Monday, December 31, 2007

I’m Not There: thoroughly enjoyable … heartily recommended

Thanks to Bernard McGuinn:

“I'm Not There is a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Heartily recommended to anyone who loves film, loves Bob's music and isn't looking for historical documentary.

“Could well have been how Masked and Anonymous or Renaldo and Clara would have turned out if made by someone who knew how to make a good film!

“I laughed out loud at least six times during the film and the actual film soundtrack is so much better to listen to than the released double CD. There's no getting away from it - no one sings Dylan like Dylan!

“The film runs artistically in parallel with the esoteric masterpiece that it takes its name from - it feels that there's so much there, but you can't quite grasp what there is when you try to look up close.

“The critics, rightly, are raving about the enacting of the 65/66 Dylan incarnation, but there's much to be appreciated from the other roles; I loved the young black Dylan character with his tall tales of experience way beyond his years and the Richard Gere role of the reclusive Billy was awesome.”

Friday, December 28, 2007

New episodes of Dylan podcasts - official and fan-generated

The magnificent series of Dylan podcasts from Legacy Recordings, introduced by Patti Smith, has now reached programme 11, with Live At The Newport Folk Festival, the first of three slots on the epochal RI gigs. Programme 10, Gotta Serve Somebody, covered the Gospel years.

The Dylan podcasts are free. And you can subscribe via iTunes to receive future episodes automatically.

http://blogs.legacyrecordings.com/podcast/category/bob-dylan


And fan Mel Prussack's newest Dyl-Time Theme Radio Hour podcast is now also up and running – his theme this month is the year 1966. Mel’s Podomatic site has been having problems, but he's confident they're now solved.

http://dylanshrine.podOmatic.com


These two series will help Dylan fans with iPods banish the stultifying boredom of commuting.




Gerry Smith

Thursday, December 27, 2007

DYLAN 3CD Limited Edition – time to reconsider?

Until I received the DYLAN 3CD Limited Edition as a present on Xmas morning, I’d been, like many readers, unmoved by the release: a missed opportunity … nothing new … repetition of earlier releases … blah, blah, blah …

Sure, I’ve bought all this music before, many times over. Sure, I’d have preferred another Bootleg Series release, especially a proper Basement Tapes. And, sure, I may never play the 3CD collection end to end.

But I can now see why Columbia released DYLAN. Clearly, it’s intended primarily to promote the back catalogue to younger consumers. But, beyond that, it’s a fitting tribute to a lifetime of timeless recordings by the biggest name on the label: the Dylan songbook is showcased here as never before.

And the packaging is appropriately reverential. From the three beautiful CD mini sleeves to the lavish 40 page booklet, and the set of 10 collectable cigarette card-type reproductions of show posters to the cloth-finished box, with its velvet lining and clever magnetized closing flap, this is an artefact assembled with skill and care.

DYLAN Limited Edition celebrates one of the great creative forces of the modern world. If, like me, you rejected it on release, it might be time to reconsider, especially if you can pick it up at discount – it’s doing the rounds at half price (£17).



Gerry Smith

Monday, December 24, 2007

Your best of 2007

Here’s wishing all readers of Dylan Daily a peaceful Christmas and a fruitful, fulfilling 2008.

And thanks for their best-of Dylan in 2007 picks to:

* Brad Saltzberg:

“1. The film I’m Not There

2. The cleaned-up, reissued version of Dylan singing I’m Not There

3. Million Dollar Bash by Sid Griffin.”


* Bill White:

“1. Bob singing Masters of War onstage at Bluesfest in Ottawa - on a field right beside Canada's War Museum.

2. Robyn Hitchcock playing a spellbinding cover of Not Dark Yet here in Ottawa at Zapod Beeblebrox in November.”


* Phil Mayr:

“Watchtower live by the drops band, south germany early ‘90s. the guys are weekend musicians, but did it quite nice... getting this copy is in my personal top 3 for 2007.”

Friday, December 21, 2007

The Bob Dylan Top 10 of 2007

This has been a richly productive Dylan year. In 2007 The Dylan Daily has covered a giddy succession of outstanding performances/products by and about Bobby, in an exploding range of media – live performance, CD, DVD, painting, radio, TV documentary, feature films, podcasts, books and magazine special issues.

Here’s my Bob Dylan Top 10 - 2007, in rank order:


1. The tour (aka NET)

2. The Other Side Of The Mirror

3. The Drawn Blank Series

4. Don’t Look Back De Luxe 2DVD set

5. Theme Time Radio Hour Series 1

6. DYLAN, 3CD De Luxe box

7. The Dream Dylan Concert 1962-2001, BBC Radio 2

8. Legacy Podcasts – Bob Dylan 1-9

9. The Traveling Wilburys Collection

10. Million Dollar Bash, by Sid Griffin


BONUS PICKs:

11. Bob Dylan - Never-Ending Star, by Lee Marshall – see exclusive book review, here, next week

12. Dylanesque - Bryan Ferry’s covers album.


All are must-see/-hear/-own – you can find full details in the Dylan Daily Archive.

