" You can call me Bobby ...or you can call me Zimmy"

#227-For Archive: www.oaklanddupree@substack.com

“…you can call me RJ, or you can call me Ray… but you’re gonna have to serve somebody…” sang Bob Dylan on Gotta Serve Somebody, his semi-hit song from the album Slow Train Coming. The tune was kind of a sly nod to comedian Ramond J. Johnson’s bit “You can call me Ray” which was very popular for laughs on late 70’s TV. I remember one local Amador County bar denizen who jokingly said, “Dupree that song’s about you!” as I was serving drinks while tending bar at the Fan Club Saloon in Sutter Creek California in 1979. In actuality, Dylan’s tune is universal and the symbolic “ devil or the lord ” option seems to encompass greed, lust, envy and all the seven deadly sins that are set before us in life… at least that’s my take on it. In re-reading Dylan’s Chronicles Part 1 , an autobiographical memoir, everything the poet-songwriter chronicled seems fresh and newly fascinating some 20 years after publishing. The whole born again Christian aspect of Slow Train Coming or the Country Western flavors (Dylan always loved Hank Williams’ Luke the Drifter) of Nashville Skyline or John Wesley Harding were part of a lengthy strategy of Dylan’s to shake the “Voice of a Generation” label foisted on him by the media that made his family life hell. Not to alienate listeners, but to maybe veer them off the “protest song” trail. Robert Zimmerman just wanted to be a working musician and songwriter and be allowed his privacy, but his writing in the first several years of recording was so stunningly brilliant that fame and admiration came to him in a tidal wave, and he was set up by the public to be the spokesman and leader of a generation… that role just wasn’t for him to inhabit…a misguided notion in the minds of others. Songs like The Times They Are A’ Changin’, With God On Our Side, A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall, and Ballad of a Thin Man were just a few examples of Zimmy’s observations and artistic expression, not born of any desire to lead a generation in thought and action. Young Dylan, flushed with recording success, had a wife and a growing crew of children but could not escape zealots who surrounded his homes in Woodstock and NYC with bullhorns beseeching Bob to “come out and lead us”. Dylan gives excruciating narration of the harassment he endured by “fans”. Being booed by audiences for going electric might have entered into his retreat from the public, though Bob doesn’t discuss that career aspect in the book. These are merely my personal interpretations. A motorcycle accident was just the excuse he needed to go into seclusion, and he found peace and quiet on the Eastern end of Long Island by renting an out of the way house under his wife’s maiden name. Dylan liked to work in his home shop, making scrap metal sculptures and gates. He was born and raised in the Iron Range of Northern Minnesota, so working in iron came naturally, I guess.

Chronicles Part 1 reveals Bob’s early years as an unknown in Greenwich Village and the people who influenced him such as older friend Ray and his wife, who gave him shelter in their big apartment filled with books and stimuli… his infatuation with Woody Guthrie’s music and mentoring by talents such as Bluesman Lonnie Johnson (the musical power of threes) and folk artist Dave Van Ronk shaped his growth. The author himself explains just how Robert Zimmerman picked the name Bob Dylan and the spelling and connotations of that choice. It also illustrates how he came to the conclusion to write his own songs instead of having a repertoire of tunes similar to many other folk singers of the era. He is really so honest about himself, and his prose is wonderfully rich and poetic. I had always thought of Dylan as a recluse who was reluctant to speak out due to his media resentment, but some years ago my old high school buddy Charlie Hager sent me CD’s of Dylan’s satellite radio shows where Bob showed off his vast musical knowledge and verbal wit. I kiddingly said to myself “that Dylan’s a gabby sumbitch!” Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour shows were marvelous and educational but sadly those gifted plastic CD’s from Charlie stopped playing in my various CD playback units and are lost to me as such…some Theme Time Radio Hour shows are available for listening on You Tube….YAY ! Similarly, my old pal, bluesman Charlie Musselwhite, had a radio show up in Santa Rosa on the KRUSH ( before he moved to Clarksdale Mississippi) called Charlie’s Back Room where he showed off a vast collection of obscure American and international songs and a musical knowledge to match.

