Talk:John Wesley Harding/Archive 1

Improvements
In the 'songs' section, the paragraph about The Ballan of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest is basically just the lyrics, paraphrased, with no commentary on them or their meaning - it's pointless. Unless someone is going to do something more interesting to it it should be removed/cut down. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.205.125.162 (talk) 13:55, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

The replaced version misstated the album chronology, misstated the release date, the genre, and the recording dates, aside from NPOV/subjectivity problems. Monicasdude 21:40, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

No it didn't. The album didn't chart until January 27/68, making the Columbia release date too far behind. It doesn't take a month for a comeback album to chart. PetSounds 23:59, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Right. Columbia Records is wrong about the release date, as are Clinton Heylin, Glen Dundas, Michael Krogsgaard, Robert Shelton, Howard Sounes, and Tony Scaduto. The copies/summaries of the Columbia session records published in The Telegraph have the recording dates wrong, as did drummer Kenny Buttrey when he was interviewed about the album. Levon Helm was wrong when he said that the last Basement Tape recordings came after the first JWH recording session, and Dylan himself was wrong when he said that very little of the JWH material was written before the sessions began. You have read the All Music Guide, and you know better than these unreliable sources. Monicasdude 06:48, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

It appears you seem to know more about Bob Dylan than Bob Dylan himself! It must be special being all-seeing about these issues. If you're literate enough to follow this, please try: 1) type in: http://everyhit.com/number.html   OK?  Still with me?.....  2) click on "1960's" in the albums section....  3) Go to "1968", (that's after "1967" and before "1969") and find the week ending March 9th.  10 weeks at #1.  Then go to the week ending May 25th.  An additional 3 weeks at #1.  4) Get out your calculator and add "10" + "3". Provided you have trouble with that, you should get something around the number 13. Is that proof enough for you? PetSounds 23:31, 16 July 2005 (UTC)


 * No. You address neither point I raised. First, the paragraph is excessively subjective, and violates NPOV standards. Second, the page you cite is itself entirely unsourced, and gives no description of its information base other than "everyHit.com is simply an online database of my family's record collection." Third, even assuming the verifiability of the data base, the 13-week run can hardly be termed "incredible" in comparison to other #1 albums, and is not even seen as noteworthy by the site's creators. It is not listed on the charts for the top albums of the decade, and is only in 10th place for 1968, behind, inter alia, two albums by Tom Jones and the soundtracks to The Sound Of Music and The Jungle Book, as well as Fleetwood Mac's debut.Monicasdude 23:44, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Where are YOUR sources then?..... Never seen one. At least I've listed 3 or 4.... And #1 for 13 weeks was incredible for Dylan. PetSounds 00:03, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Please note that due to some sort of caching/cookie problem, my last edit to the main page did not appear under my username. Monicasdude 00:35, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

I have just reverted the undiscussed/undisclosed substantive changes made by user PetSounds, in an edit he misleadingly characterized as "fixed typo errors." Monicasdude 06:10, 18 July 2005 (UTC)


 * This reversion of all Petsounds edits seems unduly harsh even if he did not discuss them all on the talk page and flagged them as minor. His changes amounted to an assertion that the album topped the British charts "for a long spell", addition of track lengths and a series of wiki link fixes. In my opinion "A long spell " would be better quantified but hardly merits deletion. If you dispute the track lengths, you should state that explicitly for discussion here. I can see no possible justification for reverting the wiki link fixes. As a matter of courtesy, I would hope that you would restore the uncontentious changes that you reverted. To do otherwise can be seen as reverting the editor rather than the edits. &mdash;Theo (Talk) 11:45, 18 July 2005 (UTC)


 * This Monicasdude person seems to have retired from Wikipedia, so you could probably put it right back without any controversy; persistence pays off. -Ashley Pomeroy 01:34, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

The paragraph associated with the song "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest" is nothing except an unsupported statement regarding the songs "enigmatic' nature, followed by an almost word-for-word transcription of the lyrics. And this moronic writing "style" advances the reader's understanding, how? Absolutely awful writing, and pointless. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brian Stegner (talk • contribs) 06:48, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

The article comes across as very uncritical. The music is interesting, even if certain tunes are very similar, but some of the lyrics are abysmal (e.g. "he told me with his voice").--Martin Wyatt (talk) 20:44, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Basement Tape(s)
I do not understand why Monicasdude prefers a Basement Tape redlink to a Basement Tapes article. Given the number of reverts I can see that this is not capricious. What is Basement Tape and how does it differ from Basement Tapes? &mdash;Theo (Talk) 10:42, 22 July 2005 (UTC)