No mention, notice, of: the new feature film or Factory Girl or the enhanced single or any bootleg/grey market recording …


What are your Dylan 2007 highlights? Please send your Dylan Top 3 2007 to info@dylandaily.com

Thanks, in anticipation. And, if you’re not dropping by for a few days, best wishes for the Xmas holiday!



Gerry Smith

Thursday, December 20, 2007

The Drawn Blank Series: encore, encore

It’s remarkable that the curator of a city art gallery in a little-known regional centre like Chemnitz should have persuaded Dylan to complete such a substantial body of art and then made it accessible to a global audience via the striking new catalogue, Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series.

Dylan fans worldwide are indebted to curator Ingrid Mossinger.

If I can find the time before it closes on 3 February 2008, I hope to visit the exhibition in Chemnitz, and I know several other Anglos hoping to do the same. Watch this space …

Recommending suppliers for the book, Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series, I stopped short of recommending the Chemnitz gallery which is actually holding the exhibition – “ … Dylan Daily emails to two officials, offering to review the catalogue, were ignored, so I can’t recommend that route.”

Happily, I have to report that my whining was premature – although I haven’t received an email response (to my two English-language emails, admittedly), today I received a copy of the magnificent book.

So I’m now happy to list the gallery as the prime supplier – they are selling the book at 28 euros (plus 17 euros packing/delivery) via their website – excellent value. Specify if you want the English-language version (the book includes several essays about the exhibition).

www.chemnitz.de/de/tourismus/tourismus_kultur_17_2.htm



Gerry Smith


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Earlier article:


The Drawn Blank Series – striking new book of Dylan paintings

Bob Dylan - The Drawn Blank Series is the official catalogue of the exhibition of Dylan paintings currently showing in Chemnitz, Germany.

But it’s rather more than that: it’s a sumptuous coffee table hardback collection of 170 striking watercolour/gouache paintings Dylan recently worked up from drawings originally sketched between 1989 and 1992.

The book is an unusual, beautiful, colourful artefact. Dylan’s artwork – interiors, urban landscapes, men, women - grabs your attention and demands careful scrutiny. The paintings, in the Expressionist style, would be arresting even if they didn’t carry Dylan’s signature. As you’d expect from its artist, the work is observant, witty and worldly-wise. The surprise is that it’s also technically accomplished – it never fails to evoke an emotional response.

I bought my cherished copy of Bob Dylan - the Drawn Blank Series from The Book Depository, England, via Amazon Marketplace, for £27.37p, delivered – a very competitive price. They still had stock when I checked, but if/when they run out, abebooks.co.uk lists other suppliers with stock. Be careful to order the correct edition – there is a German-, as well as an English-language version.

The Chemnitz gallery also has it for sale, but Dylan Daily emails to two officials, offering to review the catalogue, were ignored, so I can’t recommend that route.

Aficionados need this strikingly handsome artefact – it’s one of the Dylan highlights of recent years: far more important than that new film that’s getting all the media attention.


Details: Bob Dylan - The Drawn Blank Series, edited by Ingrid Mossinger. Munich, Prestel, large format hardback, 29 Nov 2007, 288pp.



Gerry Smith

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

The Drawn Blank Series: encore

Thanks to “M” (name withheld because email was probably intended in confidence):

“Unfortunately I ordered the catalogue before reading your warning about the English and German versions and have got the German version. An amazing collection of paintings -- a pity I can't read German!

“I wonder whether the text explains Dylan's modus operandi. What I imagine he has done is envisage the act of painting as a performance art. The original sketch from Drawn Blank is the song and each painting is a performance of that song. Does the text refer to this, or is it just a creation of my fevered imagination as I cast my eyes over the pages of incomprehensible text?”


DYLAN DAILY REPLY:
Your perception is remarkable: your conclusion is EXACTLY that of (essayist) Herr Zollner in his last two paragraphs on page 73!



Thanks also to Peter James:

“Are you sure you’re not dazzled just because the pics are by Dylan? Isn’t this just another case of a celeb dabbler trading on a reputation in another field?”


DYLAN DAILY REPLY:
Agreed: this is always a possibility, but it’s one you’ll probably discount once you’ve seen this remarkable artwork. Dylan Daily readers ignoring this important new book might live to regret it!



Gerry Smith

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

The Drawn Blank Series – striking new book of Dylan paintings

Bob Dylan - The Drawn Blank Series is the official catalogue of the exhibition of Dylan paintings currently showing in Chemnitz, Germany.

But it’s rather more than that: it’s a sumptuous coffee table hardback collection of 170 striking watercolour/gouache paintings Dylan recently worked up from drawings originally sketched between 1989 and 1992.

The book is a beautiful, colourful artefact. Dylan’s artwork – interiors, urban landscapes, men, women - grabs your attention and demands careful scrutiny. The paintings, in the Expressionist style, would be arresting even if they didn’t carry Dylan’s signature. As you’d expect from its artist, the work is observant, witty and worldly-wise. The surprise is that it’s also technically accomplished – it never fails to evoke an emotional response.

I bought my cherished copy of Bob Dylan - The Drawn Blank Series from The Book Depository, England, via Amazon Marketplace, for £27.37p, delivered – a very competitive price. They still had stock when I checked, but if/when they run out, abebooks.co.uk lists other suppliers with stock. Be careful to order the correct edition – there is a German-, as well as an English-language version.
The Chemnitz gallery also has it for sale, but Dylan Daily emails to two officials, offering to review the catalogue, were ignored, so I can’t recommend that route.

