From: owner-ammf-digest@smoe.org (alt.music.moxy-fruvous digest) To: ammf-digest@smoe.org Subject: alt.music.moxy-fruvous digest V14 #6705 Reply-To: ammf@fruvous.com Sender: owner-ammf-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ammf-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk alt.music.moxy-fruvous digest Thursday, June 3 2021 Volume 14 : Number 6705 Today's Subjects: ----------------- The.Ultimate.Clean-Harness.the.power.of.UV.Light! ["Sterilize-X.UV.Lamp" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2021 06:33:18 -0400 From: "Sterilize-X.UV.Lamp" Subject: The.Ultimate.Clean-Harness.the.power.of.UV.Light! The.Ultimate.Clean-Harness.the.power.of.UV.Light! http://lotterysqri.co/HOo9qB6wtV8sw567P29VXSKhxvkDKRsc8kFrWZhOv-XfedSt http://lotterysqri.co/Zl7CIhYlWpYvhX0m0oP6JBqHs_VwVu-R0JMZNjoSMzM8_vO- ographer Robert Shelton wrote that in the early 1970s, Dylan was frequently criticized for "selling out" and that people were pressuring him to go back to his earlier trend of composing protest songs. For Shelton, who noted the promotional photo for "Watching the River Flow" depicting Dylan looking through a camera, the track expressed Dylan's wish just to be an observer, and not a political activist. Author Seth Rogovoy similarly interpreted the song as Dylan's desire to ignore politics and avoid getting involved in people's disputes. The line "[This ol' river] keeps on rollin', though/No matter ... which way the wind does blow" has been heard by writers Peter Vernezze and Carl J. Porter as evidence of Dylan's conviction that "the river of time, the flow of facts, in reality remains unaffected by winds of beliefs, the flow of changing opinions." Greil Marcus highlighted the importance of disregarding one's initial reading of the song. "The first impression is that Bob Dylan is setting up the usual private scene: 'I'll sit here and watch the river flow.' Well, that's certainly a boring idea." He went on to describe how Dylan explores the difficulty of retaining privacy while making public art; the singer is coming to terms with unwanted attention inherent in stardom, without giving up his connection to his fans. Marcus argued that the reason the single was not a hit in the US was because "the time has passed when people are interested in hearing Bob Dylan say he'll just sit there and watch the river flow ... even though that's not quite what he's saying". For Marcus, "Watching the River Flow" is a compelling work, but the subtlety of the song may have prevented it from reaching a wide audience. Clinton Heylin and writer Christopher Ricks discussed Dylan's restlessness in the song. Heylin said that in "Ballad of Easy Rider", co-written by Dylan and Roger McGuinn two years earlier, Dylan claimed he was content to watch while "The river flows, flows to the sea/Wherever it flows, that's where I want to be"; by contrast, in "Watching the River Flow", Dylan writes that he wants to be moving, wishing he was "back in the city/Instead of this old bank of sand". Ricks found Dylan's unsettledness at odds with the implied bucolic notion of watching the river flow. For Ricks, the vocal phrasing and the musical arrangements clash with the lyrics; the "choppy" rhythms and "stroppy stomping" of the backing track, disrupt the theme of contentedly watching the river. He noted that two of the verses begin with "People disagreeing", introducing conflict into the song, and concluded that "Watching the River Flow" is "tarred with a realism that qualifies and complicates the lure of the lazy". Heylin heard in the composition Dylan's admission that in 1971 he felt uninspired about writing lyrics and had no specific ideas he wanted to voice. The biographer placed this avowal in the context of changing, polarized critical estimates of Dylan's work in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In June 1970, Dylan had released Self Portrait, an album that received very negative reviews; Dylan's next album that year, New Morning, was viewed much more favorably by critics, and Ralph Gleason declared "We've got Dylan back again!" For Heylin, Dylan's assertion in the song that he does not have any particular message to express, is an attempt to subvert critics like Gleason. Heylin wrote that both "Watching the River Flow" and "When I Paint My Masterpiece" discuss Dylan's professed lack of inspiration at the time in an honest and satisfying way. Pointing to the fact that Dylan made no attempt to record either a single or an album in the following year of 1972, he commented that "Dylan had now concluded that he must simply sit by that bank of sand and await [his muse's] return." Ian Bell, in his critical biography of Dylan, wrote that it was "no accident" that both "Watching The River Flow" and "When I Paint My Masterpiece" made much the same statement. Bell argued that "When I Paint My Masterpiece" is the better song as it is the funnier of the two. Bell heard Dylan mocking both his admirers and his own reputation in this composition, while he detected in "Watching The River Flow" an admission that "If creativity is a habit, Dylan was all but cure ------------------------------ End of alt.music.moxy-fruvous digest V14 #6705 **********************************************