Science 26 November 2004:
Vol. 306 no. 5701 pp. 1488-1489
DOI: 10.1126/science.1106582

• Perspective

ECOLOGY

Oh the Locusts Sang, Then They Dropped Dead

1. Richard S. Ostfeld and
2. Felicia Keesing[HN14]

+ Author Affiliations

1. The authors are in the Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Millbrook, NY 12545, USA. E-mail: rostfeld@ecostudies.org
2. F. Keesing is also in the Biology Department, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504, USA.

Summary

Seventeen-year cicadas of the species Magicicada spend most of their lives underground feeding on xylem from the roots of trees. But every 17 years they emerge in vast numbers, mate, lay eggs, and die. In their Perspective, Ostfeld and Keesing discuss a new study (Yang) demonstrating that the cicada carcasses provide a rich source of nitrogen, which is released by soil microbes and results in an increase in the nitrogen content and seed size of American bellflowers, an understory plant.

==

The Bob Dylan song “Day of the Locusts” refers to the cacophony from the 1970 emergence of 17-year cicadas (Magicicada spp.), which happened to coincide with his acceptance of an honorary degree from Princeton University. These cicadas, which dutifully reappeared aboveground in 1987 and then again this year, are a quintessential case of a resource pulse—a transient, multiannual episode of resource superabundance. On page 1565 of this issue, Yang (3) [HN3] describes the ramifying impacts that massive pulses of cicada...

Related uses of the word "locust"

Egyptian grasshopper Anacridium aegyptum

The word "locust" is derived from the Vulgar Latin locusta, which was originally used to refer to various types of crustaceans and insects; English "lobster" is derived from Anglo-Saxon loppestre, which may come from Latin locusta.^[10]Spanish has mostly preserved the original Latin usage, since the cognate term langosta can be used to refer both to a variety of lobster-like crustaceans and to the swarming grasshopper, while semantic confusion is avoided by employing qualifiers such as de la tierra (of the land) when referring to grasshoppers, del mar and del rio (of the sea/of the river) when referring to lobsters and crayfish respectively.^[11]French presents an inverse case; during the 16th century, the word sauterelle (literally "little hopper") could mean either grasshopper or lobster (sauterelle de mer).^[12] In contemporary French usage, langouste is used almost exclusively to refer to the crustacean (two insect exceptions being the langouste de désert and the langouste de Provence).^[13][14] In certain regional varieties of English, "locust" can refer to the large swarming grasshopper, the cicada (which may also swarm), and rarely to the praying mantis ("praying locust").^[15]

The use of "locust" in English as a synonym for "lobster" has no grounding in anglophone tradition, and most modern instances of its use are usually calques of foreign expressions (e.g. "sea locust" as mistranslation of langouste de mer).^[16] There are, however, various species of crustaceans whose regional names include the word "locust." Thenus orientalis, for example, is sometimes referred to as the flathead locust lobster (its French name, Cigale raquette, literally "raquet cicada," is yet another instance of the locust-cicada-lobster nomenclatural connection). Similarly, certain types of amphibians and birds are sometimes called "false locusts" in imitation of the Greek pseud(o)acris, a scientific name sometimes given to a species because of its perceived cricket-like chirping.^[17] Often, the linguistic nondifferentiation of animals not only regarded by science as different species, but that also often exist in radically different environments, is the result of culturally perceived similarities between organisms, as well as of abstract associations formed within a particular group's mythology and folklore (see Cicada mythology). On a linguistic level, these cases also exemplify an extensively documented tendency, in many languages, towards conservatism and economy in neologization, with some languages historically only allowing for the expansion of meaning within already existing word-forms.^[18] Also of note is the fact that all three so-called locusts (the grasshopper, the cicada, and the lobster) have been a traditional source of food for various peoples around the world (see entomophagy).