Aficionados need this strikingly handsome artefact – it’s one of the Dylan highlights of recent years: far more important than that new film that’s getting all the media attention.


Details: Bob Dylan - The Drawn Blank Series, edited by Ingrid Mossinger. Munich, Prestel, large format hardback, 29 Nov 2007, 288pp.



Gerry Smith

Monday, December 17, 2007

More on those magnificent podcasts from Legacy Recordings

I recommended the official Dylan podcasts, introduced by Patti Smith, Jersey’s finest, a couple of weeks ago. By last week, the series had grown to nine programmes, and I’ve re-listened, more carefully.

Contributions by a roster of key music biz associates like Roger McGuinn, Garth Hudson and John Hammond Jnr are complemented by some acute writers and critics, notably Bill Flanagan and a History Prof from Princeton (Sean Wilentz?), who make very perceptive comments. And by some clever comedy from the man himself.

Listening to the series for the third time in the car on a one-hour journey yesterday I was alternately raving at the sublime music clips and marvelling at the insights being tossed away by the insightful commentators.

The Dylan podcasts are magnificent. They’re also free. And you can subscribe via iTunes to receive future episodes automatically (free).

Waddya waiting for?


Gerry Smith



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ORIGINAL ARTICLE:

Sony’s official Dylan podcasts, introduced by Patti Smith


Don’t miss hip priestess Patti Smith introducing a series of official Sony Dylan podcasts.

The six programmes in the series so far, running for about six minutes each, include Dylan recordings and interview snippets, Smith’s links and contributions from musicians (eg John Hiatt) and critics (eg Greil Marcus).

The series is covering Dylan’s career chronologically. Number 6 has only reached the late 1960s, so it looks as if the series could eventually run to a couple of hours of prime Dylan documentary - all legally downloadable, of course, as MP3 files.

Highly recommended.



http://blogs.legacyrecordings.com/podcast/category/bob-dylan



Gerry Smith

Friday, December 14, 2007

Dylan in new Tom Petty rockumentary

Watch the trailer for Runnin’ Down A Dream, the new Tom Petty rockumentary directed by lauded veteran Peter Bogdanovich, and, I’ll bet, your eyes will be drawn to the singer duetting with Petty on two clips – from the Dylan/Petty 1986 tour and the Traveling Wilburys project.

In his ‘80s creative trough, Dylan made some perplexing decisions, and touring with Petty was one: surely their musical styles were too far apart – what was Dylan doing with mainstream stadium rockers?

Surprisingly, the pairing worked well. If nothing else, the shows were audience-friendly. The problem was, Dylan looked diminished in the company of the Heartbreakers: unaccountably, Petty’s rock-lite shtick seemed to dwarf the greatest popular musician of the century.

Or did it? Maybe that perception flowed from the general malaise afflicting many Bobfans in those barren years?

It’ll be instructive to dig out and re-evaluate the VHS tape of the Dylan/Petty Sydney show, broadcast some years ago on BBC TV. I have a sneaking feeling that Dylan’s performance will, almost miraculously, have somehow improved since the film was shot.

Runnin’ Down A Dream is reviewed, with link to the trailer, at:


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/12/13/bmpetty113.xml

Thursday, December 13, 2007

The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia – review of first edition

Following yesterday’s call by Michael Gray for suggested additions/alterations for the next edition of his Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, several readers have asked what The Dylan Daily thought of the massive book when it was first published, in mid-2006.

In a nutshell: deeply impressed. My review, from the Archives, is reproduced below.



Gerry Smith




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The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, by Michael Gray


Over 30 years ago, Song & Dance Man, Michael Gray’s pioneering study, outlined Bob Dylan’s credentials as a serious artist whose work guaranteed him a place at the top table of twentieth century creatives, alongside fellow giants like James Joyce, Pablo Picasso and Miles Davis.

Though Gray’s seminal work triggered a Bob Dylan book publishing industry - even semi-serious collectors will now possess well over 100 different Dylan titles - there has always been a big gap awaiting an attentive publisher: for an all-encompassing Dylan encyclopedia, presenting all that’s known about its subject.

Billboard Books purported to fill the gap in 2004, but Oliver Trager’s Keys To The Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encylopedia restricted itself mainly to Dylan’s songs and albums, largely ignoring people and places, and the cultural contexts of the songbook. Trager’s tome is valuable, but it doesn’t match the ambition of its title.

So Michael Gray’s new book was a mouth-watering prospect: big gap, key writer. Few will be disappointed by The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, published today (in the USA, and on 13 July in the UK). It’s likely to become the biggest selling Dylan book of all.

As you’d expect from a writer of Gray’s pedigree, the Encylopedia majors on its author’s unparalleled expertise, his critical judgment and a ready intelligence and authorial finesse rare among writers of Dylan (and so, a fortiori, all rock music) books.

The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia is Gray’s magnum opus: in three quarters of a million words, he paints a massive canvas. Over 730 pages, its daunting breadth of coverage and sheer level of detail is deeply impressive.

