Tag: Bob_Dylan

Bob Dylan signs six-book deal

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Wild mercury

Bob Dylan has signed a deal to write six more books for his publisher Simon & Schuster, including two works of autobiography to follow Chronicles: Volume One, the highly-praised memoir of his early years published in 2004.

The prospect of further Dylan memoirs will create great anticipation even though publication date remains tantalisingly unconfirmed. Fans have been agog since Simon & Schuster revealed in 2008 that Dylan had begun work on the next book.

Waterstone’s spokesperson Jon Howells said it was “hugely exciting for any Bob Dylan fan and for any aficionado of rock history” to hear that two more books of memoir were definitely on their way. “Chronicles set a new standard in what people expected from a rock’n’roll autobiography, and was a revelation,” he said. “No one expected him to be so open, and the writing was completely in his voice, and essential reading. Another volume is great, two more is fabulous news.”

(click to continue reading Bob Dylan signs six-book deal | Books | guardian.co.uk.)

 


“Chronicles: Volume One” (Bob Dylan)

Chronicles Volume One was surprisingly good

and of course, Bob is Bob:

Dylan’s publisher has suffered a hiccup in obtaining a follow-up. Hannah Corbett, a spokeswoman for S&S, said the initial arrangement with Dylan had been made on “shifting sands”, with the singer-songwriter “very hard to pin down” on how many books he wanted to write.

Guess Things Happen That Way

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“His Sun Years” (Johnny Cash)

Hello, I’m (downloading) Johnny Cash1

The lucky recipient of a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card (and a whole lot of press) is 71-year-old Louie Sulcer of Woodstock, Georgia —a retired real estate agent, onetime Navy radar operator, and grandfather of nine who just wanted Johnny Cash’s 1958 single “Guess Things Happen That Way” for his new Nano, a birthday gift from his children. And he bought it on a PC: “I do not own a Mac, no,” he chuckles. “I knew somebody was going to ask me that question.”

Sulcer has spent the last day fielding calls from, among others, Apple head Steve Jobs (“I thought it was my son, he’s always a joker. I kept saying, ‘Come on, Kevin, I know it’s you!”) and Cash’s daughter Rosanne (“she had her husband, who is her guitarist, play the song to me over the phone. That was real nice.”).

He has been a devoted Johnny Cash fan for most of his life, he says: “I went to Georgia Tech on a football scholarship, broke just about every bone in my body. All those boys on the team, we just loved country music… My whole life, I had never understood why people go see movies twice, but I’ve seen [Cash biopic] Walk the Line four times. My kids finally bought me the DVD. And I was pretty sure I had all of his music, but I was just checking iTunes, listening to those little 20 or 30 second clips, and I found this one. It has some good pickin’ in it!”

[Click to continue reading EW talks to the Georgia grandfather who bought the 10 billionth song on itunes: ‘I’ve never won anything!’ | EW.com]

A sweet story, really. The song itself is pretty typical for a Sun Records Johnny Cash song; also there’s a version floating around the intertubes that is a duet with Bob Dylan, circa Nashville Skyline.

from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Jobs congratulated him, thanked him for using Apple products and chatted a bit.

“He was real nice,” Sulcer said. “I told him I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed iTunes and the iPod. I really enjoy country music.

“He asked me if I played the guitar, and I said, ‘Oh my goodness. That is my lifelong frustration.’ “

Sulcer has been trying to learn the picking style of Luther Perkins, Cash’s guitarist, but he has not had much luck.

“[Jobs] said he had been messing around a little with [the guitar], too,” Sulcer said.

…

Later Thursday, after his doctor appointment, Sulcer was expecting calls from near and far. Apple public relations people have been calling him to ask whether he would consent to an interview with Rolling Stone, the rock magazine, and other publications.

“I said, ‘Rolling Stone is going to be so disappointed with this old man.’ “

He did get a call he found a little more special. “Rosanne Cash also called this morning to thank me for listening to Johnny Cash,” Sulcer said. She told Sulcer her father would have turned 78 on Friday. Then she had one more surprise for him: Her husband, musician John Leventhal, played the song he bought over the phone for him.

