11/30/10
beeradvocate.com rating- A-
Sierra Nevada Northern Hemisphere Harvest Wet Hop Ale- Community Beverage, Queens, NY- 22 OZ. bomber into Pub Glass- 6.7% ABV- Weather wise today is not an optimum beer drinking day, 60 degrees, rainy November 30, 2010, but with the holiday I wasn't able to do a review last week but I wanted to try and do one more review by the end of November so here it is. My first wet-hopped ale, which is from what I read, when the brewer brews with some portion of hops harvested within 24 hrs. of brewing. Thus the hops retain much of the water lost when hops are aged thus the name "wet" hopped. Clear amber in color. This beer poured with a creamy, dense head which retained nicely. It also left a mixture of lacing and rings on the glass. I definitely smell the hops in this one which are more pungent than I am used to and they definitely have a grassy, piney quality. From what I read these "wet" hops add more dimension to the aroma of the beer than the taste. Nice medium bodied mouthfeel and minimum carbonation. This is a nice beer with bitterness of the hops fairly well balanced. It is a beer that I am happy to try and may have again but not something I would consider a personal favorite, but certainly well crafted.
On the turntable is Desire- Bob Dylan- Recorded for Columbia Records in January 1976. Currently I am reading a newly published book by Sean Wilentz which I got from the library called Bob Dylan In America. It got me to thinking about my own relationship to Dylan. In December 2002 I bought Bob Dylan Live 1975 (The Bootleg Series Volume 5, Live) on a whim as my Christmas present to myself. It was a fortuitous purchase because it opened me to a world of Dylan that I had never experienced. I had largely ignored his career post Nashville Skyline. I was a big fan of his early albums and certainly was also a fan of his electric album my favorite being Blonde On Blonde but I had never really gotten into anything after the late sixties. I can’t tell you why, probably just a lack of exposure. I had grown up during a time where Dylan was kind of perceived as washed up. I alos had a vague bias of his 70’s period but for some reason had no real interest in digging any further informed by rumors I heard he turned "religous." Obviously this rumor was partly true but it was not until the last quarter of the decade that he trruly started making identifiable non-secular records. That fateful snowy, Saturday afternoon everything changed as far as my perception of Dylan went. From the get go Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You pulled me in with a raging sonic palate I was unprepared for. Romance In Durango, Sara, Isis, and One More Cup of Coffee were completely foreign to me. The songs I was familiar with had been re-imagined with bolder arrangements and often a new dramatic sense of urgency. Specifically, It Ain’t Me Babe and A Hard Rains Gonna Fall were filled with surging new rhythms and Dylan’s voice seemed more masculine, mature and passionate. Honky swells of pedal steel and squealing, modal fiddle runs dominated many instrumental passages. I soon realized I was going to need to find the original versions of these songs. Which brings us to today’s LP, Desire. I have heard people say they prefer Blood On The Tracks and it is hard to argue with Tangled Up In Blue, Idiot Wind or Simple Twist of Fate. But over time I have found myself more drawn to and have logged more hours with the LP Desire. Though lacking in some of the dramatic sweep and instrumentation of the Rolling Thunder Revue bootleg songs like Joey, Romance in Durango, One More Cup of Coffee and Sara are all wonderful in there sparser, original LP versions. Joey and Romance In Durango are the two songs for me which really pull me. Both songs are visually suggestive and Dylan becomes both a historical narrartor and pulp-noir novel author. The spaces these songs both inhabit are different geographically but a wonderful sense of the past is evoked in both.From the gritty streets of the Brooklyn Waterfront populated by Longshoreman and Union Organizers to the dusty, cantinas of Mexico where traditional bands are heard in the background. These songs all really continue a cinematic tone as well as the influence of Norman Raeben, artist and Dylans art teacher at the time, first established in songs like Tangled Up In Blue from Blood On The Tracks. These songs feel like a series of vingettes, often evoking real and possibly imaginary events and are visually detailed. The songs on Blood On The Tracks feel a bit more connected emotionally and/or thematically than Desire but I think the songs on Desire share over-arching themes namely: restlessness, travel and outlaws that give this album a conceptual feel even if the songs are not happening in sequence or involving the same characters. After referring to Wikipedia for some album information I learned a number of these songs were co-written by Jaques Levy, who co-wrote one of my favorite Byrds songs with Roger McGuinn, Chestnut Mare. Inspired by my current reading I will be doing a post in the future involving the composer Aaron Copland which the author Sean Wilentz suggests had parallel experiences and influences with Dylan.
No comments:
Post a Comment