Part 5 - Shuffle Synchronicities Podscript 🎙📇 with Ray Padgett
like bob? you may or may not like tom waits (initially)
NOTE: Again recommend getting the free Substack App.
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 in other Substackers to follow if you do get the app, we’re going with someone who it was assumed most people know already, but a very knowledgeable friend didn’t, so we’re going to highlight him, even though there’s no connection to the Shuffle or music…because he has such concise insight into power in society…and that’s
who produces:
Reich’s Instagram is similarly efficiently on-point.
But, um, yeah, get the app already!
Previously…
In Part 4 of the Podscript 🎙📇
We focused on how Ray’s career of writing about cover songs began with Bob Dylan, how Dylan’s own career has benefited from covers too, and had a friendly debate over which will be more well-known his originals or their covers ;)
Want to catch up?
Part 4 is available here. Part 3 here. Part 2 here. Part 1 here. Preamble here.
Don’t want to wait?
The audio of the full Podcast is also already available:
Otherwise…
Part 5 of The Shuffle Synchronicities Podscript 🎙📇 with Ray Padgett
begins now!
You have, like, a niche?
Dave
The next question is, like, you kind of have these, this niche of artists, you know, so you do, the Bob Dylan Substack. And then you moved into the Tom Waits Substack.
Dave
And you had the Leonard Cohen 33 and 1/3, which is about his tribute album, that people put together of songs of his.
Dave
So how would you describe these kind of three <laugh> artists? Like is there a reason that they became, that you became attracted to them and, their niche? I mean, we talked about a couple of things in the prep call, but what would you say is what brings them all together in your mind for why you like them?
Great songwriters, but, um, not great…
Ray
So I think, I mean, the baseline, which we can almost skip over, because it's understood, is that they're great songwriters, right? But there are a lot of great songwriters. So getting even more specific than that, looking really specifically at Dylan, Waits, and Cohen, they're great songwriters who have slightly, I don't know what the word is, inaccessible or divisive, uh, deliveries and specifically voices. Right?
Dave
Yeah. Really.
Ray
Leonard Cohen has the famous line I was born with the gift of a Golden Voice, which is like clearly meant to be a laugh line because obviously he was not.
Leonard Cohen
I'd like to try to read your palm!
Ray
Tom Waits, you know, is like an easy impression you can do to make your friends laugh because he sounds so nuts.
Tom Waits
Underground!
Ray
I mean, Dylan, same thing. The sort of nasal thing.
Bob Dylan
Rain!
Waits and Cohen, like Dylan, also became more popular due to…
Ray
And again, in all of those cases, actually, just like we were talking with Dylan, it's true for Cohen and Waits, too, that their songs have become more popular by covers with people with more broadly palatable voices.
Jeff Buckley
I heard there was a secret code that David played and it pleased the Lord.
Ray
And singing abilities.
Rod Stewart
It's just the same. On a downtown train.
Ray unconsciously developed this…?
Ray
So…I am retrofitting this explanation. It's not like I literally went out and was like, Hmm, who else has a bad singing voice? <laugh>
Dave
<laugh> Yeah. You just kinda like unconsciously have been attracted to it. Interesting…
Not great voices but still great…
Ray
Well, and the thing is, and, I'd say this about Dylan, but I think it's true probably for all of them, maybe with the exception of Cohen, who kind of has more of a speaking delivery, but even in that way, they're all great singers, right? I always say Dylan is a great singer with a terrible voice. And what I mean by that is that obviously nature has not blessed him with sounding like Frank Sinatra or something, just naturally. But the way he uses his instrument to deliver lyrics, to deliver melodies is, it’s really, it’s Sinatresque.
Frank Sinatra
You go to my head and you linger like a haunting refrain.
Ray
It's like really powerful and he really makes it work for him.
Bob Dylan
You go to my head and you linger like a haunting refrain.
Ray
I mean, Tom Waits is an even more extreme example. His voice is insane. He sounds like, you know, there are all these cliches of like, he sounds like someone who smoked a thousand cigarettes before he [sings]-
Dave
<laugh>
Ray
But he uses it as this percussive, spooky, aggressive. Like it sounds amazing when he does it.
Tom Waits
Sane, sane, they're all insane, fireman's blind, the conductor is lame.
The first time we…
Dave
Yeah. Friends, who, I love their music taste, but they'll be like, I tried Tom Waits, and I, I just can't do it! <laugh>
Ray
That happened with me! The first time listening to Tom Waits.
Tom Waits
Well, I hope that I don’t fall in love with you.
Ray
It was through Dylan. In college. I had become a Dylan fan and, I don't know, something said, if you like Dylan, check out Tom Waits. I downloaded Rain Dogs, which, like, is his most famous album. I literally made it a song and a half in and was like, Hell no.
Tom Waits
For I am a rain dog, too.
Ray
This sounds awful.
Dave
Yeah.
Ray
And it was like a year or two before I gave him another shot.
Tom Waits
It’s just the same.
Ray
And then the second time it took.
Tom Waits
And I think that I just fell in love with you.
Dave admits something similar happened the first time he heard Dylan!
Dave
Now, I don’t know if I said this, but also for me too, like, when I discovered Dylan, it was a Greatest Hits album when I was younger, you know, growing up. And it didn't take. It was, like, I tried it and I was like, No! <laugh> this is, like, not for me.
Bob Dylan
I'm not the one you want, babe.
Dave
You know? And then I went back to like The Beatles, I think, and uh, you know, stuff like that. It was just, it was, it was too, yeah. The voice.
Bob Dylan
Blow into my face with scorn. But it’s not that way. I wasn’t born to lose you.
Thanks for reading Part 5 of the Podscript🎙📇!
And for supporting Volume 2 of Shuffle Synchronicities.
Part 6 will be emailed tomorrow. Part 4 is available here. Part 3 here. Part 2 here. Part 1 here. Preamble here.
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