Emne: Dylanskulen

[Asbjørn]

Bob Dylan har etter hvert hanket inn stort sett det som er av forskjellige priser, til og med inntatt  short-listen for Nobelprisen i litteratur visstnok... Men en Pulizer-pris er vel heller ikke å forakte 






Editorial: Dylan's Pulitzer citation is a well-deserved honor


 
CT Editorial BoardTuesday, April 8; 12:00 AM
Pulitzer prizes were awarded yesterday in a number of categories including journalism, letters, drama and music.
The Pulitzer Prize is the highest national honor in print journalism, music and the arts and is awarded annually.

This year a number of deserving organizations received awards, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe. Close to home, the Washington Post won six Pulitzer Prizes, including breaking news reporting for its coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings last April. All of these contributions were notable, as they provided coverage, exposed truths and challenged public thinking and beliefs. Recognition is certainly well deserved.

But for one man, national recognition has been a long time coming. A popular figure in American music and culture for more than five decades, Robert Zimmerman, popularly known as Bob Dylan, changed the value of music, blurring the lines of rock and folk, and influencing the movement for social change during a decade of war and discovery.

Never one claiming to change the world, Dylan adamantly denied the ability of music to influence social and political change, yet he became the voice of a generation.

Gaining fame as the reluctant figurehead of the counter-culture, Dylan incorporated religion, politics, literature and pop culture into his unique style of writing and performing. Embracing more than just the folk music, he transcended all expectations and social influence to create his own.

One of his most popular anthems, "The Times They Are a-Changin'," spoke against violence in the Civil Rights movement and the disintegration of farming communities.

He sang at the March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I have a dream" speech. He spoke up after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, acknowledging that he saw a little of himself in the assassin, a move that did not go over well with the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee.

And yet, Dylan is still uniquely American, using his voice to take unpopular stances and appeal to a largely misunderstood culture. 

Nearly 50 years after Dylan first began making his mark, he is finally being honored for his service to the music community. The Pulitzer board presented Dylan with a Special Citation for his "profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power."

The great thing about Dylan is that he would probably resist the acclaim of this editorial. He would deny his influence, popularity and even appeal. He didn't do what he did for the people or for fame, or to change the world. He just had something to say. The fact that so many people spanning generations identify with him is a testament to who he is and his message. A man with a guitar, keyboard and harmonica set the pulse of the 60s and continues to influence the music of our time and coming generations.

The man behind the dark Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses intrigued reporters, fans and critics alike. A man of few words, he made no apologies for himself and his beliefs, while simultaneously denying his profound impact.

The editorial board is composed of Amie Steele, Joe Kendall, Saira Haider, Laurel Colella and Sara Mitchell.

[Lids]

http://www.musikknyheter.no/news/3711

[Asbjørn]

...i det hele tatt er det tett-i-tett med høydepunktet mht Bob-news 

Lesbare artikler hver eneste dag 

...og noen må jeg jo dele:

Men først litt opplysningsarbeid.

Han her karen har gjort seg flid med å velge ut tekstmessige høydepunktet (vaaanskelig å velge mener nå jeg )



Top 10: Bob Dylan lyrics
I’ve been a Bob Dylan fan ever since the age of 12 or 13, when I discovered my dad’s vinyl copies of Greatest Hits and Desire. His work has consistently fascinated me more than any other popular musician’s. I took a poetry class at USF about eight years ago and my professor, the cowboy poet Willie Reader, who passed away shortly after the semester ended, allowed me to do a paper on Dylan’s lyrics. It ran about 20 pages and I earned an “A+,” a rare accomplishment for me in those days. The assignment prompted a friendship between Reader and I; one that led to many long talks and us attending a Willie Nelson concert together. The Dylan paper and, more importantly, the positive feedback I received from Reader, would also eventually lead me into a career of music criticism.

I took great pleasure in seeing Dylan recently collect a Pulitzer Prize:

A Special Citation to Bob Dylan for his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.

In honor of Dylan’s recent award from the literary world, here’s a list I obsessed over longer than I care to admit.

Top 10: Bob Dylan lyrics

1. “Mr. Tambourine Man,” Bringing It All Back Home (1965)
Killer lines: “I’m ready to go anywhere / I’m ready for to fade/ Into my own parade / Cast your dancing spell my way / I promise to go under it.”

2. “Idiot Wind,” Blood on the Tracks (1975)
Killer lines: “You’ll never know the hurt I suffered nor the pain I rise above / And I’ll never know the same about you, your holiness or your kind of love / And it makes me feel so sorry.”

3. “Every Grain of Sand,” Shot of Love (1981)
Killer lines: “I gaze into the doorway of temptation’s angry flame / And every time I pass that way I always hear my name.”

4. “Desolation Row,” Highway 61 Revisited (1965)
Killer lines: “To her, death is quite romantic / She wears an iron vest / Her profession’s her religion / Her sin is her lifelessness / And though her eyes are fixed upon / Noah’s great rainbow / She spends her time peeking / Into Desolation Row.”

5. “Jokerman,” Infidels (1983)
Killer lines: “Shedding off one more layer of skin / Keeping one step ahead of the persecutor within.”

6. “Like a Rolling Stone,” Highway 61 Revisited (1965)
Killer lines: “You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat / Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat / Ain’t it hard when you discover that / He really wasn’t where it’s at / After he took from you everything he could steal.”

7. “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” Bringing It All Back Home (1965)
Killer lines: “The hollow horn plays wasted words / Proves to warn / That he not busy being born / Is busy dying.”

8. “Highlands,” Time out Of Mind (1997)
Killer lines: “The sun is beginning to shine on me / But it’s not like the sun that used to be / The party’s over, and there’s less and less to say / I got new eyes / Everything looks far away.”

9. “Blind Willie McTell,” Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (1991); an outtake from Infidels
Killer lines: “Well, God is in heaven / And we all want what’s His / But power and greed and corruptible seed / Seem to be all that there is.”

10. “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963)
Killer lines: “Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’ / Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin.’”

April 8th, 2008 by Wade Tatangelo in News

Noen kommentarer:

These lines from “Standing in the Doorway” made an impression on me when I heard them back in 1997. It gains the listener to hear them in the context of the song, but even set apart, they succinctly capture the feeling of alienation amidst other people’s happiness.

The light in this place is so bad
Making me sick in the head
All the laughter is just making me sad
The stars have turned cherry red

Another one of my favorite songs from Dylan’s classic 1997 album “Time Out of Mind,” “Standing in the Doorway” includes some of his most touching lyrics. In addition to the ones you printed, I’m partial to the lines: “Last night I danced with a stranger / But she just reminded me you were the one.”

This from “Visions of Johanna”:

“Inside the museum
Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo ‘This is what
Salvation must be like after a while’
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles”

The genius of those lines can be condensed into two words: “Voices echo.” With those words, Dylan evokes the conformity of the museum-goers, echoing each other, and the emptiness of the museum halls through which the voices echo. Then he grabs you by the neck and reminds you that there is honest expression in those museums and you understand in a flash of humor that comparing Mona Lisa to a blues is one hell of a compliment to Leonardo Da Vinci.

Don’t ask me nuthin’ about nuthin’ I just might tell ya the truth!

At dawn my lover comes to me
And tells me of her dreams
With no attempts to shovel the glimpse
Into the ditch of what each one means
Gates of Eden

Well God is in His heaven,
and we are what was his……

[In the fury of the moment I can see the Master’s hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand
Every grain of sand

/quote]

[I’m gonna grow my hair down to my feet so strange
So I look like a walking mountain range
Then I’m gonna ride into Omaha on a horse
Out to the country club & the golf course
Carrying a New York Times
Shoot a few holes, blow their minds

-I Shall Be Free No. 10

/quote]

Well, he catch you when you’re hoping for a glimpse of the sun,
Catch you when your troubles feel like they weigh a ton.
He could be standing next to you,
The person that you’d notice least.
I hear that sometimes S****n comes as a man of peace.

[Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail
The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder
That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze
Leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder

/quote]

[Asbjørn]

Bob Dylan og Andy Warhol.

To ikoner, hver på sin måte, allerede i sin samtid. Men venner...
Dvs, Andy ville nok være "in" med Bob. men ikke Bob.   

En gang de møttes skjenket Andy Bob en av sine originale Elvis- ehh tegninger. Bob tok på sett & vis imot, men det ryktes at han brukte det som dartboard og vekselvis hadde det bakpå sin etterhvert velkjente Triumph motorsykkel.





 Og selvfølgelig hadde det nok med en jente å gjøre 

Edie Sedgwick (den tids Paris Hilton).

