about the “autopen” controversy (link1, link2)? How did Nobelist Bob Dylan find a way to work Alvin and the Chipmunks and Dogs Playing Poker into the text (see pages 283, 299)? Speaking of humor, what is the line between truth and humor, which, as Dylan points out, includes an element of deception?
And On and On! Is this a special characteristic of Bob Dylan—that he is so unique, so proudly different in how he sees things, so far ranging in his imagination, so serious in his intentionality, that all of his works just explode into a whole series of subjects, connections, interpretations, lists, significances, meanings, and mysteries.
The book demands our attention from the cover onward. And the book got lots of attention, so Google on every topic you can think of. There are a zillion (by which I mean “exactly” a zillion) reviews, commentaries, and podcasts on PoMS. I found it hard to put the book down, like a mystery story. Below, I’ll give some thoughts about what this book is, but we all know now,—the book tells us—that “art is a disagreement”, so you may not agree with anything I write, so, to borrow another phrase from the book, “have at it book clubbers!”
Two Types of Writing: Imaginative and Factual
In addition to the interworkings of lyrics, music, and arrangement, another clue to the philosophy promised by the title is embedded in the way the book is written.
The individual chapters (songs) of PoMS include two types of writing: first, a subjective riff in which the author describes the setting—emotional and experiential—that gave rise to, or could have given rise to, the song and 2) a presentation of some facts about the song, songwriters, and performers (a descriptive history), sometimes with additional interpretation. In the first sort of writing, Dylan let’s his imagination run. These entries are written in the first or second person (even when writing to “you”, he’s there, he is the voice talking to the performer or writer of the song). Typographically they are almost always set apart in that there is no identation at the start of the paragraphs the way there is for the second (more facutal) kind of writing. For instance, the writer of the song I’ve Got a Woman (she is “way across town”) is stuck in traffic with a long drive ahead as he ponders his relationship. These riffs aren’t superficial, though, they explore a variety of emotions and ambivalances. Simon & Schuster called these “dream-like riffs” and reviews have called them “poetic”. In the audio version, this section is often read by Mr. Dylan himself. The more factual sections of the chapters (some chapters have just one of these two types of writing, many have both) tells us about where and when the song was recorded, how it did on the charts, the fate of the songwriter or performer.
DIGRESSION: Check out Rebecca Slaman’s PhilosopHER of Modern Song. Not to be missed! An appropriate and wonderful response to Dylan’s approach in this book.
There is something about these two forms of writing—one more subjective and imagintative and one more objective and factual—that gives us a larger perspective on what Dylan is accomplishing here: there is something namelss and unknowable that resides in the heart of performer and there is something that engages the mind and teases meaning. Sounds like Dylan in general!
But it also is telling us experience and understanding both play a roll, that the song emerges from experience but also makes us think and therein is the philosophy. Experiential but not biographical; biography doesn’t help because the song also wants to find a home in the hearts and minds of all of us. Dylan tells us that knowing biography will not help us with the meaning of a song. He writes in the chapter on Pump It Up: “Knowing a singer’s life story doesn’t particularly help your understanding of a song…It’s what a song makes you feel about your own life that’s important.” In the chapter on Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, Dylan writes: “Like any other piece of art, songs are not seeking to be understood. Art can be appreciated or interpreted but there is seldom anything to understand. Whether it’s Dogs Playing Poker or Mona Lisa’s smile, you gain nothing from understanding it.”
Dylan does not write a logical, closely argued analysis, an exposition, or treatise. Rather, the philosophy of song requires a veil of poetic imagery.
Our purpose will be to discuss these questions:
—Why did we pick these chapters?
—What were our reactions?
—What did we learn and what confused us?
—What did we find in these chapters that gives us a sense of Dylan’s philosophy of song and what advice does he give on song writing—and what makes a song “work” to use his phrasing from the last line of the opening chapter.