Music, hurricanes, and the web
The other day I was doing housework while listening to my iPod. An amazing, mind blowingly great song by Bob Dylan popped on. I don’t recall having heard it before, but I’ll never forget it. It’s called Hurricane, and it’s about eight and a half minutes long. I liked it so much that I listened to it three times in a row. It has an epic feel to it, is catchy as hell, has the signature stylistic blending and twang that vintage Dylan brings, and spins a yarn for the ages on route.
Anyway, the webby tie-in here is that I walked over to my laptop and quickly came up with this Wikipedia entry that goes into the incredible and tragic true story that the song is based on:
Dylan’s Desire opens with “Hurricane”, arguably the most popular song on the 1976 release. Named after former middleweight contender Rubin Carter, Dylan had been inspired to write it after reading Carter’s autobiography, The Sixteenth Round, which Carter had sent him “because of his prior commitment to the civil rights struggle.”
Carter and a man named John Artis had been charged with a quadruple murder which occurred in the Lafayette Grill, Paterson, New Jersey in 1966. Widely reported as a racially motivated crime, Carter and Artis were found guilty of committing the murders, and both were sentenced to four consecutive life sentences. In the years that followed, a substantial amount of controversy emerged over the case, ranging from allegations of faulty evidence and questionable eyewitness testimony to an unfair trial. In his autobiography, Carter maintained his innocence, and his story eventually led Dylan to visit him in Rahway State Prison in Woodbridge Township, New Jersey.
I still can’t get over the fact of how easy it’s able to access relevant information on the web. This is the kind of scenario that in a different era would have required calling up a knowledgeable friend or taking the time and effort to go to the library to conduct research. Instead, the gap between inspiration, desire to find out more, and satisfaction of that “information need” (as we say in the biz) is essentially insignificant.
The Internet is absolutely bustling with free services that provide access to music and music information. I’ve also taken a liking to imeem of late, a popular music service that lets you stream lots of songs just for signing up. It also acts like a music recommendation engine, playing songs based on your search terms, but I’ve been using it mostly as my own personal jukebox, simply punching in entries to songs that I’d like to hear as I think of them.
I still think that Pandora is fantastic, but must admit that I don’t really use it much these days.
Overall though my online music life continues to be dominated by Sirius-XM Satellite Radio. I’ll listen to electronia, jazz, classical, or alt rock when I need to concentrate, and The Howard Stern Show or NPR fills in perfectly when I shift over to grunt work.
