"Penetrating the Void": An Alarming Wormhole Into the Troposphere of the Musical Psyche, the Fruit of Witch Is Goral #2
‘Penetrating the Void’: An Alarming Wormhole Into the Troposphere of the Musical Psyche, the Fruit of Witch Is Goral is a submitted music review column. This is the second in a series.
The Traveling Wilburys’ Vol. 1
Recently, I’ve taken to listening to a lot of old music, music that I was really into, say, like ten years ago. It all started when my friend and I were eating at a Burgerville in Portland and “Jimi Thing” from The Dave Matthews Band’s Under the Table and Dreaming came on. I said that early Dave Matthews really kicked ass, or at least I thought so at the time. And then I started wondering about the process of abandoning once beloved artists to clear space for the more adult, or hip, or the more fitting to your personality etcetera. Long story short, I started listening to The Dave Matthews Band again. August and Everything After (1993) by the Counting Crows still makes me cry in the wee desperate hours. The Eels’ Electro-Shock Blues (1998) is still depressing as fuck. But no album re-struck a chord so much as The Traveling Wilburys’ Vol. 1 (1988).
The Wilburys’ line up reads something like a Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame induction concert. They were a pop rock super group with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, and Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra. They originally formed to help Harrison record a B-Side for his Lynne produced Cloud 9 album, but apparently after hearing the heartbreakingly lighthearted and enlightened “Handle with Care,” the record label wanted more. What they got was an entire album filled with gems.
The most charming thing about the Wilburys is that, with the exception of Petty, they were operating in the winters of their respective careers. But instead of making an album of dull blues-rock, they took advantage of their aged perspectives. On “Handle with Care,” when Harrison sings:
Been stuck in airports terrorized
Sent to meetings hypnotized
Overexposed, commercialized
Handle me with care
it feels sincere because we know his biography. On “Dirty World,” when Dylan sings:
You don’t need no wax job
you’re smooth enough for me
if you need your oil changed I’ll do it for you free
it is perverted because Dylan is old. But that’s the awesome part.
As the album progresses, we get a pretty eclectic mix of genre play. “Last Night” is uplifting Tom Petty reggae. “Tweeter and the Monkey Man” is a Dylan prose poem homage to (or spoof of) Bruce Springsteen. “Margarita” is a synthed out eighties party jam. It’s hard not to laugh at Dylan’s crazy old man voice singing:
It was in Pittsburgh late one night
I lost my hat, got into a fight
I rolled and tumbled ’til I saw the light
Went to the big apple, took a bite.
The album closes with the Harrison led “End of the Line,” perhaps one of the most uplifting pop-rock songs of the last twenty years. I have memories of skipping around my living room to this song when I was four years old, and it still resonates in the same way. Despite its eclecticism, the entire album shares that distinctive Jeff Lynne production sheen, and it is cohesive because the musicians have an obvious collective chemistry. The Traveling Wilburys’ Vol. 1 gives its audience a fresh perspective on some of the best rock musicians of all time. Highly recommended!
-Gregory Campanile
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