[Click to continue reading Woodstock man wins $10,000 iTunes contest | ajc.com]

Too funny

Footnotes:
  1. famous opening line of his live At Folsom Prison LP, prior to singing Folsom Prison Blues – shot a man in Reno just to see him die, wild cheers from the inmates, you remember [↩]

Barry Goldberg and The Only Album Bob Dylan Ever Produced

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“Barry Goldberg” (Barry Goldberg)

Michael Simmons reports on a bit of Bob Dylan related obscurity, namely that Barry Goldberg (songwriter of such hits as Devil With A Blue Dress and I’ve Got To Use My Imagination as well as being half of


Two Jew’s Blues

along with Michael Bloomfield) has reissued his mid-70s album with the original vocals restored.

Anyway, this rock ‘n’ roll Zelig also pounded the ivories behind Bob at Newport ’65 when Zimmy stuck his middle finger in an electric socket and his hair frizzed out, after which every one else began letting their hair frizz out (or something like that). When you’ve shared a stage with someone in front of a hostile audience, it’s like sharing a trench. They stayed in touch and jammed together with the Band and Sir Doug Sahm and, of course, Bloomfield. In ’73, Goldberg had a heap of good songs and was gonna record a single at RCA Records. His pal Bob sez “No no Barry, let me take ’em to Jerry Wexler,” the legendary R&B producer at Atlantic Records. Wex agrees to sign him and take Goldberg into the studio but says Bob’s gotta co-produce the sessions with him.

When Bob Dylan is handed to you on a silver platter as producer (co or udderwise), you say yes. With relish. Especially when you’re the only artist he’s ever offered his services to in this role (and ever will).

So everybody descends on Muscle Shoals, Alabama — Barry and wife/co-writer Gail and Dylan and Wex. Waiting for them are the hotshot Southern studio cats with whom one Duane Allman had paid his dues before the Brothers and who’d grooved on Two Jew’s Blues. Eddie Hinton, Jimmy Johnson, Pete Carr, David Hood, Roger Hawkins and friends. If you’ve ever dug an Aretha Franklin tune from the late ’60s, you’ve heard these aces of soulfulness. They tracked Barry’s Gladys Knight tune and one Rod Stewart covered called “It’s Not the Spotlight” and a bunch of others. “…Spotlight” and “Minstrel Show” were damn good songs about being a working musician. “Orange County Bus” is about the kind of legal trouble hippie musicians experienced all too frequently in them days. It’s a song of its time, as is “Dusty Country,” a paean to the earthy rural ideal sporting a lovely dobro. Even the strings on “She Was Such A Lady” and “…Spotlight” sound natural — no cold synthesizers that were beginning to be popular in that period. A solid album. Comfortable. Real. What they now call Americana.

[Click to continue reading Michael Simmons: The Only Album “Bob Dylan” Ever Produced ]

Sounds like perfect Rock snob fodder…

Rockers of Ages

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I can’t say the Rolling Thunder era is my most favorite of Dylan eras, but this is humorous nonetheless.

Rolling Thunder Logbook
“Rolling Thunder Logbook” (Sam Shepard)

Rocks of Ages – New York Times … No one living has a better appreciation for the sneaky and unnerving power of American myth than Bob Dylan. In the fall of 1975, the United States was gripped by what the playwright Sam Shepard, who had been hired to work on a film about the tour, called “Bicentennial madness.” With 1976 fast approaching, America was obsessed as never before with its origins, and as Mr. Dylan knew perfectly well, there was no better place to launch his tour than the mythic landing ground of the Pilgrims. Mr. Shepard did not end up contributing much to the film, but he did publish a log chronicling the tour’s first six weeks. Included in the book is a bizarre photo showing Mr. Dylan and several fellow musicians peering over the side of the Mayflower II, a reproduction of a 17th-century vessel berthed at Plimoth Plantation. A stiff breeze is blowing, and two of the party are desperately hanging on to the brims of their cowboy hats as the front man of the Byrds, Roger McGuinn, speaks on a huge, ’70s-style portable phone. But perhaps the weirdest and wackiest portion of Mr. Shepard’s log describes how Mr. Dylan and his pals recreated the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. As the poet Allen Ginsberg sat beside the iron fence that surrounds the rock, chanting and chiming his set of Tibetan bells, Mr. Dylan haphazardly piloted a dinghy to the Plymouth shore.

