"Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)"

"I like to do just like the rest,I like my sugar sweet
But guarding fumes and making haste
It ain’t my cup of meat"Here we have one of the more cryptic lines from one of his more cryptic songs. It starts with a pretty simple statement regarding peer pressure and the herd mentality he so often scorns in his other songs. However, here, the common social agreement comes in the form of enjoying sugar only when it's sweet. Of course, that it the only way sugar ever comes... it's a sweetener after all. In essence, the line suggests that he'll go with the flow when there is no alternative. Perhaps, this is the only time he's willing to go with the masses. Who is this speaker though? It really doesn't seem fair to equate the "I" of the song with Dylan himself. First person fictional narratives weren't new in his repertoire when he wrote this, but during the sessions for the Basement Tapes and then through the mid-1970s they became much more common.

It's clear we need to figure out who this person is, but the answer to that question isn't nearly as clear as the question itself. He seems to be a member (maybe the storyteller) of a small group who are collectively awaiting the arrival of this Quinn person. This is not unlike Vladimir & Estragon in Waiting for Godot. We have a group anxious to see the arrival of some sort of leader/savior, but it's quite possible that this person will never actually arrive.

The Mighty Quinn's deferred arrival seems clear in the following line as our speaker derides the practice of making haste, as if to imply the people can't rush Quinn's arrival; he will come when he comes. Here he reassures the group as if they are getting antsy and possibly even starting to doubt. We have a speaker maintaining and even reinforcing his faith in the face of the non-believing masses. Here he breaks with the very masses he seems to side with in the previous line which again suggests that he isn't as willing accept the idea Quinn may never get here. Just like Vladimir and Estragon, he holds tight to the dream. Unlike them, though, his dream is more ambiguous. Whether or not Quinn will actually ever arrive isn't quite as clear. In typical Dylan fashion, the meaning shifts from listener to listener and even from listen to listen for the same listener.

And finally, we get to the humor. After the claims about haste, he explains that making it ain't his "cup of meat." On the surface, this seems like a word choice designed solely to meet the rhyme scheme, yet there may be more to it. While measuring meat by the cupful isn't very common, perhaps it's a standard unit of measure in the community of Quinn followers. This doesn't seem like a useful standard though, because different meats demand different weights to equal a cup. Then again, when the more common "cup of tea" claim is made, it's not weight that's being discussed, but rather personal preference. It's not the speaker's preference to rush, just like he suggests Quinn also recommends taking it slowly. For instance, once he gets there, everyone will want to "doze" or rest. We see the speaker really giving the same advice as Quinn will give. The irony is that he has arrived at the message of Quinn without Quinn. This ultimately leads to a decentered and deconstructed messiah, and if they can arrive at his teachings without him, we see that the savior isn't needed. "Doing like the rest" is presented then as a bad policy since the real meaning can be found within the individual. A sort of Ralph Waldo Emerson meets Dorothy Gale meets Tommy Smothers. When you go looking for your weird, acid induced cup of meat, you won't have to look any further than your own back yard.

"Idiot Wind"

"We're idiots babe, It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves"We chose this line next, particularly because there is no penis joke to be made, & they'd been coming pretty fast & think (oh... I guess, there's a little double-entendre there). None-the-less, this song is the 4th track on his mid-'70's masterpiece. It starts off as a kiss off to a woman, but ends with these lines. We he shifts from "You're" to "we're" he is suddenly able to include himself and maybe everyone else in the song. Ten years earlier, his all-inclusiveness would have been happy and positive. Here he is commenting on the state of humanity. We've all become like those need to be fed.

Who needs to be fed? Babies & invalids? That seems to be about it. If we're to be compared to these people, we need to then think about what else they can't do, namely, wiping their asses. He's basically calling us a race of drooling, diaper wearing infants. You have to respect the directness, but also his ability to throw that little twist on @ the end. In fact, if we're all in the same boat, perhaps it's not an insult, but simply a flag of membership.

