Ram"ble (?), v. i. [imp. & p. p. Rambled (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Rambling (?).] [For rammle , fr. Prov. E. rame to roam. Cf. Roam.]
1. To walk, ride, or sail, from place to place, without any determinate object in view; to roam carelessly or irregularly; to rove; to wander; as, to ramble about the city; to ramble over the world.
He that is at liberty to ramble in perfect darkness, what is his liberty better than if driven up and down as a bubble by the wind? Locke.
2. To talk or write in a discursive, aimless way.
3. To extend or grow at random. Thomson. Syn. -- To rove; roam; wander; range; stroll.
Ramble (Page: 1186)
Ram"ble, n.
1. A going or moving from place to place without any determinate business or object; an excursion or stroll merely for recreation.
Coming home, after a short Christians ramble. Swift.
2. [Cf. Rammel.] (Coal Mining) A bed of shale over the seam. Raymond. <-- 3. A section of woods suitable for liesurely walking. muskrat ramble -- a dance -->
--webster's revised unabridged dictionary, 1913
my love affair with The Band started my senior year in college. it was the year i turned 21, took an obscene number of course hours, and tried to figure out just what was going to happen after August, when i would be a college graduate. i remember watching a lot of VH1's "behind the music". when i say "a lot", what i mean is that i skipped more than one class and put off studying for SEVERAL tests to watch episodes i hadn't seen, before. i vividly remember sitting on the denim-covered couch (come on...it was just barely not-the-90's, anymore) watching "behind the music: the band", and realizing that i knew those guys. i just didn't know that i knew them, before.
the sound this band generated (and the sound generated by levon helm, in particular) was a sound that was as familiar to me as my own mother's voice, the ebb and flow of the cadences as wise and weathered and insistent as the rise and fall of my father's voice. the stories they told with their music were familiar stories to me, even though some of them were brand new stories. and there's this bearded general, somewhere between General Sherman and General Lee, driving this chariot of sound and fury up your driveway, and all the way through the back wall of the garage, burning a swath of carpet a mile wide through the middle of your living room, shattering the plate glass window, and finishing with a wink and a big wet kiss at the bottom of your swimming pool. greil marcus said once that they were the best band in america. and to that, i must add a very emphatic "you're damn skippy."
what the band created together, when they were at the top of their game--deeply engaged in the business of being each others' business, was something that was bigger than just being bob dylan's band. not that that's a bad job. i mean...seriously? bob dylan's band. but they were their own band, firstforeverandalways. what they pulled out of dylan was incredible. what dylan pulled out of them was incendiary. what they made together took everything that rock and roll had been before and made it louder, harder, deeper, and fundamentally impossible to ignore. and while it sounds hackneyed and tired, the fact remains that that sound changed everything.
everything on "music from big pink" lets you know that this album is special. i feel like it's the musical equivalent of landing on the moon. there was always the chance that the doing of the thing would be the undoing of the doers. but...the expected and intended outcome was worth the gamble. listen to any track, and whether you know the song or not, i'll bet you dollars to donuts, the music will sound familiar to you. you'll catch yourself humming little snips of it for the rest of the day. it'll change your life, if you let it.
when i started therapy, and really making space for myself inside of my own life, claiming it, as it were...i needed a lot of security blankets. "music from big pink" and "the last waltz" were albums that i could cuddle up inside of and rest. some of the songs are incredibly sad, and there is always an undercurrent of angst or otherness or tension in rock and roll. that's what makes it rock and roll--the speed and the volume that come out of some of our blackest emotions. when i hear "the weight", i feel like i know every person in that song. every single character has some weirdness about them, but they are each necessary in the song. "long black veil", "chest fever", and and "i shall be released" are further examples of the deeply personal and universal stories the songs celebrate. i love that album. i run to tracks off of it, all the time. i listen to it when i'm in the shower. i listen to it in the car. at least one track from "big pink" is on almost every play list i've made in the last three years. and when i was at the oldest bar in houston, last friday night, they played the entire b side. THE. ENTIRE. B. SIDE.
true story:
"the last waltz" was filmed the same weekend my mom took my dad home on approval to my grandparents. levon helm sang "the night they drove old dixie down" in public, for the last time, the night my dad asked my poppy if he could marry my mother. i love that. there is something so primal and elemental about that song. the song crawls up out of the woods, with the tangy reek of pine resin and the faint after-taste of something someone's uncle carries around in a mason jar, trying to explain how things got to be the way they are, and with an apologetic tone that ranges from the jeremiad to the lovers' lament, we come to understand the profound effect war and poverty take on people, regardless of the era, because levon just can't help but tell you this story. and when levon is singing, you believe he really did work on the danville train. you can hear the sadness in his voice, the exegesis of emancipation and reconstruction and deconstruction and trying to make something meaningful out of the scraps left laying around him. it's a song and a sound and an ethos i always associate with the way my father explained hard things to me, with the old stories shelby foote tells like they were brand new, with sticky-humid summers full of pine needles, red clay, sweet tea, and the slowly drawled-out terms of endearment my Granny uses instead of all our names. it's sad and sweet and perfect.
in flights of fancy, i have imagined what it would have been like to have lived next door to the band, to have baked them a cobbler, or mended a couple of shirts, commiserated with their girlfriends, and listened in on mythical and mystical jam sessions. i have imagined flirting shamelessly with levon helm, circa 1975. i've thought about what the walls of big pink or levon's barn would say, if they could talk. i like to think they'd be so full of experiences, i'd never hear the end of the stories. the basement tapes, the midnight rambles...the stories, the music, the voices...G-d...how would i even start to say "thank you", without sounding like a 15 year old gushing over the latest pop sensation from either coast? how would i say "thank you" without dissolving into tears, trying to explain that there were moments when the music was the only thing to remind me that i was not all alone in an impossibly big universe?
it's hard to know and understand in a real and concrete way that this life is passing away, a day at a time. when heroes die, we lionize them and romanticize them and preach them right through the pearly gates. when i hear levon, when i hear the band, the collective sound and fury and celebration and announcement of "THIS IS HAPPENING, NOW", i don't think. i just know.
and i know this much is true:
heroes live forever. lions are the kings of the jungle. romance is what happens when no one else is looking. the kingdom of heaven is now.
peace on your journey, levon. thank you for the music. i love you.
mil besos,
rmg
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