I know it's early but I had to let you know. Dylan is coming out with a Christmas album. Sounds crazy, but here is a sneak preview. The arrangements are old-fashioned and the Andrews Sisters are singing backup vocals--it sounds like it, anyway, though that's probably not possible unless this is some kind of Christmas miracle. And maybe it is. It's like tuning in that old magical radio in The Twilight Zone. It sounds like we're picking up radiowaves that have been bouncing around outer space for years.
Bob Dylan, the greatest songwriter of his generation and possibly all time, loves oldtime music. His work has always been influenced by the past, his recent albums have been heavily indebted to traditional music, and every week he unearths gold nuggets of country, blues, folk, and tin pan alley on his radio show. For years, I've collected Christmas music for holiday mixtapes, and Dylan has done the same here. That's the spirit to take this album--not as anything profound or visionary, not as the next "Visions of Johanna" or "Things Have Changed," but as a stocking stuffer from Secret Santa. It may fill you with cheer, or make you laugh your ass off-- maybe a little of both. At times, it sounds like Howlin' Wolf singing with Bing Crosby's band at the Hotel Astor--but that's kind of cool. Just kick your shoes off, pull up an egg nog, and turn on that old, weird, magical radio.
Where will the money go? To help the UK homeless. Bob Dylan commented, “That the problem of hunger is ultimately solvable means we must each do what we can to help feed those who are suffering and support efforts to find long-term solutions. I’m honoured to partner with the World Food Programme and Crisis in their fight against hunger and homelessness.” More on the story here.
These squares are having a great beach party but soon a giant squid will pull them into the sea and the REAL party can get started! Here are some strange summer songs from off the beaten path.
"Summer Cannibals" by Patti Smith, film by the legendary Robert Frank
"Summertime" by Janis Joplin--Cheap Thrills recording session. Janis never had the band she deserved, but she was a blues goddess.
"Summer Days" by Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden. This worn-out riverboat gambler is as good as he's ever been, and that's saying a lot. His band is killer.
Good morning, America, how are ya? In this jet engine age we look back wistfully to the time of trains with some of the best train songs we could find. Sure, we missed a few great ones (and probably your favorite) but for now here are some songs about the mighty locomotives that criss-crossed our nation in days of yore. All aboard!
"Waiting for a Train" - Jimmie Rodgers
"Driver 8" by REM
"Born on a Train" - Arcade Fire covering Magnetic Fields
"Folsum Prison Blues" - Johnny Cash, live at San Quentin
"Train of Love" by Bob Dylan at Johnny Cash tribute
Levon Helm is still alive and kicking out great music. After a bout with throat cancer in the late 90s, his soulful voice was reduced to a whisper. But he fought his way back and fully recovered. In the past couple years he released two great albums, "Dirt Farmer" and the recent release, "Electric Dirt." His music boils over from the melting pot of the Mississippi Delta and Deep South, and Levon serves up a spicy stew of blues, country, jazz and rock and roll.
He was born in Elaine, Arkansas in 1940 to Nell and Diamond Helm, a cotton farmer. The Helm family played music for entertainment, and they listened to The Grand Ole Opry and Sonny Boy Williamson and His King Biscuit Entertainers regularly on the radio.
Levon, in 1959
Levon was fourteen when he saw Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins do a show at Helena in 1954. Also performing was a young Elvis Presley with Scotty Moore on guitar, and Bill Black on stand-up bass. No drummer. The music was early rockabilly and the audience went wild. Levon saw Elvis again a year later--this time D.J. Fontana was on drums and Bill Black was playing electric bass. Levon couldn't believe the difference, how the added instruments filled out the sound. It was the greatest thing he had ever seen. As a junior in High school he formed a rock and roll band, "The Jungle Bush Beaters." In 1957 he met Ronnie Hawkins, a show biz entertainer with an eye for talent, and formed "The Hawks." They recruited four more musicians, all Canadians, Richard Manuel, Rick Danko, Robbie Robertson and Garth Hudson--all of whom would later form "The Band."
Levon and the Hawks, New York, 1964. From left. Jerry Penfound, Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson and Robbie Robertson.
