Sign On The Window

Sign on the Window is like that necktie and your Panama hat... it helps you look good in the face of utter destruction. Each week we listen to a random Bob Dylan song and this week, from 1976, "Black Diamond Bay." We talk context (5:45), the merits of traveling over staying in LA drinking a beer (12:00),the song itself (23:00, theories (30:00) and storytelling. We talk Conrad, Achebe, and Kendrick Lamar so buckle up. CONTEXT (5:45)“Black Diamond Bay” was recorded at Columbia Studios in New York City on July 29, 1975 in 12 takes, then on July 30 in 5. There is a connection to Joseph Conrad, namely the 1915 novel Victory, as Ian Bell notes:There is no hero, certainly no epic journey, least of all a spiritual rebirth. Instead, the song owes everything to Conrad’s use in Victory of doubled perspectives, physical and moral, and to the idea of fate, blind and mute, that permeates Blood on the Tracks. In ‘Black Diamond Bay’, good and evil contend; people sc