SONG OF THE DAY
“Positively 4th Street” by Bob Dylan (single, Columbia Records, 1965). Written by Bob Dylan (duh).
WHY TODAY?
I can’t stop singing it today! That, and “Permiscuous Girl” by Nelly Furtado Feat. Timbaland, but that song is too embarrassing to blog about. Hence why I just did.
INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia)
– “Positively 4th Street” was recorded by Dylan in New York City on July 29, 1965.
– The song reached #7 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, and #8 on the UK Singles Chart.
– Rolling Stone magazine ranked the song as #203 in their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.
– The song was released between the albums Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde, as the follow-up to Dylan’s hit single “Like a Rolling Stone”, but wasn’t included on either LP.
– The studio band on “Positively 4th Street” featured Robert Gregg (drums), Russ Savakus or Harvey Brooks (bass), Frank Owens or Paul Griffin (piano), Al Kooper (organ) and Mike Bloomfield (guitar), with the song initially being logged on the studio’s official recording session documentation under the working title of “Black Dalli Rue”.
– Although the song was recorded during the Highway 61 Revisited sessions, it was saved for a single-only release.
– Critic Dave Marsh praised the song as “an icy hipster bitch session” with “Dylan cutting loose his barbed-wire tongue at somebody luckless enough to have crossed the path of his desires.”
– The lyrics of “Positively 4th Street” are bitter and derisive, which caused many, at the time of the song’s release, to draw a comparison with Dylan’s similarly toned previous single “Like a Rolling Stone”. Indeed, journalist Andy Gill described it as “simply the second wind of a one-sided argument, so closely did it follow its predecessor’s formula, both musically and attitudinally”.
– There is uncertainty about exactly which “4th Street” the title refers to, with many scholars and fans speculating it refers to more than one. New York City’s 4th Street is at the heart of the Manhattan residential district Greenwich Village, where Dylan once lived. This area was central to the burgeoning folk music scene of the early 1960s, which centered around Dylan and many other influential singer-songwriters. However, the song also may concern Dylan’s stay at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where 4th Street S.E. is one of the two main roads crossing through the part of campus known as “Dinkytown”, where Dylan lived and performed.
– The song is generally assumed to ridicule Greenwich Village residents who criticized Dylan for his departure from traditional folk styles towards the electric guitar and rock music. Many of the Greenwich Village folk crowd, who had been good friends of Dylan’s, took offense and assumed that the song carried personal references.