Bob Dylan was enjoying an unparalleled creative surge that produced Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde in just eighteen months. He needed a back-up band, and he hired The Hawks, who accompanied him on a world tour--Levon left after the first leg in 1965.
After the tour, licking wounds and recovering, Dylan and the band retired to Big Pink, a big pink house in Woodstock, New York, and recorded in the basement. "The Basement Tapes" were nearly mythical, and bootlegs of the unreleased recordings soon circulated among diehard fans, including what may have well been the very first bootleg, "Great White Wonder."
The backing band--now rechristened "The Band"--soon released an excellent album called Music from Big Pink, which featured some of this new music they were playing in the basement, and an original painting by Dylan on the cover.
The album was released when most rock was heavily psychedelic, but this was very different and old-timey, echoing the American past with voices and instruments mixing folk, blues, gospel, R&B, classical, and rock & roll. The record included such soon-to-be classics as "Chest Fever" and "The Weight," and a number of Dylan compositions "I Shall Be Released," "Tears of Rage," and "This Wheel's on Fire."
The next album was a masterpiece. Released in 1969, the eponymously titled TheBand, showcased Robbie Robertson's songwriting skills, which had improved since the first album. The band was even more focused and cohesive. "Up on Cripple Creek" was released as a single (and became the Band's first and only Top 30 release) and other favorites were "Rag Mama Rag," "King Harvest," and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." The world stopped and listened.
The Band made seven albums total, and influenced a wide range of musicians, encouraging people to get back to roots, and inspired the alt.country and Americana movements of today.
After the Band broke up, Levon continued playing music. He released The RCO All Stars in 1977, and reunited with good friend and former Band-member Rick Danko to make music. They eventually reformed the Band with some former members, and played until Richard Manuel's tragic death in 1986. Sadly, Danko himself died in 1999, a day after his 54th birthday.
Levon played on, and even acted in movies--He portrayed Loretta Lynn's father in the Coal Miner's Daughter. He was in The Right Stuff, and The ThreeBurials of Melquiades Estrada.
More recently, Levon conceived The Midnight Ramble Sessions, a series of live performances at LevonHelm Studios in Woodstock. Named for the traveling minstrel shows of his youth, the first Midnight Ramble was held in January, 2004. Since then, people have scrambled to the ramble to hear Levon tell his great stories and perform with a wide variety of musicians in an informal setting.
We're happy Levon Helm is still making such great musicand recommend you buy his latest album, Electric Dirt.
This is the second installment of Bob on Bob--the man in his own words. The first post included clips of early Dylan, these later clips are also pretty amazing. (Link to the earlier post here)
People who think Bob Dylan's best work is behind him haven't been paying attention. This artist keeps evolving. Right now he's on a winning streak that should continue with the forthcoming album, Together Through Life, due April 23rd. If the new record is anything like the single, Beyond Here Lies Nothin' (link below),we can expect a smoldering bluesy joint reminiscent of the classic Chess records of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf.
Dylan performs "Love Sick" at the Grammys when an unexpected idiot jumps onstage to bask in the glow. The man barely fazes Dylan, who has seen it all. This segment was edited strongly for official release. This is the full, unedited version, complete with the "Soy Bomb."
The Interview
Dylan recently spoke with rock critic Bob Flanagan and provided a glimpse into the creative process, the music industry, and his favorite songwriters. Here are a couple excerpts. (Links to the full interview below)
Bill Flanagan: A lot of the acts from your generation seem to be trading on nostalgia. They play the same songs the same way for the last 30 years. Why haven't you ever done that?
Bob Dylan: I couldn't if I tried. Those guys you are talking about all had conspicuous hits. They started out anti-establishment and now they are in charge of the world. Celebratory songs. Music for the grand dinner party. Mainstream stuff that played into the culture on a pervasive level. My stuff is different from those guys. It's more desperate. Daltrey, Townshend, McCartney, the Beach Boys, Elton, Billy Joel. They made perfect records, so they have to play them perfectly ... exactly the way people remember them. My records were never perfect. So there is no point in trying to duplicate them. Anyway, I'm no mainstream artist.
