Diamond Joe (Masked and Anonymous)

Rum, whiskey --> honey
Frisky. But my wife left me
'Cause I was risky.

"Diamond Joe" appears in the film "Masked and Anonymous," which features Bob Dylan among a cast of alternative-mainstream movie talent from the 1970s through the early years of the 21st century (John Goodman, Jessica Lange, Penelope Cruz and so on). I've never seen the movie, but what I have seen looks like a complete mess. That said, I still plan to watch it at some point, though I'm not sure how much of the self-regarding alterna-types I can take without getting cranky over their hipper-than-thou personas and the roots music that they dig.

Anyway, the song: Diamond Joe is an old song from the 1920s. In short, the singer gives his sweetheart rum and whiskey to get her frisky. He uses flour to make hoe cakes by the hour. The only problem with this sylvan paradise is that the singer's wife makes her dissatisfaction with the situation clear by leaving. In the chorus, the singer calls on Diamond Joe (a ferry boat? A river boat? A train? Some guy?) to come pick him up. Because of the ambiguity around the identity and organic status of Diamond Joe, I left him, or it, out of the haiku.

This song is the second song called "Diamond Joe" that Dylan recorded. It is not at all related to that other song, which appears on the album "Good As I Been to You."

A complete recording of the song is in the link at the beginning of this post. The only one that I can find on YouTube is a partial version from the film.

'Cross the Green Mountain

Civil war soldiers

Die on the battlefield.

Brothers fight brothers.

I've never been a big fan of Civil War movies, though to pan them for poor quality, especially when they are the Ted Turner-produced giant productions, is to take a churlish stance. They are more impressive than affecting to me, mainly because they expect the viewer to feel that unique feeling that Americans are supposed to have watching noble, proud tragic figures from one country shoot, hack and bomb each other to death in the name of preserving and overthrowing traditions both proud and base. Civil War buffs are a funny gang, and I've never understood or reacted to the feeling that they seek. I know there's pride, tragedy and a view toward the epic in any war, but reverence for the events that killed more than half a million people of the same country starts to look like Dungeons and Dragons fans embarking on their next dress-up adventure with the half orcs. I feel the same way about Bob Dylan's song "'Cross the Green Mountain," which appeared on the 2003 soundtrack to the film "Gods and Generals," and made its commercial appearance under Dylan's name on the eighth volume in the Bootleg Series a few years later. It's a song about the tragedy and waste of war, and is affecting and moving, but it leaves me unmoved even as I write this. It also makes the unfortunate choice of relying on the marcher's drum roll and a few of those melodic quirks of songs of the time that Robert Burns did to death on his documentary. There's a world of people out there who react to that fake nouveau 19th century Americana melancholy sound with great pleasure; I'm not one of those people. To me it's cliche. But wow, those last two verses... they're the only lines that show the emotion and beauty:

I'm ten miles outside the city
And I'm lifted away
In an ancient light
That is not of day

They were calm, they were blunt
We knew them all too well
We loved each other more than

We ever dared to tell