Nate Philbrick’s essay continues
The book is a fairly quick, amusing read about what a major tour with rock stars is like, if you are Sam Shepard.

One too many mornings

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And a thousand miles behind.

As you’ve probably already heard, Bob Dylan was recently picked up by a young police officer who had no idea who Bob Dylan was, and found his story of playing a concert later with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp implausible, at best.

Exit, Zimmerman
The police officer noted that the gentleman looked nothing like the Bob Dylan she had seen photos of, like this iconic shot from his Wild Mercury days…

Instead he looked more like this:

Dylan 2006.jpg
[Photo by Rich Corzatt]

To police in a New Jersey seaside town, the rock legend Bob Dylan was merely an eccentric pensioner wandering the streets in the pouring rain. According to Dylan himself, he was just “out for a walk”. But now there is growing speculation that when the star was recently questioned by the police, he may have been in search of Bruce Springsteen’s old house, where he wrote the classic Born to Run.

Probing musicians’ backgrounds who influenced the world of rock in the 1960s and 1970s is a hobby for Dylan. Last November he turned up unannounced at a Winnipeg house where the Canadian rock star Neil Young grew up. Kiernan and Patti Regan came home from shopping to find him waiting on their doorstep and invited him in.

Then, in May, Dylan paid a £16 entrance fee and mingled anonymously with tourists at the childhood home of John Lennon in Woolton, Liverpool.

…

The location where he was stopped was close to the house where Springsteen wrote his hits Born to Run and Thunder Road three decades ago. Could he have been on the way to a visit?

[Click to continue reading Rambling Bob Dylan raises police suspicions – The Guardian]

Funny. Who knows, if I toured as frequently and consistently as Bob Dylan, I might wander around strange towns too.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

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“Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” (Bob Dylan)


“Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Two-Disc Special Edition)” (Sam Peckinpah)

Finally got a chance to see this film a year or so ago. Watchable, not spectacular. The story behind the movie sounds more interesting. [Netflix / Wikipedia / IMDb

When Bob Dylan learned that Rudy Wurlitzer was penning a script focusing on the Bonney-Garrett legend, he tracked the writer down and requested a meeting.

“The script was already written when Bob came to see me in my apartment on the Lower East Side of New York,” Wurlitzer recalled earlier this month from his getaway home, a cabin in his beloved Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. “He said that he had always related to Billy the Kid as if he was some kind of reincarnation; it was clear that he was obsessed with the Billy the Kid myth,” a notion that was validated 34 years later in Todd Haynes’ multi-persona Dylan movie biography I’m Not There (2007). In the film Richard Gere assumes the Dylan shape-shifting persona of Billy, a bespectacled, enigmatic outlaw.

Initially, Wurlitzer suspected that the elusive singer wanted to contribute an original tune to the score of the film but Dylan had other plans – he wanted to be in the movie, despite having no acting experience whatsoever.

Wurlitzer continues: “I called the producer (Gordon Carroll) who was thrilled that Bob wanted to be in the movie and then I wrote the part for Bob off the cuff in New York. We flew down to Durango, Mexico, to see Peckinpah – who had no idea what was up – and we found him in his house, drunk and half-naked, shooting at an image of himself in the mirror. When I told him I had written a part for Bob Dylan and ‘here he is’, Peckinpah turned and after a long pause, said to Bob, ‘I’m a big Roger Miller fan myself’.”

From that moment on, the author remembers, “Dylan followed Sam around like he was one of the last real outlaws, which, who knows, he probably was, at least in my partial experience.”

[Click to continue reading Rudy Wurlitzer, Bob Dylan, Bloody Sam, and the Jornado del Muerto < Columns | PopMatters]

Making the film was a long, drawn out process:

In a 1982 feature for Rocky Mountain Magazine titled Last of the Desperadoes: Dueling with Sam Peckinpah, journalist and Elle magazine advice columnist (Ask E. Jean) E. Jean Carroll summed up the experience in a colorful and breathless single adrenaline-rushed paragraph that reads like a passage from a later Peckinpah film, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia:
Peckinpah wants to shoot in New Mexico for authenticity. Metro wants Mexico to cut costs. He loses. Peckinpah wants a Panavision repairman in Durango, Mexico, to fix the cameras. The studio says nothing doing. The first footage is sent to L.A. to be processed. The lab calls Peckinpah. Says the film’s out of focus. Panic in Durango.

