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Glory Box · Six Degrees of Dylan - Audio Episodes

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Colin McGady and I have a theory.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Bob Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone changed what a popular song could be and every rock
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: and pop song since can be connected back to it.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is a journey through musical evolution, following the influences,
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: shared ideas and unexpected encounters that connect one record to another.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Six songs, five connections, one destination.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Six Degrees of Dylan.
• 0:26
  [music]
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Before we begin, a quick listening note.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: For licensing reasons, the songs themselves aren't included in this episode.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: You'll find today's Spotify playlist linked in the postnotes.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'll let you know when to pause and listen,
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: and point you towards particular moments in each song.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Take your time, then come back when you're ready to follow the next connection.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy! Tonight, we begin inside a loop.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Portishead's Glory Box turns a fragment of older soul into a place where a new voice can speak.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Beth Gibbons sounds exposed and determined at the same time.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: The backing seems to circle her, while the guitar opens a rougher edge in the picture.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Our route follows what happens when a musical setting survives,
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: but the person inside it changes.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: We'll move through Isaac Hayes, Alessia Cara, Lorde and David Bowie before reaching Bob Dylan.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Some connections are physical.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: One record actually contains a piece of another.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Others are comparisons or encounters between artists.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: We begin with the full album recording from Dummy, released in 1994.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Listen for the repeated foundation beneath Gibbons
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: and for the way her phrasing stretches against it.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Then notice what the guitar adds when the arrangement pushes harder.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Pause here for Portishead's Glory Box and come back when you're ready.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: That foundation takes us to Isaac Hayes.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Glory Box samples Ike's Rap 2 from Black Moses.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Our selected track is the complete medley, Ike's Rap 2 followed by Help Me Love.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: It runs for more than seven and a half minutes,
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: so let it unfold beyond the section that sounds familiar.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Released in 1971, this music has its own destination.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't made to become somebody else's sample.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Hayes gives the opening a low, intimate spoken presence before the medley develops.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Returning to it after Portishead can feel like discovering
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: that a room you've visited belongs to a much larger house.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Listen closely to the musical figure beneath the opening voice,
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: then follow the change from speech into song.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: The sample is our doorway, but the whole performance is the reason to stay.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Pause for Isaac Hayes' complete medley, Ike's Rap 2 and Help Me Love, then return.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now listen to what happens when that same source enters a different conversation.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Alessia Cara's Here also draws on Ike's Rap 2.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: The connection is documented sampling.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: The contrast is in the perspective.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Here places us at a party with someone who would rather be somewhere else.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Kara's vocal is full of detail and quick qualifications.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: She seems to be explaining herself while also wondering why an explanation should be necessary.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: The 2015 recording was produced by Pop, Oak and Sebastian Cole.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Its familiar musical foundation gives the song weight,
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: but Kara fills the space with her own particular discomfort.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Notice the busy flow of her phrases against the repeating backing,
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: and the change when she arrives at the refrain.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: We are using the original know-it-all album version, not the separate 2am version.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Pause for Alessia Cara's Here,
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: then come back for a connection made through attitude rather than a shared sample.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Lords Royals steps outside another kind of party, Pop's imagined world of effortless luxury.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Where Here describes an uncomfortable room,
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Royals questions the pictures of a desirable life that surround it.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: That is my thematic comparison.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Not a claim that one song borrowed from the other.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Written by Ella Jelich O'Connor and Joel Little, and produced by Little,
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Royals makes restraint feel unusually forceful.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: A close voice, a spare beat, and layered vocals leave plenty of air.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: The record reached number one in Britain in 2013.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Its refusal of excess became a very large pop event.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to the difference between the exposed opening and the fuller vocal layers,
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: and to how little instrumental clutter is needed to make the chorus register.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Pause for Lorde's Royals, the pure heroine recording, and return when you're ready.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Lorde gives us a real-world bridge to David Bowie.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: At the 2016 Brit Awards, she performed Life on Mars with his touring band in tribute to him.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: That performance connects the artists.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't prove a hidden quotation inside Royals.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Our playlist turns instead to Bowie's Song for Bob Dylan from Hunky Dory.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: It was released in 1971, with Ken Scott and Bowie credited as the album's producers.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Here is one songwriter addressing another,
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: interested in the public voice and what people have asked it to carry.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: The song feels more complicated than a simple salute.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Admiration sits beside a wish for something that seems to have slipped away.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to Bowie's direct address and the guitar-led momentum,
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: and consider the distance between the individual
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: and the cultural figure his name has become.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Pause for Song for Bob Dylan, the original studio performance in its 2015 remaster,
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: then come back.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: We have heard Bowie addressing Dylan.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now we hear Dylan addressing someone else.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like a Rolling Stone puts a person's lost security at the centre
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: of an electric record that keeps surging forward.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: The words can feel merciless.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: The music can feel liberating.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Holding those sensations together is part of its force.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is the original 1965 studio performance from Highway 61 Revisited.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Our journey began with a voice trying to make room for itself inside
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: a repeating musical pattern.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: It ends with a voice making uncertainty public,
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: turning a question into something a whole crowd can sing.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: That is the connection to my watershed theory.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: A popular song can sustain contradiction,
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: character and social observation without giving up its physical excitement.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to the opening drum strike, then to the organ lifting around the vocal.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Pause for Bob Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone and come back for a final thought.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: A sample can carry a sound across decades.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: It cannot decide what the next singer will mean.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Portishead and Alessia Cara draw on the same Isaac Hayes recording,
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: yet they tell different stories.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Lorde changes the scale of the refusal.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Bowie asks what a songwriter's voice owes to the people who have made it part of their lives.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And Dylan leaves us with the uncomfortable freedom of a question that won't quite settle.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Six records, connected without becoming interchangeable.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Colin McGaddy.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to Six Degrees of Dylan.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time.
• 7:21
  [music]