Part 3 - Shuffle Synchronicities Podscript 🎙📇 with Ray Padgett
the part about how Ray doesn't care about lyrics!
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Some posts are a bit too long for email inboxes like Gmail and you can only hear the Audio embeds on the app or on the website, so…🤷♂️
Today’s recommendation for other Substackers if you download the app is
who is a writer, artist, and Autistic queer who’s collected many-a-psychiatric diagnosis over the years, which led them to reject normality and critique the medical model of mental illness that individualizes suffering. They produce:
And if you were keeping up with Volume 1.5 you might remember our collaboration on a guest post that explored in part reframing neurodiversity outside of the DSM model. Most people don’t realize this model is a relatively recent invention and continually changes and Jesse shows there are many ways to think about our full selves outside it.
So, um, yeah, get the app already!
Previously…
In Part 2 of the Podscript 🎙📇
We focused on how Ray’s interviews of Dylan’s band members became the basis for a new book. More specifically:
Why Ray thinks his interviews with Dylan’s band members have become so popular
How Ray earned the trust of Dylan’s band members
Ray’s thoughts on the kinds of musicians Dylan works with
Want to catch up?
Part 2 is available here. Part 1 here. Preamble here.
Don’t want to wait?
The audio of the full Podcast is also already available:
Otherwise…
Part 3 of The Shuffle Synchronicities Podscript 🎙📇 with Ray Padgett
begins now!
Wait, Ray doesn’t care about what???!!!
Dave
When we were prepping for this call, we noticed that, I analyze the lyrics and you <laugh> you really don't. And, and it was funny, you were like <laugh> I haven't really talked about that except for one time, which is an interview with, it was Jon, what's his name? Jon-
Ray
Wurster.
Dave
Wurster, yeah.
Ray
[Drummer for] Superchunk and various other bands.
Dave
And he and you, that was the interview that you actually did right before you did the Shuffle guest post.
Ray
<affirms>
Dave
And you actually mentioned that you did that interview with him [in the shuffle guest post] because the same song was mentioned. “Watered-Down Love” was mentioned in your interview with him and it was also the song you shuffled to.
Ray
Yes, that was the synchronicity! I was, like, Oh, this is a random song, I don't have much opinion on this song one way or the other. And then like literally the next day or something, I was talking to Wurster, he was the one, with no prompting from me, who brought it up.
Dave
Oh, wow! Wow!
Bob Dylan
Love that’s pure. Hopes all things. Believes all things.
Dave
And yeah, and then within that interview, that was when you said, one of the few times you ever brought up the fact that you don't think of Dylan in terms of lyrics, right? Like, I think there's some quote I could pull up, I’ll pull it up real quick. It’s like. Let’s see. It's:
“I feel like I'm one of the weird Dylan super fans who spends a lot of time thinking about him and basically ignores the lyrics. I mean, nothing against them, I just don't spend much time analyzing them. I don't even know them in some cases. The music, the sound, the melody, the performance, all that is way more why I am into Bob Dylan than why so many other people are, which is lyrics.”
OK, so what exactly is going on here?!
Dave
Um, would you be open to expanding on that? Because, you know, I also, you're right, I love the sound, his voice, the melodies, the history, where it comes from. But, like, can you expand on your relationship to lyrics in relation to Bob and also just lyrics in general, and how you write about music?
Ray
Sure. Yeah. I know, it was funny, after that ran, I feel like there was like a hidden subset of Dylan people like me, and they, like, came out of the woodwork to be, like, Me too! <laugh> But I'm sure that they're, I'm sure, we, I should say, are the minority. And it's not that I think Dylan's lyrics are overrated. It's just the way my brain works. I just don't, if I'm listening to a song, the lyrics don't register and I can listen to it 50 times, and maybe, by time 50, I'll get a few lines, or maybe I'll have the chorus because it repeats a few times.
Dave
Wow.
Ray
But like, it just doesn't, it doesn't click with me. I'm very invested in the music, and the sound, and the performance element. But it is funny that like the guy who wins the Nobel Prize for his lyrics.
Dave
Right <laugh> Yeah
Ray
Like the greatest lyricist probably ever.
Bob Dylan
I sing the songs of experience like William Blake.
Ray
Just like with everyone else, it just doesn't click. But I do think, I do think that gives me a slightly different angle.
Dave
Sure, sure.
Bob Dylan
I contain multitudes.
Ray
You know, so many Dylan people, Dylan writers, it's all lyrics basically.
Dave
Yeah.
