Desire (1975)

Last Tuesday, driving home from Angélica's way the hell out in Sac. off Madison, flipping radio stations (a leitmotif of this blog), I found KYDS 91.5. I can't remember the first song I heard on this indie station, now affiliated with Sac State's KSSU, but it was a rock song from the 80s. Perfect for clearing my head and it ended as I rolled to a stop at one of the many 4-ways. The next song started, and the familiar opening notes of push-pull gently rollicking piano and slightly plodding drum made me brake completely and turn the volume up. I couldn't name it immediately, but I knew it was a song I'd known almost all my life. As soon as the vocals began, I felt my own voice pulled up and out by some sort of tow rope from the past and right on cue, "I married Isis on the 5th day of May, but I could not hold on to her very long..." The rest of the words to Bob Dylan's "Isis" (Desire album, 1975) followed, or perhaps I followed them, like a winding path I hadn't taken for years, but used to walk every day and knew almost instinctively. I probably hadn't heard the song for more than 20 years, but I guess it's been intact inside my head for the last 31 ... I hardly missed a word and even anticipated the syllabic manipulations, enjoying being on oral/choral auto-pilot, smiling and laughing aloud at the loopy, often forced rhymes that we only tolerate from Bob Dylan.

A clip until I can figure out how to make this blog multi-sensory.

Bought the CD Sunday, played it while making cupcakes and was transported to stifling hot summer nights on the plains. "Classic rock, gripping story songs and a gypsy violin," proclaims the sticker on the case of this remastered version. They do lose something, of course, all these years later, without the snaps, crackles and pops of that worn-down album...