It's a long way from there to here

I enjoyed reading this interview with Jewel. Her sweet, melodic voice has long belied her tough nature. I suppose that is in part from trying to straddle folk, country, rock and even dance hall. I would like to see a little more rawness in her voice. It's almost like she is trying too hard to please her listeners, rather than just letting go. Maybe Freewheelin' Woman will finally be it?

Quite a few things stand out in this interview. I liked the way she sized up cynicism, calling it a "coping mechanism to hide your dreams, your aspirations ... you're just hiding behind a mask." Very true. She goes on to note all the flack she took for her book of poems, A Night without Armor. She said she was influenced by Bukowski and Anais Nin, offering raw verses in a 1998 MTV interview with Kurt Loder, only for him to give her a grammar lesson. It took all these years for him to finally issue an apology.

You begin to realize just how difficult it is for young musicians, especially young women, to cope with success. Jewel went from being a homeless person putting together her life through poems and songs, a choice she said she made, to an overnight sensation with the release of her first album, Pieces of You. She was only 21. Everyone wanted a piece of her, literally, and she had a very hard time dealing with it.

No one seemed to give her a break. She recounts some of the interviews from that time, and they were pretty harsh. Sexualized to the point of being presented as a Trailer Trash Barbie, she fought back by calling her male interviewers a bunch of dicks. She held her own and kept churning out the albums despite the mixed reviews. Then she took a break, and the vocal critics figured she was done.

Now she's back, not with a vengeance, but rather a deeper understanding of herself after raising her son Kase as a single mother. She feels she is at the height of her abilities and really proud of who she is. However, there are still a lot cynical persons out there ready to take her down a notch, so we will see how she manages. My guess is she won't take any shit from anyone.

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Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan. Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose. Looks like only yesterday. Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

Dispatches from Vilnius

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