The word "locust" has, at times, been employed controversially in English translations of Ancient Greek and Latin natural histories, as well as of Hebrew and Greek Bibles; such ambiguous renderings prompted the 17th-century polymath Thomas Browne to include in the Fifth Book of his Pseudodoxia Epidemica an essay entitled Of the Picture of a Grasshopper, it begins:

“

There is also among us a common description and picture of a Grasshopper, as may be observed in the pictures of Emblematists, in the coats of several families, and as the word Cicada is usually translated in Dictionaries. Wherein to speak strictly, if by this word Grasshopper, we understand that animal which is implied by τέτιξ with the Greeks, and by Cicada with the Latines; we may with safety affirm the picture is widely mistaken, and that for ought enquiry can inform, there is no such insect in England.[19]

”

Browne revisited the controversy in his Miscellany Tracts (1684), wherein he takes pains (even citing Aristotle's Animalia) to both indicate the relationship of locusts to grasshoppers and to affirm their like disparateness from cicadas:

“

That which we commonly call a Grasshopper, and the French Saulterelle being one kind of Locust, so rendered in the plague of Ægypt, and in old Saxon named Gersthop.[20]

”

Compound words involving "locust" have also been used by anglophone translators as calques of archaic Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, or other language names for animals; the resulting formations have, just as in the case of the Brownian grasshopper/cicada controversy, been, at times, a cause of lexical ambiguity and false polysemy in English. An instance of this appears in a translation of Pliny included in J.W. McCrindle's book Ancient India as Described in Classical Literature, where an Indian gem is said by the Roman historian to have a "surface [that] is even redder than the shells of the sea-locust."^[21]

[EDLIS Notes]

Of course we know it was really the Day of the Cicadas that June at Princeton. But we are not ones to argue with the greatest songwriter of the last century about his choice of words. Perhaps two syllables worked better than three in the song. Or one could easily imagine that Dylan liked using a word that brought up images of the locust plagues in Egypt written about centuries before in the Bible. We think it's a rather good choice for that reason alone.

PAW Home > > Rally 'Round the Cannon

Spring 1970: ‘Strike the war,’ Dylan, locusts, and opening the gate

(Last of three columns on the fundamental transformations at Princeton 40 years ago)

By Gregg Lange ’70
Posted on July 7, 2010

 

Illustration by Steven Veach

Gregg Lange ’70 is a member of the Princetoniana Committee and the Alumni Council Committee on Reunions, an Alumni Schools Committee volunteer, and a trustee of WPRB radio. He was a recipient of the Alumni Council’s Award for Service to Princeton at Reunions 2010.

Oh God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”
Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”
God say, “No.” Abe say, “What?”
God say, “You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin’ you better run”
Well Abe says, “Where do you want this killin’ done?”
God says, “Out on Highway 61.”

  –   Bob Dylan,“Highway 61 Revisited,” 1965

 

NOTE: In our previous melodramatic episode of the annals of Princeton in 1969-70, we described how national unrest over the Vietnam war descended on Princeton, exacerbating the inevitable distraction from the huge campus changes – everything from coeducation to the new University Council (CPUC) to the demise of the single wing to Afro-American studies – seemingly taking place on a daily basis. The one thing almost everyone was looking forward to was the end of the year and a nice boring summer; even another potential Woodstock (the remote Isle of Wight Festival would draw 700,000 people in August) seemed to offer relief from the relentless change and the aura of the war.

On Thursday, April 30, 1970, the day before Houseparties, I had turned in my thesis – to the muffled sobs of my adviser – and was driving west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike to fetch my fetching girlfriend when Richard Nixon invaded Cambodia. I had to pull over to the shoulder for half an hour before I could recompose myself just enough to drive. Meanwhile, the Chapel was packed and the talk was ugly. The quiet professor Stan Kelley, who had already done far more than his share to improve Princeton, felt compelled to speak from the pulpit and urge people to think and act productively.

