Les Jones

Home Life > Time, Fast Times at Maryville High, and Bob Dylan's "Modern Times"

Sunday was my 38th birthday. Saturday was my 20th high school reunion. Good thing I'm not hung up on this aging stuff, huh.

Melissa and I had a great time at the MHS reunion, which was held at the McCord Farm. Thanks to Joe and Keith McCord for their hospitality, and to Holly Burkett, Art Gambill and everyone else who organized the reunion. Everyone was super nice. But what's up with you people who got taller and skinnier after high school? You're just making the rest of us look bad.

By the way, when your high school reunion comes around, you should go. I went to the 10 year reunion at the last minute because Doug Livesay called and said, basically, "Hell, everyone's all hung up on what job they have and what car they drive, but I just want to see everybody and have fun." Good advice. Enjoy your friends while you can.

My sweetie gave me Bob Dylan's "Modern Times" for my birthday. This is the Dylan album you can play for people who never dreamed they would like Dylan. Load "Spirit On The Water" on your iPod for a wedding reception and it will sound perfectly at hime. The arrangements and song structures are listener friendly, the producer (Dylan, under the Jack Frost pseudonym) has a knowing hand, and Dylan makes the effort to sing like he's happy to get these good songs off his chest.

The band is a cosmopolitan bluesy-Western mix. Some of it sounds like "Highway 61" and half the time I expect the band to break into "Johnny B. Goode." The lyrics range from the apocalypse-light "The Levee's Gonna Break'":

If it keep on rainin', the levee gonna break / Everybody saying this is a day only the Lord could make
Put on your cat clothes, mama, put on your evening dress / Few more years of hard work, then there'll be a 1,000 years of happiness

to "Someday Baby", which shows Dylan's mastery of blues style and would make a foolproof cover:

You can take your clothes / put 'em in a sack
You goin' down the road / baby and you can't come back
Someday baby, you ain't gonna worry / po' me any more

You also get Newmanesque throwaways like "The world of research has gone berserk / Too much paperwork." The only clinker is "Workingman's Blues #2." Burn a CD without that track and you've got the most satisfying Dylan disk in ages. There's also an interesting literary link, with Dylan borrowing some of his lines from a 19th century Southern poet named Henry Timrod.

Related:

• Complete album lyrics
  
• Rolling Stone interview with Dylan before "Modern Times" release
  
• NY Times: Who's This Guy Dylan Who's Borrowing Lines From Henry Timrod?
  
• Dylan, Nimrod, and Me
  
• Wikipedia entry for Henry Timrod