200. Bob Dylan - ‘Blood On The Tracks’ + Ortensia
*Guest Pairing by Patton Dodd
Ingredients: 1 ounce blended Scotch, 1 ounce Punt e Mes, 1 ounce Aperol, 1 orange twist.
Mixing Instructions: Fill a mixing glass with ice. Add all ingredients except the orange twist and stir. Strain into an ice-filled rocks glass and garnish with orange twist. (via Amalia - Manhattan)
Notes: I’m dying to go to a Bob Dylan show where he showcases some of my favorite tracks from my all-time favorite album, Blood on the Tracks.But I’m dying for that show to be 15 or 20 or 25 years ago. Because I saw a Bob Dylan show last week, and he did showcase some of my favorite Blood tracks—“Tangled Up in Blue,” “Simple Twist of Fate,” and maybe “Idiot Wind,” but I can’t say for sure, because most of oldDylan catalogue is rendered fairly unrecognizable by the rambling swingtime mishmash approach he’s taking on stage these days.
It’s alright, Bob — you’re only making me spend more time with the real McCoy, because echoes, however faint, tell a tale of their origin.
I came late to Blood, first falling for it just out of college. I worked a job that had me in a small office behind closed doors, writing mindless copy that set me to despair. Blood might be about a specifically bad breakup—“The songs are my parents talking,” in Jakob Dylan’s oft-quoted words—but it captures a wide set of human experiences: loneliness, longing, lust, anger, regret, sweet hope. The album contains a story that contains multiple stories.
I once listened to all of Blood on the Tracks with a couple buddies and a bunch of strangers in a random Boston bar. We had stepped in to get out of a downpour. We sat and ordered pints just as “Tangled Up in Blue,” the album opener, started playing. “Simple Twist of Fate” came on next, and as everyone in the bar realized the bartender was playing the whole record—I swear this, or something like it, is true—we glanced around and caught each other’s eyes and smiled. It was a long rainy afternoon, and we had nowhere to be, and there was nothing to do but rest in the record and wait for “Buckets of Rain” to stop.