Picture taken by Judd Irish Bradley (http://www.danbern.com/photos.html)
Artist: Dan Bern
Website: http://www.danbern.com/
Table of Contents
I. In the beginning...
II. Conversion
III. The Hidden Biography
IV. The Highlight Reel
V. Unreleased Songs and How to Find them on the Internet
VI. In Conclusion
My sophomore year of college, I met a girl through one of those Online Personal Compatibility Profile sites. She was an Extroverted Giver and I was an Introverted Giver. So she, being Extroverted, got in touch with me, and before too long, I was riding in the passenger seat of her hubcap-less maroon Explorer from my sophomore dorm back to her stately Fox Chapel residence to prepare a fine rice dish, peruse some vintage Mystery Science Theatres, and mess around in a local neighborhood baseball field (now THAT'S third base).
She was a very cool girl, a bona-fide babe even, and I looked forward to Friday afternoons and the rides to Fox Chapel. Say what you will about hokey online hookup quiz sites, but life was good and we had a lot in common, save for maybe one noticeable thing: She was a Blonde Haired-Blue Eyed Suburban Hip-Hopper.
So I'd jump in the van and we'd drive away from Oakland and she'd turn on the radio and it was BOOM-thumpathump-BOOM-thumpathump-BOOM….. I tried to play it cool, to be hip. Well, no, I ragged her about it. A lot. And she ragged me about my Bob Dylan poster, and my acoustic guitar, and my tickets to Aerosmith and we agreed to disagree and BOOM-thumpathumped along while I looked out the window thinking fond thoughts of rice and baseball.
Until the day everything changed.
It started out like Fridays of past, I skipped some classes, learned a new chord, laughed at my lame buddies who were going to spend the evening playing Half-Life Counterstrike, and hopped into the maroon Explorer. "BOOM-thumpathump-BOOM" went the Explorer and I buckled up, not saying a word. She fumbled around the backseat for a cassette tape and stuck it into the deck. And then it happened:
ACCEPT MY LOVE / DON'T TEST MY LOVE
CAUSE MAYBE I DON'T LOVE YOU ALL THAT MUCH
My jaw slipped down, just like every book where it says "his jaw dropped" and it did. I sat there eyes no longer working, ears no longer hearing anything but this awesome song, just a dude that sounded more than a bit Dylanesque and his geetar singing about ancient kings, and ashes flying to India, and how much he likes olives and how he's the Messiah, and that when he tells you that he loves you, you gots to just take it for what it is.
It was coooool, man. Before I could say anything, in came the next song. This time there was a thumping rock band and this time the dude was singing about his balls. He had big balls. Big as pumpkins, yes sir. And one of his friends got to go down on Madonna, and you know, some girls don't look at you because they're shy but they dig you and some girls don't look at you because they just don't dig you at all and, seriously, how can you tell the difference? And somehow the dude rambled from clever line to clever verse to weaving and hooking and weaving back and somehow tying Tiger Woods into the whole glorious mess.
Who WAS this guy?
Who IS this guy who writes these amazing, bold, clever-as-all-hell songs?
This was the first time I had ever heard Dan Bern.
That night I spent hours on my dorm computer with the Ethernet connection. This was the Golden Age of Napster and before long I had Dan Bern albums, Dan Bern demos, Dan Bern live tracks- there were HUNDREDS of songs out there! THOUSANDS of songs! Some of them were hilarious. Some of them were absolutely gut-wrenching. Some of the we kind of weird. Some of them spoke a truer truth than had ever been sung in song form. Some of them were about being a cow.
I didn't sleep that night, just sat there with headphones downloading, listening, remembering to breathe. I sat there all of Saturday and most of Sunday until my roommate had an intervention and made me get some food and a shower.
Food had never tasted so good. Water never felt so hot.
He might not be the Messiah, but I was a full-fledged Dan Bern convert.
