Shuffle Synchronicities: Volume 1 - #86
Guest Post by Ray Padgett (Flagging Down the Double E's) + "Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major BWV 1068: 2. Air" by Johann Sebastian Bach, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra - 03/29/21
HELLO! Today we have a woooonderful guest post from Ray Padgett who runs a Substack called Flagging Down the Double E's, where he writes essays inspired by, perhaps my favorite musician, Bob Dylan, and his concerts of yesteryear.
I highly recommend checking it out if you are a fan of Dylan.
Ray is also the founder of Cover Me, the largest blog devoted to cover songs on the web, and author of Cover Me: The Stories Behind the Greatest Cover Songs of All Time (2017) and the 33 1/3 book I’m Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen (2020).
His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, SPIN, The AV Club, Vice, and MOJO, and he’s been interviewed as an expert on cover songs by NPR, The Wall Street Journal, SiriusXM, and dozens more.
Without further adieu, here’s Ray’s post!
Dave was kind enough to reach out with a great idea: A Dylan-specific Shuffle Synchronicity.
It was good timing too. I'm a big fan of shuffling as well, but just shuffling the artist Bob Dylan would bring up five versions of "Like a Rolling Stone" in a row. Dude's played that song a lot (Pro tip: The best live versions were in 1966, 1988, and 2018). So just last month I created an iTunes playlist with one single version of every Dylan song out there.
So, instead of shuffling a Spotify playlist with 30,000-odd songs, I'm shuffling an iTunes playlist with just under 500, from the two original compositions on Bob's self-titled debut album all the way through his 2020 album Rough and Rowdy Ways (strong album - if you've been meaning to check out latter-day Dylan, it's a good place to start). And the magic of the Shuffle delivered me…
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Does Substack have a drumroll sound effect
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"Watered-Down Love" by Bob Dylan
Does Substack have a sad-trombone sound effect for that anticlimax?
"Watered-Down Love" is not a song I'd thought of in years, but it was a song I once knew well. It comes off Bob's 1981 album Shot of Love, the third in his trilogy of pro-Jesus gospel albums. By this point, he had one foot out the door of the evangelical Christianity world. He'd started performing his older songs in concert again, and Shot of Love had songs that either were only obliquely about Jesus ("Every Grain of Sand") or weren't about him at all ("Lenny Bruce").
A far cry from his earlier, not exactly subtle approach that led to a whole lot of lyrics like this:
I ain't gonna go to hell for anybody
Ain't gonna go to hell for anybody
Ain't gonna go to hell for anybody
Not today, not tonight, not tomorrow, not never, no way!
Weirdly, though, Shot of Love was one of the first Dylan albums I owned. I don't think I knew it came from his Christian period back then. I don't think I even knew he had a Christian period. I had it before Blonde on Blonde, Blood on the Tracks, and a dozen other more iconic (and, you know, better) Dylan albums.
And not because it was new then either - I wasn't even alive in 1981. I had it because it was cheap. I remember, just as I was getting to Dylan, probably after my dad took me to see him the first time in high school, going to the Bull Moose Records in Brunswick, Maine to buy a Dylan CD. I'm making up the exact numbers, but all the "good" Dylan albums were $15. Shot of Love was $10. So you know damn well which one my poor high-school self walked out with.
Even at that impressionable young age, I remember thinking the cover seemed pretty half-assed:
I have no memory of my first impression of "Watered-Down Love" specifically. It's not, frankly, all that memorable a song. It's still in the pure-gospel mode, an echo of the earlier fire-and-brimstone albums but with less memorable music. Nothing much to say about it, really. So I guess that's that.
But wait!
The day after I selected this song (or, rather, iTunes selected it for me) - I was interviewing drummer Jon Wurster for my newsletter. He opened for Dylan in the '90s with his pre-Superchunk band, so we were chatting about that, other shows he's seen, just all things Bob generally. And, unprompted by me, he brought up "Watered-Down Love"!
How's that for Synchronicity?
The full conversation will run in my newsletter soon - so here's another shameless plug to subscribe if you're a Dylan fan - but here's the relevant "Watered-Down Love" bit:
Jon: I'm always trying to get a band I play in or person I'm recording with to cover "Watered-Down Love," but no one ever wants to do it. I love that one.
Ray: That is a very deep-cut choice. What about that one jumps out at you?
Jon: I just love the sound of that song. My understanding is that album is the rough mixes. It sounds like a band playing without a lot of magic sprinkling going on over top. My favorite version of that song is the live version that's on the two-disc version of, what's it called? Trouble In Mind?
Ray: Trouble No More, the Bootleg Series
Jon: Trouble No More, yes. There's a big box of that era, and there's a second version of it, I think from somewhere in London, Wembley maybe, that's so good. Where he does the jive intro that he was doing. [Bob voice] "You don't want to love that puuure. You want to water down love." And then they kick in. It feels like that's a performance too, the intro, you know what I mean?
Ray: I gather it's been a hard sell to get anyone to cover that song.
Jon: Well, no one's heard of it, that's the thing.
Well, now you, Shuffle Synchronicities reader, have heard of it! If someday you find yourself in a band with Jon Wurster, just cover the song, won't you?
What a joy to have Ray Padgett on the Substack! Right?!
Thanks so much for your post, Ray!
On my end, Bob Dylan’s Christian albums hold quite a significant spot in my heart.