The following day, Princeton president Bob Goheen ’40 *48, a decorated World War II hero and silent observer at the Chapel, released a public statement essentially saying that President Richard Nixon was misguided.

By the time we returned to Princeton, Houseparties had been canceled (actually, four clubs sort of held parties, which weren’t much fun), meeters were meeting, organizers were organizing, most other campuses were rumbling ominously, and just about everybody from the left (your high draft number wasn’t a sure thing anymore) to the right (ROTC members now faced a newly energized war they had hoped was winding down) was apoplectic. Five thousand exhausted and distracted people were faced with decisions too difficult for a well-rested sage to contemplate.

The six-week period between April 30 and June 9 is probably the most dissected in the history of the University with the possible exceptions of the Battle of Princeton in 1777, Washington’s visit in 1783, and the 1896 Sesquicentennial. Tom Krattenmaker wrote a fine article on that spring for PAW 25 years later (May 10, 1995), and the unrest and its antecedents take up an entire chapter of Don Oberdorfer ’52 and J.T. Miller ’70’s wonderful Princeton University: The First 250 Years . So let’s just note some crucial items for bitter flavor:

• The Meeting : Based organizationally on the previous November’s Vietnam Assembly  , the entire campus community (alumni could not vote) piled into Jadwin on Monday, May 4. Four hours of debate among 4,000 people yielded an overwhelming consensus left of center but not on the left wing; the vote was to “strike the war” (2,066 votes) as distinct from striking the University (further left – 1,522) or business as usual (181). The great middle, many of whom had signed an apology to Walter Hickel – the U.S. secretary to the interior whose talk in Jadwin Gym had been drowned out by about 75 demonstrators – only two months earlier, now were voting to strike; they wanted concrete action, by a 20/1 margin. Significantly, the winning resolution had been crafted by the new CPUC and was presented by Stan Kelley.
• The Killings : At Kent State on May 4 (by the National Guard) and at Jackson State on May 14 (by the State Police), fatal government attacks on students assured that every campus to the left of Bob Jones was in turmoil.   Although Neil Young’s Ohio is the famous cultural result, I always think of George Segal’s sculpture “Abraham and Isaac” (next to the Chapel)  and Dylan’s Highway 61 ; Kent State’s searing aftermath was a societal change of biblical proportion.
• The Faculty : The votes of The Meeting urged the faculty to be flexible, but crucially did not try to subvert its authority. A huge number of exams and papers were put off until fall or waived, but standards were clear in each case. On the other hand, if any faculty member tried to interfere with a student involved in the strike, I never heard of it. Seniors were in a unique bind; if they weren’t headed for honors, comps were often canceled, but nobody was excused from a thesis (most were already in); different departments handled their charges differently.   The academic notices in the Prince were complex and exhausting. Department meetings took place daily. ROTC was voted off the academic rolls.
• The Athletes : Ivy sports degraded almost instantly. The lacrosse team mainly persisted, in part because it was coach Ferris Thomsen’s farewell season. In contrast, many members of the track team quit or joined an anti-war statement at the Heps  and track coach Peter Morgan resigned in despair; he was replaced by Larry Ellis, now in the Track Hall of Fame and the first black head coach in any varsity sport in Ivy history. Other squads had teams and no opponents; some had opponents and no team.
• The Groups : Political activity was incessant. Among the perhaps dozen ad hoc anti-war groups, the largest was the Movement for a New Congress, with perhaps 400 students on campus working feverishly to elect anti-war candidates; organized first, Princeton became the national headquarters. It had an effect in the 1970 primaries, much less in November, then died. The group that ultimately was successful was UNDO, an intense band that became a national clearing house for anti-draft activity. After long and tedious efforts by many such organizations, the Nixon administration perversely allowed the draft to die in June 1973 rather than end the war even then.
• The Demonstrations : Hundreds of students turned in their draft cards to Dean Ernest Gordon, a veteran of Japanese World War II POW camps, who welcomed them in the Chapel. Revived by the campus killings, the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) resumed, as it had periodically since 1967, demonstrations on Prospect Avenue against the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), the defense think-tank renting Princeton property (now von Neumann Hall). With added recruits now, they put the building under siege with 250 people. Local police were about to break up their shantytown with shotguns when Dean of Students Neil Rudenstine ’56 essentially told the students they had to vamoose or get whacked; unlike at Harvard and Cornell and Columbia, the students trusted Goheen and Rudenstine enough to do it. There were a couple of Molotov cocktails thrown around campus (castigated by the Prince : “If there’s anything America doesn’t need at this point in its history, it is people who throw – or drop – firebombs”) and marches at Nassau Hall, but nothing else as threatening as IDA.
• The Seniors : The class met (nobody missed it) two days after Kent State and The Meeting. Moderates felt betrayed and angry, radicals were bright enough to propose rational ideas, and the class decided to dump its longed-for graduation festivities: no prom, no steer-and-beer, a radically retooled class day intended to inform the alumni and parents why the war was such a mistake. They voted not to march in the P-rade, but to explain to the returning alumni why (the class president was “volunteered” for the task). They voted not to wear caps and gowns at Commencement, and urged donation of the savings to anti-war causes. But they also voted not to impede anyone who wished to wear them, or to march in the P-rade; they were sick of coercion. And lastly, they voted to petition the University to remove the padlock (in place except for rare occasions for 65 years) from the symbolic front campus FitzRandolph Gate to symbolize the unity of the University with its community, and the unity of the class despite its diverse membership.
• The Alumni : Most thought essentially all of this campus activity inconceivable; coeducation was one thing, but many of the huge numbers of World War II and Korean War veterans simply suspected the kids were cowardly, not to mention the administration. The imminent rise of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton was assured.

