The 500 - #303 - John Wesley Harding - Bob Dylan

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: # 303

Album Title: John Wesley Harding

Artist: Bob Dylan

Genre: Folk-Rock, Country-Rock

Recorded: Over three sessions in the late fall,1967

Released: December, 1967

My age at release: 2

How familiar was I with it before this week: One song

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, 337 (Dropping 24 spots)

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest

John Wesley Harding is the eighth studio record by American singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Bob Dylan. It is also the third of 11 Dylan records on The 500 list. I wrote about Dylan’s Time Out Of Mind (#411) in August, 2020,and Love And Theft (#385)in January, 2021. It was written and recorded about a year after Dylan’s motorcycle accident and just before the birth of his fourth child, Jakob Dylan – who would rise to fame in the early 90s as the guitarist and singer for the band, The Wallflowers.

Jakob Dylan (front) with his band The Wallflowers

I don't want to be "treading trodden trails" here, so I will skip the biographical information included in those previous posts. I will simply say, John Wesley Harding really grew on me and my respect and appreciation for Dylan continues to grow as I learn to get the "it" of Bob Dylan -- an intangible quality that makes so many fans passionate about this celebrated talent.

Dylan, around the time of this record's recording.

Several months ago, my Facebook feed displayed a public message board posting on a site called If You Grew Up in London (Ontario) by an individual identified by the pseudonym Various Artists.

Homepage for the "If You Grew Up in London" Facebook group

Various Artists hosts a website, blog and podcast under the banner, My Life In Concerts. It is a multi-media diary of experiences attending concerts in the Southwestern Ontario region between 1975 and the present. From reading the blogs, it became apparent the author and I have much in common. We are both Londoners of about the same age, with a love of music who have (independently of each other) chosen to chronicle our interest through blogging and podcasting.

The current My Life In Concert Webpage

Two weeks ago, I had the chance to dig a little deeper into the content on the My Life In Concert website and was really impressed. He (Various Artists) is a skilled writer and dynamic orator. His first podcast detailed his experiences at the same Roxy Music show that a guest blogger, pal Dougie, wrote about on this blog site last year. (See Album #374, Siren).

A partial ticket from that Roxy Music performance in London

Two weeks ago, I contacted Various Artists and discussed our mutual online projects. He was, as I expected after hearing his podcasts and reading his posts, good-natured and agreeable to email conversation about our musical undertakings. Surprisingly, he volunteered to read all of my posts -- nearly 200 of them!

Over the past two weeks, he has done exactly that, while I have been listening to his podcast. We have agreed that, as young adults, our discordant music tastes would likely have made us adversaries rather than friends.

When he saw, through my social media post, that John Wesley Harding by Bob Dylan was next on my list he wrote:

"One of his very best. In my Dylan Top 10, maybe Top 5. This album along with The Band's Music From Big Pink (#34 on The 500) played a big part in launching the roots music movement at the end of the 60s. I love Dylan's stark simplicity and songwriting on John Wesley Harding. A third album that was a key cornerstone to the fledging roots movement of the late 60s was The Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo (#120). It certainly wasn't a commercial success in its time, but it influenced the right people and truly launched Gram Parsons career and his second and final record Grievous Angel (#425)."

As a recent convert to the music of Bob Dylan, I have to say that this is my favourite of the three records I've reviewed so far. As I indicated in that first Dylan post two years ago...I am starting to get "it". Gleaning tidbits of information from a fan like Various Artists is certainly helpful in my journey. Perhaps I can entice him to guest-blog or participate in a cross-over event one day.

Professional Wrestling and the Romantic Lie.

For the past four weeks, I have been working with four classes of Grade 7 & 8 students at 3 different schools. 

About 100 kids ... and I have been lying to them all.

I have been preparing them for a "Mystery Unit" about which "I am not at liberty to share information" because ... "I am in discussion with both the Principal and Superintendent in order to get permission to try this experiment". 

I do provide the following information...

• It is an incredible unit that they will find rewarding and engaging.
• It requires a high level of independent work and they get to be the stakeholders in their own education.
• Therefore, it requires a level of maturity (that I know they possess) but....
• the Superintendent and Principal are cautious - and need to see the evidence.
• So we are going to do some activities that show them how effectively we can work at a high-school level.
• All will be revealed after the March Break and ... fingers crossed...we get the Green Light! 

Almost everything I have told them is true. The three month, cross-curricular unit I have planned has always proven to be rewarding and engaging. It also provides students with multiple opportunities to share their voice and engage in rich debate through Class Discussions, Blog Writing & Flipgrid posts - shared between classes through the Social Media platform Edmodo.

My only fib is in the mystery I have intentionally created around the big reveal...truth be told...the unit has already been green lit, and will be launched when they return from March Break.

Even if you are not a fan of Professional Wrestling, you have likely heard of promoter Vince McMahon of the World Wrestling Entertainment empire. He, and his team of writers, have perfected the tricks originally developed by promoter, huckster and eventual politician PT Barnum in the late 1800's. 

This formula in current wrestling parlance...

• Hint at possibility - Tease
• Create mystery - Create an Angle 
• Build suspense - Generate Heat
• Deliver - Get Pop & Put the Face Over
• Sustain through Surprise - Swerves, Heel Turns & Face in Peril 

Dress it up in the outlandish costumes & over-the-top pageantry and you've got a billion dollar empire.