Dette er forsåvidt "udødeliggjort" i fjorårets film Factory Girl. Bob likte ikke at denne "i utgangspunktet" supre jenta ble ødelagt i "Warhol-dynastiet" av alkohol/piller m.m. og blamet Warhol de luxe. Visstnok er det Edie (som i Factory Girl hadde en laangvarig forelskelse til denne "the Voice of a Generation" - aldri kalt ved navn, man ville jo unngå rettssaker må vite) det speiles på i kjente sanger som "Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat) og "Like a Rolling Stone".

Wild Wild Web: Bob Hates Andy
By Larry Ryan



Time then for another odd website dedicated to the meeting of two 20th century icons. Last week it was Elvis and Nixon, now it's an all together more icy tete a tete between Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan.

First published last August, "Bob Hates Andy" is a monthly comic strip imagining conversations between the pair; Bob all enigmatic and poetic, Andy all detached and ironic.

Bob visited Andy in his New York studio, the Factory, in 1965 and was filmed for a Screen Test (which you can watch here and here). By all accounts the pair didn't exactly hit it off with Dylan unimpressed by Warhol and his coterie, though Warhol did present him with one of his silver Elvis paintings.

Rumour had it that Dylan alternately used the painting as a dartboard or attached it to a motorbike and drove it round Woodstock, though it seems ultimately he traded it for his manager Albert Grossman's couch, which, in the long run was probably a financial error.

Further rumours suggest Dylan "hated" Warhol because of Edie Sedgwick, one of Warhol's "Superstars".  Dylan may have blamed Warhol for Sedgwick's descent into drug addiction. Drowning in a sea of hearsay and conjecture Dylan had a putative relationship with her and she may have been the inspiration for the songs "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat", "Like A Rolling Stone" and "Just Like a Woman". In turn, Warhol perhaps resented Dylan for Sedgwick's departure from the Factory set in 1966.

The Sedgwick/Warhol/Dylan story was tackled in a heavy-handed manner in the execrable biopic Factory Girl. A film which moved Lou Reed to declare; "I read that script. It's one of the most disgusting, foul things I've seen - by any illiterate retard - in a long time. There's no limit to how low some people will go to write something to make money".

[Asbjørn]

Suze og Bobby i New York i '61. Dette albumcoveret ble nyskapende i all sin simplicity.
Suze Rotolo var Dylans dame fra '61-'64

Suze het hun, og Dylan var gal av forelskelse. Hun var ung, tre år yngre enn ham, likevel, hennes selvstendighet imponerte ham, og hennes favorittforfattere ble snart også blant hans egne. Hun reiste etterhvert til Italia med moren (flyktet fra den tilværelsen som Dylan etter hvert fikk), og Dylan kunne stå i en iiiskald telefonboks i firetiden natten mens han ringte opp venner: "I miss Suuuze"...
Han gjorde virkelig det.

I once loved a girl, her skin it was bronze.
With the innocence of a lamb, she was gentle like a fawn.
I courted her proudly but now she is gone,
Gone as the season she's taken.

Through young summer's breeze, I stole her away
From her mother and sister, though close did they stay.
Each one of them suffering from the failures of their day,
With strings of guilt they tried hard to guide us

I memoarene skrev han førti år senere:

"She was the most erotic thing I'd ever seen. She was fair skinned and golden haired, full-blood Italian. The air was suddenly filled with banana leaves."

Det var egentlig storesøsteren  som var interessert i ham, men det ble Suze og ham. Hun er bare 17 og han er 20.  I løpet av ca 3 år lever de intenst sammen... de leser masse, og han sluker hennes yndlingsforfattere - de preger etterhvert hans diktning. Maaange av sangene han skriver handler om henne. Og han utvikler seg  med stormskritt. Problemet er bare, det gjør også verden rundt ham. Suze er ikke typen som vil/kan være "chick" eller en annens type. Og dessuten oppdager hun at han "tar for seg" av damene som villig stiller opp. Og Suze selv anklages for det ene og andre av "de nye vennene hans". De slår opp og blir sammen igjen. Men i lengden går det ikke.

Og fyren skriver om bruddet og gir det ut på plate...

Of the two sisters, I loved the young.
With sensitive instincts, she was the creative one.
The constant scapegoat, she was easily undone
By the jealousy of others around her.

For her parasite sister, I had no respect,
Bound by her boredom, her pride to protect.
Countless visions of the other she'd reflect
As a crutch for her scenes and her society.

Moren til Suze "har lagt ham for hat" for alt det er verdt, uten at han egentlig vet hvorfor. Selv sliter hun med sine egne alkoholproblemer...
Rotolo, a self-described "red-diaper baby" raised by cultured union activist parents, came by subway from Queens. She was eager to leave her widowed mother with her drinking problems, and to make a new life in art.

Bobs versjon:
Myself, for what I did, I cannot be excused,
The changes I was going through can't even be used,
For the lies that I told her in hopes not to lose
The could-be dream-lover of my lifetime.

With unknown consciousness, I possessed in my grip
A magnificent mantelpiece, though its heart being chipped,
Notising not that I'd already slipped
To a sin of love's false security.

From silhouetted anger to manufactured peace,
Answers of emptiness, voice vacancies,
Till the tombstones of damage read me no questions but, "Please,
What's wrong and what's exactly the matter?"

...og nå begynner det å bli dramatisk. Dylan har påstått at han aldri har vært selvbiografisk i sangene sine (rubbish), men han må innrømme: "I came pretty close with this one. Egentlig har han vel angret...

And so it did happen like it could have been foreseen,
The timeless explosion of fantasy's dream.
At the peak of the night, the king and the queen
Tumbled all down into pieces.

"The tragic figure!" her sister did shout,
"Leave her alone, God damn you, get out!"
And I in my armor, turning about
And nailing her to the ruins of her pettiness.

Beneath a bare light bulb the plaster did pound
Her sister and I in a screaming battleground.
And she in between, the victim of sound,
Soon shattered as a child 'neath her shadows.

Suze har vel i den senere tid innrømmet at hun "forstår Dylans versjon" (hun selv kom jo "godt ut", det var verre med moren/søsteren...)

Midt på 70-tallet ringte plutselig Bob'ern opp Suze igjen, Bob var nettopp skilt og hun selv slet i sitt eget ekteskap, hun avviste ny kontakt, men innrømmer at hun egentlig angret seg...

Bob hadde ikke glemt henne, hans første stoooore "voksne" kjærlighet.

All is gone, all is gone, admit it, take flight.
I gagged twice, doubled, tears blinding my sight.
My mind it was mangled, I ran into the night
Leaving all of love's ashes behind me.

The wind knocks my window, the room it is wet.
The words to say I'm sorry, I haven't found yet.
I think of her often and hope whoever she's met
Will be fully aware of how precious she is.

Ah, my friends from the prison, they ask unto me,
"How good, how good does it feel to be free?"
And I answer them most mysteriously,
"Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?"
Ballad In Plain D



Ellers, Bob er Bob. Selv ikke Suze fikk egentlig vite hans egentlige navn før...:

Like others in the Village, Rotolo doubted Dylan's stories of his origins, but she was deeply hurt to discover he was really Robert Allen Zimmerman when his draft card spilled from his wallet in their 4th Street walk-up. "I called him Raz now and then, taken from his initials, just to annoy him."

Suze har altså nå utgitt "sin versjon" av disse tre årene (...og resten av sitt liv). Bokomtalen i sin helhet.
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-et-book15-2008may15,0,6529457.story

[lojosang]

Syke, syke mann! Dylan i en sådan stund? 

[Asbjørn]

Syke, syke mann! Dylan i en sådan stund? 

...det var faktisk en flott måte "å avkoble på" frem mot avspark den dagen.

...før jeg plutselig oppdaget at tiden gikk. Men jeg rakk da avspark med et godt kvarter 

[Asbjørn]

Yngste datteren til Bob!* Dennis Gabrielle Dennis Dylan (Gabby Goo Goo som hun ble titelert på baksiden av Under the Red Sky)


(ikke noe tull... Hun stammer fra tiden før ekteskapet med den afroamerikanske gospelsangerinnen Caroline Dennis).


*dvs "hittil kjente" that is...

[Asbjørn]

HOW THE ALARM CAME TO TOUR WITH BOB…


ON THE ROAD WITH DYLAN!
 Mike Peters, frontman with The Alarm, recalls his experiences on the Never-Ending Tour

The Alarm var jo rimelig store en tid, gode var de også. Mike Peters forteller her fra tiden som oppvarmere for Bob.