The P-rade on Saturday, June 6, was the beginning of the endgame. Chris Connell ’71 has captured Class of ’70 President Stew (then Dill) McBride’s thankless position in his article in the current issue of PAW (July 7) .   The class’s unwillingness to march as usual rankled older alums for decades.

Baccalaureate on Sunday was presided over somberly by war heroes Goheen and Gordon. The recessional was “Not Alone for Mighty Empire”:

God of justice, save the people from the clash of race and creed,
From the strife of class and faction, make our nation free indeed;
Keep her faith in simple manhood strong as when her life began,
Till it find its full fruition in the brotherhood of man!

  – William P. Merrill, 1911

On Monday, the teach-in substituting for Class Day featured George McGovern, the anti-war senator from South Dakota. Many seniors came with their parents; many came alone; some stayed away.

Inevitably, in the end it came down to Tuesday’s Commencement, five weeks after Kent State and every subsequent campus complication mankind could conjure up. So, of course, nature lent a cacophonous hand. It was, for you closet entomologists out there, the great Brood X. The largest U.S. periodic cicada emergence, it came out right on cue and, I swear on the Big Bug in the sky, peaked in volume on the front campus during Commencement June 9. The millions of friendly orange and black bugs were crawling over everybody’s mother, and making a pitiful ’60s sound system half-unintelligible.

Connell’s article portrays the day admirably through the eyes of valedictorian Ray Gibbons ’70. Some black graduates stood and turned their backs silently in protest of South African investments, the Latin salutatory was eliminated in deference to a blunt dialogue enumerating the class’s seething frustrations with business as usual (Hal Strelnick ’70 and Mike Calhoun ’70 “ask you to listen that we may move together beyond the rhetoric that has reduced human beings on one hand to pigs and on the other to snobs and bums”), but the ceremony – the audible parts – continued calmly, with most of us sitting in suits and ties and white armbands with the class peace logo. Surreally, Bob Dylan was there to receive an honorary degree (thereby astounding even those who invited him: it was his first, and the last for another 34 years) escorted by a stunned Rudenstine. Dylan was so unnerved and/or intrigued he recalled his adventure in the song Day of the Locusts , which appeared on his album New Morning that October. He’s been a class icon ever since – “In Locusts Parentis” our cringeworthy motto.