Downtime. The camera is fixed and the paranoia sets in. The actors get sick. The crew gets sick. Peckinpah is puking every day. They fall behind schedule. James Aubrey, president of MGM, wants to save time and forbids Peckinpah to shoot a raft scene. Peckinpah shoots it. The scenarist, Rudy Wurlitzer, starts complaining. Says Peckinpah is rewriting the picture with the help of his old TV scripts. Jerry Fielding, Peckinpah’s music composer can’t work with Bob Dylan and quits.

Dylan’s unhappy. Kris Kristofferson (the Kid) says Rudy’s dialogue is corny. Rita Coolidge (Maria, the Kid’s lover) says all that remains of her role thanks to MGM is that of “a groupie.” James Coburn (Garrett) says Peckinpah is a creative paranoid who generates tension to give everyone the same experience to feed on during the film. A fight breaks out one Saturday night.

Two guys. One is on the phone ordering a couple of gunmen to Durango. Wants the other guy killed for threatening Peckinpah’s life. Whitey Hughes, Peckinpah’s stunt man, says they always have a good time, but on this film they aren’t having a good time. The hit is canceled at Peckinpah’s insistence. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is brought in 20 days over schedule and $1.5 million over budget.

MGM’s building a hotel in Vegas and needs cash. The studio moves the release date up and gives Peckinpah only two and a half months to edit. On the sly MGM duplicates the work print and employs another cutter. Peckinpah’s version runs between 122 and 126 minutes. The studio’s runs 106. The producer, Gordon Carroll, negotiates day and night. Gets nothing restored. The picture’s released. Peckinpah sues for $1.5 million. Orders all the cuts put back or his name taken off. Nada. Nada. Nada.

[Click to continue reading Rudy Wurlitzer, Bob Dylan, Bloody Sam, and the Jornado del Muerto < Columns | PopMatters]

And of course, the Bob Dylan song, Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door becomes a big hit, and is oft covered by others, including Dylan1. Now that I think about it, I saw the original studio version of Pat Garrett, not the so-called Special Edition. Maybe I’ll watch it again, sometime.

The soundtrack was also haphazardly recorded:

As Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid neared completion, Dylan held a recording session on January 20 at Columbia’s recording studio in Mexico City. Filming had been so difficult, both of the film’s stars and Wurlitzer accompanied Dylan out of Durango. Wurlitzer said at the time, “Sam knows he’s losing to Dylan…but I don’t care, man. I’ve got to get away.”

Backed by local Mexican musicians and members of Kris Kristofferson’s band, Dylan had difficulty recording a satisfactory take of “Billy.” Eventually, he began paring down the arrangement, and by the last take, he was backed only by bassist Terry Paul. This final take was used for the film and later included on the soundtrack album as “Billy 4.” A brief instrumental, “Billy Surrenders,” would also be featured in the film. The session would continue until 4 a.m., but it would not produce anything else that would be considered usable.

Meanwhile, Peckinpah hired Jerry Fielding to advise Dylan on his work. Fielding was experienced in film scoring, but he held very conservative views regarding popular music. Dylan was fully aware of Fielding’s opinions regarding his work (“a lot of nonsense which is strictly for teenyboppers”), but he did not resist Fielding’s recommendations on how to score the film.

On Fielding’s advice, Dylan sang “a relevant verse” of the “Billy” ballad “as it fit the story at [four] separate points throughout the picture.” Fielding had also heard Dylan’s new composition, “Goodbye Holly,” which was written for an important scene involving the character, Holly. Fielding recommended dropping this song and writing a new one for a scene involving the death of Sheriff Baker.

“I set up two dubbing sessions,” recalls Fielding. “Dylan had this song [‘Billy’] he’d written for which he had a limitless number of verses that he would sing in random order…So I had to tape Dylan’s song, because he had nothing written down, and have it transcribed…At the same time I asked that he write at least one other piece of music because you cannot possibly hope to deal with an entire picture on the basis of that one ballad. So finally he brought to the dubbing session another piece of music – ‘Knock-Knock-Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.’ Everybody loved it. It was shit. That was the end for me.”

