I don’t know if I’ll ever find my “voice.” I feel like I sing each song as a different character, and that character has its own accent, inflection, etc. I’d like to attribute it to my minimal acting experience and think of it as a positive thing, but voice coaches have told me they routinely here that exact bs from mediocre singers. 😉 Whatever. I think my mediocre voice sang the shit out of this one. 😂 I don’t sound anything like Bob Dylan, and I don’t even sound much like Dan O’Hearn, it’s just a weird one-off that happened to work IMO. This recording is the second time I’ve deliberately played this song from start to finish that I can recall. The first time was immediately before I recorded this video, just because the chords and melody came to me as I was noodling around, while making up my own lyrics. So you could say this video is a true first take, of which I’m also proud. I have no idea if I’m playing or singing it “right,” and I don’t care - think of it as my own improvised version.
I’m a big fan of this song - it’s early Dylan at his most cynical, sneering and punk. Vocally, I was trying to put the softest touch on it possible, but this song is so well-written that you can’t really take the snarl out of the words. I haven’t felt a personal connection to the narrative in well over a decade, but I may or may not have used to cry it out to this one during breakups. Punks aren’t known for being prolific writers of love songs, but the love songs they do manage to write seem to have a baseline level of sincerity and clarity. This is one of all-time favorite punk love songs. And before you whine about Dylan not being “punk,” consider that he invented it! 😊 Along with numerous other genres.
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