“We played the whole of that summer, about 30 dates. We were being managed by Elliott Roberts – who’s managed Neil Young and Bob Dylan – and Jeff Kramer, Elliott’s assistant. At the end of the tour Jeff became Bob’s manager. We were invited on the tour cos Elliott and Jeff had been telling Bob about The Alarm, that we came from Wales and played acoustic guitars and had this element of folk rock which was buried in there somewhere, and he liked what he was told about us and what he heard, and he invited us on the tour. There was no real fee – our fee was negotiable. There was definitely haggling over the fees, especially as we were managed by the same guy. We took what we got. But we would’ve played for nothing because to play with Dylan was such a great honour for us.”

THE FIRST NIGHT…

“The first night of the tour was in California, in the Concord Pavilion not too far from San Francisco, on Tuesday, June 7 1988. Neil Young came onstage. I can’t remember what he played, maybe ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ or ‘All Along The Watchtower’. I’d never seen Bob Dylan before, but the reason I played the acoustic guitar and the harmonica in The Alarm was because of Dylan. To be on tour with him was beyond fantasy for me. I was so awed to be at the gig, and I had a backstage pass, but just to make sure I experienced it in the way I wanted to do as a Bob Dylan fanatic, I bought tickets too and I sat in the front row and watched the gig. It was brilliant to be there. I remember being quite awed going onstage for the first time because we’d never really played to an audience that was that sort of analytical. They weren’t going to be standing up and pogoing up and down like they’d done when we played with U2 and Simple Minds and Big Country. Our reaction had always been very physical. This was the first tour we’d played where the audience were sitting down throughout the show. It changed us as a band. We started bringing out more of the folk element, which took us on to the Change album. I like do think he was coming on and we’d shaken the audience up a bit, appealed to their baser instincts.”

MAKING FRIENDS WITH DYLAN…

“We put an acoustic section in the set, and he started coming out to the side of the stage to watch us. I think he was digging it. He was enjoying the contrasts. I think he liked having these young bands. He started to become a bit intrigued by us. He probably thought we were like young pups with lots of enthusiasm. I got to know him. He liked to converse about the culture of Wales and to talk about poets he was aware of from Wales, the obvious one being Dylan Thomas. Because our tour was being run by the same people running Bob’s, we were all booked into the same hotel. It was quite a funky tour. It wasn’t what you’d imagine. He didn’t like staying in fancy hotels. He’s got an aversion to air conditioning. He prefers to stay in hotels where he can open the windows. There’s those classic 60s pictures of him diving into swimming pools – well, he was definitely in the swimming phase. We were often staying in those 1970s American motels that had the swimming pool outside and the little reception and the sort of rooms his vehicle could be driven up to so we could walk up to his room and no one would see him. We’d be swimming in the pool and the next minute he’d come out and dive in and do a few lengths and that’s where some of our conversations took place, just in the pool. He’s quite a secretive person and doesn’t really open up, but he’s a very pleasant man when you do have the time of day with him and when his guard is down a little bit. He became more relaxed with us. He was great, a really nice guy. He didn’t do soundchecks at that time. If he came in while we were playing, he’d come up on the side of the desk and have a look.”

DYLAN’S SECRECY…

“There was this guy Victor Malmudes who was just Bob’s mate. We never were quite sure what he did. One day Bob didn’t come down for his usual swim. Victor said, ‘He’s got a bit of a cold.’ The next day we were by the pool and Bob comes down for a swim and Nigel Twist [Alarm drummer] said, ‘How are you feeling today, Bob?’ He goes, ‘What do you mean?’ Twist said, ‘Victor said you had a cold.’ Bob said, ‘Did he?’ and that was it. He carried on swimming. That evening Victor was sent home off the tour for giving away personal information. He was banished for three days, and then he came back.”

ON THE ROAD…

“All sorts of people were coming to the shows. Jack Nicholson came to the Greek Theatre in LA. President Carter turned up at the gig in Atlanta. He was sat in the front of the gig. Behind him were all the executive people of Atlanta, and they all brought their dinner to the show. We [Alarm and Dylan camps] all got on fantastically well on the tour. It was a summer tour, most of the shows were outdoors and we were having barbeques and playing soccer in the field behind the stage, and I think Bob Dylan just enjoyed the carnival atmosphere we brought to proceedings. We did treat it as a holiday. It rubbed off on the crew and the people around him.”

SINGING ONSTAGE WITH DYLAN…

“One night Elliott comes into the dressing room before our show in Santa Barbara and said, ‘Bob wants you to come up onstage and play guitar on “Knocking On Heaven’s Door”.’ GE Smith, who was playing guitar for him on that tour, said to me, ‘Bob won’t introduce you, but you’ll hear the chords and that’s your cue to come onstage.’ I was stood at the side of the stage terrified. I heard the opening chords, walked out and then a couple of seconds later the drums have kicked in and there I am onstage. In the second verse Dylan calls me forward and asks me to take the second verse, pushing me forward – ‘Get on the microphone, start singing.’ Then he came on the microphone beside me and there I am cheek to cheek with Bob Dylan. It was pretty amazing duetting the song with him. It was a great climax to the show. The next night in San Diego, which was the last night for us, he said how much he’d really enjoyed having us and he said, ‘I really enjoyed singing with you last night. Why don’t you do “Heaven’s Door” with me tonight?’ GE said it was the same deal. I was stood in the wings waiting to come on and I thought, ‘This is something else – it’s in a minor key.’ And then he sang the first line and he’d totally rewritten the song, and it was in D minor. The first night I’d played it, it was the classic G, D, A minor, G, D, C. Now we’re playing D Minor, F and C, some really weird version that was almost unrecognisable. I think he likes to challenge everybody that he meets, to see whether you can stay with him or collapse under the pressure.”

[pale]

Og for noen frisyrer du har funnet fram til Asbjørn.

Dette er et av de visuelle høydepunktene i hele Dylantråden.

(Innholdet var som vanlig bra, men jeg slet litt med å holde fokus)

[Asbjørn]

Og for noen frisyrer du har funnet fram til Asbjørn.

Tha Alarm er definitivt 80-talls 

[Asbjørn]

Er du i Bergen fredag, kan jo en Bobfest være tingen: 

7 - Bergen Dylan Society has its annual Bob Birthday Party (raising the US flag) the nearest Friday (May 23) as per usual. Want to join, contact apsve@start.no

...dvs Bjørn holder sin årlige bursdagsfest for Bob 







Og er du i Oslo lørdag, hvorfor ikke prøve ut samme konsept i Oslo:

[lojosang]

[Asbjørn]

Ja, Lojo, det går fort når man har stativ 
(tegneserien nådde forresten ut "til hele Dylan-verden" via www.expectingrain.com 


Men ja, denne tråden inneholder jo bl.a. "råd for nybegynnere" (i de eldste sidene), her er en kar som mener Bringing It All Back Home (1965) er best for nybegynnere (note, europeiske utgaver kaller denne plata for Subterranean Homesick Blues etter førstelåten...). Og joda, albumet er "allsidig" det, førsteverket i en berømt triologi, og har et par all time-highs among them... 




- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Bob Dylan, like great Scotch-is an acquired taste. Yes, his voice is "nasally." Yes, his inflection is odd. Yes, he can be hard to understand and way off-key. Yet, his sound, his instrumentation and above all his songs can be salvation to the ears of those who learn to appreciate him. Yet, his discography is over 30 albums deep.

People looking to discover Dylan don't even know where to start when attempting to listen to him. Sure, you can pull out a Greatest Hits album but that will only give you the same songs you already hear on the radio-"Like A Rolling Stone" and "Rainy Day Women #12 and #35." Thus, to truly appreciate Dylan it makes sense to listen to his best albums from start to finish. So, what album should you start with?


For the new Dylan listener we recommend you start off with Bringing It All Back Home.
Why?
Well, it's got a little something for everyone. There's straight up rock and roll: "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and "Maggie's Farm." There's acoustic folk: "Mr. Tambourine Man", "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue'--Each with Dylan signature harmonica shreds. There's a bluesy rocker, "Outlaw Blues", and even a few comedic songs like "On the Road Again" and "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" which are sure to warm the first-time listener up to Dylan's wry sense of humor.

The other alluring tracks on this album are addictive, stream of consciousness songs such as "It's All Right Ma, I'm Only Bleeding" and "Gates of Eden." These songs have the ability to hit the virgin Dylan ear like a Mack truck- pounding home his ability to say the right thing at the wrong time-with a cynicism and sincerity that is mesmerizing.



