Bob Dylan | “When the Deal Goes Down”

IN THE TUBE
Bob Dylan is releasing his 46th album, Together Through Life, on April 28. And assuming it’s even a tenth as good as Modern Times, then I’m prepared, her and now, to declare it the best songwriter’s record of 2009. Straight up. Modern Times was incredible, as were Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft and Tell Tale Signs. And I’ll stretch back even further and extend Dylan’s new era of greatness to include Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong. It’s one of the great inspirational pleasures in life, surveying Dylan’s discography chronologically: meteoric rise, waver, Blood On the Tracks, waver, free-fall into near obscurity. And then one of the greatest comeback kid stories ever told. Anyway. I’m sure nobody needs to hear me ramble on about Bob Dylan. Instead, here’s the gorgeous video to the unspeakably beautiful “When The Deal Goes Down,” from Modern Times, to get the salivary juices flowing for April. (Unforunately they disabled embedding, so you’ll have to click the link and skip over to YouTube to check it out.) This is one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs, and I think truly emblematic of Dylan’s recent discography: it is a body laced with nostalgia and regret.  “When The Deal Goes Down” is heart breaking in every aspect, from it’s timeless (stolen) melody to its imagistic lyrics. And I love the video too. Even Scarlet. It could have so easily been a disaster but instead it’s, you know, not. It’s infused with the same quiet longing as the song, an account of a life, a registry of memory, and an attempt to understand better one’s own history. “We live and we die, we know not why, but I’ll be with you when the deal goes down.”

by Chris Kiehne