#sad eyed lady of the lowlands

[dollarbin]

Nickel Bin #4:

Cat Stevens' Foreigner Suite

Though I'm surely as guilty of practicing it as the next music blogger, I don't know how to spell pretentious without looking it up.

But The Beatles surely entered every new Spelling Bee hoping pretentious would be the first word they were responsible for. They knew the concept all too well. After all, Yoko and John decided his schlong, and nothing else, was a worthy subject for a 40 minute film.

(No, I'm not gonna show you a clip of the movie here; get your mind out of the gutter; and anyway, the film was only ever shown once and is not available anywhere; so no slow-motion image of Lennon's Johnson for you; Yoko said "the critics wouldn't touch it"; neither will this blog...)

Paul meanwhile routinely praised his own music by posing as a nonexistent journalist named Clint Harrigan. And George was inspired to write Try Some, Buy Some to document "his sudden perception of God amid the temptations of the material world" while living in this house:

And Ringo... well you know The Dollar Bin is shy about criticizing Ringo, even if his website just announced a "LANDMARK PHOTOGRAPHY RETROSPECTIVE HARDCOVER “BEATS & THREADS” CHRONICLING OVER 70 YEARS OF HIS LEGENDARY DRUM KITS AND ERA DEFINING FASHIONS."

There is perhaps just one form of late 60s to mid 70s era rock pretension of which the lads from Liverpool never partook: the side-long song. Arthur Lee's Love introduced the idea of one long song filling an entire side of vinyl on their second record, and everyone, including Lee, instantly recognized that doing so was pretentious nonsense.

(By the way, Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands does not count. Why? A) it's only 11 minutes long and takes up a side on its own only because it is at the end of a double album, b) it's too awesome to criticize in any way, and c) cuz I said so.)

Relax: I love Pink Floyd's Echoes (not to mention The Pentangle's Jack Orion) as much as any reasonable white guy, but you've got to admit there is little one can imagine more pretentious than declaring that your music requires listeners to concentrate for 18-23 minutes without pause because you're a big deal artist sent by the gods who cannot be bothered to meet the needs of radio formatting or real people with real responsibilities.

And that brings us to our first ever discussion of one of the Dollar Bin's greatest oddballs, Cat Stevens. It wasn't pretentious enough for Cat to fill the entire A Side of his career cauterizing 73 album Foreigner with one song; he also insisted on calling it a "suite".

The musical term "suite" has its origins in the 1500's and was central to Baroque era music; the idea of a suite was to assemble serious music together for the purpose of serious dancing. Bach wrote a bunch of them; time signatures were to be rigidly followed; everything was either homophonic (not homophobic, ye hasty reader, homophonic: all acceptable music is queer friendly) or polyphonic or, who am I kidding? I have no idea what a song suite actually is; all I can say that it's a serious piece of serious music; in other words it has nothing to do with Jethro Tull.

What I'm trying to say here is that taking three to seven pop songs, smashing them together (with either total or no elegance) and calling it a "suite" is comparable to me wrapping up last Wednesday's spaghetti in a tortilla, adding canned salsa, and declaring my pathetic lunch a Super Deluxe Burrito. Stephen Stills was of course the master of such pretension; see Suite: Judy Blue Eyes. I'll bet he's tucking into a spaghetti burrito as we speak.

Cat Stevens' Foreigner Suite is, admittedly, another totally pretentious addition to this club. And yet, it features everything we love about the Cat Man: sweet harmonies, dense sonic changes, passionate lyrics and his patented I'm-a-grandpa-who-zipped-up-too-fast-and-got-his-hairy-hacky-sack-caught-in-it vocal stylings. Plus he recorded the song while on tax exile in Jamaica and was appropriately enamored with reggae, so the whole thing is a fitting follow up to Paul Simon's Mother and Child Reunion.

My wife bought this record early in our relationship at a Salvation Army without my pretentious approval. I knew Cat Stevens. My long ago friend Thom Moore of Moore Brothers fame had shown us Harold & Maude and I'd been listening to Tea for The Tillerman since middle school.

(My buddy Eric and I once spent all of a sleepover listening to the title track on repeat; when we finally went to bed we turned it down as low as it could go while still remaining audible; therefore we woke up every other minute and a half when everyone belted out HAPPY DAY!; we had no access to, or interest in, drugs, so that was our idea of trippin').

But I'd decided early on that everything after Mona Bone Jakon (now that's a record that deserves a big deal Dollar Bin treatment; it's the overlooked third member of holy, end-of-the-60's, white people music trinity alongside Five Leaves Left and Astral Weeks) was a compromise, and that everything after Teaser and the Firecat was a worthy soundtrack for that film about Lennon's one-eyed monster.

So I turned my pretentious nose up at my lady friend's thrift store find, resumed listening to Daydream Nation, and thereby missed out on Foreigner Suite for the rest of the 90's.