We challenge anyone to listen to this album all the way through at least 5 times in a two-day period and not think: "This guy ain't so bad after all! What else can I listen to?"

[Asbjørn]

No Shelter from the Storm:
Bob Dylan's Apocalypse
By John W. Whitehead
5/27/2008


"I can hear another drum
beating for the dead that rise,
Whom nature's beast fears as they come
and all I see are dark eyes."
--Bob Dylan

In a pop music world where issues are seldom addressed and creativity and individuality have been lost, Bob Dylan, who just turned 67, is a refreshing alternative. Like a voice crying in the wilderness, Dylan emerged in the early 1960s to become the conscience of a generation. After an initial self-titled album that failed to chart, he released 1963's The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, which contained some of his most enduring work. "Blowin' in the Wind," "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" and "Masters of War" gave the protest movement some of its greatest anthems.

Only in his early 20s, Dylan was remarkably mature and able to express ideas and stories of the moment with exceptional strength and brilliance. His songs spoke of an incestuous relationship among authoritarianism, social evils, militarism and materialism and said the solutions to corruption are spiritual. In song after song, Dylan proclaimed the existence of a God who brings judgment, or a "hard rain," on people who perpetrate evil.

Dylan, who clearly articulated political ideas in his music, captivated early audiences. He soaked up cultural influences, only to reconfigure them as he saw fit.

Revealing what would become a penchant for lifelong radical change, however, Dylan decisively broke with the past and abandoned political songwriting as if in midstream. He moved beyond political activism with the release of his first partially "electrified" album, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), which exposed his bitterness that times were not changing as he had expected them to. One song from that album, "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)," revealed a deep cynicism, lambasting modern materialism's denigration of what was once venerated. Mentioning "flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark," Dylan concluded that very little is held sacred anymore. His work from this point on began to concentrate on the message that dehumanizing forces treat human beings as mere business investments.

Dylan's commercial breakthrough, Highway 61 Revisited (1965), and his next album, Blonde on Blonde (1966), revealed the many different influences on his life and crystallized his new plugged-in sound. With this, Dylan abandoned traditional folk singing and created a new idiom--and a new pop culture. "Like a Rolling Stone" and subsequent songs introduced lyrics with substance to pop music.

While most of the sixties generation thought that flower power, love and drugs were going to create a new society, Dylan saw the apocalypse approaching. A pivotal song is his 1965 masterpiece "Desolation Row," which cries for humanity to renounce materialism or face destruction and alienation. And in 1967, Dylan produced what some called the first "biblical rock album," John Wesley Harding. In five years, Dylan had undergone a remarkable transformation, from humble folksinger to topical songwriter to one of rock's first shaman figures, only to culminate in a mysterious writer of biblical-inspired parables.

Dylan gave indications of his coming Christian conversion on his album, Blood on the Tracks (1975). In "Idiot Wind," he sings of a "lone soldier on the cross" who finally wins out in the end. And in "Shelter from the Storm," God, who is referred to in the feminine gender, takes Dylan's "crown of thorns" while promising to give him shelter from an impending tumult.

Dylan's 1978 conversion dominated Slow Train Coming (1979). On the first track, he says that whether it's "the devil" or "the Lord," everyone must serve a spiritual entity. And on the reverent and worshipful "When He Returns," Dylan portrays an omnipotent God who knows and sees all. But the apocalyptic tone remained, as in the album's title track "Slow Train," which represents the cumulative judgment of God.

In 1997, Dylan released Time Out of Mind, which won three Grammy Awards, including album of the year, and reestablished Dylan as a leading cultural voice. But as the world celebrated a return to form, Dylan continued to express an ever-increasing notion that the end was drawing near. "Well my sense of humanity has gone down the drain," he sang on "Not Dark Yet." "Behind every beautiful thing there's been some kind of pain." And: "I've been down on the bottom of a world full of lies. I ain't looking for nothing in anyone's eyes. Sometimes my burden seems more than I can bear. It's not dark yet, but it's getting there."

These dark lyrics only hinted at what Dylan more directly expressed in a 1995 interview. When asked if he still thought the slow train of judgment was coming, he replied: "When I look ahead now, it's picked up quite a bit of speed. In fact, it's going like a freight train now."

In 2001, Love and Theft hit the shelves. One of the songs, "High Water Everywhere," displayed an eerie prescience. "High water risin', six inches 'bove my head," Dylan warbled in a grisly voice. "Coffins droppin' in the street like balloons made out of lead." And if any doubt remained as to his purpose, "I'm preachin' the Word of God," Dylan sang, drawing on imagery from the Old Testament. "I'm puttin' out your eyes."

Modern Times (2006) established Dylan as the consummate rock poet and once again found the world's foremost biblical songwriter waxing on the fate of man in "When the Deal Goes Down":
Through the darkness on the pathways of life
Each invisible prayer is like a cloud in the air
Tomorrow keeps turning around
We live and we die, we know not why
But I'll be with you when the deal goes down.
Through Dylan's live performances, music and poetry, he remains relevant and profound. And although he doesn't get the airplay he once did and his albums don't sell as well, he still speaks his brand of truth to power.

[Asbjørn]

...her er en kar med en "bedre sent enn aldri"-spalte... Artige synspunkt på hvordan han "har gått glipp av plater" i tidligere år, og slett ikke bare av Dylan-interesse dette her..

http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/better_late_than_never_bob



Better Late Than Never:
Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde
By Chris Dahlen
May 30th, 2008





I've been itching to write one of these ever since the Better Late Than Never feature started, 'cause I have a doozy. Now, I know we all worry that we're missing something big. For some reason—okay, let's just blame the Internet—we hold ourselves responsible nowadays for knowing practically everything. The tribalism that used to save us from, say, taking disco seriously, has gone away. Guys like Nick Drake get dragged out of the archives and dropped on the college kid must-know lists. Hell, people even talk about David Axelrod.

I have totally slept on Bob Dylan. I don't mean that I didn't spend enough time on Dylan. I'm saying that until a couple months ago, I had never played a Dylan record straight through. I had zero interest in the guy.

Except I'm not going to whip talk about any of those people. Here's my confession: in all my life, and after several years of writing about music, I have totally slept on Bob Dylan. I don't mean that I didn't spend enough time on Dylan. I'm saying that until a couple months ago, I had never played a Dylan record straight through. I had zero interest in the guy. And I have no excuse.

It's not that I haven't had time: I'm 34. It's not that I skipped the '60s: when I was a teenager in the pop dustbowl of the late-'80s, I chewed through bands like the Beatles or the Dead. And obviously I knew who the guy was. Dylan touched at least half the musicians I ever listened to. He slipped weed to the Beatles and helped make the film Help! so hilarious. He kicked Phil Ochs when he was down—and there's a guy I did listen to, thanks to my parents' copy of Pleasures of the Harbour. Even science fiction gives you no escape: take Douglas Adams' mice quoting "Blowin' in the Wind," or the smarmy way Cameron Crowe shoehorned The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan's sleeve into Vanilla Sky, or—most bizarre of all—the Cylons singing "All Along the Watchtower" last year on Battlestar Galactica. Dylan's so heavy, he's intergalactic.

Baby boomers trip over themselves talking about his genius. On HBO's In Treatment, Gabriel Byrne enjoyed a quick smug moment of comparing him to Walt Whitman, and he's not the first to stick Dylan in that canon. And that's his biggest problem: he still belongs to the boomers. They discovered him, they claimed him as the voice of their generation, and to this day they're insufferable about the guy. One of my uncles—the one I stole so many Grateful Dead and Jethro Tull records from, back in the day—put it this way: to get Dylan, you really had to understand those times.

About Dylan, I'm an endless font of ignorance. For my crash course I focused on 1966's Blonde on Blonde—one of the top ten greatest rock 'n roll records ever, according to just about every critic over 50—and I prepped with exactly two sources, the documentary No Direction Home, and Wikipedia. I learned some pretty fascinating stuff. I had always pegged Dylan as an icon for hippies—but I didn't know that he was the entertainment at Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. I knew the folkies got ticked when he made it big and left behind the "topical song" movement, but hearing folks like Pete Seeger talk about how a torch had been passed from Guthrie down to Dylan—and how Dylan basically left it smoking in the Village somewhere, to be picked up by pretty much no one of consequence—well, I can see how that hurt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bjqYPH7rAo&eurl=http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/better_late_than_never_bob
It's Alright Ma From deluxe edition Don't Look Back outtakes
 1965 

Most refreshing of all, I also learned that Dylan's a bullshit artist. It's not because he kept making up his biography, or pulled stunts like stealing all those Woody Guthrie records before he came to New York, but because he's mastered the art of distorting small facts to get to the big truth. And sometimes he gets caught. When someone who knows him as well as Joan Baez nudges him off his pedestal, it reminds you not to get too swept up in his mystique. In a clip in No Direction Home, we see Dylan playing "Mr. Tambourine Man" for a workshop at the Newport Folk Festival. As he unspools one endless, cosmic lyric after another, you can almost catch him crack a smile—like he's saying, "I know, I know." When you realize he's not sure where all this comes from either, it makes you wonder about the rest. And that's about when you get hooked.