Dylan recorded the final version of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” at a session in February, this time on Warner Bros. Records’ soundstage in Burbank, California. “It was very early in the morning,” recalls drummer Jim Keltner. “I think the session was 10 a.m. and again it all fell into place…There weren’t any overdubs on that, the singers were singing live, little pump organ, Roger McGuinn I think played [guitar]. This was for a particular scene in the movie when Slim Pickens is dying and that’s the first time I ever cried while I played. It was the combination of the words, Bob’s voice, the actual music itself, the changes, and seeing the screen…In those days you were on a big soundstage, and you had this massive screen that you can see on the wall, [with] the scene…running when you’re playing. I cried through that whole take.”

The sessions at Burbank lasted several days. Though they were much more relaxed and amiable than the Mexico City session, the process was still irritating to Dylan. At one point, he told producer Gordon Carroll that “this is the last time I work for anyone in a movie on the music. I’ll stick to acting.” Though Dylan would produce his own films and later contribute songs to other soundtracks, he would never take sole responsibility for an entire soundtrack again.[Click to continue reading Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (album) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

Though of course, Dylan won an Oscar decades later for Things Have Changed. [YouTube of his acceptance speech]

Footnotes:
  1. when Dylan sings out of his vast songbook, he usually “covers” himself, i.e., makes new interpretations of the original song. Sometimes similar, more often radically different [↩]

Reading Around on April 6th through April 8th

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A few interesting links collected April 6th through April 8th:

  • Attribution and Affiliation on All Things Digital – Waxy.org – ” Also, where the source of the article is acknowledged, there’s no corresponding link to the page/URI to which it refers (something I’d regard as a convention that’s at least a decade old now). “

  • Roger Ebert’s Journal: Roger Ebert: April 2009 Archives – awesome remembrance of the long-ago vanished world of print journalism. “One of my editors at the Sun-Times once asked me, “Roger, is it true that they used to let reporters smoke at their desks?” This wasn’t asked yesterday; it must have been ten years ago. I realized then, although I’m only writing about it now, that a lifestyle had disappeared. “
  • Audio: Bob Dylan on Barack Obama, Ulysses Grant and American Civil War ghosts – Bill Flanagan: In that song Chicago After Dark were you thinking about the new President?Bob Dylan: Not really. It’s more about State Street and the wind off Lake Michigan and how sometimes we know people and we are no longer what we used to be to them. I was trying to go with some old time feeling that I had.

Bob on Obama

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“Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance” (Barack Obama)

Bob liked Barack Obama’s book enough to support him in 2008.

Bill Flanagan: In that song Chicago After Dark were you thinking about the new President?

Bob Dylan: Not really. It’s more about State Street and the wind off Lake Michigan and how sometimes we know people and we are no longer what we used to be to them. I was trying to go with some old time feeling that I had.

BF: You liked Barack Obama early on. Why was that?

BD: I’d read his book and it intrigued me.

BF: Audacity of Hope?

BD: No it was called Dreams of My Father.

BF: What struck you about him?

BD: Well, a number of things. He’s got an interesting background. He’s like a fictional character, but he’s real. First off, his mother was a Kansas girl. Never lived in Kansas though, but with deep roots. You know, like Kansas bloody Kansas. John Brown the insurrectionist. Jesse James and Quantrill. Bushwhackers, Guerillas. Wizard of Oz Kansas. I think Barack has Jefferson Davis back there in his ancestry someplace. And then his father. An African intellectual. Bantu, Masai, Griot type heritage – cattle raiders, lion killers. I mean it’s just so incongruous that these two people would meet and fall in love. You kind of get past that though. And then you’re into his story. Like an odyssey except in reverse.

BF: In what way?

BD: First of all, Barack is born in Hawaii. Most of us think of Hawaii as paradise – so I guess you could say that he was born in paradise.

BF: And he was thrown out of the garden.