Then we opened the FitzRandolph Gate, as classes had done at graduation for many decades, and we and our friend (and eventual honorary classmate) Bob Goheen left it open, which no one had ever done, with the inscription “Together for Community.” With all the astonishing, disrupting, frenetic activity of 1969-70, it now seems to me our last simple statement of opening the gate may well have been the most important of all the outcomes for Princeton.  

Good for us; good for us all.

Princeton University Archives

The Class of 1970 opens FitzRandolph Gate permanently – June 9, 1970

I put down my robe, picked up my diploma,
Took hold of my sweetheart and away we did drive,
Straight for the hills, the black hills of Dakota,
Sure was glad to get out of there alive.
And the locusts sang, well, it give me a chill,
Yeah, the locusts sang such a sweet melody.
And the locusts sang with a high whinin’ trill,
Yeah, the locusts sang and they was singing for me.

  – Bob Dylan, “Day of the Locusts,” 1970

[EDLIS Notes]

We posted this to provide a look back at those turbulent times by someone who was there on the front campus on graduation day to get his diploma along with Bob Dylan. This was not just an ordinary graduation. It came at the peak of a very difficult time for Dylan's generation. And notice that the writer confirms that the ceremonies occurred at the very height of the din created by the Brood X cicada emergence. There's no way Dylan could have left them out of the song. 

June 10, 1970

PRINCETON, N. J. (AP) -- Princeton University awarded honorary degrees Tuesday to singer Bob Dylan, Mrs. Martin Luther King Jr. and seven others reflecting the 1970 campus interest in peace, civil rights and the environment.

For the first time, graduates broke tradition and shunned black caps and gowns in favor of business suits and white armbands carrying the slogan: "Together for Peace, 1970."

Also for the first time, eight women received Princeton degrees. Neither Dylan nor Mrs. King, widow of the slain civil rights leader, spoke.

The decision to shun traditional robes was made by the 223rd graduating class last month, when President Nixon sent U.S. troops into Cambodia, sparking a wave of protests on college campuses. About 80 per cent of the 1,223 graduates wore armbands.

Money which would have been spent to rent robes was donated to the Princeton Community Fund, a local organization which supports antiwar and antidraft activities.

 

Posted by - at 12:19

Bonus video of a Dylan concert with the Band at the end.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

it was 39 years ago today, june 9, 1970, that bob dylan accepted an honorary doctor of music degree from princeton university. the degree was the first, of only two (he accepted a second honorary doctor of music 34 years later, from the university of st. andrews in scotland), that dylan has agreed to accept during his career thus far.

"day of the locust" was written by dylan in the wake of his less than enjoyable experience of actually collecting the honorary degree. while dylan has written about it in "chronicles," various biographers have collected anecdotes associated with the honor. it took the combined efforts of his wife, sara, and david crosby to convince him to attend the ceremony (he skipped the dinner on behalf of the honorees the preceding evening).

clinton heylin's "behind the shades" quotes crosby's recollections of the time - including their smoking a final joint before the drive over the university (in a limo that crosby had hired - which apparently turned dylan off the moment he stepped into it) - and the pre-ceremony argument when dylan was told he'd need to wear a cap and gown on stage to receive the degree. dylan initially refused - but was, again, convinced by sara and crosby to go along with the program.

the last lines in "day of the locust" summed up his take on the experience:

"i put down my robe, picked up my diploma
took hold of my sweetheart and away we did drive
straight for the hills, the black hills of dakota
sure was glad to get out of there alive."

also, the line: "the man standin' next to me, his head was exploding/ well, I was prayin' the pieces wouldn't fall on me." was a direct reference to crosby, who was suffering the effects of the killer weed he had smoked :p

the title is taken from the swarm of cicadas the droned on and serenaded dylan and the participants during the ceremonies

On June 9, 1970, during one of the lowest points of his career, Bob Dylan was the recipient of an honorary Doctorate of Music at the venerable Princeton University. Having just turned 30 two weeks before (and just about to release his all-time worst album, Self Portrait), Dylan rolled up at Nassau Hall in a 1968 Buick Electra, flanked by his wife Sara, David Crosby, and Ben Salzman, his music publisher's husband.

