"I couldn’t quite grasp what [Caribbean Wind] was about after I finished it. Sometimes you’ll write something to be very inspired, and you won’t quite finish it for one reason or another. Then you’ll go back and try and pick it up, and the inspiration is just gone. Either you get it all, and you can leave a few pieces to fill in, or you’re trying always to finish it off. Then it’s a struggle. The inspiration’s gone and you can’t remember why you started it in the first place. Frustration sets in. I think there’s four different sets of lyrics to this, maybe I got it right, I don’t know. I had to leave it. I just dropped it. Sometimes that happens. I started it in St. Vincent when I woke up from a strange dream in the hot sun. There was a bunch of women working in a tobacco field on a high rolling hill. A lot of them were smoking pipes. I was thinking about living with somebody for all the wrong reasons."
Bob Dylan, to Cameron Crowe (1985) @dylanfan8 Carib. Wind [Reh. w/pd st. gtr (9. 23 80)] via Graham Taylor
Bob Dylan - Caribbean Wind (very rare! San Francisco - November 12, 1980) [audio] from Ana on Vimeo.
Fox Warfield Theatre, San Francisco, California, 12 November 1980
Only known performance of Caribbean Wind. Later recorded at the Shot Of Love sessions in 1981 and finally released in 1985. Lyrics differ on this early version.
"She was from Haiti, bowed down at the table
And then I took over the Lord
At the show in Miami, in the theater of divine company.
Talkin' 'bout Jesus, talked about the rain
She told me about the vision, told me about the pain
That has risen from the essence and the dividing of memory.
Is she a child or a woman? I really can't say,
Something about her said, "Trust me anyway''
As the years turned to minutes and the minutes turned back into hours
What about you, playin' as a pawn?
It certainly was possible as the gay night wore on
But victory was mine, and I held it with the help of God's power.
And that Caribbean wind still blows from Trinidad to Mexico
The circle of light and the furnace of desire
And them distant ships of liberty on them iron waves so bold and free
Bringing everything that's near to me nearer to the fire.
Shadows move closer as we touched on the floor
Prodigal son sitting next to the door
Preaching resistance, waiting for the night to arrive
He was well connected, but her heart was a snare
Cause she had left him to die in there
But I knew he could get out while he still was alive.
Stars on my balcony, buzz in my head
Slayin' Bob Dylan in my bed
Street band playin', "Nearer My God To Thee''
She never did see me where the mission bells ring
She said, "I know what you're thinking, but there ain't a thing
You can do about it, so you might as well agree to agree''.
And that Caribbean wind blows hard from the Valley Coast into my backyard
Drivin' all your love to the furnace of desire
And them distant ships of liberty on them iron waves so bold and free
Bringing everything that's near to me nearer to the fire.
Atlantic City by the cruel sea
I hear a voice cryin' "Daddy'', I always think it's for me
But it's only the silence in the buttermilk hall that call
Bearin' new messages, bringing evil reports
Of rioting armies and time that is short
And earthquakes and train wrecks and death-threats written on walls.
Would I have married her? I don't know I suppose
She had bells in her braids and they hung to her toes
The curtain was rising and, like they say, the ship will sail at dawn
And I felt it come over me, some kind of glow
My voice said, "Come on with me girl, I got plenty of room''
But I know I'd be lyin', and besides she had already gone.
And that Caribbean wind still howls from Tokyo to the British Isles
We never walked in to that furnace of desire
And them distant ships of liberty on them iron waves so bold and free
Bringing everything that's near to me nearer to the fire."
Merle Kilgore "The Boozy King" whose intro Firenzo, his tux jacket gonzo, and the brain in that cranium, while not made for fission, a cause for great concern, housed himself at Sue's Brewer's Boars Nest, Desoxyn, Eskatrol, Placidyl ...
Can't remember the last time I wrote a poem about a music video:One-more-time revisiting, top-five, extraterrestrial, flawlessly frozen Forever in cryogenic freezer, peopled with players which makes it numbing, but not in a good way like a Miltown lunch.