As devotees of Gray’s writing might expect, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia’s strengths include authoritative essays positioning Dylan’s work in the context of other artistic traditions – notably The Bible, English literature, the blues, rock ‘n’ roll, nursery rhymes and film.

Highlights? Scores. Gray’s analysis of the influence on Dylan’s work of the Book Of Ecclesiastes is the most evocative piece of writing on the musician you’re likely to encounter. His take on Lay Down Your Weary Tune is almost as good. Articles on Albert Grossman, the Newport Folk Festival (and the surprising links between the two), Sara Dylan, and Jerry Schatzberg provide startling revelations. Innumerable other probing essays illuminate dark corners of the Dylan world of which few are even aware. Gray’s dissections of the impact of Dylan’s literary antecedents are definitive.

The footnoting which bedevilled Gray’s last Dylan book is used here to good effect, documenting detail which would interrupt the flow, without repeating the mistake of supplying a parallel, competing text.

And, for a book of this magnitude, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia has remarkably few solecisms or typos. Others might seek to document factual errors, but they’ll need eyes like the proverbial toilet rat to find them.

The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia: perfect, then?

Well, no, not quite. The content could be better balanced. Some Dylan songs and albums are discussed at length, and with considerable acuity, as you’d expect. But many of the albums receive short shrift. Thus The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan gets less than a quarter of a page, to be followed soon after by two and a half pages on Froggie Went a-Courtin’!

Lots of entries on Dylan’s Dadrock contemporaries could have been cut, some entirely, the remainder reduced to focus on their links with Dylan. The galaxy of Dylan superfans profiled will be flattered to see their fealty recognised, though few civilian readers will be much interested.

Gray’s readiness to flaunt his critical savvy generally serves him well, but some aficionados will stick pins into his effigy after reading, for example, his relentless sniping at recent touring performances, and his dismissal of Before the Flood (“has never been a favourite of anyone keen on Bob Dylan”). Gray’s reservations about the two most recent films, No Direction Home and Masked And Anonymous will probably resonate only among fellow experts.

And, after this book, Michael Gray won’t expect to receive Xmas cards for 2006 from, inter alia: Joan Baez, Roger McGuinn, Robbie Robertson, Larry Charles, the estate of Ewan McColl, Pete Seeger, Oliver Trager, Dave Stewart, Stephen Sondheim … .

When he leaves the Dylan comfort zone, Gray makes some tendentious calls. His dismissal of Cole Porter – one of the few songwriters who would vie with Dylan as the best of the last century – suggests an unworthy rockism. Ditto his dismissal of Joni Mitchell’s jazz-lite excursions, and the legacy of the Grateful Dead. Gray’s generally laudable article on Van Morrison is short of the nuance which informs his Dylan writing.

The Sydney Morning Herald - a “staid and haughty paper”. Paul Brady - “a national hero on both sides of the border in Ireland.” Really?

And, in a writer with such a richly deserved reputation, Gray’s occasionally strident tone is a surprise. Some of his spiky, splenetic ruminations are compounded by a monochrome critical schema, which seems to judge art, people and events as either wonderful or wretched, with few shades of gray.

Gray’s worst stylistic tic is his over-fondness for hyperbole via superfluous adverbs: his over-use of –ly words - “utterly meaningless”, “infinitely fluid”, “immaculately compatible” - is wearing. Absolutely, utterly wearing.

Such infelicities wouldn’t matter in book about Rockaday Johnny, but books such as Gray’s, dealing with the greatest writer in the English language since Shakespeare, have to meet higher standards.

Another Editor might have been tougher on such matters.

As an artefact, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia has the look and feel of The Bible. The unflattering front cover profile apart, the design confers an appropriate gravitas. The CD-ROM of the text supplied with the book is a valuable bonus, offering a functionality that hard copy simply can’t match. Want to check out all the references to Christopher Ricks? Easy. Want to print out the article on Like A Rolling Stone to read on the train? No problem. Want to sneak read the Encyclopedia on the office PC, while pretending to complete a spreadsheet? Just remember to pop the CD-ROM into your jacket pocket before leaving home.

Continuum needs to pack the CD rather better, though – extricating it from the plastic wallet inside the back cover is difficult, and hazardous. Brief user instructions would be handy, too. Some of the headings used in the Encyclopedia are unhelpful. The Index might well be a work of art, but I’ll never know - I can’t read the microscopic font.

In a nutshell? Easy: from today, Michael Gray’s new Encyclopedia is destined to be the most important Bob Dylan book, bar none.


The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, by Michael Gray, Continuum, June (US)/July (UK) 2006, 736pp, £25.




Gerry Smith

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

New (paperback) edition of The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia: your additions and alterations invited

Thanks to Michael Gray, author of The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia:


“ENCYCLOPEDIA NEWS: THE PAPERBACK!

“I'm happy to say that Continuum has clinched its plans for the paperback of The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, and that this will be published simultaneously in New York and London on April 15th (2008).

“This gives me a brief chance to incorporate updates and a few corrections to the text, and I should like to ask each interested blog reader this: please let me know of anything essential you think needs adding or altering.