 * I explained this at some length in an earlier discussion of these edits:


 * "The wikilinking he introduced is incorrect; The Basement Tapes (album) is rather different from the Basement Tape(s) session recordings, which have been unearthed and circulated by Dylan fans, and a separate article is badly needed; the differences are set out at length in, for example, Greil Marcus' book "The Old Weird America." I had thought that using a different form of the signifying phrase and not styling it as though it were an album should have been enough to signal to anyone reasonably familiar with Dylan's work that I did not intend a reference to the Columbia album. At the very least, an inquiry was warranted before making that (quite inappropriate) edit."


 * The term "Basement Tape" is the original reference --

http://www.punkhart.com/dylan/disco/gww.html


 * and the usage, especially as an adjective, is extremely common in Dylan discussions (and allusions in discussions of other artists). See, for example

http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Spring01/Blake/basement.html

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/David_Boldinger/WhosWho.htm

http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:u3x0Qm_GAC8J:www.repairmanjack.com/forum/showthread.php%3Ft%3D1094%26page%3D1+%22basement+tape%22+dylan+%22rolling+stone%22&hl=en&start=21

http://www.richieunterberger.com/folkrockdisc.html

http://www.punkhart.com/dylan/feedback.html

http://www.bluecheer.info/bluecheerhistory.htm

http://www.hvmusic.com/article/yarg/hubbard/

http://www.gopherstick.com/listening%20guide%201994.htm

Monicasdude 15:40, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Sources for Jaweh link
In my opinion, EDLIS The Bob Dylan's Who's Who is not a credible source for the assertion that "many commentators find religious significance in the character's initials". The unnamed editor of this page of extracts from usenet pages makes the assertion but none of the extracts support it. &mdash;Theo (Talk) 11:05, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

the "no mixing" story
It's certainly well-sourced, and it's often reported, but. . . the SACD edition of JWH proves it wrong. There's been discussion of this in interviews and articles about the rerelease, but Johnston reports doing some mixing, and the audio evidence indisputably shows a great deal of editing of Dylan's vocal tracks. And the album version of "All Along The Watchtower" has been identified as a composite of at least two different takes. So the story that the LP was just put out from the basic studio tracks, without further work, has proved to be a music legend rather than factual. Too bad, since it's a neat little story. Monicasdude 17:33, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

The "Rumor" concerning the albums cover
This was not a rumor. It was true. I don't know how one would prove it except to get one of the original album covers. My brother showed it to me in 1968. It was quite obvious once you knew to look. The faces were camouflaged in the bark at the top of the tree. It was clearly a reference, a comment, and an inversion of the Beatle’s Sergeant Pepper album, which John Wesley Harding musically was as well, being a retreat from the sonic experimentation fueled by "Pepper" and a return or a retreat to a simpler, sound.Meb53 23:03, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

GRASPING AT STRAWS
"All Along the Watchtower" is also notable for its vi-v-iv chord progression. Jimmy Page would use this cadence for the coda to "Stairway to Heaven," and it would later find popular use in heavy metal music. Dylan himself would return to this progression in Desire's "Hurricane".

This is almost certainly coincidence. This is a common cadence in music, its use dating back 100s of years. No evidence of specific influence is offered. You got a source? Then state it. Admittedly Jimmy Page is well known for "borrowing" music. It's pure guesswork in all likelihood, colorful prose to overgranidfy the subjects. This chord progression is also not especially notable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.147.47.163 (talk) 17:38, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Which St. Augustine?
The article states that 'I dreamed I saw St. Augustine' refers to Augustine of Hippo. Are there any references for that? In particular, has Dylan himself ever confirmed this? The events in the song (defiance of earthly powers, being put to death) seem more likely to refer to Augustine Webster. Note that while it's true to say that Augustine of Hippo died when Vandals overran the city, he wasn't killed by the Vandals - he was already mortally ill. I'm not going to change the article, as I have no sources myself, but the later Augustine seems to fit the bill better. TheAstonishingBadger (talk) 21:25, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I just realised this is impossible, as Augustine Webster wasn't canonised until after this album came out. All the same though, can anyone verify that the Augustine in this song really is Augustine of Hippo? 122.57.113.245 (talk) 22:58, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Check out Robin Witting's book Isaiah for Guitar: A Guide to John Wesley HardingItalic text (Exploding Rooster Books) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tarantula7 (talk • contribs) 10:28, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

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