Better Late Than Never (Maybe) Edition

1. Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues- Bob Dylan

• "I started out on burgundy but soon hit the harder stuff, everybody said they'd stand behind me when the game got rough, but the joke was on me there was nobody even there to bluff, I'm going back to New York City, I do believe I've had enough." This song rocks. Bob Dylan's conversion from Judaism to Christianity in the late 70s didn't cause as many waves as his switch from acoustic to electric guitar in the mid 60s. "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" (featured on 1965's "Highway 61 Revisited") is an early example of his musical conversion. The dissent amongst his folk audience was palpable, and audibly documented on "The Bootleg Series Volume 4: Bob Dylan Live, 1966 The Royal Albert Hall Concert" album. During an electric set that included "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" an audience member is heard shouting "Judas!". Dylan's subsequent instructions to the band (The Band) as they warmed up for "Like a Rolling Stone" were to "play f#cking loud". I can recall seeing Clem Snide in DC in the early 2000s and being elated when they worked this song's final verse (quoted above) into their set. I was also elated when the show ended and the house music in the venue featured selections from Hall & Oates greatest hits.

2. Diamond Dogs- David Bowie

• "This ain't rock and roll, this is genocide! Come out of the garden baby, you'll catch a death in the fog, young girl, they call them the Diamond Dogs." I know that "Diamond Dogs" was a single from an album of the same name in the mid 70s. I know that musically this song could be mistaken for mid 70s Rolling Stones number. Lyrically I can't pretend to know what in the world this song is about. I did a little casual research and found out that the "Diamond Dogs' album was a concept piece inspired by the novel 1984 that depicts a post apocalyptic glam world. I haven't seen the other side of the apocalypse but I don't imagine glam survives. The single best remembered from"Diamond Dogs" would have to be "Rebel Rebel". "Diamond Dogs" (the song) found it's way onto 1990's "Changesbowie" greatest hits collection but didn't make the cut for the updated "Best of Bowie" 2002 collection.

3. Part-Time Lover- Stevie Wonder

• "We are undercover passion on the run, chasing love up against the sun, we are strangers by day lovers by night, knowing it's so wrong but feeling so right." The great film "High Fidelity" referred to 1984's "I Just Called To Say I Love You" as a "musical crime". How any song produced by Lionel Richie could be a musical crime is beyond me. Crime or no crime, a year later (and almost a full decade before TLC gave us "Creep") Wonder struck gold again with "Part-Time Lover". I think everyone enjoys this song. Fans of old school hip hop should recall the Boogie Down Productions song "Part Time Suckers", an obvious ode to this Wonder classic. I have a cassette tape (look it up) of my sister and I singing along with this song on the radio when we were kids. If I weren't on the recording it'd be the sort of embarrassing thing I'd break out at a rehearsal dinner some day. It's something I plan to keep under wraps as sadly I'm a co-conspirator in this musical crime.