The Traveling Wilburys - Tweeter and the Monkey Man

The story of the Traveling Wilburys has been told by many [including me], so I won’t bore you with their history. The whole album was done for a laugh, and by far the funniest song on the album was Bob Dylan’s Tweeter and the Monkey Man. Until I heard this song I never knew Bob Dylan had a sense of humor. I always saw him as a “serious” guy. After Tweeter and the Monkey Man my perceptions of Bob Dylan changed forever. I first thought this was Dylan taking the piss out of Bruce Springsteen. The song even takes place in New Jersey, with a couple of places called out by name [Rahway Prison, Jersey City]. The song is filled with words that often crop up in Springsteen lyrics: Vietnam, nobody gives a damn, freedom, Jersey, highways, young marriages, car crash, surrender, gun, prison and to run out of gas. With all the Springsteen song titles present [Stolen Car", "Mansion On The Hill", "State Trooper", "Factory", "Mansion on the Hill", "The River" and a Tom Waits song covered by Springsteen “Jersey Girl”] how could it not be? But I’ve since learned it was just a playful homage since Dylan actually likes Bruce. Oh well…

The story tells the story of two drug dealers, -- Tweeter and the Monkey Man -- their nemesis, "The Undercover Cop", and the nemesis's sister, Jan. It is hinted that Tweeter is a male-to-female transsexual, in the lines: "Tweeter was a boy scout / before she went to Vietnam..." Throughout the song, Bob tells the story of the the fall of Tweeter and the Monkey Man [Tweeter and the Monkey Man were hard for cash/they stayed up all night selling cocaine and hash to an undercover cop who had a sister named Jan/for reasons unexplained she loved the Monkey Man...]. Jan kills her brother, because she loves the Monkey Man [even though she was married to a racketeer named Bill], and the story climaxes with a shootout on a bridge: "She took a gun out of the drawer / and said 'It's best if you don't know' / the undercover cop was found face down in a field... /" and "The monkey man was on the river bridge using Tweeter as a shield / Jan said to the Monkey Man, 'I'm not fooled by Tweeter's curl' / I knew him long before he ever became a Jersey girl'...". The verse that always got me laughing was “Now the town of Jersey City is quieting down again, I’m sittin’ in a gambling club called the Lion’s Den/the TV set was blown up, every bit of it was gone/ever since the nightly news show that the Monkey Man was on...” The line in Jersey anything's legal as long as you don't get caught brings The Sopranos to mind. Just sayin'... :-)

George Harrison’s twelve-string slide was the hook that got me interested in Tweeter, but with lyrics as humorous as these, how could you not like it? And not only that you can actually understand what Dylan is singing. That was a rarity at that time, or so I thought until he came out with Oh Mercy in 1989. So if you haven’t heard it before, take a listen. If you have heard it, listen again and enjoy!

This is my last blog before I head out to parts west tonight. Tomorrow Bob Dylan turns 70. With that said, Happy Birthday, Bob!

Tweeter and the Monkey Man

Bruce Springsteen: Rain, Snow or Shine

Twenty-five years ago today I learned the true meaning of the words “rain, snow or shine.” Those were the exact words that were printed on my tickets to see Bruce Springsteen on his Born in the USA tour back in 1985. As a music consumer, I don’t ask for much – I just want truth in advertising. Boy am I naïve! Back in 1985 I was a Springsteen fan. I loved Born to Run, and I thought Darkness on the Edge of Town was even better. I still think those two albums are Springsteen at his best. The River was his first step toward massive success, and when Born in the USA came out in 1984 that sealed the deal for him. By the time he rolled into Denver in September 1985, he was one of the two biggest stars on the planet [Michael Jackson, of course, being the other one].

Everybody I knew wanted to go to Mile High Stadium to see him. He had been to Denver earlier on this tour, but he played at McNichols Arena then. There was no way he could play to everyone who wanted to see him, so the next time he would come through town he was going to play two shows at Mile High. I got in line hours before tickets went on sale, and my patience was rewarded. I snagged two seats on the stadium field. My girlfriend Carol [who is now my wife of 23 years] and I looked forward to seeing the show with keen anticipation. At the time, I was going to school in Pueblo and she was back home in Fort Collins. We got to see each other one weekend every month, so for this particular month it was going to be extra special…or so we thought.

Our show was to be on Sunday, September 22nd. The plan was to go up to Fort Collins on Friday afternoon, spend the weekend with Carol, see the show on Sunday, then head home on Monday so I’d miss only one day of class. All was going according to plan, but then on Sunday the snow came. There wasn’t much snow, it wasn’t sticking, so we thought “no problem.” The ticket said “Rain, Snow or Shine.” What suckers we were! At mid-afternoon on the day of the show we started heading toward Denver. Right after I turned on the radio to hear some music, we heard the announcement – “tonight’s Springsteen show is postponed until Tuesday night because of the weather.” What? No! Ah shit! Not ten seconds after the announcement was made on the radio I saw the familiar flashing lights of a Fort Collins cop in my rear view mirror. Crap! Busted for speeding. That was hard to do in a ’75 Toyota Corolla, but somehow I managed. What started out as a good day was going downhill and picking up speed. So then we went to Washington’s in Fort Collins, but we got booted out because we brought in our own booze. We really liked Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers back then…The perfectly shitty ending to a perfectly shitty day.

The next day I went to the local Ticketbastard outlet to either get my money back or to swap my tickets [remember, they were down on the field] for seats for that evening’s show. We were in luck. There were still seats available for the Monday show, so I grabbed them. There was only one problem – they weren’t on the field like my other seats. They were in the upper deck. We pretty much had the same view of the stage as Voyager [I actually heard that at a Who show in Oakland, but I digress…]. Ok, so we wouldn’t be able to see the band very well, but there were these huge TV screens on either side of the stage, so those of us who were getting nosebleeds because of the altitude could see the band. All was ok for about the first hour, but then the winds came. And the temperature dropped…and we froze our asses off. The metal bleachers we were sitting on weren’t helping matters any. Damn you Springsteen! If you hadn’t canceled the day before I wouldn’t be freezing my ass off. You asshole! “Rain, snow or shine” my ass! Carol and I still get pissed whenever we hear those dreaded words. We were so cold it took us hours to thaw out. I lived in a Winnebago for awhile after we got to Colorado in 1978, and one day the temperature dipped to 35 below zero, and I wasn’t as cold then as I was the night we saw Springsteen [asshole…].

We learned a few lessons that day: 1) Never believe what is says on your ticket, especially if it says “rain, snow or shine;” 2) Don’t go to a Springsteen concert ever again; 3) Avoid outdoor shows in Denver after Labor Day; 4) Bruce Springsteen is an asshole. Many years after this show I flipped through a Springsteen biography, and it mentioned our show on that day back in 1985. The book revealed that Springsteen had not even bothered to leave Los Angeles that day. So not only is Springsteen an asshole, he’s also a pussy...and a lying sack of shit! Yeah, I’m still bitter… }:-P