I guess I don't really have much to say about this one, but maybe that's because it's so short. The unity of image might point to it's simplistic brilliance though. Short & sweet. But then he adds "Babe" to the end of the line (& many other lines in this song) which connects it to his earlier work w/ songs like "It Ain't Me Babe," a much more anti-authoritarian tune. Here, he's moved from radical to nihilist. There's no longer any reason to fight since we're all in the muck (literally, if we consider the adult diapers we apparently need) together. It's a fun nihilism though. And it's the sense of humor that invites comparisons to the post-modern move from the anxiety of the Cold War to the freedom to have fun... or was John Perry Barlow would put it 10 years later, "enjoying the ride." We're all doomed, but that doesn't necessitate any sort of Yeatsian fear. The center may not hold, but he seems to be suggesting that, as he said in "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," it doesn't matter anyhow. It's life on the periphery that he is celebrating, & we're all on the outside looking into the void together. And that's OK.

"You Ain't Goin' Nowhere"

"Whoo-ee! Ride me high
Tomorrow’s the day
My bride’s gonna come"In this lyric from the Woodstock recording sessions that ended up primarily as The Basement Tapes, the humor is in the forefront. Like most of his lyrics from these sessions, there's a subtlety & wit that seems characteristic of his other stuff, but it's less ignorable... if we can use the word "ignorable." That said, we could probably fill an entire blog focusing solely on this album, but we won't.

We seem to have two basic issues at play here: 1) the "ride me high" part & 2) the "brides gonna come" part. In the first part, we have a nice play on words. in the traditional phrase, it's either "high on the hog" or high in the saddle," but here, Dylan replaces the other animals with himself. This could me two things. Either he sees himself as the beast of burden being ridden by other which is certainly a possibility, or it's a sexual innuendo... granted, not a very subtle one. As it's linked to the "brides gonna come" part, the sexuality becomes even more clear.

On the surface, it seems like a reference to stories like "The Bride Comes to Yellow Skies," by Stephen Crane; it's a nice naturalistic story about the commodification of the West in relation to the fictionalized mythology created by writers in the East. This is definitely a major theme in Dylan's lyrics, but from whence is she coming? There's no other reference to this woman, so she could obviously be a mail-order-bride: scheduled to arrive @ a specific moment. However, that doesn't really fit w/ the previous line, "Ride me high." If it's sexual, & the wife is coming (i.e. reaching orgasm), then it seems like her orgasms are scheduled like the train on which she may be arriving. Apparently, he checked the calendar & realized that "oh, tomorrow is the day I need to get her off." if this is really the case, it places the lyric in the same position as "The Bride Comes to Yellow Skies" in that we're dealing w/ the commodification of an idea. Here though, the idea is the idealized version of the woman: simple and controllable rather than the complex women of the real world.

The use of the word "tomorrow" sets the coming in some indeterminite future. While it appears as though tomorrow is right around the corner, we know that in another Dylan song from the same period, "tomorrow is a long time." He may not be refering to the day after today, but rather to some unspecified point in the future. In fact, tomorrow may never come... perhaps she will never come either.

"From a Buick 6"

"She walks like Bo Diddley and she don’t need no crutch"

In some weird alternate universe, this seems to be a complement. The structure of the songs suggests that the woman being described is a girlfriend & each verse explains one of her positive characteristics. It rings of Shakespeare's Sonnet 130; lyrics that, on the surface, don't seem complementary, but when compared to the bubbly pop songs of its time, present a portrait of a believable woman rather than the simplistic perfection so common in the lyrics of his contemporaries.

Of course, one needs to envision what it means to "walk like Bo Diddley." Walking to the "Bo Diddley beat"? Maybe. We possibly have a veiled jab at people like Mick Jagger who were coping that beat left & right. The idea of referring to Jagger as a woman is funny, but not likely. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a lot of footage of Bo Diddley literally walking (at least not back then), but maybe she walks her fingers up & down the neck of a guitar like Bo Diddley. Then again, she could be walking her fingers up and something else, namely his phallus. Apparently, a good woman is one who is willing to dole out an HJ on a regular basis.

