Shelter From the Storm, or an Idiot Wind

Today is a day for vinyl.  Not that I don't appreciate the unblemished, airbrushed clarity of digital sound, and the convenience of on-demand MP3s, but today is a day for dusting off the 33 1/3 rpm relics in the attic, jamming open the windows, and letting those blown speakers on the old Hi-Fi belt out in analog glory.  It is Spring, you see, and for us folks on either side of forty days like this were made for speakers aimed outdoors, for tweetering vocals and thunderous sub woofers and days of youth raging against mid-life crises and blowing away the years' accumulation of dust.  It is a defiant sound, and it takes me back to my glory days, alone now with my rake and the house to myself before wife and children return from a week in Vermont.  Time to peel back a couple of layers and let the sounds soak through to places far away and long kept at arm's length.

"Suddenly I turned around and she was standin there
With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair.
She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns.
Come in, she said,
Ill give you shelter from the storm."

So it's Bob, and not from the extraordinary Blood on the Tracks but the grinding live version on Hard Rain.  My LP of the former, brilliant album remains with an old flame and I've never bothered to replace it.  I'm partial to this version of the song, anyway.  You can hear it live on YouTube here if you'd rather not take my word for it and want the full effect.  Click on it, let it fire up, then come on back and keep the soundtrack going.  Otherwise, this is not going to make much sense.

I can tell you, it made my feet shuffle and my arms lift when I set the stylus to the groove on the attic Hi-Fi, in that place where we banish old love letters and obsolete technology, and stacks of records seldom played but too much a part of our former selves to be abandoned.  And who's to gainsay me today, with the house to myself and a warm breeze blowing through the open windows, if I rock out like a fool to the strains of my youth, to this Idiot Wind?

"I've heard newborn babies wailin like a mournin dove
And old men with broken teeth stranded without love.
Do I understand your question, man, is it hopeless and forlorn?
Come in, she said,
I'll give you shelter from the storm."

So I let the music wash over me, those blown speakers and that scratchy needle picking at the chords of mystic memory until the scab peels and the blood runs.  I am young, and in love, and long-haired and vulnerable, and the sun pours down like honey and the wind is my lover's kiss.  I am half my age, and I remember days when all that mattered was friendship and youth and a summer breeze and a woman's touch.  When I turned a blind eye to our depression, to the siren's warning, and I loved and lost and loved again.

"In a little hilltop village, they gambled for my clothes
I bargained for salvation an they gave me a lethal dose.
I offered up my innocence and got repaid with scorn.
Come in, she said,
I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Different songs take me down different paths.  This one takes me to the summer of my nineteenth year, a neo-hippie free fall through feelings too intense, at the end, for her and me to bear.  But that was still a glorious summer, and here after all these years life has resolved in a newfound friendship, which means there is something to be said for growing up, after all.  Thanks, frumiousb.

I've long since given away most of my bootlegged Grateful Dead tapes, but kept the vinyl.  Up next after Bob is some Janis - Take Another Piece of My Heart - and some Taj Mahal - Ain't Gwine Whistle Dixie from The Real Thing, the live at the Fillmore double LP, and some Jimi - Fly On, Little Wing - and The Clash.  Going fast, now.  Billy Bragg, and the Pogues - Rum Sodomy and the Lash - and R.E.M. because no one who came of age in the 1980's is without Murmur or Reckoning somewhere in their stacks of vinyl, and then to the songs I've kept, that made the transition from my youth to middle age and from analog to digital.  Richard Thompson, Juluka, and, yes, Led Zep.  But that takes me all the way back, to that first wet teen-aged kiss and fumbling hands in a field of stars.  My much younger, awakening self.  I don't take a tour through that adolescent time very often, anymore, except when I look at my children and imagine them as the teenagers they will be, all too soon.  I can't wait for them to come home.

"Well, I'm livin in a foreign country but I'm bound to cross the line
Beauty walks a razors edge, someday I'll make it mine.
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born.
Come in, she said,
I'll give you shelter from the storm."

It's a beautiful day.  There's a tear in my eye.  And I am dancing in the backyard, spinning with the needle of the world.

Comments

[GreenmanTim]

Yep, you've pegged my age pretty well. I grew up at a rural boarding school in the 1970's and the music of your young adulthood was what I heard coming from dorm room speakers when I was in grade school and Jr. High. I think the "breakup albums" stay with us longer than other popular music. "Blood on the Tracks" is a top-shelf example, as is Richard and Linda Thompson's "Shoot Out The Lights." And Billy Bragg, when not waving the workers' banner, consistantly nails the aftermath of lost love.

[Larry Ayers]

A very nice essay on musical nostalgia! I'm guessing that you are about ten years younger than I (I'm 52) but there are several intersections. I was a Grateful Dead fan and heard them live during the 1970's, and Blood On The Tracks was an influential Dylan recording early on in a marriage which has now dissolved.

[GreenmanTim]

It was the A-side of "Life's a Riot", starting with The Milkman of Human Kindness. Raw, full throated Cocknny, unadorned guitar. "I don't want to change the world / I'm not looking for a new England / I'm just looking for another girl."

Think I'll spin "Love Gets Dangerous" today.

[Charlottesvillain]

Awesome. It sounds like our musical tastes are compatible. What did you play by Bragg? My favorite is Talking with the Taxman About Poetry.

[GreenmanTim]

It could just as easily been Neil Young. Comes a Time, I reckon. "This ol' world keeps spinnin' round / It's a wonder tall trees ain't layin' down" Really good to know you again, too.

[frumiousb]

This entry brought a tear to my eye as well. It's really good to know you again.