“Obviously I am adding entries on Modern Times, The Drawn Blank Series, the Dylan 3-CD set and I'm Not There, and to mention the Cadillac ads, the re-mix of 'Most Likely' and the 2nd series of Theme Time Radio Hour, and to add in the deaths of Tommy Makem, Mark Spoelstra and Ian Wallace. (Paul Nelson's death, and some correction, is already included in the revised reprint of the hardback issued in the UK on Sept 24th 2006.)

“BUT there will inevitably be other things it would be good to include if possible, and I shall be grateful if you can suggest any.

“(In the case of living musicians, they may well have issued new albums since early 2006, but we don't have the capacity to add all these in - though it should be possible to mention any that really are significant in that artist's career. Joni Mitchell's Shine is an example, I think, since it represents her first album of substantially new material in some years.)

“So if anything strikes you, let me know, and before January 1st please!”


http://bobdylanencyclopedia.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Remasters/Street Legal

Thanks to Martin Cowan:

“Further to the recent posts about remastered Dylan CDs, it's certainly true that if you rake through the racks at stores like HMV, it is possible to find "old" (ie not remastered) versions of albums nestling next to 2003 reissues, often at the same price.

“So … buyer beware!

“On a separate note, while the superior 1999 remastering of Street Legal has been rightly praised in many quarters - although why did they loop in that extra instrumental verse at the end of Changing of the Guards? - the echo on Dylan's vocal on some tracks (particularly Senor) is rather annoying.

“Compare that version with the remastered Biograph version which has no irritating echo and sounds just great and you'll maybe see what I mean.”

Monday, December 10, 2007

Cheap CDs: a word of caution

Thanks to John Carvill:

“Just a word of caution regarding all those super-cheap Dylan CDs. As with many artists, the record companies have seen fit to bestow upon us a wide range of encodings, remasterings, clippings, edits, remixes and whatnots of Dylan albums.

“Often, 'cheap' CDs are older versions of albums which have subsequently been remastered.

“A few examples worth noting are: Blonde on Blonde, which has been issued and reissued in I don't know how many variants, it must be into double figures for sure, certainly at one stage they faded/clipped tracks so it would fit on a standard-length CD.

“The best CD version (that I know of) of 'Blonde on Blonde' is the SACD remaster from a few years back, you don't have to buy the SACD to get it, there's a widely available one-disc version which has the SACD's 'CD layer' on it.

“Same goes for 'Bringing It All Back Home', except I think you do have to buy the SACD to get that one.

“And the original issue of 'Street Legal' was terribly murky, it benefited hugely from the 1999 remaster.

“You should definitely avoid older versions of these CDs. Probably most Dylan Daily readers already know this stuff, but just in case … “

Bob Dylan Transmissions - enhanced CD & 74 page book

Thanks to Nigel Boddy:

“I've now listened to Bob Dylan Transmissions and can report that the sound quality (on a few of the tracks) could have been a lot better - no remastering carried out here! But, it's possibly better having average quality `rare and previously unreleased' material in your collection than not at all (?).

“The tracks, as far are as I can determine, come from the following sources:

1. Blowin' In The Wind,
2. Man Of Constant Sorrow
3. With God On Our Side
(Folk Songs & More Folk Songs TV Show 1963)

4. Hurricane,
5. Simple Twist Of Fate
6. Oh Sister
(The World of John Hammond TV Show 10.9.75)

7. Jokerman (Late Night With David Lettermen TV Show 22/3/84)
8. Maggie's Farm (Farm Aid 1985)
9. All Along The Watchtower (Guitar Legends 17/10/91)
10. My Back Pages
11. Knockin' On Heaven's Door
(30th Anniv. Show 18/10/02)

12. Highway 61 Revisited
13. Rainy Day Women #12&35
(Woodstock 14/8/94)

The two additional CD-ROM enhanced tracks are Girl From The North Country (With J Cash) & Forever Young (With Bruce Springsteen).

Friday, December 07, 2007

Grey market Dylan product proliferating

If you haven’t had a good root in the Dylan racks of the music megastores for a while, you might be surprised at the recent proliferation of what’s best described as “grey market” product - CDs and (especially) DVDs.

These products aren’t official (Sony) releases, but they can’t be bootlegs (aka "black" market), or they wouldn’t be stocked by the mainstream music emporia. Some are also available via online retailers.

The latest such product to catch my attention is Bob Dylan – Transmissions, a CD of 15 (mainly audio) tracks recorded for TV/radio across Dylan’s career, released by UK label Storming Music Company. Presumably such releases are legit because the original broadcasters have licensed performances for which they hold the copyright?

Has any reader come across this or similar CDs? Are they worth pursuing?




Gerry Smith

Thursday, December 06, 2007

Dylan’s everywhere! Even in Marks & Spencers

Is there no limit to Dylan’s omnipresence?

In my last two visits to local Marks & Spencer stores, Bobby has been busy lulling shoppers into buying mode.

On my last visit to the town centre store, the middle-aged, middle class female population shopping for underwear (“you pay a bit more, but … “) was being serenaded by Like A Rolling Stone.

A week later, the seekers after the meaning of life (and overpriced fruit and veg) in the M25 megastore were bopping along to It Ain’t Me Babe.

Bob Dylan – “countercultural spokesman”: you kidding?



