GUEST POST – Too Much of Nothing
Working under the name Cody and the Machine Elves he recorded several psychedelically tinged cassettes and CDs between 1991-2002 including the classic track Mantra, and is also a historian of the positive music that has changed the world since 1950.
He is one of the co-ordinators of the monthly meditation network – The Network of Light.
“When there’s too much of nothing
Nobody should look.”
December 2009: Rage Against The Machine organise the music buying public into purchasing more copies of their track Killing in the Name than the X-Factor winner Joe McElderry – Simon Cowell’s choice for the Christmas number one.
Cowell, obviously severely miffed, goes on television news and talks of launching a new ‘democratic’ X-Factor type show where the viewing public vote on ‘important’ issues: Bring back hanging? Eat more burgers? Freedom to be obese? That kind of thing?? A media circus ensues.
On such occasions we can often turn to Bob Dylan for a commentary – he’s usually been there, mapped out the territory and sung wisdom from his soul. In this case it was one of those misrepresented (by his record company) Basement Tapes recorded at Big Pink with The Band in 1967 after he withdrew from the mercurial maelstrom of 1966. The first verse of one of these songs Too Much of Nothing explains our predicament:
“Now, too much of nothing
Can make a man feel ill at ease
One man’s temper might rise
While another man’s temper might freeze
In the day of confession
We cannot mock a soul
Oh, when there’s too much of nothing
No one has control”
Doesn’t that just say it all?
Over the Christmas holiday 2009 there was far too much of nothing on our freeview/Sky/freesat televisions and on the churning airwaves of our digital multi-choice radios. The cultural fragmentation stimulated and aided by the Internet, I phones, Wii, Twitter and all the rest, means the centre not only could not hold but had melted and flown before our eyes. About 10 million people did watch David Tennant’s Doctor Who on Christmas day but that was about it (and that apparently featured another ‘end times’ scenario for good old planet earth).
It is no surprise that Dylan chose to follow the first verse of his Basement Tape song with a chorus that featured T.S. Eliot’s wives Valerie and Vivienne –
“Say hello to Valerie
Say hello to Vivienne”
Vivienne Haigh-Wood married Eliot in 1915; Valerie Fletcher became his second wife in 1947. This was undoubtedly a nod to The Wasteland, Eliot’s epic poem of emptiness. Of course Dylan had already featured Eliot fighting with Ezra Pound two –years earlier in his own epic Desolation Row. Some critics have written off Too Much of Nothing as a lightweight mundane little song, Paul Williams even positing that the musicians sound bored with the whole thing. However, according to Michael Grey’s research Dylan is drawing from Ecclesiastes when he sings
“Now, its all been done before,
It’s all been written in the book”
which could be taken as a tired philosophy on the pointlessness of it all or as Dylan’s commentary on the treadmill he had found himself on during his break-neck touring and three albums in eighteen months period, for after he’s name checked Eliot’s wives he sings:
“Send them all my salary
On the waters of oblivion”
In Dylan’s case the Basement Tapes represent his quest to escape from the void of nothingness:
“Lost time is not found again”
Odds and Ends
“We’re so alone
And life is brief”Tears of Rage
“Pick up your money
And pack up your tent
You ain’t goin’ nowhere”You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere
“Nothing is better, nothing is best
Take heed of this and get plenty of rest”Nothing Was Delivered
“And after every plan had failed
“And there was nothing more to tell”This Wheel’s on Fire
These songs lead us on to the redemptive journey through John Wesley Harding to Slow Train Coming and Oh Mercy.
What Dylan is showing us here is that this emptiness, the lack of true culture, the underpinning of a real spirituality leaves society open to all kind of ills. ‘Can make a man feel ill at ease’ – all around we see the fear and anxiety present in the world, which in the third verse of Too Much of Nothing can turn the individual into a liar or make him mean.
Strangely many critics choose not to comment on this song, for example Christopher Ricks and Greil Marcus. Yet it was the first of the Basement Tape songs to be covered by Peter, Paul and Mary charting in November 1967. We could wish for a good strong beefed-up cover version of this song during 2010. It would not chart or sell millions but it would re-contextualise and throw light on the cultural collapse we are currently experiencing. Oh for such intelligence to be given a mainstream voice at this point.