Chicken Town

       When I got to the phrase cow town while writing my previous post, The Basement Tapes began playing in my head – Bob Dylan and the Band. More specifically, the tune I was hearing was my favorite Dylan song Lo and Behold which contains the line this is chicken town. Then a vision of ferris wheels and hanging my head in shame came into view. I made a note to write about Lo and Behold, but I would not have forgotten, because the song has played all day.

        The Collins Hill Library opened near the high school around the turn of the century, and the girls and I would go there often. When I discovered the music collection at the library, I began to check out CD's. Mostly old rock stuff I had remembered from the early 70's but had not heard in a long time – American History by America, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Bread; and it was there I discovered the Basement Tapes.

        Back then, my car CD player worked, and we put in The Basement Tapes – we rocked and bopped along, mostly me. Suddenly Million Dollar Bash came on – we got quiet and listened – then this line came on took my potatoes down to be mashed/finally made it over to the million dollar bash – and the back seat of the car erupted in laughter! The girls were so tickled with the silliness of the lyric! What did it mean? Why was it there? Obviously bash rhymes with mash – that's why it's there; but was he implying that this million dollar bash was so trite that it required someone to bring the potatoes to mash? Or was the real message here that some folks can get away with most anything, including rhyming million dollar bash with potatoes to mash and having their fans love it?

       While Sarah and Amanda enjoyed Million Dollar Bash, I liked best the song Lo and Behold on the Basement Tapes. You know the feel good philosophy that gets spouted about from time to time – try to find something positive to say about each day – may be even write it down for affirmation? Well, I tried to find something that would make me say to myself lo and behold every day. And often I would include a lo and behold or two in the letters I wrote. So when I heard the Basement Tapes for the first time and Lo and Behold came on – my lo and behold now had a tune – lo and behold lo and behold looking for my lo and behold – Dylan was looking for his lo and behold too!

        And the rest of the song? There's the imagery of the circus and a hobo doing the singing – more things near and dear to my heart. But I never got what the song was about. Googling it finally today – one explanation makes perfect sense – these are basement tapes – the players were just jamming words, tunes – sometimes repeating the way they had done the song before, sometimes improvising, or making it better, or forgetting and substituting. The songs don't have to have meaning. There is suggestion that parts of the melody and lyrics are homage to the old American tunes and players and instruments – Perhaps this is why certain images go through my brain when I hear the song. And all of that is why the Lo and Behold makes me happy.

        I'm Not There is a movie depicting Bob Dylan as six different characters. I knew it would be full of Dylan tunes, but I didn't dare hope that Lo and Behold would be in it – then the circus came on the screen, and the song played, and it was oh so delightful – I didn't need to look any farther for my lo and behold that day!

       Perhaps if I had been familiar with the song Lo and Behold years earlier, then when the guy sitting next to me on the Number 12 bus that day complained that Buffalo was a cow town, I could have turned to him and said, “What's it to ya Moby Dick? This is chicken town!”

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