Posted on 07/01/2005 6:18:43 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
Free of record-label disputes and a troubled marriage, Michelle Shocked is back on a creative streak and ready to drop not one, not two, but three new records on her fans.
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is a folk-rock outing that chronicles her breakup with writer Bart Bull. The bio on her Web site calls it a "breakup epic in the grand tradition of Richard and Linda Thompson's 'Shoot out the Lights' and Bob Dylan's 'Blood on the Tracks' and Marvin Gaye's 'Here, My Dear.' "
"Mexican Standoff" touches on her Latin and Texas roots. And "Got No Strings" applies Western swing to songs from Disney films.
Anyone who's followed Shocked's career knows to expect these kinds of twists from the free-spirited singer-songwriter who debuted in 1986 with "Texas Campfire Songs," recorded on a Sony Walkman, built on that initial buzz two years later with the more finessed "Short Sharp Shocked," featuring her biggest song, "Anchorage," and then took a big band detour on "Captain Swing."
Now the East Texas-born singer is living in L.A. with a new love, and talking about her trilogy and her divorce. As for opinion on rock's most cherished songwriter, don't ask.
Q: How did you come to put out three albums at once?
A: Well, it might be the brave new world. I'm running my own label, and there's no one stopping me. I can do what I want.
Q: For "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," did you think, "I'm going to sit down and write a breakup album, like those classic ones"?
A: No, I don't like some of those. I don't like the bitterness, I don't like the acrimony.
Q: You don't like "Blood on the Tracks"?
A: You know, I'm not a Dylan fan. I'm sorry, I'm just not. It probably puts me in a tiny minority ...
Q: I've never heard a songwriter say that, but OK, we'll move on.
A: Forgive me. ... When it came time, I did want to chronicle the experience, but I wanted it to be based more on a sense of humor, a sense of wryness. Yeah, we're knuckleheads, we try to make it work, but the odds aren't in our favor.
Q: Did it take time to arrive at that attitude?
A: No, I think I went into the marriage with it. It was such a long shot. I'm neurotic; he's neurotic. The one thing I didn't count on that took us down was alcoholism. I think we could have made it work without the alcoholism.
Q: Earlier in your career, you tried to cross genres and met some resistance.
A: Earlier in my career, I outlined for the A&R man who signed me, I said, "I have a trilogy. I'm going to release three albums. They are designed to shine the light, give people information as to what my influences and inspirations are. I want to let people know where I'm coming from musically."
They couldn't be less interested. They heard the song "Anchorage," and they pretty much plugged me into an A&R formula, which is, "go as fast and far as you can on your first album, because it's all going to be downhill from there." In other words, they like to take a novelty song and just pump it beyond any reasonable measure, and you coast the rest of your career on that song. They weren't interested in a concept of me building my audience slowly based on a clear understanding in what my artistic direction was.
Q: Do you sense that your fan base can take these stylistic leaps with you as well?
A: They do it intuitively, more and more as time is on my side, and I'm able to issue my own material and tell the story more directly. The audiences have responded, and to some degree there was been a winnowing process. There are the few audience members who come to hear "Anchorage;" the rest have come to expect the unexpected. That is the delight of a Michelle Shocked performance.
Q: Just going back to something, I'm curious as to why you don't like Dylan.
A: It's most likely sour grapes, but that's not ... I think he took a lot of speed and wrote a lot of nonsense. And because people were so frightened, so confused by the times that were a-changing, they elevated his Dada into meaning, and he's been riding on the coattails of their interpretation ever since.
Q: Interesting point of view.
A: Not completely unique. I know a lot of songwriters from Texas, because we come from such a different tradition, we've all had to run that gauntlet where if you're a songwriter, Dylan is presumed to be the touchstone. I know from my own experience growing up in Texas, there were Texas songwriters that had different musical values than the ones Dylan espoused.
(Scott Mervis can be reached at smervis(at)post-gazette.com.)
I like Michelle Shocked -- she's got a very quirky sort of style, and some really good songs. As she pointed out in her experience with the A&R (who?) guys, it's people like her that tend not to get any airplay....
It's hard to argue about that, but there were certainly brilliant gems in Dylan's work. Note past tense.
Who is Michelle and why is she shocked about Dylan? And why should we care?
Well, it's not like he hasn't written anything since 1969.
It sounds like she hasn't listened to anything he wrote in the last 35 years. Oh, well. There's no accounting for taste.
Huh? Cherished? I've never even heard of her, let alone cherish her.
I believe they were referring to Dylan as "rock's most cherished songwriter".
HEY!!! Watch it there, bub!!
That old man still has a couple good tunes left in him. I will carry the colors for him as long as I am able.
In the mean time, I don't want to hear anyone say anything bad about my man Bob.
You've been warned, and you know who you are...
She's right...however he also wrote some amazing songs.
Oh, Dylan. Well, I put him in the same category as Springsteen, low-talented has-been hack. She's right. He wrote 1 or 2 songs and sailed on that.
I'm with you. The Dylan haters can get back to me when Michelle writes anything as enduring as Dylan (or Guy Clark or Townes Van Zandt for that matter).
I heard a bootleg of an Arlo Guthrie show, and he was poking fun at Dylan, finishing up with an analogy of songwriting is like fishing. You don't want to be downstream from Dylan.
I'd have a bit more respect for Michelle's comments if she left it at "I don't like Dylan". No problem there. Lots of people don't.
(1) He's better than they are.
(2) He broke with the left.
(3) He untrendily became a born-again Christian.
(4) He untrendily became a supporter of Israel.
(5) He doesn't need to completely bare his psyche to make a personal song work - by leaving mystery it can be universalized in the way most singer/songwriters' work cannot.
(6) He's better read and has a better vocabulary than pretty much any other musician except maybe Morrissey.
What are those 1 or 2 songs that Dylan wrote that he sailed on?
From your headline I was expecting something a lot more abrasive.
I don't see too much objectionable to what she says. She doesn't care for his music and gave her reasons. Sounds fair enough.
I enjoy Dylan, but he did take a lot of speed and he did write a lot of nonsense. Shocked just thinks that none of that translated into good music. In my opinion, occasionally it did.
Just different aesthetics, is all.
... Ummmm.... I think they were "the Alphabet Song"... and "Like a Rolling Stone". But I'm not sure about the latter one.
You beat me to it.
I was also going to remind many on this forum that Dylan is not quite the lefty that he has been made out to be. In fact he was very uncomfortable with the "voice of his generation" label that was bestowed upon him and contemptuous of the throngs of hippie fans who would make uninvited pilgrimages to his home forcing him to move repeatedly.
Infact, Dylan is *gasp* a gun owner!
I've never liked anything I've heard from Bob Dylan. Sorry.
How can you tell? Perhaps the mystery is simply that you can't understand a damned thing he's saying...
(6) He's better read and has a better vocabulary than pretty much any other musician except maybe Morrissey.
See above.... ;-)
and in other news:
Martin Brest, director of the hit film Gigli, offered a critique today on William Shakespeare, noting: "I think he wrote a couple of decent plays and has been beating them to death ever since."
Tom Wilson II, author of the hilarious and artisticlly provacative "Ziggy" comic strip stated, "Michelangelo" was a no-talent hack."
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