Bob Schwartz

“So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late”

First music of the day is important. But not easy to choose. It has to fit inside and outside, me and the world.

This morning I chose All Along the Watchtower, written by Bob Dylan, performed by Jimi Hendrix.

The artistic heritage of both of them goes back before the 1960s. Dylan drank from the well of folk music and the beat poets. Hendrix began as a blues and R&B player. They flourished, like rare flowers, beyond those beginnings.

If you are new to either, suggestions. For Dylan, listen to albums from 1965 to 1967: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited (personal favorite), Blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding (includes Watchtower). For Hendrix, the only three studio albums before his death in 1970: Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love, Electric Ladyland (includes Watchtower).

Anything more I would say is small and superfluous.

© 2024 by Bob Schwartz

“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief
“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth”

“No reason to get excited,” the thief, he kindly spoke
“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late”

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl