I'm enough of a sucker to have already purchased the new album (received today) and the new film. Steve Jobs too, probably, as a condition of this.
The Contrarian of a Generation, Revisited
A new album and film both focus on Bob Dylan's metamorphosis from Midwestern guitar strummer to Greenwich Village folk idol to electric rocker.
Has there ever been a rock star as contrary as Bob Dylan? When taken for a folk singer, interpreting traditional songs, he started to write his own. When taken for a topical songwriter who would dutifully put his music behind party-line messages, and praised as the spokesman for a generation, he became an ambiguous, visionary poet instead. And when taken for an acoustic-guitar troubadour who was supposed to cling to old, virtuous rural sounds, he plugged in his guitar, hired a band and sneered oracular electric blues.That's the story told in two overlapping projects: the two-CD set “No Direction Home: The Soundtrack - The Bootleg Series Vol. 7” (Columbia/Legacy), to be released today, and “No Direction Home,” a documentary directed by Martin Scorsese that will be released as two DVD's on Sept. 20 and broadcast on the PBS series “American Masters” on Sept. 26 and 27. (Despite the soundtrack designation on the CD's, versions of some songs differ between album and film.)
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