Outside Counsel

I don't trust lists generally, and lists about Bob Dylan are particularly suspect, but this one corresponds with my taste, kinda, so I am making an exception. I'll add this: Greatest Hits Vol II is my go-to for introducing people to his work.

The indispensable Sheila O'Malley on The Great Escape.

The idea that a person’s soul is uncapturable is at the heart of The Great Escape’s enduring appeal; the movie’s unfettered spirit ricochets around within its tight structure, igniting multiple storylines.

I'm still processing "A Complete Unknown", but I certainly enjoyed it. One of the things that I think was notable about it was that it seemed to lean into Dylan's relationships, and the songs that he wrote about them more than his social consciousness, and the songs that social activists thought defined his work in that period. The "protest" material is there, of course- it has to be- but the movie does a nice job of placing that material in context. As I grope towards my Unified Theory of Bob Dylan one key element for me is that he came on the scene absorbing everything, reflecting on it, then writing about it from his personal perspective. When he saw injustice he wrote about it; when the threat of nuclear annihilation was in the air he wrote about that. But he also wrote about being in love, and being heartbroken, and about being in the world. The movie does a good job of showing us that world, which puts his songs in a context that the various Dylan documentaries, good as the are, sort of miss. Pennebaker, Scorsese and the rest focus on Bob. ""A Complete Unknown", much like "I'm Not There" focus on the context that the young Dylan lived in.

A pretty good list of Sonny Rollins sides. If I were makeing this list I doubt that I'd include anything after 1960, and I'd probably mostly say that someone coming fresh to his work should start with the stuff he did as a sideman. The issue, as I've noted in the past, is twofold. First, his reputation after his first sabbatical, was largly built on live performances. Even his stauncest advocates concede that his studeo recordings often miss the magic. Second, he really never leaves room for anyone else on the stand to take a solo (except, sometimes, his nephew, trombonest Clifton Anderson).

I knew the Thruway would be closed, and my navigation app was directing past it- a moot point, because the on ramp was blocked by a marooned tractor-trailer. A short way beyond that I saw a snowplow on its side in the ditch to my left, so it was clear that Erie, Pennsylvania had been hit hard by the snowstorm the night before. My rental car was a Dodge Challenger, which has to be in the top five of terrible cars in snow, so I was fine with the idea of just taking it easy on the back roads. Routes 5 and 20 run from Erie to Buffalo, and although there were still some flakes in the air the radio updates told me that the strom had moved east, and was probably in Hamburg. I followed the traffic into Erie, and realized immediately that nothing had been plowed, and that the only path was the track the traffic that had gone before me had made. It quickly became obvious that the Challenger wasn't going to be kept under control at anything faster than 20 MPH. That was fine, because that was pretty much as fast as everyone else was moving. I proceeded a ways toward the harbor, and shortly realized that there was kind of a lot of oncoming traffic. This made things a little tricky, because any attempt to yeild some space, or to manover around the stuck tractor trailers on the right caused me to fishtail. After several miles of this I came upon a line of cars and a guy in a reflective vest directing the cars in front of me to turn around. I rolled down the window and asked what was going on, and was told that every detour out of town was blocked by stuck tractor-trailers. This was the only person I saw controlling traffic for the next several hours. I turned around, and started to look for streets with packed doen snow in order to try to find a course east. Topography became a new adventure. Every dip in the road had accumulated snow, and every rise had to be carefully negtiated because any loss of momentum risked getting stuck. I discovered this pretty quickly, but the first time I was able to rock the car out. The next time I got stuck was when a came upon a compact car with Michigan plat, traveling es spinning its wheels in the middle of the road. She wasn't going anywhere,and I wasn't until she was, so I got out and started pushing. Shortly I was joined by a third person and were were able to send the lady on her way. As we were doing this a line of cars was developing behind me, and when I tried to get underway I found that I was stuck. Because the Michigan lady was no longer blocking the way they started to go around me, but the guy that had helped me push stuck around and got me out. We pushed the Michigan lady outtwo more times and at no point did anyone with Pennsyvania plates get out of their cars to help us. The last time I said to the other guy, "I'm from Buffalo. In our culture we help people who are stuck," and he reveiled that he and his girlfriend were also from the Queen City of the Lakes. After the last time I worked my way back to a main road, and discovered several miles of parked tractor-trailers. At the end of the line was the Thruway entrance, which was full of drifting snow and the traditional stuck truck. As an additional treat this road, which turned out to be Route 20, was closed beyond that point. Come to find out there was a bridge out. I turned around and pulled into a McDonalds, where the Michigan lady and the other Buffalo people arrived shortly after me. All of this took around four hours. I dislike describing things as "surreal" but there was a definite Twilight Zone vibe about driving endlessly in a town with no exits. I had a burger and a Coke, and tried to find out what was happening on my phone. After about an hour- I'd say it was about 3:30 at this point, someone came in and said that the PA police had called the Quick-Fill nextdoor and reported the the eastbound Thruway was open. I proceeded back to the on ramp, and found that it was still blocked, so I turned around and got on the westbound Thruway for a couple of exits, got off, and got back on going east. At this point I was about 70 miles from Buffalo. There was only one eastbound land open, but I figured that once I got across the New York line things would improve. They did, for a bit, but once I was past Ripley the snow started up with a vengance, and I was back following the track at about 20 MPH. At some point I fell into line behind a plow, and continued there for the next two exits. My GPS wanted to divert me to ether 5 or 20, but the snow on the exit ramps was way to deep for me to consider venturing that way so I pressed on. It was at about this point that the rear window of my muscle car became completely obsured by snow. The snow continued, as did I moving at abuot 15 miles per hour, until I reached the downtown Buffalo exits, where there was no snow, the roads were completely dry, and I was able to return my rental. I'm no rookie. I've driven through some storms in my time, but I never experinced anything like this before. Erie Pennsylvanians, what the hell is wrong with you? Erie Pensylvania, how come you didn't shut things down the night before, instead of letting trucks block every detour out of town? Where was the traffic control? Where were the emergency bulletins?

It's hard to know why The Move never caught on in the US. I had a roommate in college who was a fan, and I enjoy the band's work to this day

Number 280 at my polling place at 10:30 this morning. Line out the door, abut a 15 minute wait. By far the largest turnout shown in my informal record- 195 in 2011 was the previous high, but that was an evening vote. I used to love Election Day, but now it seems like a grim duty.