To thine own self be true

was In Memoriam, a powerful elegy published in 1850 by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, that took 17 years to write after his close Oxford friend Arthur Henry Hallam’s young death. Made up of 133 shorter elegies, this amazing classic is easily the longest and most dedicated poem on the immortality of friendship and the presence of a dead individual’s spirit in a living survivor’s life. I own the 1897 version with beautiful, reflective illustrations by Henry Fenn which are pretty much on each page–a fantastic and successful effort to visualize a literary work.

he’s dead.”

Trump’s absurd rants about America’s greatest war hero John McCain.

(Tommy Banks at the piano, white-haired, on the centre left; me at the mike in white shirt standing on centre right; the late Bob Miller on acoustic bass beside me–his wife Dorie taught with me at J. Percy Page)

Friday, Feb. 21, 1997 at Harry Ainlay School. What an honor! Mr. Banks and I went through each poem I was going to read ahead of time and, with his customary consummate brilliance, he quickly made notes for an effective arrangement for each one. The best musical backing any poet could ever want. (I still have the tape.)

the Alberta legal system flunks for not calling the 2017 Edmonton terrorist who mowed people down with his vehicle with a terrorist flag in the back a terrorist. Words do matter; enough pussyfooting with these dangerous people who want to kill our innocent civilians. Common sense and facts are badly needed in this case.

Enough already.
When a whale has 88 pounds of calcified trash found in its gut, you gotta think that plastics need to be more seriously restricted.

crazy. Kids that age don’t need that kind of distraction from school and work. (Plus junior-highers would likely want to try weed if that happened. Where would the exploitation of Canadian kids end?)

No, selling out kids all over again (as they were already with e-media technology in schools) is dumb x 2. An irresponsible selling out of more generations to come in the name of biz and government simply lusting after money while screwing kids’ health is insane and sheer greed.

Supposedly 10,000 more to be filled, but that number may be low, don’tcha think?

started telling me how she was missing church in order to make coffee. Brought to mind the many Sundays I experienced in the 1950s and early ’60s back in Winnipeg when not much was shakin’ on Sundays. Many people then still went to church, major stores were closed, and Sundays were largely “a day of rest” for most of the populace. I would seldom see any friends those days. The only things happening were the Winnipeg Warriors hockey games and maybe the occasional concert. On the tube, families and kids watched Walt Disney around 5 or 6 pm and the Ed Sullivan variety show brightened up Sunday evenings (where so many of my generation first saw Elvis and The Beatles play live).

But once I got into senior high (1964), that began to change with my new Silver Heights friends; any day was eligible for socializing freely. I can still remember being surprised that a nearby church windowed basement had a dance going on in the evening with The Deverons (Burton Cummings’ original band); a church teen group put it on. When I started working Sundays periodically in 1967, it really came home that people had always worked Sundays to keep essential services like hospitals and buses running to accommodate real needs, Later when I came to Edmonton in 1968 and 1970, it was really still Deadsville here on Sundays–nothing open, nothing on except for the Klondike Days promenade during which the downtown streets were closed off.

The woman in the coffee shop yesterday reminded me of how Sundays had changed over the decades and how our country lost a lot of peace and quietness as it turned Sunday more into just another busy day full of possible activities. In our family and home, Sunday usually remains a family day with visiting and celebrating par for the course. Yesterday my daughter and her companion came over for a delivered Chinese food repast on St. Patrick’s Day. I spent the afternoon before that attending an Edmonton Stroll of Poets AGM where I sold some copies of my new book, reconnected and socialized with poet-friends, and even read one 1990 poem that went over well with the best possible audience for poetry in town. No, none of the latter would have been typical or possible in those olde Sundays so long ago.

The Nobel Prize winning poet earned many fans back in the folk era which was ending about 1966-67. There were, of course, all the famous early songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind”and “The Times They Are-A-Changing”. Many of those songs were protest songs and then he began to write personal songs like those on Another Side of Bob Dylan, followed by “Mr. Tambourine Man” (made into a top 40 hit by The Byrds) and top 40 songs such as “Like a Rolling Stone” (which remains his biggest radio hit). With these ‘plugged in’ songs, he was credited, single-handedly, with launching the whole folk-rock era.

Arguably, this high period was based on three significant best-selling albums in a row: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and the double album Blonde on Blonde. The bootleg 6 disc box with illustrated book, pictured above, is a treasure trove of Dylan process in making these three albums. It shows how the many songs evolved through many takes; the numbers featured here range from one to 20 takes (the latter of “Like a Rolling Stone”, certainly the centerpiece of this 3-LP core from this time period).

Also included are other tunes that perished quickly (“You Don’t Have to Do That”, “California”, “Sitting on a Barbed-Wire Fence”, “Medicine Sunday”, “Jet Pilot”, “I Wanna Be Your Lover”, and “Lunatic Princess”or that were recorded by others such as “If You Gotta Go, Go Now–Manfred Mann). Various versions of his top 40 songs “Positively 4th Street”,”Can You Please Crawl out Your Window”, “I Want You”, “Just like a Woman”, and “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35” also reveal his hit-making formula of the day.

There are many outstanding treats here, too, with the alternate versions of the long songs “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” and “Desolation Row”. Myself, I enjoyed hearing “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry”, “Like a Rolling Stone”, “Visions of Johanna”, and “Stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again”, chugging toward their final forms on the original albums. The one take of “Rainy Day Women” is very funny and among the more delightful highlights.

BTW/the accompanying photo book called Mixing up the Medicine is a nice visual companion. Another book containing the discs has notes on each of the three albums, followed by notes for each take on the discs. All that a Dylan listener could want to make better sense of the goings-on at the rehearsals.

As a poet and musician, I appreciated these rare, unexpected glimpses into how Dylan worked in the studio at the time and how these songs went through processes with many intriguing twists and turns on their way to ‘finality’. Overall, this deluxe offering is fun, entertaining, informative, and creatively illuminating. The changes in music and lyric choices are highly instructive for poets, songwriters, musicians, and recording studio types alike. Two thumbs way up for this one, especially serious Dylan fans.