BD: Not exactly. His mom married some other guy named Lolo and then took Barack to Indonesia to live. Barack went to both a Muslim school and a Catholic school. His mom used to get up at 4:00 in the morning and teach him book lessons three hours before he even went to school. And then she would go to work. That tells you the type of woman she was. That’s just in the beginning of the story.

BF: What else did you find compelling about him?

BD: Well, mainly his take on things. His writing style hits you on more than one level. It makes you feel and think at the same time and that is hard to do. He says profoundly outrageous things. He’s looking at a shrunken head inside of a glass case in some museum with a bunch of other people and he’s wondering if any of these people realize that they could be looking at one of their ancestors.

[Click to continue reading Bob Dylan on Barack Obama, Ulysses Grant and American Civil War ghosts ]

One of these days I’ll read the President’s books.

Jimi Hendrix reality TV footage to be released by his estate

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“The Jimi Hendrix Experience” (The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Jimi Hendrix)

I’d watch that, if it isn’t horrible.

Candid, “reality TV”-style footage of Jimi Hendrix at home, backstage and “hanging out” will soon be released, according to the late musician’s sister.

The footage dates from 1969, when a camera crew followed Hendrix for a month, catching him both on and off stage. The Hendrix estate will release the footage in a DVD later this year, as part of a new deal with Universal Music Publishing Group.

[Click to continue reading Jimi Hendrix ‘reality TV’ footage to be released by his estate | Music | guardian.co.uk ]

and I wonder why the Hendrix estate is blocking the making of a bio-pic? Are they working on their own? or what?

Experience Hendrix have “10 more years of Hendrix music” in their archives, according to Janie. “Currently I am in the studio transferring tapes of Band of Gypsys performances that have never been released before,” she said, referring to Hendrix’s final band. The company plans to release at least two albums this year, and a Jimi Hendrix Experience concert DVD of the band’s Royal Albert Hall gig in February 1969.

The Hendrix estate has continued to block attempts to make a Jimi Hendrix biopic, most recently refusing to license any music to a proposed film starring Outkast’s Andre 3000.


“Electric Ladyland (w/dvd)” (Jimi Hendrix)

plus there is this:

Fourteen acoustic demo songs by Hendrix, recorded in 1968 and traded to a neighbour in exchange for milk and sugar, are to be auctioned in April. The battered, coffee-stained green box contains 1,800ft of quarter-inch tape, from when Hendrix was working on his third album, Electric Ladyland.

The songs mostly feature Hendrix playing solo acoustic guitar. Though he covers Dylan, he plays Tears of Rage and not the now-classic All Along the Watchtower, which appeared on Electric Ladyland. A few tracks include an unnamed harmonica player.

Hendrix gave the tape to Carl Niekirk, who owned a photography studio beneath the rocker’s Brook Street, London flat. “It was a constant stream of people coming and going and partying,” Niekirk told the Independent. As the flat and studio shared an entrance, the photographer would often have to let in Hendrix or his guests – including George Harrison.

One day, Hendrix asked Niekirk if he could borrow some sugar. When the photographer took it up, the rock star gave him the tape. “Because I asked him, he just gave it to me,” Niekirk said. “As simple as that.”

[From Jimi Hendrix’s acoustic Electric Ladyland demo tape to be auctioned | Music | guardian.co.uk ]

which took decades of legal wrangling before it could be released

New Bob Dylan Record Imminent

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“Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8 (Deluxe)” (Bob Dylan)

Bob Dylan -Together Through Life album cover

New Bob Dylan record imminent, untitled as of yet1

I’m listening to Billy Joe Shaver/And I’m reading James Joyce/Some people tell me I got the blood of the land in my voice, Bob Dylan sings in a leathery growl, capturing the essence of his forthcoming studio album — raw-country love songs, sly wordplay and the wounded state of the nation — in “I Feel a Change Coming On,” one of the record’s 10 new originals.

Set for late April, the as-yet-untitled album arrives a few months after Dylan’s outtakes collection Tell Tale Signs, and it “came as a surprise,” says a source close to Dylan’s camp. Last year, filmmaker Olivier Dahan, who directed the 2007 Edith Piaf biopic, La Vie en Rose, approached Dylan about writing a song for his next feature. Dylan responded with “Life Is Hard,” a bleak ballad with mandolin, pedal steel and him singing in a dark, clear voice, “The evening winds are still /I’ve lost the way and will.” (The song appears in the film My Own Love Song, starring Renée Zellweger.)

