"That ethereal twilight light"

Modern Times hits #1; Dylan's first since Desire. I don't remember the last time I bought an album that hit #1 on the charts after I bought it. Sad -- or not -- to say.

That ethereal light, you. It's the sound of the street with the sun rays, the sun shining down at a particular time on a particular type of building. A particular type of people walking on a particular type of street. It's an outdoor sound that drifts even into open windows that you can hear. The sound of bells and distant railroad trains and arguments in apartments and the clinking of silverware and knives and forks and beating with leather straps.

-- Barry Miles, ed., and Pearce Marchbank, comp. Bob Dylan: In His Own Words. New York: Quick Fox, 1978

David Hajdu quoted that passage in his book, Positively 4th Street, to describe the sound Dylan was trying to achieve when he recorded his breakthrough The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, back before the Dawn of Time.

On Modern Times, produced by the brilliant Jack Frost, he seems to have really created a recording that sounds, feels, just like he described.

And it fucking swings.

Maybe it's the iTunes commercials. Who cares? That such a piece of quality sound is topping the charts...with a bullet!...gives me hope for Amurica.

More on the words, maybe, to come.