Blonde On Blonde
But Blonde on Blonde has a pretty low bullshit content. For one thing, much of it's about women, and when you go there for real, it's hard to get cocky. For another, Dylan has said that Blonde on Blonde is "The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind"—and the honesty shows. Neither rushed nor lazy, it reminds me of works like John Fahey's America, John Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence, or Dr. Seuss's One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish—a work with no sharp peaks or ruts or concern for loose ends, that feels like one long train of thought.

Blonde on Blonde has been praised for hopping across several genres—it's pop, it's country, it's blues, it's surreal—and for how naturally the styles blend into one another: after you get past the first two tracks, it settles into a spacious, organic vibe that's far moodier than his previous electric albums. The record opens with "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35," which I started skipping—it's too pat, and familiar from classic rock radio. It doesn't hit its stride until track three, with "Visions of Johanna." You can hear a harder, steadier version of it on the soundtrack album to No Direction Home, and hearing that made me appreciate even more what a perfect few minutes they caught here—the organic ramp-up, the way every lick from the organ and guitar supports Dylan's voice, the lyrics that catch the spotlight—"Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues/You can tell by the way she smiles"—and the impressionistic lines that stitch right into the absurd ones. It pulls off the great rock and roll trick of sounding like the easiest, most natural thing in the world.

I won't try to parse the lyrics here: I'll just leave them where most of the blurbs on Dylan do, and say they're "surreal." Except when they're not. "I want you, I want you/I want you sooooooo bad" makes sense. "Just Like a Woman" may puzzle with its oblique references to real lovers and its vague misogyny—which would be easy to criticize, if so many of us hadn't been there too, abusing the first good hand we have against a lover. (He puts it a little more sympathetically in No Direction Home: "You can't be wise and in love at the same time.") I've often heard people describe Dylan as "difficult," either because the songs are long or because of that voice. But the production is too warm to resist, and as for the crooning, he doesn't really start moaning from the gullet until the last track, "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands." But that's a love song, so it's hard to complain; if anything, it seals my first impression of the album: this is one of the greatest make-out records in rock history

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueGuzmotwaI&eurl=http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/better_late_than_never_bob 
Just Like A Woman 1966   

But while I worked on this piece, I figured out something else. I finally understand why I never got into Dylan. And even though I try to be cavalier about the whole thing, I'm starting to think it's a personal failing.

One thing Dylan clearly taps into isn't just the voice of a generation, or the reaction to the '60s, or the spirit of rock and roll. He's part of the music of America. In addition to taking one torch from Guthrie, he picked up another from the Beat Poets. Here's a quote from his '66 Playboy interview, where he's been asked what drew him to rock and roll:

Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy—he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?

It's beat, American, glorious, and totally fake—like amber waves of bullshit.

But here's the thing: I'm in awe of the old beat road fantasy—but I'm also wary. I've never read Kerouac's On the Road. But every couple years I reread Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, a 1962 novel that doesn't say much about the decade to come, but that could be fairly called a grandfather of cyberpunk. The protagonist, Binx Bolling, lives in a bland suburb outside historic New Orleans. Forsaking his romantic southern ancestry and its doctors and war heroes, he works as a stockbroker, and watches a lot of movies. He observes everything but doesn't risk much; he's too busy watching a scene to take part in it.

Bolling's kind of a twit. But if you're a pop culture nerd, it's easy to relate to Bolling—to his profound, pointless quest for meaning, and his knack for seeing through other people's bullshit. Watching No Direction Home, I was intrigued by some of the exciting history it captured—the scene in the Village, the Newport Folk Festival, the great concerts and parties and freak-outs that would come throughout the '60s. But let's say you had the chance to travel back in time: would you dive right in and blow your mind? Or would you worry about not being at the right place at the right time? Would the hippie jug bands and finger-pickin' freaks drive you nuts, and would the student radicals just sound like a pack of… students? Or worse, would you get scared of missing the whole point and wallflowering at the back, and never get high, laid or enlightened?

I grew up listening to music that was either overcomplicated or overanxious, autistic composers playing prog and avant-garde or post-punk pop bands that jittered and trembled. But as I hit middle age, I'm trying to calm down. The song that sticks in my head from my Dylan crash course is one of the slightest on this record, "4th Time Around," with the crisp, rat-a-tat drum beat and Spanish guitars that are so staccato they almost sound like the drums-and-wires I favor—except instead of nervous, they sound exciting, and they can stay right on the edge without clenching up. I know I can't do that.

Everyone sees a mystery in this guy. Joan Baez slept with him, and got to hear about it on this record—and even she can't figure him out. I'm just starting, but now I'm hooked, too. I want to know how that nervous, wound-up kid you see in the footage from the '60s can sound so sure and bold for hours at a time when he's onstage. How he could stop staring at the crowd and make it stare at him. I need to know: how'd he learn to believe in his own bullshit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO0gSJGJ7Fs&eurl=http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/better_late_than_never_bob Phenomenal 1966 performance of
Like A Rolling Stone in City Hall, Newcastle (props to Country Jim). Dylan is absolutely manic, a must-watch.

[Asbjørn]

Bob har "alltid" malt. Midt på '70-tallet gikk han på flere uker langt kurs med Norman Raeben, og han har sagt om kona Sara at hun "never understood me from then on". En ting var malingen, også tekstene hans forandret seg, de ble "tredimensjonale"... og enda mer "tidløse"...

Vel, i disse dager åpner "The Drawn Blank Series" i London, en utstilling med Dylan-bilder. Her er et utvalg...

[Asbjørn]

Yngstesønnen Jakob i dag 

Han har nemlig nettopp utgitt solodebuten "Seeing Things" 
...og det i en alder av 38 år.




Nå skal det jo sies at Jakob er alt annet enn en nykommer, sånn rent generelt. Han har allerede en  Grammypris innabords, han har vært frontfigur i det tidvis velkjente Wallflowers og han nærmer seg 40. Men, altså, først nå er han klar for å "stå frem" i farens singer/songwriter-tradisjon. At produsenten heter Rick Robin er nok heller ingen ulempe.

Først noen norske anmeldelser:
Avisa Bodø

Jakob Dylan har laget mange fine skiver som frontfigur for bandet sitt Wallflowers. Personlig har jeg platen Red Letter Days fra 2002 som favoritt. Sist gang jeg hørte Jakob Dylan på plate var sammen med en annen sønn av en legende, Dhani Harrison, med sin flotte versjon av John Lennons Gimme Some Truth. En låt som var deres bidrag på Lennon-tributen "Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur".

BA
Nærmer seg Bobber'n
Han har tidligere blitt sammenlignet med Tom Petty, både i utrykk og rent genremessig. Muligens en artist som til og med gjør Tom Petty bedre enn Petty selv på sine eldre dager.

Men med denne platen beveger Jakob Dylan seg nærmere sin far, Bob, rent lyd og genremessig. I motsetning til Wallflowers mer rocka og til tider overflødige lydbilde, er denne platen strippet ned til det helt enkle gitarbaserte og fintfølende. Jakob Dylan flørter fint med americanagenren og minner i grunn litt om en ung Bruce Springsteen.

Jakob Dylan har uansett en fin og særegen røst som kler denne stilen godt.

Selv om de første sporene på platen som Evil Is Alive And Well og Valley Of The Low Sun er gode låter, er det etter hvert de virkelige gullkornene kommer.

Will It Grow er simpelten fantastisk og låter som I Told You I Couldn't Stop og War Is Kind er virkelig med på å gi denne platen det løftet den trenger for kunne bite fra seg i et ellers svært så utprøvd musikalsk terreng.

Jakob Dylan klarer seg godt på egne ben og har med Seeing Things levert en enkel, men god plate. Og produsent Rick Rubin er for lengst genierklært, med god grunn.

Veldig bra!
 Jakob Dylan
Dette er rett og slett en elegant produsert perle av et album, mener BAs anmelder.