[Click for more details about Dylan Records Surprise ‘Modern Times’ Follow-up : Rolling Stone]

I’m sure every music critic will rave about the album soon enough, regardless if it is any good or not. And I’m sure I’ll buy it as soon as it is available, regardless if the album is a spicy Texas border-town musical pozole like a second coming of Doug Sahm or just wheezy accordion tunes played by somnambulists.


“Modern Times (Special Limited Edition)” (Bob Dylan)

His Bobness says the album will be “in the spirit” of classic Chess and Sun Records, and different than Modern Times:

The new record’s very different from Modern Times which was a number one hit. It seems like every time you have a big hit, the next time out you change things around. Why don’t you try to milk it a little bit?

I think we milked it all we could on that last record and then some. We squeezed the cow dry. All the Modern Times songs were written and performed in the widest range possible so they had a little bit of everything. These new songs have more of a romantic edge.

How so?

These songs don’t need to cover the same ground. The songs on Modern Times songs brought my repertoire up to date, and the light was directed in a certain way. You have to have somebody in mind as an audience otherwise there’s no point.

What do you mean by that?

There didn’t seem to be any general consensus among my listeners. Some people preferred my first period songs. Some, the second. Some, the Christian period. Some, the post Colombian. Some, the Pre-Raphaelite. Some people prefer my songs from the nineties. I see that my audience now doesn’t particular care what period the songs are from. They feel style and substance in a more visceral way and let it go at that. Images don’t hang anybody up. Like if there’s an astrologer with a criminal record in one of my songs it’s not going to make anybody wonder if the human race is doomed. Images are taken at face value and it kind of freed me up.

Footnotes:
  1. update: according to bobdylan.com, might be called, “Together Through Life” Still seems a bit cryptic, which translates as – might have a name change [↩]

Reading Around on February 20th

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Some additional reading February 20th from 09:50 to 18:29:

  • Reviews: Companies Accuse Yelp Of Review Extortion, Yelp Says No Way – Some San Francisco companies have accused the review website Yelp of manipulating reviews, either in exchange for buying advertising or as punishment for refusing. Yelp flat out denies the charges. They say that the posting and removal of reviews are determined solely by an algorithm and that their sales staff has no access to the reviews. But in this detailed article published this week in the East Bay Express, several restaurants cite phone calls and emails that they say indicates otherwise.

  • 50 Greatest Guitar Albums – Guitar World – Highway 61 Revisited introduced Bloomfield…his next major recording, 1966’s East-West with the Butterfield Blues Band, … The tune “East-West,” a 13-minute exploratory fusion of blues and Indian modality that features Bloomfield’s and Bishop’s guitars, flipped the switch for long-form rock improvisation. His shimmering slide licks and shrieking, treble-toned lead on “Walking Shoes,” akin to Hubert Sumlin’s playing on Howlin’ Wolf classics like “Killing Floor,” are ghostly, needling, vicious and patently unforgettable. On the band’s showcase, “Work Song,” Bloomfield’s melodies climb through scales in a manner closer to free-jazz saxophonist John Coltrane than to B.B. King, balancing chromatic ascents and descents with radically slurred bends and off-the-beat accents. And Bloomfield’s linear single-note playing on “I Got a Mind to Give Up Living,” which acknowledges his debt to King with wrist-shaking vibrato, captures the soulful essence of simmering slow blues.
  • Media Matters – Austin American Stateman , unlike AP, others, notes Heartland Institute’s energy industry ties – Well, yesterday the Austin American Statesman came out with a story making reference to Heartland and what did they do?: He is “regarded with reverence,” said Dan Miller, a publisher at the Heartland Institute, which puts out a newsletter asserting no scientific consensus on global warming and gets money from energy corporations. […] Climate scientists, however, hold that carbon dioxide emissions have a significant effect on a changing climate. A 2007 climate change study by an international group of scientists found that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal” and said with “very high confidence” that the net impact of “human activities since 1750 has been one of warming.”Atmospheric and climate scientists at UT and Texas A&M University have said that temperatures will rise in Texas, coastal communities are at risk from rising sea levels in the Gulf, and weather conditions are likely to include more severe droughts and flooding.