There is a reason that this approach lands with kids. It's too much to get into here - but there is a lot to discover in the works of anthropologist & philospher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) and educational theorist Kieran Egan (1942- ), particularly his 1999 book Children's Minds, Talking Rabbits & Clockwork Oranges.

Herbert Spencer and Kieran Egan's 1999 Book

In a nutshell - early teens are typically in a state of Romanticism (just like the period) and both could be summarized as

• Showing delight in the exotic (especially the supernatural)
• Putting emphasis on individualism.
• Revolting against convention.
• Evidencing rich imagination.
• Having an intense interest in self-inquiry.
• Resisting order and reason.
• Celebrating transcendent human qualities (particularly redemption).

I guess this was a long explanation to justify my lie. I am a liar with a noble purpose (talk about a Romantic notion). I hope to set these students up for a highly engaging unit that they will find rewarding. I am also confident that they will become better thinkers and communicators by unit's end. I intend to document the journey here. Hope you can join me.

A Quick 2017 Reflection

The last time I wrote for this site, I had agreed to participate in an #IMMOOC - An Innovator’s Mindset Massive Open Online Course - centered around the George Couros book - "The Innovator’s Mindset". It was in early September and I was just starting in my new role as an instructional coach.

At that time, I was still getting my feet under me as a coach. The first few months in this new role have been about building relationships and doing professional reading. I assumed, incorrectly, that I would have plenty of time to contribute to this ongoing, educational weblog journal.  It is now the last day of December...and 2017… and I am just getting time to reflect and write.

I have, over the past four months, been provided with a deluge of quality professional development through my Board, my Twitter Professional Learning Network (#PLN) and my own reading & research. My position also affords me the enviable opportunity to collaborate with creative, passionate and dedicated colleagues who consistently bring their “A Game” to classes and schools everyday.

So, I want to take a few minutes to reflect on 2017 and start anew tomorrow.

• Last year, I wrote  16 blog posts - My goal for 2018 is to get to 24. I also intend to ReTweet more blog posts from my colleagues. I think we should all tag each other in our posts and repost frequently - ideally quoting the post with feedback.
• My most popular was an effort to dispel some myths about Prayer in Schools that I penned in April http://bit.ly/prayerinschool  Perhaps this is evidence that I should tackle more controversial or dynamic subjects.
• Surprisingly, my least popular was http://bit.ly/AlrightFairEnough which detailed a cross-curricular approach to teaching Junior age students how to effectively and amicably disagree with each other. It was written in the middle of the summer. I suspect that had something to do with it.
• Another weak post was my early September effort to chronicle my journey as an Instructional Coach. This I get. It is self-indulgent and frankly boring. I need to do less of this.
• I am proud of the growth of my #PLN. I am following nearly 3000 Twitter users (mainly educators) and I am on the verge of gaining 2000 followers. I don’t want to set a goal here, because I have already far surpassed my expectations.
• The best book I read this year was Trevor Mackenzie’s “Diving into Inquiry: Amplify Learning and Empower Student Voice”. It was made better by my participation in a summer book club using my favourite App of the year - Flipgrid.
  

I want to keep this short. I know that is important. Knowing that my posts are short will embolden me as a contributor - I hope to come right back to the keyboard tomorrow to begin writing my #OneWord post for 2018.

Have a safe, happy and healthy New Year.

Marc

The Tyranny of Choice

I am finally going to “post” a blog today.  I'm emphasizing the word “post” because I have written, tinkered-with, debated and deleted many over the past five years. This will be the first one I have officially released into the wild.  

This reticence was not due to apprehension about the content but, a self-imposed hesitation about the platform and presentation.  Much like choosing Friday night entertainment on Netflix -  the delay was a product of the "Tyranny of Choice. What do I choose? What should it look like? What will be a great title? Is this good enough?

My routine, for many years, has been the same. I start, or rediscover, an account on a platform (WordPress, Blogger, etc) and then begin to build the perfect blog environment.  I select titles and templates and carefully craft a catchy URL address. I dutifully search YouTube videos to provide me with step-by-step tutorials. Simply put, I exhaust my enthusiasm in the minutia. The "devil is in the details" - but - those demons are sometimes Boredom and Diversion.

Invariably, I would get as far as composing a large, unedited chunk of my first post when distraction would set in...life, circumstance, uncertainty, a hockey game on TV. I would convince myself that I needed time to reflect and I would leave the post unfinished.  

Prior to my return, I would learn of a new platform (Edublogs, SquareSpace) - I have stale accounts on them all - and I would begin the process anew. Today, I have decided that this must end.

Here is what I have learned about getting an education blog started. (And this will be short and simple because of #3)

1. Just write something that you think is important and that you want to share with fellow educators. Once it is written, you will be far more keen to put it out into the world.
2. Find a tutorial to help you, but look for a tutorial that is current. Blog platforms change frequently. An excellent tutorial from 2011 may be more confusing than an satisfactory tutorial from last month.
3. Make your points simple and clear. Write a blog that you can edit easily and can be read in a few minutes.
4. Have fun. If you are not enjoying the process, blogging is not for you.
5. Post it. Give it a quick edit and then put it up. You can always revisit it in the future when you gain a new perspective.

With that said - here goes nothing.