Real compared to what?
I’m listening to a “Compared To What,” the smoking, jazz-vocal jam from 1969 with big Eddie Harris on sax and Less McCann on piano/vocals. It’s the classic, live joint captured at Montreux. Eddie is wailing on the sax, Les is spittin’ out the verse while banging the ivories. I can’t think of a more appropriate song for this Mercury Retrograde. Let’s pay homage to one the track’s timeless verses:
“The President, he’s got his war/Folks don’t know just what it’s for/Nobody gives us rhyme or reason/Have one doubt, they call it treason/We’re chicken-feathers, all without one nut. God damn it! /Tryin’ to make it real — compared to what? (Sock it to me).”
Real . . . compared to what?
McCann was born on the Autumnal, Equinox, 9/23/35. He and Eddie Harris were perfect bookends for their sign as Harris held down the back end of Libra, 10/20/34. McCann, shares that epic birthday with both John Coltrane and Ray Charles. When the two of them busted out “Compared To What” in at Montreux, it became an anthem of sorts, different than say what “The Times They Are A Changin”” which ushered in The 60’s was all about. “Compared To What” was bouncing “The 60’s” out on their ass. Speaking of Bob Dylan, Mercury Retrograde and real compared to what, the usually uber-chill, Joni Mitchell (Scorpio) dropped a bombshell this week, basically saying that Bob Dylan is a plagiarist and a phony in a recent “LA Times” interview; “Bob is not authentic at all: He’s a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I.”
Could it be the oncoming pull of the Scorpio Full Moon, drawing the sap of bitterness out in Joni, or, is she finally blowing the lid on one of Rock’s best kept secrets?
Her natal Mercury (Scorpio) is opposing retrograde Mercury in Taurus. Transiting Mars has caught up with her natal Pluto in Leo and Saturn is doing a wide squat on her natal Venus in Virgo. It’s a prefect celestial storm for Joni to stir the pot. I posted this and the video that I am posting below on Facebook and got singed. That’s okay. I can live with it. I ‘m thinking of changing my name to “Hazmat Inayat Khan,” since these chemtrails are turning my tissue to flame retardant, silicon flesh. I guess Big Bro and those multidimensional creeps that are systematically wiping out the bees, bats and soon whales, want me to stick around and are converting my skin to some alien sheen that seals off the burning rays of the Sun, keeping it from charring it to cinders and ash. So go ahead, flame away here as well if you wish.
When I saw that Mitchell quote about Dylan being a fake and a deception, I couldn’t help but flash back on that really weird, Ed Bradley interview that he did with Bob back in 2006. The first words out of Dylan’s mouth were, “You feel like an impostor.” I thought that was pretty interesting. Then Dylan goes onto talk with Bradley about the “bargain” he made with “The Chief Commander.” Chief Commander eh? He said he made the deal, I mean bargain “to get where he is today.” Another video clearly states that he went down to the crossroads, where Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to his own version of the “Chief Commander” as well. Now this can be canny self-promotion and self-mythologizing or it can be clearly hidden in plain sight. Real compared to what?
Dave McGowan did a blistering series on The Laurel Canyon scene of the 60’s and 70’s and made more than just a few casual connections between major players such as Crosby, Stills, Morrison, Phillips, Zappa and Gram Parsons amongst others with “The MIC.” McGowan once revered the music and the influence of many of these irreproachable icons and after he got his nails dirty, had to re-visit his level of appreciation for what they were up to and who they really were. Intertwined with the internecine connections of old money and the military establishment are the standard connections between rock, satanism and luciferianism. The thing that makes his research so compelling is that he isn’t born again or has some sort of puritanical and uptight agenda. Dave McGowan is sardonic, brilliant, funny and a hipster in his own right. Check out his series and look back during this retrograde phase at the buds of “The Summer Of Love” and you could discover that Bob Dylan might not be the only impostor from that hallowed era.
15 thoughts on “Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is do you, Mr. Jones?”