But then we had a kid in 02 it was time to a) rewrite my pretentious first/last novel, b) drink more/cheaper beer, and c) listen to the records in my collection I had previously ignored, all in an effort to prove to myself that I was not simply a middle aged, balding dadman forever more. And that brought me to Foreigner Suite.

Let's listen.

Where to start? I count the soulful main theme (There are no words...) which opens the piece briefly and then comes back for an extended run at the end, then there's another two or three unique melody sections as well as the funk in the middle, and then the whole thing soars away with sweet piano doodling and a chorus that I can't begin to get my head around: heaven, Cat sings, must have programmed you. Is he singing to a 60's era, Warehouse-sized IBM machine? Or to Neil's new robot? Is he inventing the internet years before Al Gore did?

I love this song. I'd play it loud on weekends in our first real home whenever my wife was at work. My infant daughter spent the 8 minutes unpacking all her toys one by one, tasting each of them. And I'd sit on the floor beside her, tasting them too. Then she'd don every costume jewelry necklace in the house and crawl about, dragging bling wherever she went. And I'd sing along with Cat and crawl along after her, marvelling. After all, Heaven had programmed her.

And when she graduates from college this May I'll likely have Cat Stevens in my head:

When you're talking to me And the whirling wind turns to song Why it sets my soul free

Here's to Cat. He wound up donating all the money he saved on his taxes while in Jamaica to UNESCO.

More importantly, here's to Martin Luther King. Today's his day. His words and voice are currently knocking the wind out of my ninth grade students in all the right ways.

And, most importantly, here's to all the unpretentious people who spent today in service to others.

Cheers.

[balladofhollisbrown]

listening to sad eyed lady of the lowlands is like heaven. it’s like everything just fades away, all your problems, all your memories… it’s like bob dylan is right there, singing this song to you like a mother singing a lullaby to their child.

[mackmp3]

do u like bob dylan?

yes hehe very much so :D

i was obsessed with him when i was 13 - at some point i owned 11 of his albums, annotated my copy of his slightly bonkers book & learned to play a unholy number of his songs <3 idk what is was about him but yeah he was a major Intrest of mine & i'm still quite fond of his music hehe

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Photo of Sara Lownds and Bob Dylan, by Daniel Kramer (1965) 

* * * *

“Oh, the farmers and the businessmen They all did decide To show you where the dead angels are That they used to hide But why did they pick you To sympathize with their side? How could they ever mistake you? They wished you’d accepted The blame for the farm But with the sea at your feet And the phony false alarm And with the child of the hoodlum Wrapped up in your arms How could they ever have persuaded you? Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums Should I leave them by your gate? Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?”

[Not Dark Yet]

[thebluereptile]

this this THIS right here 💛

[some-esoteric-joke]

nobody listens to sad-eyed lady of the lowlands like i listen to sad-eyed lady of the lowlands

[dufrau]

(the more i write this thing and the longer it gets, the more im like... this story is NOT going to be a hit. it is dense and internal and mopey as hell. BUT i think a small handful of people will really like it, most importantly me.)

[baezdylan]

playing a bob dylan record and hugging the album cover close to my chest as i lie on the floor with could-be-tears in my eyes was not how i expected my evening to go which was stupid. because of course that would happen.

[themagicalmysticalboy]

i’ve listened to this song a million times and was genuinely surprised when someone said i was a long song. like i had to go check and only then did i know it was over 10 minutes long. it’s never felt like a particularly long song to me and i almost never skip it. Joan’s cover of it is dope too btw

[whenyouwishuponastar7]

I want to post chapters 2-3 days apart but my fic being finished and completely edited with 5 more chapters ready to go is making me antsy sksksk I'm so used to posting completed fics all at once but for much smaller fandoms

[thedickcavettshow]

I wonder what Sara Dylan thought of Joan Baez’s cover of Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. Because what do you do in that situation? Your husband’s ex-girlfriend whom he left for you covered an intimate love song he wrote about you. And it’s better.

[kvetchlandia]

Bob Dylan Sad Eyed Lady f the Lowlands 1966

...With your sheets like metal and your belt like lace

And your deck of cards missing the jack and the ace

And your basement clothes and your hollow face

Who among them can think he could outguess you?

With your silhouette when the sunlight dims

Into your eyes where the moonlight swims

And your matchbook songs and your gypsy hymns

Who among them would try to impress you?

Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands

Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes

My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums

Should I leave them by your gate

Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?...

[haveyoulistenedtothisalbum-poll]

Tracklist:

Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 • Pledging My Time • Visions of Johanna • One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later) • I Want You • Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again • Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat • Just Like a Woman • Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine) • Temporary Like Achilles • Absolutely Sweet Marie • Fourth Time Around • Obviously Five Believers • Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands

Spotify ♪ YouTube