During the spiritual awakening/manic episodes of 2019, I had just found out about those albums for the first time.
Unlike Ray, I had listened to and fell in love with the famous “iconic” ones first.
To me at least, the Christian albums were a revelation.
They kept popping up on my shuffle, to a degree that it seemed statistically impossible that they could come on so much based on how many songs there were (around 30) versus how many songs there were on the shuffle at that time (around 9,000).
This was as I was also learning about Christianity for the first time.
So the fact that my favorite Jewish musician and perhaps favorite musician altogether also held a soft spot for Jesus, or I guess a bit of a hard spot, really helped me come to terms with my belief in the Holy Spirit.
Which of course I later learned is part of almost every other spiritual tradition i.e. Khidr, Sophia, the Tao, the Self, intelleto, ch’i, ki, kundalini, Prana, mana, orende, manitu, axe, baraka, etc.
Here are the lyrics to it:
Love that's pure hopes all things
Believes all things, won't pull no strings
Won't sneak up into your room, tall, dark and handsome
Capture your soul and hold it for ransom
You don't want a love that's pure
You wanna drown love
You want a watered-down love
Love that's pure, it don't make no claims
Intercedes for you instead of casting you blame
Will not deceive you or lead you into transgression
Won't write it up and make you sign a false confession
You don't want a love that's pure
You wanna drown love
You want a watered-down love
Love that's pure won't lead you astray
Won't hold you back, won't get in your way
Won't pervert you, corrupt you with foolish wishes
Will, no, not make you envious, won't make you suspicious
You don't want a love that's pure
You wanna drown love
You want a watered-down love
Love that's pure, ain't no accident
Is always content
An eternal flame, quietly burning
Never needs to be proud, loud or restlessly yearning
You don't want a love that's pure
You wanna drown love
You want a watered-down love
Watered-down love
You want a watered-down love
Watered-down love
You want a watered-down love
Yes, you do
You know you do
When you are feeling manic/awakened, this song really rings true.
The amount of light and “pure” love that you feel from God or the One or the Universe or the mystery or whatever you want to call it, feels so much stronger than the old egoic way you used to get “watered-down love” that I can totally see how Dylan got here.
I have to admit that I also turned into a bit of an evangelical with my soon-to-be-ex-wife during that time when she was an atheist, and I was formerly an agnostic.
Dylan, like me, is likely an Enneagram 4, the artist type, so when they/we go to their integration point of 1, which is the reformer type, we can get stuck in a period of reforming that can be at the lower levels of an average 1.
That is, obsessed with the dualist judgment of right and wrong.
Before the higher levels of a healthy 1.
That is, balancing dualism with the non-dual serene acceptance of what is.
At that first stage, Dylan and I likely became “Conscientious with strong personal convictions: they have an intense sense of right and wrong, personal religious and moral values.”
The issue is we can also “become high-minded idealists, feeling that it is up to them to improve everything: crusaders, advocates, critics. Into ‘causes’ and explaining to others how things ‘ought’ to be.”
LOL.
Before finally, hopefully, “By accepting what is, they become transcendentally realistic.”
So while Dylan during his Christian period was trying to teach everyone to be a Christian, I was trying to teach my soon-to-be-ex-wife her Enneagram type and that she should believe in God, or a Higher Power, instead of being an atheist, etc.
As we all know, it didn’t go well ;)
And like Dylan who evolved out of that hardline era, even though it took a few years and a few albums for him, it took me some time to evolve out of it, too.
Unfortunately, not enough time before my soon-to-be-ex-wife wanted to separate.
And I lost a number of friends.
But I do think that is God or the Universe’s plan still ;)
Anyway, I think this is an incredible Synchronicity that out of all of Dylan’s songs, Ray got this one.
For me today, I got our second Classical music song. This one from Bach!
"Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major BWV 1068: 2. Air" by Johann Sebastian Bach, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
My local LA Philharmonic wrote of this song, “The Air is the hit single of the set, having penetrated the ears of people who would not normally listen to Bach, and making so many appearances in popular music and movies that it should have hired an agent. It is still known in some circles as the ‘Air on the G String’ because an arrangement by the violinist August Wilhelm (1845-1908), with the melody transposed down more than an octave so that it could be played entirely on a violin’s lowest string, became fabulously popular in the days when it was rare that anyone would attempt to play Bach’s orchestral music in anything like its original form.”
What do I make of this synchronicity?
Well, first, I think it has to do with the fluency of Ray’s writing.
Bach’s music is joyful to listen to, and so is Ray’s prose to read.
He clearly has immense talent, and again if you love Dylan, like I do, do consider at least subscribing to his free plan.
It’s #10 on paid Substack music newsletters, I’m #23.
As I said above, please consider helping me stay in the #25, and remain more “discoverable” to other readers, subscribe to a paid option!
Secondly, I think this Bach song is a synchronicity because instrumental music without lyrics is like spirituality without religion, or love without words.
When Bob and I and Christians try to name the mystery and say what to do and what not to do, it can lead to people not wanting to experience whatever it is that is at all.
What Bach and instrumental music does is trust that the spirit and love can be found without the hindrance of specific beliefs and language that people rebel against.
But what do I know ;)
I shuffled one more time for fun and got:
“Zealots” by Fugees, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, Pras
Whoaaaaaaa…
Okay, that’s the eighty-sixth Shuffle Synchronicities.