BF: Then what kind of artist are you?
BD: I'm not sure, Byronesque maybe. Look, when I started out, mainstream culture was Sinatra, Perry Como, Andy Williams, Sound of Music. There was no fitting into it then and of course, there's no fitting into it now. Some of my songs have crossed over but they were all done by other singers.
"Cold Irons Bound" on the set of Masked and Anonymous with his loyal band from The Neverending Tour.(full lyrics here)
BF: Who are some of your favorite songwriters?
BD: Buffett I guess. Lightfoot. Warren Zevon. Randy. John Prine. Guy Clark. Those kinds of writers.
BF: What songs do you like of Buffett's?
BD: "Death of an Unpopular Poet." There's another one called "He Went to Paris."
BF: You and Lightfoot go way back.
BD: Oh yeah. Gordo's been around as long as me.
BF: What are your favorite songs of his?
BD: "Shadows," "Sundown," "If You Could Read My Mind." I can't think of any I don't like.
BF: Did you know Zevon?
BD: Not very well.
BF: What did you like about him?
BD: "Lawyers, Guns and Money." "Boom Boom Mancini." Down hard stuff. "Join me in L.A." sort of straddles the line between heartfelt and primeval. His musical patterns are all over the place, probably because he's classically trained. There might be three separate songs within a Zevon song, but they're all effortlessly connected. Zevon was a musician's musician, a tortured one. "Desperado Under the Eaves." It's all in there.
BF: Randy Newman?
BD: Yeah, Randy. What can you say? I like his early songs, "Sail Away," "Burn Down the Cornfield," "Louisiana," where he kept it simple. Bordello songs. I think of him as the Crown Prince, the heir apparent to Jelly Roll Morton. His style is deceiving. He's so laid back that you kind of forget he's saying important things. Randy's sort of tied to a different era like I am.
BF: How about John Prine?
BD: Prine's stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs. I remember when Kris Kristofferson first brought him on the scene. All that stuff about "Sam Stone" the soldier junky daddy and "Donald and Lydia," where people make love from ten miles away. Nobody but Prine could write like that. If I had to pick one song of his, it might be "Lake Marie." I don't remember what album that's on.
(from Flanagan interview, Part 5)
"One Too Many Mornings," live from the Rolling Thunder Tour, 1976. The last day of the tour, playing in the rain, Dylan sings his heart out."I gaze back to the street, the sidewalk and the sign..."
The rest of the Dylan interview by Bill Flanagan can be read in its entirety here: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part4 Part 5 Now, the final installment, Part 6
"Beyond Here Lies Nothin'" from the forthcoming Dylan album:
When I arrived, it was dead-on winter. The cold was brutal and every artery of the city was snowpacked, but I'd started out from the frostbitten North Country, a little corner of the earth where the dark frozen woods and icy roads didn't faze me. I could transcend the limitations. It wasn't money or love that I was looking for. I had a heightened sense of awareness, was set in my ways, impractical and a visionary to boot. My mind was strong like a trap and I didn't need any guarantee of validity. I didn't know a single soul in this dark freezing metropolis but that was all about to change -- and quick.
The Café Wha? was a club on MacDougal Street in the heart of Greenwich Village. The place was a subterranean cavern, liquorless, ill lit, low ceiling, like a wide dining hall with chairs and tables -- opened at noon, closed at four in the morning. Somebody had told me to go there and ask for a singer named Freddy Neil who ran the daytime show at the Wha?
New York City, midwinter, 1961. Whatever I was doing was working out okay and I intended to stay with it, felt like I was closing in on something. I was playing on the regular bill at the Village Gaslight, the premier club on the carnivalesque MacDougal Street. When I began working there, the Gaslight was owned by John Mitchell, a renegade and raconteur, a Brooklynite. I only saw him a few times. He was ornery and combatant, had an exotic looking girlfriend who Jack Kerouac had based a novel on. Mitchell was already legendary. The Village was heavily Italian, and Mitchell hadn’t taken even one step back from the local mafiosos. It was a known fact that he didn’t make payoffs out of principle. The fire marshals, the police and the health inspectors were routinely invading the place. Mitchell, though, had lawyers and he took his battles to city hall and somehow the place stayed open. Mitchell carried a pistol and a knife.