By all accounts, Dylan was a nervous wreck. As David Crosby later recalled, “When we arrived at Princeton they took us straight into a little room and Bob was asked to wear a cap and gown. He refused outright. They said, 'We won't give you a degree if you don't wear this.' Dylan said, 'Fine, I didn't ask for it in the first place.'”

Although they finally convinced him to wear the gown, Dylan still refused to don the cap, opting instead, like the rest of the 1,200 graduates, to toss on a white armband which bore a peace symbol and the number 70, designating the graduating class. Besides Dylan, nine others were receiving honorary degrees that day, including the liberal columnist Walter Lippman, and Coretta Scott King.

The Big Moment

When Dylan's name was called, University President Robert F. Goheen introduced him with a short speech that read, “Paradoxically, though he is known to millions, he shuns publicity and organizations, preferring the solidarity of his family and isolation from the world. Although he is approaching the perilous age of 30, his music remains the authentic expression of the disturbed and concerned conscience of Young America.”

Despite reports that he smiled when the president mentioned his “perilous age of 30,” according to Dylan in his 2004 memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, the speech made him cringe.

“Oh sweet Jesus!” wrote Dylan. “It was like a jolt. I shuddered and trembled but remained expressionless. The disturbed conscience of Young America! There it was again. I couldn't believe it! Tricked once more. The speaker could have said many things. He could have emphasized a few things about my music. When he said to the crowd that I preferred isolation from the world, it was like he told them I preferred being in an iron tomb with my food shoved in on a tray.”

The Rolling Stone Report

“Yes, it's true, Bob Dylan accepted an honorary degree from Princeton University, but first-hand observers say he was very nervous and hesitant about the whole thing and seemed 'appropriately out of place' during the ceremonies.” So began a Rolling Stone article that lampooned the event. The article went on, “A source at Princeton said Dylan had called after he'd been notified that he was to receive the honor, 'to find out just what kind of degree it was.'”

According to the story, Dylan would not speak directly with any staff or students, and all questions or requests—even something as simple as a glass of water—had to be relayed through either his wife or Crosby. “At one point a number of photographers and reporters began asking questions and taking photos, and he stomped out of the Faculty Room. 'I don't like it. They're asking questions,' he told his wife in the hall.”

The story continued: “All during the ceremony, Dave Crosby was licking a half-orange and looking greatly amused. When asked what he was doing with Dylan, Crosby laughed: 'I was standing by the New Jersey Turnpike, looking for America, and Bob saw a freak and stopped to pick me up.'”

Dr. Bob: After the Fact

Soon after receiving the degree, Dylan would write about the event in his new song, "Day of the Locusts" (purchase/download), which would appear on his new release New Morning (compare prices), an album critics hailed as Dylan's big return to form.

I put down my robe, picked up my diploma,
Took hold of my sweetheart and away we did drive,
Straight for the hills, the black hills of Dakota,
Sure was glad to get out of there alive.

"I was glad to get the degree, though. I could use it," Dylan continued in his memoir 34 years later. "The very look and touch and scent of it spelled respectability and had something of the spirit of the universe in it. After whispering and mumbling my way through the ceremony, I was handed the scroll. We piled back into the big Buick and drove away. It had been a strange day. 'Bunch of dickheads on auto-stroke,' Crosby said."

