Hard Rain

I've been trying to fix the whole in my musical knowledge where jazz should be lately by listening to John Coltrane and Charles Mingus, just for a start. While they are both really wonderful even after only a cursory listen, with Mingus standing out as being particularly inventive and fun, I find myself return to the places I'm familiar with, like Tom Waits's proverbial rain dogs. In this case, I mean returning to my idol, Bobby Dylan.

He's like that, though, always having something to return to, no matter how you feel. I'm listening to Hard Rain tonight, an album probably not many of you are familiar with out there. It's a live album recorded in 1976, part of the Rolling Thunder Revue, post Desire. I think I've mentioned Desire on here before. It's really the last in his string of great albums starting with The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Desire is preceded by Blood on the Tracks (technically by The Basement Tapes, but that was recorded earlier), one of his most famous albums. Blood is simply beautiful in its sadness, generally seen as Dylan's reaction to his separation, mostly soft songs of confusion and hurt and definitely worth a listen. Desire is part travelogue, part angry calls for justice on behalf of American anti-heros, and part desperate last cries at a failed relationship. It is probably his most intense studio album and wonderful, even if it requires a few listens to get into past the immortal "Hurricane."

Enough background, then. Hard Rain is from the tour presumably in support of that album, but only features one track ("Oh, Sister") from it. He's backed by similar instruments, anyway. There's screeching violin and drums that somehow come off as a mix between haphazard pounding and pinpoint accuracy. Dylan's own performance is what I love, though. It's really as if he can't stand what he was thinking when he wrote/recorded the originals. "Idiot Wind," the closing track, is a little disappointing, but "Lay, Lady, Lay," "Shelter from the Storm," and "I Threw it all Away" all come off almost like him mocking his own efforts out of self-loathing and doing a great job the whole time. He turns some of his most touching, softest songs into multi-layered battles with himself, winning by yelling over top of his band, who is trying their hardest just to keep the songs some sense of orderly, it seems to me.

Critics don't like this album, and I see why; the band lacks the energy to really capture the songs in one way or another. The critics are really right in complaining about it, but sometimes it is just right. It's Dylan right as he is finally collapsing, before he is mumbling from the ruins of his life on Street Legal, before his conversion to fire-breathing evangelism. Dig it tonight.