Lou Levy, top man of Leeds Music Publishing company, took me up in a taxi to the Pythian Temple on West 70th Street to show me the pocket sized recording studio where Bill Haley and His Comets had recorded "Rock Around the Clock" -- then down to Jack Dempsey's restaurant on 58th and Broadway, where we sat down in a red leather upholstered booth facing the front window.
Lou introduced me to Jack Dempsey, the great boxer. Jack shook his fist at me.
"You look too light for a heavyweight kid, you'll have to put on a few pounds. You're gonna have to dress a little finer, look a little sharper -- not that you'll need much in the way of clothes when you're in the ring -- don't be afraid of hitting somebody too hard."
"He's not a boxer, Jack, he's a songwriter and we'll be publishing his songs."
"Oh, yeah, well I hope to hear 'em some of these days. Good luck to you, kid."
Outside the wind was blowing, straggling cloud wisps, snow whirling in the red lanterned streets, city types scuffling around, bundled up -- salesmen in rabbit fur earmuffs hawking gimmicks, chestnut vendors, steam rising out of manholes.
My perspective on all that was about to change. The air would soon shoot up in intensity and become more potent. My little shack in the universe was about to expand into some glorious cathedral, at least in songwriting terms. Suze had been working behind the scenes in a musical production at the Theatre de Lys on Christopher Street. It was a presentation of songs written by Bertolt Brecht, the antifascist Marxist German poet-playwright whose works were banned in Germany, and Kurt Weill, whose melodies were like a combination of both opera and jazz. Previously they had had a big hit with a ballad called “Mack the Knife” that Bobby Darin had made popular. You couldn’t call this a play, it was more like a stream of songs by actors who sang. I went there to wait for Suze and was aroused straight away by the raw intensity of the songs . . . “Morning Anthem,” “Wedding Song,” “The World Is Mean,” “Polly’s Song,” “Tango Ballad,” “Ballad of the Easy Life.” Songs with tough language. They were erratic, unrhythmical and herky-jerky-weird visions. The singers were thieves, scavengers or scallywags and they all roared and snarled. The entire world was narrowly confined between four streets. On the small stage, objects were barely discernible-lampposts, tables, stoops, windows, corners of buildings, moon shining through roofed-in courtyards-grim surroundings, creepy sensations. Every song seemed to come from some obscure tradition, seemed to have a pistol in its hip pocket, a club or a brickbat and they came at you in crutches, braces and wheelchairs. They were like folk songs in nature, but unlike folk songs, too, because they were sophisticated.
This is a wild song. Big medicine in the lyrics. Heavy action spread out. Each phrase comes at you from a ten-foot drop, scuttles across the road and then another one comes like a punch on the chin. And then there’s always that ghost chorus about the black ship that steps in, fences it all off and locks it up tighter than a drum.
(excerpts from Chronicles,Vol. 1, by Bob Dylan) to be continued...
ONE MORE THING:
The new Dylan album, Together Through Life, will be released April 28th.Beyond Here Lies Nothin' is the first single, a bluesy track with an old Chess Records feel. In case you missed the free download at bobdylan.com (it was up for one day only. That's right, 24 hours) here is a sneak preview:
Cat Power--Chan Marshall. Cette chanson est extraite de son dernier album Jukebox. Seul morceau original de l'album, "Song to Bobby", raconte l'histoire vraie de sa rencontre avec son idole de toujours, oserais-je dire l'homme de sa vie, Bob Dylan : "Giving you my heart was my plan".
And after Chan Marshall's "Song to Bobby," here's a rare clip of the man himself playing with some old friends. Back in 1966, an unwitting Playboy reporter asked Dylan what made him choose the rock and roll life.
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 my girlfriend Wendy's birthday, so we have a couple favorites in her honor. First up, Madonna Louise Ciccone performs her first hit, a song that empowered young girls everywhere to leave pink bedrooms en masse and cross the borderline. Fortune favors the brave.