Wikipedia will tell you that Dan Bern (aka Bernstein, a name under which he sometimes performs) is a guitarist, singer, songwriter, novelist, and painter. It will tell you how he's decended from the Woody Guthrie folk tradition by way of the Holy Trinity of Dylan, Springsteen, and Costello. A lot of people think he sounds, sometimes too much, like Bob Dylan. It's an easy comparison to make; they're both clever writers, Jewish, and sing like they're stoned. Bern has his own take: "I guess Bob Dylan was sort of the Dan Bern of the '60's."
Not too much biographical information seems to exists on Bern save for the odd semi-professional interviews archived in the Way Back Machine. The pieces tell a tale of a man from the mid-west who moved out to sunny Los Angeles to seek his fortune. That he released his first album, with the dude that produced Springsteen's Nebraska, at an age when most aspiring rock stars would have given up and settled for a cube, a pension plan, and 2.5 kids. That touring behind his second album, the Ani DiFranco-produced Fifty Eggs, got him banned from the folk circuit for years due to his ruminations on extraterrestially assisted evolution, black people music, and the size of his nutsack. That as frontman of the band IJBC (International Jewish Banking Conspiracy), he crafted two solid albums of a new pop music that tells the truth with good beat and some nice harmony. That he never wrote a song in Paris but he cut a disc and wrote a book or two in Spain. That he reclaimed the swastika. That's he's seen the inside of a jail cell almost as many times as Johnny Cash. That he barnstormed America, just the man with his acoustic guitar, during the 2004 presidential election campaign and released two of the most smart, explicit, biting protest albums ever attempted since young Dylan got bored and started popping speed like Milk Duds. That his three to four-hour improvisational live shows are legendary, sometimes violent and unrestrained, sometimes reflective and stoned, both honest and tongue-in-cheek, both silly and tender, - legendary to his rabid cult-like following of the devout but completely ignored by the mainstream media, the Rolling Stones of the world with their 20 pages of jeans ads and their feature stories on Justin Timberlake and Avril Lavine.
That's almost all you will find- bits and pieces of a story- Cliff Notes to one of the best biographies no one's written.
Dan, himself, might not even care. If you ask him when he knew he had ‘made it', he'll tell you he hasn't yet, and if you judge him tonight, he wants you to judge him by the songs he writes- that's who he is to us.
So let's talk about the songs. There's a lot of water to wade through. I won't be able to mention everything but if you have to start somewhere, here's the highlight reel:
Dog Boy Van (1996) – The highlight of this self-released EP is the first track, "Jerusalem", a folky yarn about love, olives, and being the son of God. Also top notch are "Hannibal " and "Kurt", the first of many topical songs that drops names like he drops rhymes.
Dan Bern (1997) - Sony thought "Jerusalem" was so good they used it again as the lead track to his debut album. After that it just gets better with the straight-ahead folk rock of "Never Fall in Love", and "Too Late to Die Young", and the sprawling "Wasteland" and "Estelle". My buddy Jan Brown swears that "Rome" is one of the best songs anyone's ever written and they made MTV videos for "I'm Not The Guy" and "Marilyn". No shit.
Fifty Eggs (1998) – In my humble opinion, this is the best sounding record he's done. Fellow folker Ani DiFranco lent he production skills and her crack band for this album to create an album that's as musically interesting as the lyrics. It starts off with "Tiger Woods" and if you're not easily offended you'll love the rest of the disc. If you are easily offended, you probably won't want to hear about Jesus toking a doob in "One Thing Real", or alien-primate intercourse in "No Missing Link", or how the day they found a "Cure for A.I.D.S." everyone had orgies. "Oh, Sister" is a heartfelt tribute to his older sister (where would Willie Mays have been / without Jackie Robinson / and who can say what I ‘d been / without you to lead the way) and "Rolling Away" closes out the disc with fitting rambling introspection and if you keep listening you'll find "Suzanne", one of the best hidden tracks anyone's ever stuck on the end of a disc.