 Jakob Dylan - yngstesønnen til Bob og Sara Dylan - har parkert rockebandet The Wallflowers, og brukt mye tid i Hollywood-fjellene sammen med stjerneprodusent Rick Rubin.

"Seeing There" er 38-åringens første soloalbum. Alle de ti låtene blir styrt av kassegitaren, tekstene går fra kjærlighet til krig på null tid, og vokalen er en klar krysning mellom pappaen og en Tom Petty.

Likevel klarer Jakob å lage en plate som er veldig forskjellig fra farens. Dette er rett og slett en elegant produsert perle av et album fra en singer-songwriter som virkelig har funnet sin stemme, og med små nyanser som hele tiden gir nye lytteopplevelser.

Låter å laste ned: "War is Kind", "I Told You I Couldn't Stop", "Evil is Alive and Well!".

Så går vi over til Las Vegas Weekly:

Father’s day weekend is upon us. And, a new album came out this week.

A man stands there, on an album cover, literally, a man with his hat in his hand. His famous name is on the cover of the disc, too, and the producer, Rick Rubin, is a legend at helping artists reconnect with their muse. Open the packaging and the disc has the famous label, Columbia, there, too, even with the dissolution of the recording industry: Columbia Records. It is all a fan could hope for, almost. Except this isn’t the man. This is the son.

To this day on his Never Ending Tour, the man’s father opens his concerts with a taped voice saying: “Ladies and Gentleman please welcome, Columbia Recording artist Bob Dylan.”

But musically speaking this Columbia recording artist is best known for his couple minor hits in the Wallflowers. At the end of the day though he is known as the colossus that is his father: the greatest songwriter to ever live, the only songwriter ever to be nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature. You pick your standard for greatness from awards (Dylan picked up his special Pulitzer this year to add to his Oscar and many Grammy Awards), admiration by fellow artists (Dylan is certainly the single most covered individual songwriter in the recording era), and variety (Dylan’s heart is in folk-blues, but his many side trips have gone so far as to include some of the greatest gospel songs of the last century).

Even Dylan scholarship is in a different league than what is written about any other popular music act (even the far more commercially prominent Beatles). If you have any doubt about the seriousness with which the academy takes Dylan, examine Oxford Professor of Poetry Christopher Ricks’ recent obsessive study of Dylan’s songwriting in “Dylan’s Visions of Sin.”

Ricks is no rock fan, but there comes a rare point where an artist’s ascent so towers above his peers that there simply is no precedent or comparison. Picasso was such an artist, and so is Bob Dylan. We will not see his kind again.

So, where does that leave the son, hat in hand, with the blessed genes and insurmountable legacy?

I always feel badly for Jakob Dylan, the one child of the master to go into songwriting. How do you stand in that all consuming shadow? Jakob Dylan’s new Seeing Things is a good disc, a very good disc, in the confessional songwriter style his dad more-or-less invented on Blood on the Tracks during one of his many incarnations of the ‘70s.

Blood on the Tracks painfully details the break-up of Jakob’s parents and the traumas of his own childhood. Real Bob Dylan fans (and probably Jakob) also have heard Blood on the Tapes; widely bootlegged, Tapes offers the original even angrier and more explicit versions of those songs of divorce and family dissolution.

And, it isn’t just Bob Dylan’s talent and subject matter that stand between his son and any audience. Jakob Dylan’s own songs are endlessly examined by Bob Dylan fanatics (of which I am one) for any hint of insight into his relationship with his father. It is none of my business; yet I can’t help myself. There can’t be another songwriter alive who is as hard to judge as Jakob Dylan.

As a thought experiment, say, if as performance art, his dad had recorded and presented the songs on Seeing Things, as the new Bob Dylan disc. There would be acclaim worshipful reviews, more sales and some lines like “my age is a metaphor that only speaks of everything before” getting nods from experts as having the fingerprints of the master’s unmistakable writing. But Jakob Dylan wrote that line and the other words on Seeing Things working with light instrumentation of guitar and bass.

As a result, the fate of Seeing Things will be reviews as quiet and respectful as the backing music on the disc. I do not know where that leaves Jakob Dylan beyond needing to read a biography of Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach for perspective. But songs on Seeing Things seem to suggest Dylan, the younger, has found perspective, and doesn’t need my sympathy. On “Valley of the Low Sun” Dylan sings: “My dreams are humble lean as arrows/Streetwise ready and fair/As we bum rush the ages tied to the rails.” Is the reference to Blood on the Tracks? My heart quickens. And, so it goes, with young Dylan literally and always “tied to the rails” of his father’s battleship reputation. Yet, with “humble dreams” is that so bad? “I want to be Bob Dylan,” the Counting Crows once sang. But maybe Jakob Dylan does not. We can’t all be the Voice of a Generation and even Bob Dylan hated that job.

Jakob Dylan has remained dogged at his chosen career of writing songs and making records. And, maybe there is a reason that in the end matters more than the courage it takes, year after year, to get up on stage with both being the son of Bob Dylan and a guitar hanging around his neck. “I been working double shift all night/My line of work suit me fine.” Dylan sings on “All day and All night.” No one would confuse those words with lines by his dad. But, in part, that is because there is a certain satisfaction and even happiness in the song and those are feelings that restless, enigmatic and generally melancholy Bob Dylan has never been able dwell on. Perhaps, also, the song suggests, that at the end of the day, Jakob Dylan likes what he does and is able to do it well and that is sufficient. Yeah, he has special burdens, as he sings on the same song: “Got Bigger Secrets Than You Do.” And, undoubtedly that is true as he well knows; he will always be parsed through his dad.

But just maybe, Seeing Things hints, Jakob Dylan has learned the key to happiness is to be making music with skill and passion in a world where not everyone gets to be Bob Dylan.

Og et intervju med den allltid like vennlige Jakob, her fra Paste Magazine:


Another Side of Jakob Dylan

Going Solo, The Prodigal Son Slips Into His Father's Kingdom
Writer: Bud Scoppa, photo by Mark Seliger
Feature, Issue 43, Published online on 05 Jun 2008

After five albums and 18 years fronting The Wallflowers, Jakob Dylan has built the confidence to “go acoustic” on his first solo album, the Rick Rubin-produced Seeing Things. Historically speaking, this is a very big deal, because the 38-year-old Dylan has fashioned a batch of topical songs out of the bedrock of traditional music, just as Dad did during his initial burst of brilliance.

“I wouldn’t know how to write songs today that don’t address these things—they’re beyond relevant,” Dylan says of timely but poetically posed observations like “Evil Is Alive and Well,” “Valley of the Low Sun” and “War Is Kind.” “But too many topical songs are just bumper stickers. The expressions and language I use come to me naturally, so it’s not so much avoiding topical terms as it is that they don’t feel poetic or interesting. Sometimes you’ve gotta go backwards to go forward.”

Even more stripped down than Rubin’s celebrated American Recordings series with Johnny Cash, Seeing Things zeroes in on Dylan’s naturally mournful voice and acoustic fingerpicking. These riveting, close-mic’d performances are the late-ripening fruit of a lifetime spent poring over the sacred texts—Robert Johnson, English folk guitarist John Renbourn, Muddy Waters’ Folk Singer, Neil Young and, of course, his old man.

The album’s most revealing song, elliptically autobiographical closer “This End of the Telescope,” is laden with imagery that will be very familiar to Bob’s legions. In the first verse, for example, Jakob writes that he was “Raised by wolves on the fat of the land / Clear of romance, beauty and damned.”

When it’s pointed out that the lyric seems to deal, metaphorically but unflinchingly, with the singular place in the universe he inhabits, Dylan responds, “You mean in the familial sense? There’s a reason why imagery that sounds like it’s been dragged right up from the middle of the earth keeps getting re-spun every year—’cause it’s the best. Yeah, I work within those parameters, and I see those images, and I hear music that way.”

Having made an album of unadorned original folk songs, Dylan realizes there’s no escaping his father’s looming shadow. “That stuff is the high water mark for anybody doing what I do,” he says, “so there is no way to avoid it, not just for me but for any songwriter. If your goal is to not be referenced to his career, there are not a lot of options. Certainly I have a different set of expectations with it, but I just can’t wonder anymore if people are gonna think about that. I have no hang-ups about it.”

[Asbjørn]

Pneumonia Ceilings

Da Bob lærte Lennon/McCartney å skrive "Dylan" - beskrevet av en av de tilstedeværende "bakmennene"...

Excerpt from Mark Shipper's "Paperback Writer".