Second up, a rare rehearsal clip from The Concert for Bangla Desh with old friends George Harrison and Bob Dylan singing "If Not For You." And you know it's true.
The late Heath Ledger--who died from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs--has been posthumously nominated for Actor in a Supporting Role for his portrayal of the Joker in The Dark Knight, the latest film in the Batman franchise. Ledger stole the show with his evil antics, but no less of a performance was his turn as singer Bob Dylan in the arty, experimental film from 2007, "I'm Not There."
Heath Ledger as the Joker, posthumously nominated for an Oscar
In the Todd Haynes film, six actors portray various sides of the mercurial songwriter, and Ledger plays Robbie Clark, an actor in Greenwich Village struggling with his career and his marriage to Claire (a fictional character based on Sara Dylan, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg).
Like Dylan, the film isn't for everyone--and those seeking formulaic entertainment or a standard bio-pic should look elsewhere--but it brims with excellent performances and a thought-provoking montage of styles that mirror the phases of the shape-shifting singer. Ledger's performance is dark and complex, as you can see from this clip.
Heath Ledger and Charlotte Gainsbourg in "I'm Not There" (2007)
Listen to the song, "I'm Not There," by Bob Dylan, one of the unfinished basement tapes recorded with The Band at Big Pink. Just push the button to play.
William Zantzinger, the rich Maryland tobacco farmer who beat black bar maid Hattie Carroll to death with a cane has just died at the age of 69. According to the New York Times, Zantzinger struck her with a cane because she wasn't serving him drinks fast enough.
The well-connected man got off with a lenient sentence--only six months in prison--and that injustice inspired a young Bob Dylan to write the powerful ballad “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.”
Read the original news story HERE. Warning, contains violence and a racial epithet.
Cross your fingers, but I think we've survived the great snowstorm of 2008. After a couple weeks in the deep freeze, things are starting to thaw. Slowly. Everyone is sick of being snowbound, but we've been lucky to be safe and warm. I don't know what happened at Nickelsville, the tent city for the homeless down the road.
The clip is from 1976. Some people complain that they don't recognize Dylan's songs anymore; he changes them in concert. They've been saying this since he first pulled out of Hibbing one stormy winter. The man changes like the weather. He's never been an obedient jukebox. Listen to this outtake of "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts," and compare it to the more familiar version from "Blood on the Tracks."
Thanksgiving is the perfect time to bring out The Band. In spite of being 4/5ths Canadian, these brilliant musicians created a unique take on Americana, blending old time country, blues, gospel, and rock 'n' roll into a sound that was both timeless and resonant, a Memphis jukebox one moment, a tentshow revival the next, a killer bar band Saturday night, and when the smoke cleared Sunday morning, a motley crew of Civil War deserters playing tunes around a campfire. They told stories. They tended the still. They made great records, back when there was such a thing. They didn't warm to strangers right off, but once you got to know them they were right friendly folks. Now some of them are dead, and the rest are in rocking chairs. Drop by and say hello. Those rocking chairs won't go nowhere.
These clips are from The Last Waltz, a film of their final concert, Thanksgiving Day, 1976.
Starting out as the Hawks with Ronnie Hawkins, and later backing up Bob Dylan to jeering crowds on the 1966 tour (where the folkies were shocked by all the electricity), these scroungy old codgers holed up in Woodstock, New York, like the Dalton Gang. They licked their wounds and smoked their rope and practiced in the basement of a house in West Saugerties they called Big Pink, which would also be the title of their first album. These "basement tapes" were bootlegged, circulated, and discussed into the wee hours. Only a fraction were ever officially released (a double album in 1975) but the word was out; the rest of the rock world may have been plugging in to psychedelic paisley, but these boys were channeling the musical past--mining the ore of what rock critic Greil Marcus would call the "old, weird America."