Pete Drake and his box, key of #atonal, dissonant #C9, or stranger, pulleys bend, round metal bar gliss, scissorhand claws you as you come-to on the floor, falling over this bizarro-country-ish facade in an Assembly of God, loss of touchstone, Gene Autry reels spin in the old man's head like every Saturday, his nickname 'Killer,' proved belief in illegitimate quantifiers, whose charts and calendars plan your daily conquests, meals, and assignations, overriding what you must do, and your belief that the moment of birth in-position stars and Houses, celestial ways and strains, and holes, and other neighborhoods too far too visit, wouldn't want to live there unless able to take Goldilocks, whose entitlement, having everything perfect--time, temperature, and place, is what scientists narrow likelihood of sustainability this planet in space, home to a motley group of characters whose hatred for themselves and those whose tribes, sects, denominations, regiments, armies, oceans have, which they have wanted to kill the other since first introduced, when Creationist Warming Party HOA, began the immutably linked glorious reference when giants walked the Earth.
La Cosa Nostre is unconcerned with the state of your globe and its warming, but delighted that you, your guardianship, notice newly smouldering trash fires on horizon, or behind-schedule state and city government services, whose workers (no-show, of course), seem exceedingly groggy, or variously over-stimulated, even experiencing some sort of communal relationship with animals in parking lots, which they formerly eschewed, shooed, and chewed, dependent on their liking and mood, or their Godfather's ... nominative determinant, simultaneously preventing faded sobriquet, imbued American love of Gangster and Cowboy in black, whose ass Autry chased, whose every touched life redoubled twice, overburdened acolytes, so to speak, which might, introducing Pete Drake, his beery Twin Peaks presence cannot be denied.
David Lynch, disturbingly accurate, wholesome, inappropriate Mother of All Mother Churches, directs this m/v: unholy, unsanctified altar, clergy hail from holler to favella, if she like the record, she'd go around with men, but 'Grand' is beaumonde, 'Opry,' diminution, like stars we worship, Lil Abner homespinning, homespun winning--bite with teeth Moonpie, RC Cola for relief; no macaroons, Earl Gray tea, you just bit country's little tit, little bit NASA, Computer Punch Cards, firsts from Nashville in garages, not Silicone Valley (Webb Pierce's guitar-shaped swimming pool), where Bob Moore (bassist), did more scales by noon than El Chapo's Sinaloa Cartel, with twice the work ethic, whose sessionography is used to counterweight terabytes, whose bass employs a stool for bottom; most louche posturing, shrugged off-shoulder outfit since miniskirts dropped from the sky into the Cumberland after some wiseacre called Tom T. Hall wrote a story, then tried lyrics, after a night of greasy food, and an unhealthy allegiance to friends whose orbit the song inspires, switch horse in midstream whose river runs half as deep, even still water is ... 'Still ...'
Bill Anderson, please speak up.
It is long your murmur before you will party with TNN puppet, whose attentions it seems befuddle you as to where to stare, and why, into a dummy's eyes?
1980s Printer's Alley dancer at Skull's Rainbow Room (just holla, she'll hollaback), southern Salome, whose last remark before shaking (was always, fries), served up head like John the Baptist every Seventh Veiled performance.
talking steel guitar recumbent, abundant, adumbrant, grandiloquent, redundant preponderant of wonderment in moon-red banquettes, white serviettes ...skinny ecdysist, erector sets, too shy to request, picaresque Burlesque.
- She should unfold her serviette and place it on her lap. It is immaterial whether she places the bread on the right or left-hand side of the cover when taking it from the serviette.
- A gentleman should do the same with his serviette and bread, placing the one across his knees, and the other at his right or left hand.
Say it slowly and think about words and what they mean to religious publishing, the songpoem and its phenomenon, in a place which made it bizarre, factory churned, records turned, and we toured star's homes, while they in pajamas at low ebb, artists like Web, and denizens reeling in slow burn, cocaine endemic, work brightener, career-ending treacle of country singers' complaints, those deviated haints ...