New English Library / Times Mirror 1978.
London Hilton scrap of paper from a suggestion by Dave Hirsch.
Chapter 12: I Don't Believe in Zimmerman.

http://expectingrain.com/dok/int/pneumonia.html

The first few months of 1966 were pleasant ones for the Beatles. "Meet The Beatles" remained at the top of the charts all over the world, exactly where it had been since its release. Except for a brief tour of Australia, there was little real work to do, and all four were able to resume seminormal lives, for a change.


Ringo, after a brief bout with tonsillitis which forced him out of the Australian tour (Australian Jimmy Nicol filled in for him on drums), went off to Switzerland to study billiards. Harrison went to India and met up with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who was later to play a role in the Beatles' career.


Lennon and McCartney remained in London, writing songs, visiting nightclubs, listening to the new crop of records, and taking in an occasional concert or two.


One of those concerts was given by Bob Dylan, the American star who was rapidly taking much of the Beatles' older, more sophisticated audience away from them. Dylan was riding on a wave of popularity brought about by a pair of precedent-shattering albums, Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. Stringing together rapid-fire streams of imagery over his hard-rocking backup band, Dylan was extending the limits of the pop song far beyond anyone else's previous attempts.


Lennon and McCartney were divided on the issue of Bob Dylan.


[One page is edited out here]


An aide of Dylan's had come to the Beatles' box to inform them that Dylan requested their company at his hotel suite. This was exactly what Lennon had hoped for. He was delighted.


One hour later, John and Paul arrived at Dylan's hotel. Dylan's appearance was startling. He looked so big onstage, and so little - fragile, almost - when he stood in front of you.


"Come on in," Dylan said. "I'm a big fan of yours. A big fan." Lennon was in heaven. McCartney was flattered, but vaguely skeptical.


"Best bloody show I've ever seen, Bob," Lennon told Dylan. "Can I call you Bob?"


"Can I call you Henry? Of course, call me anything you like. Frank. Pete. Late for supper. Donovan. Anything you like."


This was cool as Lennon had never experienced it.


Dylan asked them to sit down, then said: "If it wasn't for you guys, I'd probably still be playing acoustic. It was those songs of yours, those older ones, 'Please Please Me', and that stuff, that made me consider rock & roll again."


Lennon felt embarrassed. "Please Please Me" seemed so banal, so primitive compared to what Dylan was writing. He wished Dylan had never heard any Beatles songs before their current album.


"We're way past 'Please Please Me' now, Bob. Our new album is kind of where we're at today," he said.


"No, no... don't turn your back on your old stuff. It was great. Weird chord changes, tremendous harmony. It turned the whole country upside down. I love the new one, but those first albums were unreal."


There was an awkward silence in the room. Lennon couldn't accept a compliment about his early material, and McCartney felt slightly out of place.


"Hey," Dylan said, "you guys want a drink or joint or something?"


Lennon wanted a drink but figured it would be pretty uncool to ask Bob Dylan for one. "Yeah," he said. "Let's smoke a joint."


Dylan produced a perfectly rolled joint from his coat pocket, lit it, took a long hit, and passed it on to McCartney. Suffice it to say that the marijuana was of a quality that only the John Lennons, Bob Dylans, and Paul McCartneys of the world could get their hands on in those days.


Within minutes, the ice had melted, and it was as if they'd known each other all of their lives. They found they had a lot in common: a love for early rock & roll, an interest in th enewest musical equipment, and - especially - fame.


"I don't know if I like it," Dylan confessed.


"Like what?" a stoned McCartney asked.


"You know. Fame. Fame and fortune."


"Beats smokey nightclubs all to hell," Lennon said.


"Yeah, it does," Dylan agreed. "But I feel like I don't, you know, deserve it. I feel sort of, ah... guilty about all of it."


Lennon wouldn't hear of it. "Why should you feel guilty? You deserve it. All of it. You're the best f**kin' songwriter in the world. Your songs are deep. They mean something."


"That's just it," Dylan said. "They don't mean anything. I just write' em. I don't even know what my songs mean, and here I am, people calling me God and everything...."


"Don't let George Harrison hear you say that," McCartney joked.


"Yeah, what's his story, anyway? Was all that stuff for real about his quitting, or what?"


Lennon laughed. "To this day, I don't know."


Dylan continued, "So here I am, sitting in hotel rooms, banging away these words on a typewriter. Words! Phrases! Words and Phrases! Phrases and Words! And one morning I wake up and get a phone call and somebody tells me I'm a millionaire. Beats me." He shrugged his shoulders.


"What humility," Lennon thought. "What bloody humility!"


"What honesty," McCartney thought. "What an honest guy!"


They were all pretty bombed by this time. Dylan could see that Lennon didn't believe him, so he suggested that the three of them write a song together and he'd show them how it was done.


"Us write with you?" Lennon was shocked. Also a little scared. "We can't write like that. We write these little love songs. Little rock & roll love songs. We can't write Dylan. Only Dylan can do that."


Dylan laughed, "That's what everyone thinks. C'mon over here."


He sat down behind a typewriter at the end of an eight-foot mahogany table. John and Paul sat at either side of the typewriter.


"Okay, now what's the first thing that comes to your mind?" Dylan asked.


"I don't know. I can't think of anything," Lennon said.


"It's just words we're looking for," Dylan said. "Words and phrases. Think of words and phrases."


Lennon was silent. "Words and phrases, right?" he said weakly.


Dylan couldn't wait any longer. "Words and phrases right," he said, then typed it as the first line of the song.


"You're gonna use that?" Lennon said.


"I can use anything, John. It doesn't matter. Now you think of something, Paul."


McCartney looked down at his cigarette. "Cigarette ash", he said, challenging Dylan.


Dylan seized it gleefully. "That's it. You've got it. Now... 'Words and phrases right'... 'Cigarette ash keep me up all night!' . . . yeah, that's good." He quickly entered it into the typewriter, then asked John for another thought.


"Where'd you learn to type so fast?" John asked. He didn't want to accept the fact that this was how Dylan wrote.


"How come your mama types so fast?" Dylan said, ignoring Lennon. Then McCartney added, "At this rate she'll be done by a quarter past." Paul and Dylan laughed hysterically.


"That's good, Paul" Dylan said. "You've got the idea, but the problem with your line is that it could make sense. 'Types so fast, she'll be done by a quarter past.' Almost makes sense. Now suppose we really get out there." He lit another joint, then continued.


"Now it's 'How come your mama types so fast,' right? Hmm ... Let's see here..." His brow knotted in thought for a few seconds. "Fast. Fast. Fast," he repeated aloud. "Past. Fast. Past. Last. Past. Cast. Mast! That's it. That' the one. Try this - 'How come your mama types so fast, Is daddy's flag flyin' at half-mast?'" He repeated it aagain and was satisfied. "Yeah, that works. That works fine."


This is exactly what McCartney had expected, exactly what he criticized in Dylan, and yet he was impressed. What a fun way to write songs! Lennon, McCartney felt, was digging it too, but didn't want to say so and prove McCartney correct. As for Dylan, he was into it.


"OK, something else now," Dylan said.


"Pneumonia," McCartney pulled out of left field.


"Pneumonia," Dylan repeated. He sat back in his chair and looked straight up at the ceiling, trying to think of a line. "Got it!" He snapped back and started typing, saying as his fingers hit the keys: "Pneumonia ceilings, pneumonia floors."


"Great!" McCartney exclaimed. Try this: "Daddy ain't gonna take it no more."


"I love it!" Dylan was jumping up and down in his chair as he added this line to the song.


McCartney's lines were forcing Lennon's hand. He wasn't going to be outdone.


"Elephant guns blazing in my ears," Lennon said out of nowhere.


Dylan just looked at him. "Shit. Where'd that come from? You got it, John!" He typed the line and before he could finish the six words Lennon said, "I'm sick and tired of your applesauce tears..."


Dylan didn't stop typing until this line was added, too. "Jesus," he said slowly, "no wonder you guys are rich."


Lennon was into it now. "Thermometers don't tell time anymore," he said, "Since Aunt Mimi pushed them off the twentieth floor!"


Dylan typed it all, but not before McCartney countered with "So say good-bye to skyscrapers..."


Then Dylan finished it: "You'll read about it in the evening papers!" He was having a great time.


"I picked my nose and I'm glad I did!" Lennon screamed. Then McCartney added, "No one knows my nose 'cause I keep it hid!"


At that moment, the three of them actually fell on the floor, they were laughing so hard.


"Oh, God, it hurts," Dylan said from the floor. "I can't stop."


Lennon and McCartney looked at each other underneath the table. They could write songs with Bob Dylan. It felt terrific. Lennon started another line, but Dylan stopped him.


