Stereogram
for Peter Robinson
I was listening to Dylan’s Time Out of Mind,
his late renewal after wasted years
– all simmer and wry despair –
to find that maybe he was rated again.
The voice was a wreck on a burnished track,
the songs a palimpsest of antique blues.
In the end the words will come
if they have to, like music that’s ghosted
by echoes stored in a phonograph’s horn
– remembering now stereogram.
Was that what we called it?
It was more like a sideboard
than a sound machine
with its glossy veneer and gilt trim.
Its clunking drop-down front
revealed a deck and storage,
a radio that warbled and seethed.
Picking up on Dylan,
I worked back to his debut album.
On the sleeve he was just a kid,
dressed like a vaudeville hobo,
yet seemed to dig deeper than most.
When he sang about death
he ripped through hokum.
We had all our lives before us.
M.C. Newberry
Mon 17th Oct 2016 16:39
I bought that album with its famous cover of the singer and
girl friend arm in arm on a New York street when it came
out - a time when I, like the man himself, was in my 20s.
Some songs I liked and some were OK but it was just
another album from some guy who was making a name
in the folk/protest music world. No big deal for me when
so much else was happening musically and I didn't feel any
inclination to stay with his stuff, then or since...despite
his later association with a favourite singer/songwriter: Johnny Cash.
As for BD's big award: Truly - the times, they are a changing!