Dave admits to periods when he was disinterested in lyrics too
Dave
And, actually, there's a story I wanna relay to, which is, like, for many years I also didn't think of music in terms of lyrics. Basically from, like, birth, <laugh> or whatever <laugh> whenever I started listening to music at all. And then until 21, like, when I had, you know, the first episode of mania or awakening, whatever you wanna call it.
Ray
<affirms>
Dave
Yeah, it just didn't register. Like I would hear the music and the sounds. And I would love it. I would just be so into it. But then after the awakening, like, it kind of, it was almost like a sheen had like come off my ears or my, my, <laugh> third eye or whatever, where I would be like, Oh wait, there's real poetry, there’s [sic 😉] real words are being said. I would kind of go through the history of what songs were important to me, and it seemed like there was a reason why they were important. Like, you would have an album of 10 songs that were all, you know, like a Weezer album would all be like the same 10 songs that are all the same basic <laugh> melodies and sounds, you know?
Dave
And then with the songs that I loved out of that album, like, they, like, had some meaning for my particular autobiography, more than maybe other people's.
Weezer
Not somethin' real, so I'd rather keep wackin'. Why bother? It's gonna hurt me. It's gonna kill when you desert me. This happened to me twice before. It won't happen to me anymore.
Dave
And then, you know, there was a period where that went away, when I started medicating, the quote-unquote illness. And then you just kinda got back into a more, uh, I dunno, just dampened, neurotic perspective. And then it wasn't until 35 again that that kind of reopened. That appreciation for lyrics and that kind of, I guess, you know, someone would say over-obsession <laugh> infatuation with them. But, have there been periods in your life where lyrics, maybe you've already answered this, but have there been periods in your life, where lyrics have meant something to you, maybe like something's going on in your life personally, and you're like, Oh wait a second, this is hitting. Or is that not part of your experience? I don't need to put this on you, but just curious?
Ray
I mean, probably there have been instances more than periods, I guess I would say. I can come up with a few lyrics that meant something to me at a certain point, in my autobiography. It's not like there's none.
Parody lyrics?
Ray
And you know, another funny thing I guess is that the first musician I ever got obsessed with, in middle school, was Weird Al Yankovic.
Dave
<laugh> Oh wow.
Ray
And of course, the interesting thing there is, he again, the whole point is lyrics, right? The music is the same as the Nirvana song, or the Nelly song, or whatever, right?
Dave
Yeah, yeah.
Ray
The music is identical. The lyrics are the only thing he's changing.
Dave/Ray
<laugh>
Weird Al (cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”)
What is this song all about? Can't figure any lyrics out.
Ray
So I tend to love these people who are very lyrics forward and then not pay that much attention to the lyrics.
What about Dylan’s though???
Ray
But yeah, I think I've mostly always been this way. Like I say, there’s [sic again 🤭] periods. I remember early on when I was first getting into Dylan, every breakup I had, I was like, Oh, this is the theme song for the breakup. But really it was only just the title.
Dave/Ray
<laugh>
Ray
I didn't really, I dunno if any of the other lyrics connected at all, but the title seemed relevant. So I was like, Alright, I'm gonna call this the, you know, The Blood On The Tracks, there are songs about breakups on there, so I guess I'm supposed to…
Bob Dylan
When something's not right, it's wrong. You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go.
Dave
Get into it. Yeah. Interesting. Also, there are also some songs that he writes where the titles are actually, like, ironically the opposite of, you know, what they're about.
Bob Dylan’s “She Belongs To Me”
But you will wind up peeking through her keyhole. Down upon your knees.
Dave admits he probably gets too into lyrics
Ray
I'm sure. I'm sure my connections- In your Substack, you make these deeper connections. Mine were, I'm sure very surface-level, and, in some cases, totally wrong. Because, as you say, in many of them, the title is somewhat misleading <laugh> But that’s as far as I got.
Dave
I think, though, I think I get so deep that I lose the thread sometimes and people are like, I don't know what <laugh> you're talking about.
Ray/Dave
<laugh>
Dave
This is, you're making too much out of this. Like…
Bob Dylan
Most of the time, I can keep both feet on the ground.
Dave
Yeah. This is not real. So I think it goes. It goes both ways.
Bob Dylan
I can read the sign.
Thanks for reading Part 3 of the Podscript🎙📇!
And for supporting Volume 2 of Shuffle Synchronicities.
Part 4 will be emailed tomorrow. Part 2 is available here. Part 1 here. Preamble here.
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