Sonic Youth: I'm Not There
[purchase]
Is there a better way to start this week's theme than with a song from an album of Bob Dylan covers? Director Todd Haynes put together a diverse collection of bands and musicians for the soundtrack of the 2007 Dylan biopic, I'm Not There, to reinterpret and add a fresh perspective to the Bobster's catalogue. Here's Sonic Youth's gauzy take on I'm Not There, from Bob's 1967 Basement Tapes bootleg. Dylan only recorded the song once and never touched it again. Greil Marcus wrote: "I'm Not There is barely written at all. Words are floated together in a dyslexia that is music itself, a dyslexia that seems meant to prove the claims of music over words, to see just how little words can do."
And I'm also hesitating by temptation lest it runs
Which it don't follow me
But I'm not there, I'm gone