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| Bob Dylan – Desolation Row Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Pretty awesome analysis! I'd agree with almost all of it, except I have a different interpretation of Verse 7.
I think Dylan's calling out the whole 'romance industry' itself - the codependent glamor around our 'secular religion' feeding the capitalist machine... gotta sell all this stuff. The spoonfeeding of Casanova, killing him with self-confidence, poisoning him with words - I think is about the warping and perverting of actual true love, Eros, with a whole concocted persona... or, on a more subtle level - the utterly 'disillusioning' aspect of revelatory knowledge, i.e. - once you get a look at what's actually going on, you can't really continue the way you before... in a way, Casanova can't describe what he's seen on Desolation Row, not from his self-confident ego perspective, no matter how many words he has at his disposal... |
submissions
| Bob Dylan – Desolation Row Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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I think it works either way. Personally, I've always thought it was "around the time the doorknob broke" - echoing Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues again - about the mailboxes being stolen, the post office locked. Same thing with Subterranean Homesick Blues - the pump don't work 'cause the vandals stole the handles. Just, things being in a fucked up state. Broken. 'Everything is Broken' being an actual song title of his from later on... But even if it was meant to literally be a letter describing a time that a doorknob broke (less likely, imho, than the other interpretation), it still works |
submissions
| Bob Dylan – Desolation Row Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Re: 1 - yep, I've always thought that. That he means this sarcastically, that - in a way, a Good Samaritan, looking for some 'unfortunates' to save - always seeing things thru the lens of, who can he help - is pretty fucked up actually. Hypocritical.
Re: 2 - paradox. Yeah, such deep peaceful states are possible, but - you can't stay there, that becomes a trap itself. you have to come back to and reckon with, reality. |
submissions
| Bob Dylan – Desolation Row Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Oh, and the wikipedia article has been slimmed down considerably since xFireandIcex posted above... for the version that was current at the time they mentioned it, above, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Desolation_Row&oldid=45597505 - lots more interesting than the current version of the page. |
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| Bob Dylan – Desolation Row Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Re: the blind commissioner, 'they've got him in a trance, one hand tied to the tightrope walker, the other in his pants' - I've always seen that as a comment on how drama (tightrope walker) and sex (hand in his pants) can be such distracting forces, can be such a huge part of the (collective) trance we, and specifically the blind commissioner, are in... An example of media distorting and distracting, promoting drama, and self-satisfaction, specifically in some sort of mid-level govt. figure... finding drama, and enemies (for the riot squad), because... well... they need to be found. Reminds me of the ending of Farenheit 451... Or any kind of staged drama. Gotta find the bad guys, and chase 'em down. |
submissions
| Bob Dylan – Desolation Row Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Similar to how, nine years later, he says the same thing, but plainer, more directly - in Tangled Up In Blue - "Some are mathematicians, some are carpenter's wives - I don't know how it all got started, don't know what they're doing with their lives..." |
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| Bob Dylan – Desolation Row Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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I've always loved the Dead's versions of this song. Weir has the perfect twisted nuanced bitter/sarcastic/jaundiced perspective to sing it. |
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| Bob Dylan – Desolation Row Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Fascinating that it works on so many levels. Iconic, archetypal. I know next to nothing about Warhol's scene or Dylan's knowledge of it or likiness to commment about it, so these didn't occur to me. The whole Dr. Filth verse to me just suggests all the sexual repression going on, the 'authoritarian' culturally dictated & received views about hetero-normative safe sexuality, accepting no deviance... but in the process creating kink and 'dirty'ness itself, in a way. The factory & heart-attack machine and insurance men is all about just capitalism itself, and the need to promote and fuel mindless consumption, lest the whole system collapse. Kerosene and castles alluding to the nightmarish reality of this sad state of affairs, pointing out the actual horror lying beneath the numb surface. |
submissions
| Bob Dylan – Desolation Row Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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I think it's a state of mind, enlightenment, hipness itself - alternative culture and reality in the truest sense.
Awesome interpretetion. I wouldn't disagree with any of it. I think the song is brilliant in its poetic economy of words and evocativeness. |
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| Grateful Dead – Desolation Row Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Yeah, seriously - here's where the comments are (rightly so) - on the page for this song as a Dylan song (which it is): http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/1110/ |
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| Bob Dylan – Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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I heard somewhere that it referred to JFK. The 'fire on main street' that he shot full of holes - thus showing he'd lost control - was the Bay of Pigs. Kinda makes sense in that 'everyone still talks about how badly they were shocked' - everyone knew where they were when it happened (JFK's assassination) - and, for good measure he mentions 'the senator' in the next verse. Ever since hearing this, the song makes sense - it's about power, greed, politics, warpedness... etc.
When the Dead played it in the late eighties it took on renewed meaning, as the Noriega thing in Panama was boiling over at that time... but Panama is a metaphor for US imperialism, if anything is... carving out a little zone of another country, installing your control there. One of the other commenters talked of Dylan being prescient - I'd agree, and, it's not too much of a stretch - he and Hunter S. Thompson were astute observers of the ugly underbelly of U.S. reality... |
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