"Wait a minute now." Dylan was wiping the tears from his eyes. "Lemme get that last one. Now what was it? I can't even remember." They were so stoned that time was standing still.


McCartney started to tell him: "It was ... uh ..." He couldn't think of it. "What the hell was the line, John?"


"I don't remember it, either!" Lennon shrieked.


They all fell on the floor again.


"Greatest f**king line in rock & roll history," Dylan said, still on his back, "and we can't remember what it is! I don't believe it! I don't believe it! ..."



"PNEUMONIA CEILINGS" - Never released, never recorded, never even finished, here is the Lennon-McCartney-Dylan collaboration which fans call "Pneumonia Ceilings." A housekeeper at the London Hilton fished the original copy out of Dylan's thrash the day after John and Paul visited Dylan. She sold it for a mere $5 to Beatle fan. Today it is valued at $75,000!

Subject: Sir Pot and Bob
From: Brian Kelly (loyola@connect.ie)
Date: 16 Jan 1999 12:48:56 -0800

In the book Many Years From Now (Barry Miles, Secker & Warburg '97), Paul McCartney gives more detail on how Bob introduced the Beatles to the joys of pot smoking during the groups first US tour. Apologies if this has already been posted.

****

"Dylan was driven down from Woodstock by his roadie in his anonymous blue Ford station wagon, picking up {the journalist Al] Aronowitz from his home in Berkeley Hills, New Jersey, on the way. Aronowitz, who had been on the fringe of Beat Generation circles since the late fifties, had turned Dylan on to pot the year before. In the hotel lobby, police barred their way until Mal Evans [Beatle roadie] came down and the three were quickly ushered into the main lounge. Brian [Epstein] naturally played the gracious host and asked what they would like to drink.

'Cheap wine', said Dylan. Unfortunately the Beatles had been drinking good French wine with their meal so Mal was dispatched to buy something suitably nasty for Dylan. In the meantime, Dylan was offered some purple hearts, the little blue Dirnamyl pills which kept virtually every British rock group goin through the sixties when their bodies told them they should be sleeping. Dylan declined and suggested they smoke some grass instead. Brian Epstein explained with some embarrassment that they had never smoked pot before.

'But what about your song, the one about getting high?', asked Dylan. ' " And when I touch you I get high..."' The Liverpool accent had rendered the words of 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' unintelligible to Dylan. 'It goes, " I can't hide, I can't hide..."', explained John.

Victor Mamudes, Dylan's tall, skinny roadie, was naturally the one carrying the drugs - in those days this was a roadie's most important job - and he passed the bag to Dylan, who began to roll the first joint rather shakily, spilling qutie a lot of the grass unto the large bowl of fruit on the room-service table. Al Aronowitz wrote: 'Bob hovered unsteadily while he tried to lift the grass from the bag with the fingertips of one hand so he could crush it into the leaf of rolling paper which he held in his other hand. Besides being a sloppy roller, Bob had started drinking whatever expensive stuff was already there'.

With more than a dozen police in the corridor outside and reporters just down the hall, great caution was deemed necessary; Dylan and Ringo retired to the far end of the back room near the front windows, blinds were drawn and rolled towels sealed the locked doors. As snatches of Beatles songs floated up from the fans in the street below, Dylan passed a skinny American joint to Ringo, who smoked the whole thing, not knowing that pot-smoking etiquette requires that the joint be passed around.

Paul: 'The first time I got very high indeed. It was quite a breakthrough, it was something different. George Harrison, John and I were sitting with our Scotch and Cokes, and Dylan had just given Ringo a puff of it... We were kind of proud to have been introduced to pot by Dylan, that was rather a coup. It was like being introduced to meditation and given your mantra by Maharishi. There was a certain status to it.'

******

So now you know.
Brian

[Tom S]

Bob and Bruce
"Forever Young"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ7nOAVaz84&feature=related

[Asbjørn]

Bob and Bruce
"Forever Young"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ7nOAVaz84&feature=related

What a duo!   

De fleste Bobcats elsker Bruce også. Me included

......

...må bringe videre en fin liten Bob-story 


Timothy O'Grady har gitt ut en bok (Divine Magnetic Lands: A Journey in America):

As a child of the 1960s, he makes the necessary pilgrimages to Woodstock and the Minnesota birthplace of Bob Dylan, although the best, and typically enigmatic, Dylan story comes from a female leftist friend who declined Dylan's proposition at a Greenwich Village party in the 60s. She didn't see him again until years later when she was standing at a bus stop and a van with darkened windows drew up; at the wheel was Dylan, who asked: "Changed your mind?"

[Asbjørn]

7.oktober, ny utgivelse:
TELL TALE SIGNS

....siden ca mai har vi visst at en ny Dylan CD var på vei. Det ble tidlig klart at det ville bli nr 8 i serien av 'Bootleg Series' Og man trodde den ville komme ca september. Låtene ville være outtakes o.l. fra 83-05. Altså, endelig 'nytt stoff' og ikke bare gammalt 60-stuff...

Og entusiastene stråååålte: Endelig kommer Girl From the Red River Shore frem i lyset 
De færreste har hørt den. Men gjetordene er mange... Og en nederlandsk journalist som i sommer fikk høre, skrev:

I can't speak Dutch, but Norwegian is close enough to Dutch for me to understand most of it so I'll try to translate a paragraph for you:

"Girl From The Red River Shore could be the strongest song Dylan has written in years. The ghost ballad is an epic number where Duke Robillard's guitar and Jim Dickinsons piano is drawn towards Dylans halucinatory and ghostlike voice."

Det vil bli en dobbel CD med en ekstra de luxe version med bok/bilder av singles etc, en ekstra CD, og nesten en ekstra tusenlapp i pris (!!!)

[Tom S]

http://www.dailymotion.com/runawaydream/video/x12v83_blowin-in-the-windbad-moon-rising_music

Bruce spiller Blowin' in the wind     ....og litt CCC.

[Asbjørn]

Bruce spiller Blowin' in the wind     ....og litt CCC.

...vurderte å legge inn den i går 

Legg merke til den avsluttende 'Thanks, Bob' 

 

[Tom S]

"Han (Springsteen) hadde to store forbilder, Bob Dylan og Elvis. Han har også blitt sammenlignet med disse to flere ganger, og er veldig stolt av det."
- Wikipedia

Bruce spiller Blowin' in the wind     ....og litt CCC.

...vurderte å legge inn den i går 

Legg merke til den avsluttende 'Thanks, Bob' 

 

[Asbjørn]

Bruce da han fikk æren av å introdusere His Bobness  i "Rock'n Roll Hall of Fame' en gang på 80-tallet:

'The way Elvis freed your body, Dylan freed your mind'...
Hvorpå han forteller historien om da han & moren satt i bilen og hørte 'LARS' (Like a Rolling Stone) for første gang. Moren kommenterte at 'that guy can't sing' mens han bare 'visste' at han hørte på 'the toughest voice in rock, ever...')

[Asbjørn]

The Mighty Quinn i dag.

Da Bob & bandet (jamf. the Band) gjemte seg i kjelleren  (jamf. The Basement Tapes)'i det store, rosa huset'  (jamf. Music from the Big Pink)jammet de i veg, sanger som aldri var ment for utgivelse. Men, så utgav noen 'The White Wonder' & bootlegs var oppfunnet.

Mannfred Mann fikk tak i The Mighty Quinn, & den ble #1 i England.
Bob selv lot den komme ut i liveversjon i skvaldreverket 'Self Portrait' i 1970 (utgitt for å bli kvitt fansen, få fred...).
- neste gang Bob fremførte sangen live var i 2002 (32 år!!!).

http://itsamitchell.blogspot.com/2008/08/little-background-on-mighty-quinn.html

Her er en blogg om låten, med låten, Anthony Quinn, Denzel Washington & eskimoer av forskjellig slag...

[Lids]

http://www.nrk.no/lydverket/sniklytt-til-bob-dylan-ved-midnatt/

[Lids]

http://www.fvn.no/kulturpuls/musikk/article615290.ece

[Asbjørn]

Driver &  lytter meg gjennom disk I nå

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95047293

Første jeg gikk for var 'Girl on the Red River Shore' - sagt å være noe av det beste fra Bob siste 20 år...

(låtene måå høres mer enn en gang, sånn er det bare. Bob vokser for hver lytt )

- Husk dette er enten låter som Bob ikke ville ha med på plate eller 'alternatvie versjoner' av utgitte, mange vél så bra som den utvalgte. Og så er her noen live-versjoner...

PS Herlig 'groove' på Someday Baby