Gerry Smith

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Modern Times track-by-track: Workingman’s Blues #2 – part 2

Chris Gregory, who has just finished writing an engaging, thoughtful track-by-track analysis of Modern Times, has kindly consented to The Dylan Daily publishing a sample of his writing, on two of the album’s ten songs.

The first article, on When The Deal Goes Down, was published here last week. This second article, in two parts, analyses Workingman’s Blues #2.




Workingman’s Blues #2 – part 2


By Chris Gregory




(Part 1 was published on The Dylan Daily yesterday)

The backdrops against which the narrator sings are constantly shifting. As with many of Dylan’s recent songs, it’s hard to figure out whether the action is taking place in the present day or in some past time. Sometimes we seem to be in the present day, sometimes in the 1950s, the 1930s … sometimes as far back as the American Civil War. The narrators of many of the songs on Love and Theft and Modern Times live in a kind of timeless dreamworld.

Dylan has said that his ambition is to write songs which ‘stop time’. We are never sure whether the actions he describes are happening in a chronological sequence or not. The songs’ stories are told through the unreliable filter of memory.

In the next verse we hear that the narrator is closing his eyes and …listening to the steel rails hum … suggesting he is now a vagrant, riding a freight train. But not because, like Haggard’s working man, he seeks the freedom of ‘bumming around’. Like the migrant workers of the Depression, he has no choice.

The whole song can be seen as a kind of dream vision seen through this dispossessed working man’s eyes. The great irony of the song is that he is no longer a working man at all. His work has been taken away. The hunger he is fighting to stop … creeping its way into my gut … may be real hunger, or a hunger for ‘what has been lost’. In any case he sounds tearful, and resigned to his fate, telling us he has hung up his ‘cruel weapons’.

The love object he addresses, whom he implores to … come sit down on my knee … may well be a child who has now grown up. In his tearful vision the narrator remembers the child as they were when he was raising him or her. He wants to enfold the child with love. But his mind is continually restless. For like the narrator of King Harvest he’s a … union man all the way… . In his mind, there are still battles to be fought. In each chorus he fantasises that, together with his child he will again fight the bosses on the ‘frontline’. The final line of the chorus repeats Haggard’s modest refrain as if it is a sacred call to arms.

As the song progresses the narrator descends further and further into his dream-fantasy. He is an old man, raging against the dying of the light, crying ‘tears of rage’. He imagines dragging those who have dispossessed him down to hell, lining them up against a wall to have them shot. But he is weary, confused, his consciousness … tossed by the wind and the seas … . Already he is sinking back into sleep, resigned to his redundancy in this cruel world that has rejected him: … Sometimes no one wants what we got/Sometimes you can’t give it away … . As he descends into sleep, dark visions begin to overwhelm him. He … sleeps in the kitchen with my feet in the hall … . Of course he has no house, only this tiny freight train carriage where the ’kitchen’ and the ‘hall’ are so close together. He imagines himself confronted by countless faceless enemies, crowding in on him. He knows that death itself is not far away. Sleep is comforting to him but it is … like a temporary death… . He knows his death is approaching but he knows not when. In the darkness he feels the … lover’s breath … which in Timrod’s poem will be the force which will awaken the spiritual life within.

But it is too late for that breath to work on him. He feels …the night birds call … He knows that the end is nigh. Yet there is no sense of panic, or despair. The music remains stately and unstressed; the band subdued and disciplined behind the singer’s masterful control of his breath.

Increasingly, the narrator becomes a Lear-like figure, exiled from his land and his children. Like the singer in King Harvest he has lost his barn and his horse and his money. He knows that … the sun is sinking … on his life. Like the narrator of that great song of generational anguish Tears of Rage (another song which echoes King Lear, written by Dylan with a melody by The Band’s Richard Manuel) he fears that his child has rejected him. … Of what kind of love is this/Which goes from bad to worse … he asks himself in Tears of Rage. In Workingman’s Blues #2 the narrator is even further down the line: … Tell me now, am I wrong in thinking/That you have forgotten me … . The narrator tells us that the child has … wounded me with your words … . He says that he will wipe the memories of his enemies from his mind, but that the memory of his child – the new ‘working man’ will always remain with him.

In the final verses he tries to heal the rift between them – though he is possessed by a disturbingly dark apocalyptic vision of what will happen to the child: … All across the peaceful sacred fields they will lay you low/They’ll break your horns and slash you with steel … he implores his loved one to look into his eyes one final time. And then, as life begins to ebb away, he fantasises that the child will … lead me off in a cheerful dance … . Everything will be remade anew … the old man sees himself with … a brand new suit and a brand new wife … .

He declares that he can live well on a meagre diet. In the final moments he restates his pride in being a ‘working man’ by telling us that he is ready to work again, unlike those who … never worked a day in their life/Don’t know what work even means … . Perhaps he is Haggard’s working man, now grown old, his world and his values in ruins. But in the end, as the sun sinks on his life, and although circumstances have overwhelmed him, he has something solid to cling to. His pride, in the end, is his salvation.