There is NO substitute for talent …
I guess there’s all kinds of talents in this universe. I just watched Heath Ledger’s very last interview, where, ironically, he plays Bob Dylan in the enigmatically titled, “I’m Not There.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-B4NXW6bH8
Contrary to many people who tend to think outside the status quo, I have never looked at the 60’s with much more than contempt. We did get a few important thinkers out of that era, and a few positive social developments. But whenever I hear baby boomers stroking themselves over how great the 60’s were, I see a bunch of fools who traded their love beads for lines of coke, and metastasized into a corporatist police state-loving plague of locusts.
Mark,
We’ve kicked this one around before. Jerry Rubin, Bill Clinton, are both emblematic of the failure of that era. Some interesting things came out of it, but there was a lot of cleaning up to do after the party and the entitlement that went along with Pluto in Leo was not conducive to the level of collective maturity that config needed to administer an accountable stewardship of the culture. Their kids, the Pluto in Libra generation are going to feel the effects of both transiting Saturn and Pluto on their lives. Hopefully, many will take up the cause again, from a slightly more sober and committed perspective.
I have ALWAYS been totally mystified by Dylan’s manufactured/media-imposed “appeal”.
Question: Would he have been anointed King of the Music World by the EARTHLY powers-that-be if he had been born, say, Robert Smith, not Zimmerman?
Dawn, I had a friend in high school that was deep into Dylan and I simply refused to go there. Joni Mitchell’s music spoke to me much more. From “Hissing Of Summer’s Lawns” to “Mingus” I think is one of the more fascinating periods for one artist in modern music.
Thanks for posting that …
… that special talent that unlocks the heart and opens the mind
comes from the place that can only be Divine …
Oooooh yes….First comes Saturn, then comes Pluto…then…one big can of whoop ass. Get ready it; will be awesome.
I came here to do two things. Kick ass and chew bubble gum. And by this time next year…I’ll be all outta gum.
Gandhi said ” The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.”
I really feel that energy of striving after a dream is getting stronger for all who walk that path of selflessness…
As a musician that used to play in a Satanic influenced band i can say that i felt it was anti establishment to be into that scene – now after learning that the Bush family were members of the satanic Skull & Bones – i am ashamed that i was so foolish – satan is the estabishment in the west now, and its fruits are shown here on Bobs face. He perhaps didnt follow his instincs in artistic pursuit and that leaves you cold & without pride and respect for yourself and your endeavors.
Good on you Joni Mitchell a true fellow Scorpio! 😉
…when Jesus said “Know them by their fruits”… …maybe he was refering to the 5th dimensional energies that are around us … who LOVE music
Joni, you are right; so strange, true, sad. Her comments & stars speak to me. My own Leo moon conj her north node which is squ Neptune in Scorpio conj her Sun/Mercury in Scorpio. Her Asc conj my north node, her Jupiter conj my Leo Sun echo and touch my musical & poetic . Anger, and weird affliction and piercing, white hot rage at hypocrisy and the satanists that have overtaken, degraded, and usurped everything good [until we rebuild again]. The huge con and the weird attacks on those who feel, know, & want to fight it. I feel oddly vindicated. She sees disgusting Madonna as Nero, exactly, precisely. I got the worst mojo after directly serving Madge and her cohort at the UN, Feb 2008. Joni’s Venus sq Mars and other mutable t-square suggest the on-off-un-oft-married, quarrelsome truth-teller.
Her childhood polio, smoking, hardships, abandonment [adoption] & reuniting with her daughter and hatred of what America has become esp since the 80’s, “Strong and wrong” synchs with me. It figures that she would be afflicted with Morgellons, which appears to be a kind of induced mind control experiment, beamed in psychosis. Or a new plague that is frightening. I pray that she is restored to health.
Might that Joni get clear and healthy and those who move with her do the same, God & Goddess-willing. May her and even Joan Didion be well, join and speak now, with their public forums, more and deeper truth, now, and resoundingly at this late stage, near zero hour.
Bob Dylan is God…………
I like to rip Joni`s freaking head off and shit down her neck.Give me a call Bobby.
Keef, Dylan might be God, but you might have to re-define who that God might be. 🙂
I’ll dial the blue line later today.