{"id":2073,"date":"2016-10-01T07:00:21","date_gmt":"2016-10-01T11:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=2073"},"modified":"2017-03-01T12:14:20","modified_gmt":"2017-03-01T17:14:20","slug":"dock-of-the-bay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/dock-of-the-bay\/","title":{"rendered":"Dock of the Bay (adventures in India)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Dock of the Bay\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/R4-Y0L71rBI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I was back in the US for a year in 1979-80, then headed off to Europe again, busked up the money for a plane ticket to Pakistan, and flew Aeroflot from Paris to Karachi. I hitchhiked north to Lahore and Rawalpindi, then across the border to Amritsar, India&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;or, actually, to the road to Amritsar, where a Frenchman who had managed to get his Citroen 2CV all the way from France to India had the misfortune to let me take the wheel and I promptly totaled it in a head-on collision with a truck. <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-2099 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Elijah-in-India-1981-3-194x300.jpg?resize=194%2C300\" alt=\"\" width=\"194\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Elijah-in-India-1981-3.jpg?resize=194%2C300&amp;ssl=1 194w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Elijah-in-India-1981-3.jpg?w=554&amp;ssl=1 554w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 194px) 100vw, 194px\" \/>The story is a bit more complicated than that, and it wasn&#8217;t entirely my fault, but the damage was done. So we spent a few days recovering in Amritsar, then I took a train to Delhi.<\/p>\n<p>In Delhi I got a cheap bed in a shared room with a half-dozen dissolute hippies &#8212; among them the co-founder of Celestial Seasonings teas, which he&#8217;d started as Rocky Mountain Herbals, gathering the herbs himself.* He&#8217;d sold out to a partner and headed for Nepal and parts east, aiming to become an expert in opium. I don&#8217;t know how expert he was, but he took me along on one of his local buys, explaining that you shouldn&#8217;t smoke the Indian stuff because it was cut with plastic. So we ate it, and it was a very pleasant, low-key high&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;which is, more or less, how I would characterize my stay in Delhi, until the morning I woke up to find that someone had extracted all my money from the pocket of my jacket, despite the fact that I always rolled up the jacket and used it as a pillow.<\/p>\n<p>That presented a bit of a problem, since none of the local hotels or restaurants would hire me to play unless I had a work permit, and the couple of times I tried busking the populace seemed to find me mildly amusing but did not subsidize my efforts. <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-2074 \" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Times-of-India-review.jpg?resize=235%2C1061\" alt=\"times-of-india-review\" width=\"235\" height=\"1061\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Times-of-India-review.jpg?w=673&amp;ssl=1 673w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Times-of-India-review.jpg?resize=227%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 227w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 235px) 100vw, 235px\" \/>So then I got the bright idea of going to the US embassy and offering my talents to the United States Information Service as a cultural emissary who was already there, and hence cheap.<\/p>\n<p>Oddly enough, they went for it. I designed a concert-cum-lecture in which I provided a capsule history of American music, from ballads and field hollers through blues, country, swing, rock &#8216;n&#8217; roll, and a couple of hits of the 1960s &#8212; notably Otis Redding&#8217;s &#8220;(Sitting on) The Dock of the Bay.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d worked out this guitar part more or less by accident: I was playing around with the idea of fingerpicking while slapping a steady rhythm on the downbeat, and it seemed to fit Redding&#8217;s song &#8212; which meant I practiced this a lot as an exercise but virtually never played it in public, because who needed another version of &#8220;Dock of the Bay&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>Answer: my audience at the India Institute of Technology. The concert went well, I got my first review ever, praising my &#8220;zest&#8221; and &#8220;educative quality,&#8221;** crashed for a few days with some students there, then played a second concert at a girls school, was paid a few hundred dollars by the USIS, and caught a train to Bombay (now Mumbai). In Bombay I did one more embassy-sponsored concert, picked up some work as an extra in Bollywood movies &#8212; that was me among the tourists on the runaway bus rescued by <span class=\"irc_su\" dir=\"ltr\">Mithun Chakraborty<\/span> &#8212; and as a British policeman in <em>Gandhi<\/em>, standing on the dock with my back to the camera, restraining the surging crowds as the Mahatma arrived from South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, I spent my evenings on another dock, looking out towards the fort and playing for whoever wandered by &#8212; which, once again was unremunerative, but I met a lot of nice people, got stoned when interested, and even found a bed now and then.<\/p>\n<p>As the song says, with allowances for distance:<br \/>\n&#8220;Eight thousand miles I&#8217;d roamed, just to make that dock my home&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>*I cannot vouch for the accuracy of that Rocky Mountain Herbals\/ Celestial Seasonings story, nor do I remember the guy&#8217;s name. He did keep a voluminous scrapbook of philosophical quotations like the ones on the tea boxes, but that&#8217;s not exactly proof. I lost touch with him, aside from one postcard a year or so later, sent from a jail in Thailand.<\/p>\n<p>**I take no responsibility for the odder bits of history in the review, or the description of African American work songs as expressing &#8220;a joy which no adversity could repress.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was back in the US for a year in 1979-80, then headed off to Europe again, busked up the money for a plane ticket to Pakistan, and flew Aeroflot from Paris to Karachi. I hitchhiked north to Lahore and Rawalpindi, then across the border to Amritsar, India&#8230; &#8230;or, actually, to the road to Amritsar, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/dock-of-the-bay\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Dock of the Bay (adventures in India)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Dock of the Bay (adventures in India) - Old Friends: A Songobiography<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/dock-of-the-bay\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dock of the Bay (adventures in India) - Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I was back in the US for a year in 1979-80, then headed off to Europe again, busked up the money for a plane ticket to Pakistan, and flew Aeroflot from Paris to Karachi. I hitchhiked north to Lahore and Rawalpindi, then across the border to Amritsar, India&#8230; &#8230;or, actually, to the road to Amritsar, &hellip; Continue reading Dock of the Bay (adventures in India) &rarr;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/dock-of-the-bay\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-10-01T11:00:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-03-01T17:14:20+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Elijah-in-India-1981-3-194x300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Elijah Wald\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ElijahWald\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ElijahWald\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Elijah Wald\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/dock-of-the-bay\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/dock-of-the-bay\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Elijah Wald\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/20e4f69f2f284ea0ff728a9d1b7720a9\"},\"headline\":\"Dock of the Bay (adventures in India)\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-10-01T11:00:21+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-03-01T17:14:20+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/dock-of-the-bay\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":783,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/20e4f69f2f284ea0ff728a9d1b7720a9\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/dock-of-the-bay\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"http:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2016\\\/10\\\/Elijah-in-India-1981-3-194x300.jpg\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/dock-of-the-bay\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/dock-of-the-bay\\\/\",\"name\":\"Dock of the Bay (adventures in India) - 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They had bangers and\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/She-Was-Poor-But-She-Was-Honest.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":947,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/chicken-is-nice\/","url_meta":{"origin":2073,"position":2},"title":"Chicken Is Nice (Dave Van Ronk\/Howard Hayes)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"April 18, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A charming Liberian oddity I (and everyone else) got from Dave Van Ronk, because it was impossible to find elsewhere and he did a lovely version.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Cafe_Music_Liberia","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Cafe_Music_Liberia.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3498,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/hell-have-to-go\/","url_meta":{"origin":2073,"position":3},"title":"He&#8217;ll Have to Go (Ry Cooder\/Jim Reeves)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"March 24, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I spent a month or so hitchhiking around Scotland in the summer of 1989, partly because I was headed to Africa and wanted to familiarize myself with the work of Jim Reeves. 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