The San Francisco Examiner from San Francisco, California • 263

31 Rhythm Dylan's 'Blonde' Broke All the Rules fit ly don't see how the evidence of the lines he writes can be ignored. He is achingly autobiographical in "Just Like a Woman" "please don't let on you knew me when I was hungry and it was your world" or "little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously, he brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously" or that incredible line from "Visions of Johanna" "the ghost of 'lectricity howls through the bones of her face." Or, from the same song, "Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues, you can tell it be the way she smiles," and "name m.e someone who's not a parasite and I'll go out and say a prayer for him." There's a neat take off on the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood" in "4th Time Around" which has a wild mandolin accompaniment and some great, grotesque and funny lines which dip into reality as in "I never took much, I never asked for your crutch now don't ask for mine." With any such collection as this, the point is one can write about it indefinitely. It is really poetry and jazz and it is of a part with the body of Dylan work and contains some of the best things he's done yet. I submit that "Visions of Johanna" and "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowland" are great songs and great poems. The latter is a ghostly enigma.

Allen Ginsberg says it stanis as a good poem all by itself, which is praise of the first rank. The song is replete with images such as "mercury mouth," "street car visions" and "geranium kiss" and has the haunting line "who among them could ever think he could destroy you" echoing back through a variety of changes throughout the poem. "Who is the 'Sad Eyed Lady'?" Ginsberg asked at Big Sur. "Is it the poet's own or is it America?" This is the kind of creativity that Dylan engages in, which can bring out such reactions from one of the leading American poets of all time. STEREO OR MONO 1 Ily Ralph J.

Cloaion TIERE ARE no albums released in the world of popular music, or for that matter in any of the areas of music, that have the tremendous impact of the new ones by the top figures such as The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Mama's and the Papa's and Bob Dylan. For the first time in the history of the business, actually, information about what tunes are included, what the accompaniment is and other such items have real news value. Dylan's new release, for instance, "Blonde on Blonde" (Columbus C25 841) was the subject of lots of discussion prior to actual release. The news that all the tracks were recorded in Nashville was printed. The news that one track ran for an entire side of an LP and that the album was not just a single LP but a double LP package was also printed.

People wanted to know. Dy-land is a red hot subject for discussion because he has broken all the rules of the record business and is breaking more. Title on Spine The new package, for instance, has the title only on the spine of the binding where it can be seen in small print when the LP is on the shelf. The cover consists of a three-quarter length full color photo of Dylan extending the full length of both covers when the LP is held wide open (like using the front and back cover of a book for one long design). Inside there is no text except for the song titles and the i i a s' names, but a series of pictures, some involving a performance and others por-traits showing Dylan and some unidentified people.

The album is distinctly different, I'll say that for it, in design as well as content, and it works. I think one might almost believe the album jacket could sell by it- CAL TJADER'S quintet will continue its engagement at the El Matador through August 20. a BOB self. The twin LPs certainly could because they contain some of the very best Dylan performances to date. In the plethora of discussion concerning Dylan these days, I read somewhere that he is a prisoner of Columbia Records because he represents such a high dollar volume and thus he does what they want him to.

Nothing, so help me, is further from the truth and flat-out funnier. Actually, there are executives of Columbia who shake, literally shuke, at the prospect of even conversing witli Dylan and his manager, his power is such that he ean cost them their jobs. Columbia is in some sense a prisoner of Dylan and thus he can do whatever he wants to do that can legally be done in this society. I lis Own Alan Hence his extraordinary ten-minute version of "Like a I mmmmmmm simk p.d.q. teC $BACH I Don't miss Professor Ij.

VPlGU IB 1 Peter Schickele and his 1 ftt -13 hilarious interpretations 1 of the recently discovered i I works of P.D.Q. Bach. 1 DYLAN Rolling Stone" and hence this album with its one full side devoted to "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands." No, Dylan is his own man as is every true artist. This package contains 13 songs. They range from the comic, satirical "Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat" with its Ma Rainey traditional blues feeling, its wild lyrics and its great guitar bits by Jaime (Robbie) Robertson, through the exquisitely moving "Visions of Johanna" (he sang it locally as "Seems Like a Freeze and the wildly swinging track on which the band plays so well, "Most Likely You'll Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine." Like all of the Dylan albums, this package offers a very great deal more than is evident at first hearing.

In fact, one of the characteristics of the Dylan work is that it possesses that quality of density which Gide found so important. more you hear it, the more you hear. Straight Blues Several of the songs are almost straight blues. He sings warmly and sentimentally now and then, the cutting edge of anger is all but omitted from this album, and there is frequent entry into his nightmare world with his ghostly gallery of images. have to pay to get out of going through all these things twice," he sings in "Memphis Blues The debate rages still.

Is Dylan a poet or is he just a box manipulator? I real 47 INCLUDES: P.D.Q. Bach at Carnegie Hall P.D.Q. Bach (1807-1742)? 1 JO I 170 GRANT AVENUE 591 MARKET STREET (Near Post St.) AT 2ND 55 ELLIS STREET SOUTHLAND SHOPPING (Between Powell Market) CENTER HAYWARD 840 MARKET STREET UNIVERSITY MALL (Near Powell) SHOPPING CENTER DAVIS NEW STORE NOW OPEN IN CODDINGTOWN CENTER, SANTA ROSA This World, Sunday, July 31, 1966.