The second half of this line needs a bit of discussion too. Most people don't require crutches, so his need to point that out is strange. This leads us back to the idea that he's actually talking about a man. Someone who needs no crutch because he already has a third leg. Perhaps the woman is a transvestite. As Foucault (and to a more boring extent, Stanley Fish) suggests, when a subsequent text alters our reading of a previous text, the shifting meaning forces us to confront the structures of power in a society. In this case, we are lead back to the Mick Jagger reading thanks to his performances in movies like Bent (see the transvestite link above). We are left wondering if Dylan really is commenting on Jagger's role in pop music. And then, the following line has to do with the woman's loaded shot-gun. If not Jagger, it's quite possible that Dylan is singing about a man. Besides, a woman doesn't have the proper gear between her legs to "walk like Bo Diddley."

On the other hand, her ability to walk w/o a crutch could again be simply a weird complement. She stands upright on the ground. Good for her. Maybe he's just suggesting that she is sober. That's not a bad characteristic in a person... though still not too rare. Either way, we've got some fantastic connections to Shakespeare & Bo Diddley... awesome!

"Bob Dylan's 115th Dream"

"They asked me for some collateral and I pulled down my pants"History: This song, the 7th track on Bringing it all Back Home, is about a Columbus-like trip to the Americas but w/ the use of dream logic, it takes place in modern-day New York City & features characters from other sea narratives like Captain Ahab (here called Captain Arab). At one point in the dream, crew members are arrested & Dylan needs to raise money to go their bail. When looking for a loan, the bankers ask for collateral.

Analysis: Here, Dylan is making a rather obvious "dick joke" as he offers his phallus as collateral. This suggests that his cock is of unusual size or shape, & therefore worthy of the money he needs. There are also homoerotic undertones here as he may be implying he will have sex w/ the banker in order to spring his friends... they get sprung after he gets sprung... as it were. Of course, he's also prostituting himself here, trading sex for the release of his seamen. In general, the song is a critique of European expansion & the dissemination of Western hegemonic forces throughout the new world. Here, of course, we have the play on words that Derrida suggested later (in his book Dissemination) regarding "dissemination": the spreading of ideas & Semen: the spreading out of male power. However, but involving sailors in he mix, Dylan is also able to add the word "seamen" to this fun linguistic game.

Other reading of this line may suggest that he's actually trading his pants, not his phallus for their release. If this is the case, he is willing to sell the very clothes he is wearing top save his friends; however, it seems as though he would need to take them off to accomplish this, not just down as the lyric suggests.

You Better Go Back To From Where You Came: A new blog all about the humor in Dylan lyrics

I was listening to Bringing it All Back Home the other day & thinking about the age-old claim that he is the "voice of a generation." Even the weird intro to his concerts says this. I've always wondered who it is that he got to record that strange message, but it turns out, at least according to the Wikipedia page about it, that he has a crew member read it every night. But that's not the point of this post; the point being that we're here to celebrate the weirdness that is Dylan's lyrics (& if you're lucky, random quotes from interviews & books). No where in that stage intro does it mention his humor.
"Ladies and gentlemen please welcome the poet laureate of rock 'n' roll. The voice of the promise of the 60s counterculture. The guy who forced folk into bed with rock. Who donned makeup in the 70s and disappeared into a haze of substance abuse. Who emerged to find Jesus. Who was written off as a has-been by the end of the '80s, and who suddenly shifted gears releasing some of the strongest music of his career beginning in the late '90s. Ladies and gentlemen — Columbia recording artist Bob Dylan!"
He's definitely written some funny shit, but no one ever talks about it. We always get "He's so serious," or "His commitment to social change is so important," or "If he just didn't mumble so much." That said, this new blog is meant to celebrate the humor in his songs. In each post, you'll get a quote picked @ random & then some rather uninformed commentary.
There have been books documenting the wit & witticism of everyone from Dan Quayle to Keith Richards & from George W. Bush to Chuck Norris. Never has the wit & witticism of Dylan been chronicled though, so here you go. Your 1st lyric post will follow soon.