On June 23, 2004, a much worldlier, wiser Dylan would gladly receive yet another honorary Doctorate of Music, this time from Scotland's University of St. Andrews. “It seems appropriate,” Neil Corcoran stated during the award speech, “that his second such degree should come from Scotland's oldest university, since Scottish border ballads and folk songs have been the inspiration for some of his melodies, and his great song 'Highlands' is an elaborate riff, or descant, on Robert Burns.”

Pretty thin reasoning, one reckons, but awards of any variety are one of the things that fuels Dylan's inspiration these days. A little more grease for the wheels certainly can't hurt, Scottish or otherwise.

From About.com Folk Music

Bob Dylan

New Morning

Columbia

By Ed Ward

November 26, 1970

Well, friends, Bob Dylan is back with us again. I don't know how long he intends to stay, but I didn't ask him. Didn't figure it was any of my business.

Put simply, New Morning is a superb album. It is everything that every Dylan fan prayed for after Self Portrait. The portrait on the cover peers out boldly, just daring you to find fault with it, and I must admit that if there is a major fault on the album, I haven't found it. Nor do I care to. This one comes easy, and that's what it's all about, isn't it? A newly re-discovered self-reliance is evident from the first measure to the last fadeout, the same kind of self-reliance that shocked the old-timers when this kid dared to say "Hey-hey Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song." That may have been his own modest (as it turns out in retrospect, anyway) way of saying "Here I am, world." Calling his latest outing New Morning may very well be his way of saying, "I'm back."

But that's reading things into it already, and I'd like to get through this review without reading much into what's already there, because what's there is very impressive indeed, and needs no help from the likes of me. Instead, let's look at what is there, pausing now and again to comment on it.

To begin with, there's the cover. Dylan, looking like he's been through some rocky times, but confident. And the back cover, with Young Zimmerman and Victoria Spivey, self-appointed "Queen of the Blues," standing by her piano. He's holding a guitar that Big Joe Williams had just given him, and she is beaming up at him, immensely pleased. The look on his face seems to say, "I thought I could do it, and I could. Shit, man, I'm Bob Dylan, that's who I am." And indeed, that's who he was. And is.

"If Not For You" starts it all off. A kind of invocation to the muse, if you will, only this time, instead of crying "I want you so bad," he's celebrating the fact that not only has he found her, but they know each other well, and get strength from each other, depend on each other. 'Twas always thus, it seems, and the Kooperishly bouncy organ and brisk tempo go back a long ways.

Everyone seems to think that "Day of the Locusts" is about Dylan picking up his degree at Princeton, but it could as easily be any kid in this day and age, perplexed, uptight, and not a little unnerved by this juncture of his life, graduating from college. But putting all that aside, musically, this is where the whole thing gets off the ground. Dylan makes his first appearance here playing piano (piano cuts wisely ticked off on the cover, probably by Kooper who knows a great keyboard artist when he hears one, and who hears one in Dylan), and the entire production, from the locust organ discord to the subtly mixed-down vocal backup, is just fine. This cut sounds like a lot of work was put into it, which is a break from Dylan's usual studio practice of doing a song about twice and leaving it at that.

After the hero of "Locusts" has run off to the Black Hills, he tells us that "Time Passes Slowly." More superb pianistics here, although the erratic ending makes me think that this was done on the spot in the studio. No matter, it's a nice piece of fluff, and it fits.

"Went to See the Gypsy" is what the side's been building up to, and there is no doubt in my mind that it is a masterpiece. The hardest rocker from Dylan in a 'coon's age, it builds beautifully, ending in some fantastic electric guitar work. Dylan's voice is back in its raspy, rowdy glory; after a list of unusual achievements credited to the gypsy by his dancing girl, we hear Bob growl, "He did it in Las Vegas and he can do it here," Really! I whooped the first time I heard that. For some unknown reason, the story line in this song reminds me of the scene in Juliet of the Spirits where Juliet and her friend go to see the androgynous Indian at the grand hotel. And the meaning, if indeed there is one, of the line about the "little Minnesota town" escapes me, but I don't really care.

