RaR15 – Positively 4th Street
DIRECTIONS:
Listen to the recording of the tune by clicking the attached mp3 file. This will open the recording in a new window or tab. Listen and follow along with the listening guide in the book.
Read the liner notes below.
Read the information “What to Listen For”
Respond to the Rate-A-Record/Questions by clicking on the assignment link and then click on on the button “Write Submission” (to the right of Text Submission) to record your response. Do not use the comments field.
Positively 4th Street by Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan’s influence on rock and roll songwriting is so pervasive that it is hard to conceive of how the genre would sound without it. Through the medium of folk-rock, a style largely of his own making, he introduced stream-of-consciousness writing, and elevated poetry, social consciousness, and American roots music to the possibilities of what rock music could be, and what it could be about.
Dylan did not start out as a folk musician. Growing up in Hibbing, Minnesota, he learned to play harmonica and guitar and formed several rock and roll bands; he knew about Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams but didn’t try to perform their music until he got to the University of Minnesota. He discovered the blues during his freshman year and decided that he had to learn more about it. He spent part of 1960 in Denver, where he met Jesse Fuller, the “Lone Cat,” a one-man blues band who played guitar, harmonica, cymbals, drums, and a homemade bass called a fotdella. Dylan absorbed a great deal of knowledge about the blues and he learned of the harp-rack, a device that held the harmonica in proper playing position to keep the performer’s hands free. By January 1961 Dylan was in New York, having bypassed further collegiate study in favor of meeting, and hopefully learning from, Woody Guthrie. Guthrie was by that point hospitalized, dying of Huntington’s chorea, but he welcomed Dylan’s visit and encouraged him to return and to play for him. Dylan also began playing in the Greenwich Village coffeehouses that were devoted to folk music and was soon discovered by John Hammond, the legendary artists and repertoire man for Columbia Records who had started the careers of Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Billie Holiday.
Dylan’s first album was composed mostly of folk and blues standards; his next, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, was entirely original songs, including the protest masterpieces “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Masters of War,” and “Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall.” “Positively 4th Street,” a putdown of false friends and “plastic people,” first appeared on his 1967 Greatest Hits album, but is thought to have been written in 1965, shortly after Dylan began experimenting with folk rock.
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR:
It’s all about the lyrics here!
Dylan’s unique vocal delivery
The role of the organ – filling in the holes/gaps
Simple verse form. It’s all about the story/lyrics.
Lyrics:
You got a lotta nerve
To say you are my friend
When I was down
You just stood there grinning
You got a lotta nerve
To say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on
The side that’s winning
You say I let you down
You know it’s not like that
If you’re so hurt
Why then don’t you show it
You say you lost your faith
But that’s not where it’s at
You had no faith to lose
And you know it
I know the reason
That you talk behind my back
I used to be among the crowd
You’re in with
Do you take me for such a fool
To think I’d make contact
With the one who tries to hide
What he don’t know to begin with
You see me on the street
You always act surprised
You say, “How are you?” “Good luck”
But you don’t mean it
When you know as well as me
You’d rather see me paralyzed
Why don’t you just come out once
And scream it
No, I do not feel that good
When I see the heartbreaks you embrace
If I was a master thief
Perhaps I’d rob them
And now I know you’re dissatisfied
With your position and your place
Don’t you understand
It’s not my problem
I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment
I could be you
Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You’d know what a drag it is
To see you
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APA
303 words