Appropriately enough, their last official concert was Thanksgiving Day of the bicentennial year, 1976. As these clips show, The Band played their hearts out. Old friends showed up and played, too, including Dylan, Neil Young, Muddy Waters, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, The Staple Singers, Ringo and many others. Martin Scorsese filmed the night and turned it into a documentary called The Last Waltz. As I said, it was Thanksgiving, so along with brilliant musical performances guests were treated to a full turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Dylan brought a ton of salmon. Nobody left hungry.
The Band in "old, weird America"
Here's an added holiday treat--"All You Have to Do is Dream" (take 2), an unreleased "basement tape" with Dylan and the Band at Big Pink, 1967 (just click button):
"Some of these bootleggers, they make pretty good stuff," Dylan sang on Love and Theft.
He was right. Bootleggers have been coming up with some great stuff. To keep up with the demand for unreleased gems, bootleggers have been illegally issuing rarities from the Dylan archives since the very first bootleg, The Great White Wonder, was released on vinyl back in 1969.
GWW was strictly underground, under-the-table, contraband--a treasure trove of unreleased Dylan. This was the first time anyone heard him singing with The Band on such classics as "I Shall Be Released," "Open the Door Richard," "Too Much of Nothing" and "Tears of Rage." The fact that it was a bootleg, well, that was part of it--something about living outside the law, if memory serves me well.
This October 7th, Dylan will be releasing volume eight of his official bootleg series. Tell Tale Signs is comprised of demos, alternate takes, and live performances recorded between 1989 to 2006, the years Dylan gave us Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, Modern Times and Oh Mercy.
Sure, these are outtakes, but don't think this is just a collection of second-hand, picked over stuff--Dylan is famous for not releasing some of his best material (a fact bootleggers are fond of reminding us when justifying their existence). I've heard the album already, and it's brilliant, but don't take my word for it. You can hear it over at NPR, where they will be streaming the album in its entirety until October 7th.
Click HERE to hear an exclusive preview of Tell Tale Signs.
By now, you've probably heard the new Bob Dylan song.
It's actually an outtake from the not so distant past (to be released on the upcoming official "bootleg" series, vol. 8, on October 7th). Still, we like it. The song is good, and the music video is also pretty cool, with indie character actor Harry Dean Stanton roaming the countryside as a purveyor of Dylan bootlegs.
Imagine that.
Anyway, dig this tiny movie--and have a great weekend!
Bob Dylan is still writing brilliant songs, and this is one of them. Dylan fans love to hearken back to days of yore, convinced his best work is well in the past. Geezers mumble about the folk stuff, or Highway 61, or Blonde on Blonde, or Blood on the Tracks. Those were great albums, but things have changed.
Some people hate him for those very songs. The hits. They're too cool, and for them music is about bragging rights--what obscure, rare, impossibly indie act have I discovered that you know nothing about?
The irony is that often the folks who hate Dylan love musicians who have been highly influenced by him. Countless bands cop his style, water him down, steal his lyrics, secretly "discover" him and mine his ore with pick and shovel. People make an entire career out of imitating just one phase of his creative output. Americana, rock, indie, freak-folk, hip hop, and pop all owe him a debt. Toss out the Juno soundtrack and do your homework.
"Things Have Changed" is as good as anything the man has written. Listen to the words.
The three day weekend is here, and in Seattle that means the Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival. To celebrate, here is a clip of a couple old rovers strumming guitars on a hillside in Greece. Just a loose jam between friends. These talented troubadours were probably sipping Ouzo and enjoying the classical view before slipping into the mystic. We're lucky to join them for an old favorite.
Here, a video exclusive, two masters at play, Van Morrison and Bob Dylan.
After the great 1974 comeback tour with the Band, Bob Dylan wanted to create a traveling musical revue that was less a full-force stadium show and more an intimate cabaret built for smaller halls. He'd been hanging out in Greenwich Village like the old days, showing up unexpectedly in the tiny cafes, and he was dreaming of a touring gypsy circus, a commedia del'arte, withpoets and troubadours in costume and face paint. Dylan was getting back.