Although, with its opaque and mysterious surface, the song may appear to be at odds with much of Modern Times, Workingman’s Blues #2 is in many ways its central opus. It is a kind of ode to ‘Modern Times’ itself. Not only the modern world of the technological, globalised culture of the twenty first century but also the eternal process of evolving into ‘Modern Times’ that happens to every new generation. And Dylan himself, of course, is a ‘working man’ who for the last eighteen years or so of the Never Ending Tour has pursued the goal of finding his own salvation through constant work.

There is a level on which, in Workingman’s Blues #2, he is addressing his audience, taking us through the times in which he himself felt abandoned, having only his own pride to fall back on. But the renewed confidence he now shows in his music and his writing - the result of years of hard work - can be felt in every moment of this transcendent, far-reaching piece, which stands with his very best songs.

Like Visions of Johanna or Desolation Row or Idiot Wind or Jokerman or Blind Willie McTell, it can be subjected to many different interpretations. And like those songs, every time you hear it, it sets off new trains of thought in your mind. All you need to do is close your eyes and listen to those steel rails humming … .



All lyrics quoted are used for the purpose of criticism or review.
Workin’ Man Blues, by Merle Haggard, Copyright © 1969 Merle Haggard. Workingman’s Blues #2, by Bob Dylan, Copyright © 2006 Special Rider Music.



See all Chris’s writing at:

www.chrisgregory.org/blog

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Dylan in new UNCUT/Cheap CDs/Levon Helm

Thanks to Martin Cowan:

* Dylan in new UNCUT

A 5 star review for "I'm Not There" in the latest UNCUT magazine, along with a feature on the Blackbushe show from 1978, AND the Long Ryders covering "Masters of War" on the covermount CD. And so it is a Bobby Christmas....

* Cheap CDs

HMV are also offering most of the Dylan back catalogue on a "two for £10" deal. Mind you, there's nothing new here really - remember in the days of vinyl, Sony used to shift a lot of the older Dylan albums under their "nice price" banner.

* Levon Helm

If you haven't already picked up on this, I'd like to commend the new Levon Helm LP "Dirt Farmer". With former Dylan touring band member Larry Campbell at the controls, this is a nice mixture of covers and originals, sparklingly recorded, and Levon in fine voice throughout. One for the Christmas list!

Modern Times track-by-track: Workingman’s Blues #2

Chris Gregory, who has just finished writing an engaging, thoughtful track-by-track analysis of Modern Times, has kindly consented to The Dylan Daily publishing a sample of his writing, on two of the album’s ten songs.

The first article, on When The Deal Goes Down, was published here last week. This second article, in two parts, analyses Workingman’s Blues #2.




Workingman’s Blues #2 – part 1

By Chris Gregory


Sleep is like a temporary death …


"You will perceive that in the breast
The germs of many virtues rest,
Which, ere they feel a lover's breath,
Lie in a temporary death"

Henry Timrod, Two Portraits


Workingman’s Blues #2 is already the most celebrated, though perhaps the most misunderstood, track on Modern Times. Distinguished by a beautiful, shimmering arrangement and heartfelt vocals and crammed with memorable poetic twists, it has an anthemic, almost ‘scarf-waving’ quality found in only a few other Dylan songs (Just Like A Woman, The Times They Are A-Changin’ and Like A Rolling Stone might be said fit into this category). Without a doubt, it gets you right there. Most of the (overwhelmingly glowing) reviews of the album have already acclaimed it as an ‘instant classic’. It’s the track on the album you might like to play to a non-Dylan fan to try to win them over, to show them that Bob isn’t just this whiny folk singer after all - that he can write a ‘good tune’ and deliver it like a ‘proper singer’ if that’s what he really wants to do.

The music and the singing carry the track’s overwhelming mixture of bitter nostalgia and defiant dignity in a way that almost anyone can relate to. As a song it is heart-stoppingly moving. It lifts the spirits. It can make you want to cry. But it is not, as a number of (perhaps hopeful) commentators have suggested, any kind of ‘protest song’. The feelings it conveys are ambivalent, complex, sometimes confused. Positioned at the beginning of ‘Side Two’ of the record, it radically changes the tone of Modern Times. The first five songs are concerned with awakening the spirit of creativity - they are playful and hopeful. Workingman’s Blues #2 begins Dylan’s examination of the ‘dark side’ of our Modern Times. Despite its attractive tune and lush presentation, it is the most opaque and ‘difficult’ song on the album.

The song is a ‘sequel’ to Merle Haggard’s celebration of blue-collar pride, Workin’ Man Blues. But here Dylan’s rationale is very different to his reworking of blues classics in Rollin’ and Tumblin’, Someday Baby and The Levee’s Gonna Break. His Workingman’s Blues lifts only the chorus line …Sing a little bit of these workin’ man’s blues … . While Haggard’s song is a straight twelve bar shuffle, Dylan’s version is not (in the musical sense) a blues at all. Yet it’s clear that any examination of #2 must start here.

Haggard’s narrator is an upstanding member of the ‘proletariat’ (although you won’t, of course, find that word in his song) who has been … a workin’ man dang near all my life … supporting nine kids and a wife with his ‘working hands’. He’s determined to keep working … as long as my two hands are fit to use … and in a pointed sneer at those no-good hippies who were getting so much of the limelight at the time, declares (twice in the song, so we can’t fail to get the point) that he … ain’t never been on welfare/that’s one place I won’t be … . But as he sits drinking his beer in a tavern, he does confess that sometimes he does fantasise about doing … a little bumming around … and catching … a train to another town … . It is perhaps this part of the song, with its connection to the Woody Guthrie freight-train rambling ethos which originally inspired the teenage Dylan, which provides the clearest link between the two songs. Naturally, Haggard’s narrator’s moment of doubt is quickly excised as he reiterates his intention to ‘keep on workin’.