In the Chronicles Part 1 book, Dylan goes into serious detail of making the LP Oh Mercy with producer Daniel Lanois in New Orleans. Lanois was recommended to Dylan by Irishman Bono during a night of Guinness drinking and tale swapping at Bob’s Malibu pad. It’s a damn fine album, recorded in New Orleans, but was a major struggle to make at first. They had sidemen in the studio that included Mason Ruffner, Rockin’ Dopsie, and various Neville Brothers. Dylan’s observations of that city make delightful reading. He bought a ‘66 Harley Davidson motorcycle and took a ride through back country Louisiana with his artistic wife on the back of the bike, hoping to clear his head from the stunted and stalled recording sessions. He and Mrs. Bob Dylan met some real and stimulating characters on their little adventure. Dylan also went to the little movie theater in his temporary NOLA hood and saw Mickey Rourke in Homeboy playing a cowboy boxer and that filmic performance somehow served Zimmy as a vivid inspiration to complete the Oh Mercy album. BTW I got to know Mickey a little in Hollywood and we had some great conversations. A one-of-a-kind character is Rourke. Dylan also talks of touring with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and the Grateful Dead variously backing him. He resisted chucking it all right then and there …instead Dylan walked out of the Dead’s rehearsal hall in San Rafael to clear his mind and figure out how to somehow quit those projects. He stopped in a small bar and listened to a jazz combo comprised of old timer musicians wearing hats and Dylan took in the geezers and observed their joy in playing music … that experience somehow got him back on track to tour with the Dead and alternately the Heartbreakers …he found the willingness to sing and play the Dylan songs that those two band’s members were eager to perform. In Bob Dylan’s world, creative inspiration, wherever it comes from, is a vital ingredient to his continuity. These days Dylan seems to tour constantly (e.g., The Never-Ending Tour) and I finally got to see him several years ago at Civic Auditorium in SF (now named after Bill Graham) with guitarist extraordinaire Mark Knopfler opening. A great show. I will be a Bob Dylan music lover til my last breath.

Batch of Snatches: Two of my readers, unsolicited by me, offered a pledge to pay to read this blog! I’m very flattered and if I got twenty something more pledges, might just make the transition to paid. Thank you Jim and Tim !…Labor Day 2023: Not gonna give you another litany of my 60 years of work, but fave jobs include my current gig of crossing young school kids safely across busy streets, working for Bill Graham as stage and/or dressing room manager and security ranks high because of the great music I got to experience, as well as being bar manager at The Stone nightclub in SF for Freddie Hererra , so many nights of the Jerry Garcia Band, Muddy Waters ,Albert King, James Brown and lotsa musical greats… working at the Roundup Saloon in Lafayette California, tending bar and promoting shows there with Charlie Musselwhite, Norton Buffalo, and Mark Hummel’s Blues Survivors to name a few…moving down the street to the Killarney House , I was privileged to present great blues artist Fenton Robinson….speaking of the Killarney, my boss Irishman Denis O’Leary promoted gambling for drinks with bar dice . Mafia Liar’s Dice was the main game often with six or seven players . He had about thirteen leather cups and sets of the good, expensive dice, inlaid with red , blue, and black pips. Denis had tickets, like raffle tickets or old-style movie theater cardboard tickets, which he stamped and initialed, each good for a drink and sold as such. No exchange of cash between the dice players was allowed. I asked him why he didn’t use poker chip style drink chips like the other saloons, and he said in his brogue “ me boy, when chips go into the washer, they only come out cleaner, but tickees in the laundry are lost forever” …I recently put my lottery tickets through the wash accidentally, in their protective plastic sleeve and they still got wet, almost a relief that I lost, as per usual. In 30 years of playing, I’ve hit for multiple hundreds of dollars several times. I voted against California Lottery many years ago, knowing I would play weekly… which I do. It’s my only shot at ever seeing Europe and the rest of the world in person… Nature Bats Last: Burners are stuck in the mud in the Nevada desert. They should have quit when they were ahead: burning a straw man on Ocean Beach in San Francisco as an art statement, instead of a huge promotion/extravaganza in the Black Rock desert. As an SF cabbie , I used to drive the partying “Burners” from all night dances at Mighty, a club on Utah Street. They are mostly agreeable folks… speaking of mud, people in Sonoma got sick from disease laden mud in a “mudders” event while dust from the soil on California’s Central Coast is full of bad fungi the makes humans breathing it very ill… if the soil AND the air is fucked up…well…NOW we’re in trouble!… morons in other states have an anti-environmentalist tactic of blowing huge black clouds of diesel exhaust from pickup trucks onto electric cars and hybrids…these fucking idiots convert their exhaust system to make this statement called “Oil Rolling” … I know Tesla drivers are max annoying and entitled, but polluting the air in an extremely stupid protest action could only come from the movie Idiocracy (2006) a Mike Judge satire that seems now to be almost prescient, lamentably. I drove hybrid taxicabs (Ford Escapes) for years as mandated by progressive minded SF officials. I had zero problems working with the SUV Escapes, in fact I dug driving them very much… Wikipedia provides terrific biographies sometimes. Give ‘em the three bucks when they ask for it! Recently read Wiki bios of bluesman Albert King and pioneering African American actor Tim Moore ( the Kingfish on Amos ’N’ Andy) just fascinating and informative … heartbreaking to consider the cruel obstacles that African American artists had to navigate here in the good ol’ USA…Bridges Restaurant in Danville was where the Mrs. Doubtfire restaurant scenes were shot 30 years ago , with maestro Dick Bright playing a waiter. People just adored that Robin Williams picture. My pal, David Martin organized an Oakland Dupree birthday dinner at Bridges several years ago and it was great. As an SF cabdriver, I would ask people from everywhere if they wanted to see the Mrs. Doubtfire house (Divisadero and Broadway) and they all answered YES !… also used to show tourists the “Pacific Heights” house from the 1990 movie with Michael Keaton. It actually sits on 19th Street atop Potrero Hill. Both of those movie set homes are smaller than they appear in the films…That King of Hubris, Benioff threatened to take his Dreamforce Convention elsewhere, then retracted his anti-SF stance. Hey pal, if you are going to Vegas with your convention, please take the Tower of Doom with you! … I used to work Dreamforce, driving cabs, and making pretty good dough, but the streets were overwhelmingly crippled with traffic, because Bay Area idiots attending the thing drove their cars into The City instead of taking public transportation. Actually, met lots of fine folks from all over the world at Dreamforce…I have about 39 films on DVD listed on my Netflix queue, but it’s a de facto symbolic queue as they are discontinuing DVD rentals soon which is what made them a successful enterprise in the first place. Titles like Spielberg’s 2005 picture Munich and the ‘81 remake of Postman Always Rings Twice are virtually impossible to get which pisses me off for wasting 14 bucks a month. The motherfuckers should give back rebates for even using their near worthless DVD service.

