1. I started my Friday with the bliss I usually experience on Thursday. I was busier than usual with domestic demands Thursday evening, so I waited until first thing Friday morning to listen to Dan Mackay's radio show, Hard Rain and Slow Trains: Bob Dylan and His Fellow Travelers and Jeff Harrison's Deadish.
I don't know if there's such a thing as the Bob Dylan origin story, but once a month for the year of 2022, Dan devotes a show to what Bob Dylan was doing month by month in 1962, the year his first record album was released. Today I learned as much as I've ever known about Dylan's experience as a 19/20 year old with seasoned blues veterans Big Joe Williams and Victoria Spivey.
Dan's show helps me bit by bit come to know Bob Dylan's career better. This morning I arrived at a new and much better knowledge of Bob Dylan's debt to the blues and his work as a bluesman. I wish I could elaborate on this more fully -- and maybe one day I'll be able to.
For now, I'll just say that Dan's March 17th program made it clear that if there is such a thing as the Bob Dylan origin story, it's steeped, in part, in the blues, in acoustic blues and the history of the blues.
I love how Jeff opened Deadish on his March 17th show by playing Grateful Dead version of four songs that appeared on Bob Dylan's first album, including a 1962 recording of Jerry Garcia singing a beautiful and mournful a cappella version of "Man of Constant Sorrow" and a moving version of "Peggy-O". I loved these covers, the connection back Dan's show, and experiencing how, like Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead owe so much to the traditional folk and blues music they inherited.
Jeff's show started beautifully and continued to be so. He featured some fragments of jam sessions from 1975 in Bob Weir's studio that I found dreamy and fun. I also enjoyed the songs he played that featured Pigpen and he managed to squeeze in much of a great show the Grateful Dead performed at the Carousel Ballroom on March 17, 1968 that featured some fiery jams and that helped deepen my acquaintance with several Grateful Dead songs from that time period. I hope to return to Jeff's show, listen again, and deepen my acquaintance with "The Other One", "New Potato Caboose", and "Caution" in particular.
2. NCAA men's basketball dominated my day -- and, again, I won't even try to recap all that happened over the sixteen games that were telecast today. The most fun games, for me, by far, featured teams from lesser conferences giving teams from Power 5 leagues some fierce competition. UT- Chattanooga came within a whisker of defeating Illinois. Colgate played Wisconsin tough and only lost by seven points. Davidson gave Michigan State a very difficult time, like Chattanooga gave Illinois, and only lost by a point. Inevitably, as the tournament progresses, these teams that get no national coverage during the regular season fall away and I always hate to see them go.
3. Copper has been out of sorts lately. It's not medical -- his recent annual checkup at the vet was sound. Because he can't be out in our common living area when Gibbs is there, he has to spend most of his time behind closed doors, either in the bedroom or the Vizio room. I spent the entire day with Copper and Luna today in the Vizio room. When she's behind closed doors, Luna does much better than Copper, and Luna was great today. I thought Copper was much more content in the Vizio room with human company all day. He rested, used the litter box, and came over to me a few times for some closer attention. He's a sensitive cat, but unlike Luna, who attaches herself to me all through the day, Copper maintains physical distance, but enjoys being approached and petted, given attention. Most of all, Copper likes to be where I am, so when Gibbs is in the living room and kitchen, I'm going to spend much more of that time in the Vizio room or the bedroom so Copper has as much companionship as possible.
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