Side one ends on two comic notes. "Winterlude" is lewd, and makes me wish I'd learned to ice skate when I was still back East. The line about going to get married and then coming back and cooking up a meal reminds me of Bing Crosby crooning, "In the meadow we can build a snowman" in "White Christmas." And "If Dogs Run Free" puts me in mind of a beatnik poetry reading at the Fat Black Pussy Cat Theatre in Greenwich Village. Everybody — and especially Maeretha Stewart — sounds like they're having a good time, and Al Kooper can play in my piano bar any time he wants.

On the surface, the second side would seem to be the "serious" side of the record, but that notion is belied immediately by the fact that somebody's guitar (Bob, is that you?) is horribly out of tune. But there is a lot of gusto to Dylan's singing and, for a change, the backup girls add just the right touch.

The unquestioned masterpiece of the album is "Sign on the Window." It ranks with the best work he's done, and the fact that he plays such moving piano and sings with just everything he's got makes it one of the most involved (and involving) pieces he's ever recorded. It's right up there with "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowland," "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues," "Like A Rolling Stone," and the unreleased "I'm Not There" in intensity. "She and her boyfriend went to California." And baby, that's a long, long way. It's gonna be wet tonight on Main Street, and with that pronouncement, Dylan communicates a despair mixed with resignment. And is the cabin in Utah the panacea that it would seem, the glue to mend this broken heart? I'm not convinced, and Dylan doesn't sound like he is either. If poetry can be a story that must be sent by telegraph, then this is certainly one of Dylan's foremost achievements as a poet. Words, music, singing, piano work, all of the highest order. Yes, Doubting Thomas, he can still do it. And how!

And if there is any doubt left try on "Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat Volume Two," otherwise known as "One More Weekend." It's such a good rocker, and so full of energy that I still haven't bothered to listen to the words. No matter, they surely say what they must, which, in the grand old rock lyric tradition, is not much.

Speaking of lyrics, who among us would have thought that we'd see the day when Bob Dylan would start out a song with "La la la la la ...?" I've never heard Dylan sounding so outrageously happy before. The tune to the verse is similar to "I Shall Be Released," but the sentiments here show that the release has already happened. I just love this number, and I hope that the likes of Joe Cocker will think twice before attempting a cover version of it.

The second side ends with two "religious" songs that will doubtless be plumbed for "meanings" they don't contain. "Three Angels" is an old-fashioned Dylan word-riff, the kind of thing that we've seen before in "Gates of Eden" and "Desolation Row." It is so corny that it is funny, and this is the one cut on the album that makes me wonder if it'll stand up under repeated playings. And regardless of what others say about "Father of Night," I (think that Dylan found a good gospel riff on the piano and used it. Anybody can make up words to it; they simply aren't that important. I guess it could also be seen as the leavetaking of the muse too, but I'll leave it to others far more erudite than myself to figure that out. Praising the maker of the night is an awfully good way to end a New Morning, anyway.

* * *

In the end, this is an album that, the less said about it, the better. I have my favorite moments (like the part in "Sign On the Window" where he modulates up and then, when he says "Looks like it's gonna rain", he hits a major chord — right out of the blue), but so will you. It seems almost superfluous to say that this is one of the best albums of the year, one of Dylan's best albums, perhaps his best. In good conscience, all I can really say is get it yourself and prepare to boogie.

After all, what better recommendation for an album — be it Dylan or a bunch of unknowns — is there?

Coretta Scott King & Bob Dylan At Princeton

American civil rights activist Coretta Scott King, widow of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., talks to American singer and songwriter Bob Dylan after they were each given honorary degrees from Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, June 9, 1970.

Second song on the album, New Morning
Released October 21, 1970
Remastered version released March 31, 2009
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