Because I love you
I get tongue tied around you
I never say smart stuff around you
I never say anything around you
That makes you want to be with me
So, because I love you
I will never be with you
There's plenty other people
Who I always find the words for
That I have the sweet gift of gab for
That I'm magical and good for
Who because I do not love them
Always want to be with me
Everything I say is true
So there's nothing we can do
Then what the Hell I'll say to you
Let me have one dance with you
That's from "One Dance". Great Fucking Lyric. Get this disc.
Smartie Mine (1999) – Self released double album and his fourth (and fifth) in three years. There's blues covers, throwaways, two songs from the last disc re-recorded with his new touring band, and some real gems. Some of the filler songs are better than the good tracks for a lot of other songwriters, but if you're on iTunes or whatnot, start with: "Chelsea Hotel", "City of Models", "Joe Van Gogh", "Little Russian Girl", "Gambling With My Love", "Beautiful Trees", "Two Month Affair". "Talking Woody, Bob, Bruce, and Dan Blues" plays off the legend of Bob Dylan visiting Woody Guthrie in the hospital and being ‘anointed' as the new voice of folk music. In talking blues style, Dan breaks into Bruce Springsteen's house to receive the torch. "Sculptor" is as beautiful as a love song gets: "Wish I was a painter / then I could do you justice / wish I was a sculptor / makes me want to take up molding clay."
New American Language (2001) - This is front-to-back the most solid and near perfect album in his catalog. Backed for the first time by his International Jewish Banking Conspiracy Band, Dan dreams of a new American language, he talks to God about time travel, he jams with Keith Richards, he eats nothing but rice, he leads the Thanksgiving day parade march square down Desolation Row.
Maybe all things you thought you had coming to you ain't coming to you- not in this life- but don't let your heart get broken by this world. I'm not going to list individual song titles; just get this one.
Swastika / World Cup (2002) – Two separate EP's released in 2002, Swastika starts with the "Talkin' Al Kida Blues", so clever it's scary. This EP was his first major political statement as an artist. He reclaims the swastika with the power of rockabilly, cuts loose about the hypocrisy of marijuana prohibition in "Jail", and the disc closes with the 11-minute epic "Lithuania"- a homage to his roots and the relatives he never met.
World Cup is a sort of travel diary- a 5 track acoustic EP alongside a novella written and recorded on the fly during Dan's most recent European tour. I'll quote Mr Swihart at the all-music guide on this one:
Truly humane, deeply textured songwriting. An equal treat to the music, however, is the slim diary itself. Bern fills its pages with sketches, scattered observations, piecemeal lyrics, and even genuine fiction, while going through the range of moods, from grouchy, groping, and spent to probing and perpetually curious. Even when bits fall flat, as they occasionally do, World Cup provides a fascinating peak — perhaps even some insight — into the workings of the beautiful mind of one of rock's most important artists.
The best ones are "All Right Kind of a Girl", "Reeperbahn", and "Comme Vous Le Faites Tous".
Fleeting Days (2003) – Again backed by the IJBC, it's very similar in production and sound to New American Language but has darker overtones to the lyrics. Not really a cohesive ‘statement' album, Fleeting Days is a collection of original songs that had been in the vaults, and given new life and the full IJBC treatment. The Dan Bern back catalog of properly ‘unreleased' songs is vast and daunting, enough to make a grown songwriter cry and a rookie get a day job. There's not one track that shines above the rest, but all of them are solid and as a whole it's an excellent rock album. Perhaps some of the individual songs could have been better served with different production, but the IJBC was one of the tightest loose bands I'd ever seen. They'd get on a stage and jam with extreme intensity and joy and they took that vibe and put it best they could on Fleeting Days. It's an excellent addition to your soon-to-be-growing Dan Bern collection.