Dylan with Patti Smith in the Village, 1975
That dream became the legendary Rolling Thunder Revue. The revue played in small Northeast venues in 1975 without much notice, just hit-and-run announcements the day of the show. A second leg of the tour was added in 1976, culminating in the "Hard Rain" film that aired on TV, believe it or not, that bi-centennial year. I saw the revue in Providence, Rhode Island, and it was probably the best concert I've ever seen. A year later, and a lifetime away, I saw the TV show in a huge, rambling hippie commune in Kettle Falls, Washington. The place was a 1970s hippie tableaux jammed with people, kids, dogs...there were tables full of food, an people passed wine bottles and joints, lots of laughter, but everyone froze and payed attention when Dylan strolled onstage that magical hour.
At the time of the tour, the brilliant "Blood on the Tracks" was his most recent album, and Dylan was in fine form. He breathed a fiery breath into old favorites as well as new music nobody had ever heard, strange mystical songs that would later appear on "Desire." These clips provide proof to the doubters, and were filmed of the tour for the movie, "Renaldo and Clara."
"And as the evidence piled up, as the rock was pushed back to reveal the worms, many retreated into that past that never was, the place of balcony dreams in Loew's Met, fair women and honorable men, where we browned ourselves in the Creamsicle summers, only faintly hearing the young men march to the troopships, while Jo Stafford gladly promised her fidelity. Poor America. Tossed on a pilgrim tide. Land where the poets died.
Except for Dylan.
He had remained, in front of us, or writing from the north country, and remained true. He was not the only one, of course; he is not the only one now. But of all the poets, Dylan is the one who has most clearly taken the rolled sea and put it in a glass."
Pete Hamill, New York 1974, from the original liner notes to Blood on the Tracks
Here's the story a super group that almost didn't happen. Fortunately, it did. George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne formed a loose old-timey band. George suggested they call themselves "The Trembling Wilburys." That was vetoed.
It started as a meal between Harrison, Orbison, and Lynne, and the guys went to Dylan's home studio in Malibu. George had left his guitar at Tom Petty's place, so Tom got involved. The plan was to make a B-side to Harrison's upcoming single, but the group worked so well together they decided to make an album. It went on to become a huge success and was nominated for Album of the Year.
The Wilbury's Story, Part 2
Sadly, it lost to Faith, by George Michael. Another huge Grammy blunder. "Don't Worry Be Happy" was awarded Song of the Year, a perfect anthem for the Reagan Era. While the Gala of Greed continued, the Wilburys hung out at the edge of town like scruffy outlaws, ready to rob the bank when the revelers finally drank themselves to sleep.
More on the name: According to Professor "Bobby" Sinfield, the name originates "from the various Wilbury Fairs which traveled Europe in Medieval times, titillating the populace with contemporary ballads, or were they rather derived from, “YE TRAVELING WILBURYS”, who were popular locksmiths during the Crusades and used to pick or unlock the jammed chastity belts"
Dylan is a busy man. When not writing and performing songs tirelessly, deejaying a popular radio show, or writing his award-winning memoirs, he's busy drawing pictures.
After a successful art show in Germany last year, the songwriter has an art show opening at the Halcyon Gallery in London next week, featuring a collection of over 200 pictures, mostly color variations on the artwork published in "Drawn Blank."
In a rare new interview in the London Times Dylan discussed his art, his memoirs, and Barack Obama.
“Well, you know right now America is in a state of upheaval,” he says. “Poverty is demoralizing. You can't expect people to have the virtue of purity when they are poor. But we've got this guy out there now who is redefining the nature of politics from the ground up...Barack Obama. He's redefining what a politician is, so we'll have to see how things play out. Am I hopeful? Yes, I'm hopeful that things might change. Some things are going to have to.” He offers a parting handshake. “You should always take the best from the past, leave the worst back there and go forward into the future,” he notes as the door closes between us."
I know it's early but I had to let you know. Dylan is coming out with a Christmas album. Sounds crazy, but here is a sneak preview. The arrangements are old-fashioned and the Andrews Sisters are singing backup vocals--it sounds like it, anyway, though that's probably not possible unless this is some kind of Christmas miracle. And maybe it is. It's like tuning in that old magical radio in The Twilight Zone. It sounds like we're picking up radiowaves that have been bouncing around outer space for years.