Mud and Dust Avoidance Viewing: Irma Vep (1996) Maggie Cheung, the very attractive Hong Kong actress comes to Paris to make a tribute vampire film (anagram of Irma Vep). The cast features a wild and wacky almost dysfunctional French film crew, constantly arguing and gossiping led by an eccentric director on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It’s funny and clever, especially since Assayas skewers the filmmaking process of his own home country, France. This auteur is becoming one of my fave director/writers… The Big Sleep (1946) Like The Godfather or Pulp Fiction, it’s hard for me to resist watching this one when it comes up. Howard Hawks’ playful Philip Marlowe picture is chock full of sexy innuendo from Bogie and Bacall. The Raymond Chandler story is converted into a screenplay partially written by William Faulkner…fun Film Noir detective tale and such great 40’s hard boiled dialogue! Plenty of foxy dames decorate the movie as well …in glorious Black & White… How To Live To Be 100: The Blue Zones(2023) A Netflix streaming doc series about longevity… first stop: Okinawa Japan, a temperate island , isolated from rat race civilization. The locals eat blue sweet potatoes and locally grown greens, drink green tea and hang around all day playing quoits. A 101 year old lady advises “Don’t Be Angry !” heh heh heh heh heh… easier said than done. My grandmother made 100 and wished she didn’t. She ran out of money and needed constant health care. Let’s just enjoy life on a daily proposition …one day at a time. As my old pal, the late Herbie Herbert, loved to say “ When your number is up, it’s up ! If it’s NOT up , no doctor can kill you, but if it IS up, a doctor can speed you on your way! ”…another Netflix streamer; Who is Erin Carter? (2023) is a tough action thriller series set in Barcelona. It stars Evin Ahmad, an appealing and attractive Kurdish actress who successfully pulls off her starring role. The costumers (or producers) have her in tight form fitting slacks to accent her booty and hips for sex appeal, I guess. The Spaniard male actors all seem to have the same beards and haircuts, so it’s a little difficult to tell good guys from bad guys. Pretty good entertainment otherwise, which might be hard to come by as the writers and actors strikes continue and start to matter, programming wise…As it should be!

Songs of the Day: Man in the Long Black Coat- Bob Dylan + Don’t Throw Your Love On Me So Strong-Albert King +I Hear Some Blues Downstairs- Fenton Robinson +With God On Our Side- The Neville Brothers