My Country II / Anthems (2004) - Two highly political EPs, My Country II (with the IJBC) was even subtitled "Music to Beat Bush By". "President", a highlight of the live acoustic set, rocks out with the band as Dan tells the choir what he would do if you put him in the White House. "Sammy's Bat" rocks so damn much, I still stick it on mixtapes. If "After the Parade" was written in the 60's, Dan Bern would be playing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and having carnal relations with Joan Baez. Instead, in 2004, this entire disc slips completely under the mainstream radar, showing how phony and corporate mainstream music publications have become.
Anthems is a time capsule of the optimistic revolutionary vibe that you might have felt back then if your state was colored blue. Written, recorded, and released in a week in the Fall of '04 and he barnstormed the country relentlessly, just the man, his acoustic guitar, six chords, and the surreal, surreal truth saying the things that not many were and more should have.
Breathe / Breathe Easy EP (2006) – After not recording or gigging for an entire year, Dan recently released this new album and companion EP. This is an album made by a man who's heart nearly was broken by this world. No longer a sarcastic young man, Dan is pushing 50 and he's been reflecting and reorganizing his priorities and the conclusion he's reached is that sometimes you just have to stop what you're doing and breathe. If this is where you're joining the party, it's a weird time to be showing up. To appreciate this album the most, you have to go back and know what's come before.
On it's own, it's more poppy than previous discs but completely introspective lyrically. There are no laughs, no jokes on this disc, no songs about testicles, no name dropping. It's still a powerful statement from a man who's been there and done that and still doing it. Highlights are "Suicide Room", "Trudy", "Breathe", "Past Belief", and "Rain". On the EP, the re-worked version of "Chelsea Hotel" is neat, as is "Watching the Storm". "Joe Christ" is the best Easter song ever written, although the chorus girls take things into Fat Elvis territory. Breathe fulfills Bern's contract with Messenger Records and one can only hope he continues to make music and share the music he's made with whoever is listening.
V. Unreleased Songs and How to Find them on the Internet
1) now the world can end
2) land of the great in-between
3) pimlico alone
4) marina and me
5) phillip glass
6) witness
7) nuclear bomb
8) you hung the moon
9) smart & final
10) walking through glass
11) cowboy
12) missing you
13) cy young
14) fishin with yer grandpa
15) sunset blvd
1) god (awful lot of time)
2) blue highway
3) children of the cold war
4) sex
5) i don't know who i am
6) shakespeare's got a gun
7) crazy for her
8) bright lights
9) party by myself
10) crossroads
11) clouds
12) if this aint love
13) lightning jazz
14) stoned
15) the fifth beatles
I had a dream one night that Dan Bern was in my home studio and we cut his next two righteous albums compiled from the best of the unrecorded songs in the vault. Then there was something about a polar bear and getting lost in Central Park, and then I woke up and I was almost late for work. Anyways, they might have had tracklists similar to the two above. Want to hear them?
The first place you want to go is http://danberndigitalarchive.net/
Compiled with care and the permission of the artist, this server is loaded with live tracks, entire shows, demo tapes- hundreds of songs. It takes some time and navigating to find the real gems but of special note is a live version of "I Need You". It's on Fleeting Days with the IJBC, but hidden in the motherlode is a solo acoustic version played live on the radio. It's heartfelt, honest, and everything a love song should be and sung as true as true gets. Under ‘Complete Shows' I'm listening to "Moments, 2001" right now. Recorded at a club in Germany, Bern explains and recites the songs in German to the crowd before launching into them. The version of "Tiger Woods" is priceless.
http://www.archive.org is also a treasure trove of live shows. If you haven't already spent hours digging through the vaults, you have a lot of catching up to do.
Go listen to some Dan Bern. You probably checked out this zine to find some new music (or robot porn. Can't help you on the robot porn). So go. Go.
| by Eli @ 04 Jan 2007 01:53 pm |
| I also share your love of Dan Bern. Until him, I never had a favorite artist... |