In the late ‘60s a song like Haggard’s Workin’ Man Blues would have been seen as terminally unhip. Yet from today’s perspective it is a classic of Americana, and in its own way as much a product of the late ‘60s as the Jefferson Airplane. In this and other songs Haggard was reacting against the spirit of his times by reasserting ‘traditional American values’ but not in a gooey, flag-waving way. The narrator of the song may be proud of his stance, but we are left in little doubt that his life is gruelling and unrewarding. He has to keep on working because he has no choice. No doubt he’s in that tavern a lot, downing a great deal of beer. It’s a significant marker of shifts in cultural values that earlier in 2006 we saw Haggard touring in support of Dylan, interspersing his songs with sneering references to Bush’s foreign and domestic policies and comic tales about hanging out and getting very wrecked with his buddy Willie Nelson.

Dylan, of course, keeps resolutely mum about such matters. It’s also significant that we can trace the beginnings of such a shift back to the late ‘60s when Dylan himself, then regarded by the counterculture as nothing less than a living prophet, the ‘voice of their generation’, would have no truck with psychedelia. In seclusion in (of all places) Woodstock, New York, he was creating recordings which, from The Basement Tapes (1967) to the much-misunderstood Self Portrait (1970) (despised by the ‘hippie establishment’ at the time but now standing as an important landmark in the development of ‘Americana’) daringly embraced country music and many of its values.

Meanwhile, Dylan’s soulmate in this adventure, Robbie Robertson of The Band, was also involved in creating an imaginative new perspective which incorporated ‘workingmen’s values’ within a vision of what Greil Marcus was later to call ‘the old, weird America’. In Mystery Train, his wonderfully eccentric paean to Elvis Presley and The Band, Marcus calls The Band’s own epic of the ‘working life’, King Harvest (Will Surely Come) (1969), Robertson’s ‘masterpiece’. King Harvest, with its embrace of unionization and its steadfast working man’s perspective, seems to me to be the other key text we need to look at with reference to Workingman’s Blues #2.

Dylan’s begins memorably with his own piano intro to the song’s distinctive melody, underpinned as he begins to sing by Donnie Herron’s understated viola and George Recile’s clipped, military-march style drumming. The voice is warm and resonant, gentle and welcoming.

The first image is of sunset: … an evenin’ haze settlin’ over town/starlight at the edge of the creek … , the words and the singing style creating an idyllic picture. After this, the next lines are perhaps something of a shock, as we are immediately transported into the ‘political’ territory of a kind of ‘Marxist lament’: … the buyin’ power of the proletariat’s gone down/Money’s gettin’ shallow and weak … . Yet Dylan’s delivery remains calm and melodic. The use of the term ‘proletariat’ sounds oddly archaic here, and the sentiment itself strangely nostalgic. We soon learn that the opening image is part of the narrator’s ‘sweet memory’ of a life that has been lost, and so the use of the term seems to be part of that ‘lost world’.

At the end of the verse the narrator, still calm and reflective, comments that … they say low wages are a reality/if we want to compete abroad … . This is already a widely-quoted couplet, which many commentators have used to suggest that the whole song is a protest against globalization. Despite the fact that it chimes with Dylan’s oft-expressed concern for the American working man, as expressed in his 1983 song Union Sundown (which for all its clumsy rhetoric really was a protest against globalization), his 1994 collaboration with Willie Nelson, Heartland, and most famously mouthed in his highly controversial comments at Live Aid in 1985 which led to the annual Farm Aid concerts, little of the rest of Workingman’s Blues #2 actually supports this claim. In fact, the narrator delivers the lines with a sense of acceptance - there is no real anger here.

… continued on The Dylan Daily tomorrow …


All lyrics quoted are used for the purpose of criticism or review.
Workin’ Man’s Blues, by Merle Haggard, Copyright © 1969 Merle Haggard.
Workingman’s Blues #2, by Bob Dylan, Copyright © 2006 Special Rider Music.



See all Chris’s writing at:

www.chrisgregory.org/blog

Monday, December 03, 2007

The Traveling Wilburys Collection revisited

Prompted by a reader’s enquiry - ‘should I buy it as a Xmas present?’ – I revisited The Traveling Wilburys Collection over the weekend. Does it stand up to scruting after all the hype’s died down?

Well, maybe. The first album is worth having. The dvd, especially the documentary, is enjoyable. But the second album (“Volume 3”)is what happens when the muse has flown. The packaging – especially the booklet – is insignificant.

As I told reader Deirdre, I’d probably buy it if I saw for about £7. But that she’s safer buying him any of the other 2007 releases:

* The Other Side Of The Mirror

* Don’t Look Back Deluxe

* DYLAN Collectors Ed.

(But not the I’m Not There soundtrack – Wilbury’s is a better bet than any covers album.)


Gerry Smith