Philip Dickian Guitar relics

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Dylan memorobilia Hard Rock
a vintage Bob Dylan guitar from his pre-electric days

Seems a bit gimmicky to me, and eerily familiar to multiple Philip K Dick plot points – creating fake industrial age artifacts for profit. Does spending an extra $12,000 on a beat-up guitar make it sound any better? No, not in the slightest. I could understand emulating custom electronics (changing the pickups, frets or whatever) to get a sound that a favorite guitarist might make, but mirroring Jimmy Page’s beat up guitar scars seems like a waste of money.

The Easy Way To Hard Rock: ‘Distressed’ Guitars – WSJ.com:
CORONA, Calif. — At the Fender guitar factory here recently, Mike Eldred carefully laid the freshly painted body of a baby blue Stratocaster on a workbench. He then proceeded to scar the new instrument’s delicate lacquer surface using a menacing leather strap adorned with belt buckles, nuts and other hardware.

Normally, even one of the resulting scratches or dings on a brand-new instrument would make a guitar enthusiast cringe. But in the hands of Mr. Eldred, they are the first steps in the process of creating a “relic” guitar — a brand new instrument that has been deliberately aged to simulate decades’ worth of rock-and-roll wear and tear.
… “I always use the pre-faded blue jean analogy,” says Tom Murphy, whose Guitar Preservation Inc. does antiquing work for Fender’s main competitor, the Gibson Guitar Corp. “We know what that’s all about: Why wait? Just buy ’em like that.”

Some relics are so painstakingly aged that the end result is scratch-for-scratch copies of legendary guitars owned by real rock stars. This even appeals to the rock stars themselves, who have put in decades of sweat equity to create the real thing. As their prized vintage instruments have become increasingly valuable and fragile, some have begun using replicas of their famous guitars, especially on long tours.

Mr. Murphy, a former professional musician who in the early ’80s played guitar in Marie Osmond’s touring band, has built replicas now played by Led Zeppelin’s legendary guitarist Jimmy Page and Aerosmith’s Joe Perry, among others.

In a few instances, guitar makers have sold limited runs of replicas, with every nick, scratch and stain duplicated on new instruments made to look and feel like those made famous by Eric Clapton, Mr. Page and the Clash’s Joe Strummer. Fender is producing copies of Police guitarist Andy Summers’s 1961 Telecaster — which he bought used in 1972 for $200 — which are authentic right down to the broken bridge and quirky custom electronics. The 250 replicas are being offered at $15,000 each; dealers have already sold most of them, sight unseen, according to Fender and dealers.

Ridiculous

Seth and guitar 1971
a now-vintage fake Gibson, circa 1971. I think my uncle Phil has it now

New Friend
probably partially why I bought a sunburst guitar recently (albeit a Yamaha)

Continue reading “Philip Dickian Guitar relics”

Bookmarks for January 8th through January 11th

swanksalot0 comment

A few interesting links for January 8th through January 11th:

  • The unlonesome death of William Zantzinger – “William D. Zantzinger, whose attack on a black barmaid in 1963 made him the subject of one of Bob Dylan’s most enduring folk songs, died Jan. 3 at the age of 69, under far better circumstances than the woman who suffered a fatal stroke after suffering blows from his cane.”

  • Four words regarding Burris: Game over, Game on. – “Congressional Quarterly reported this week that of the 180 people appointed to the U.S. Senate since popular election of senators began in 1917, 60 ran for re-election and won, while 56 ran and lost.”

Tears of Rage: Richard Manuel is Dead

Seth Anderson0 comment

One of my most favorite songs ever is Tears of Rage from The Band‘s first album.

The opening track on 1968’s Music from Big Pink is one of the most perfect pop compositions ever. It is a perfectly atypical opening number and a perfect introduction to the intriguing style of The Band. It is also a depressing suggestion as to how much more perfect they could have been had Richard Manuel been able to keep himself from himself.

Co-written by Manuel and Bob Dylan, “Tears of Rage” is the painful lament of a betrayed parent. The first recorded version of the song is the Dylan-sung one that was released on The Basement Tapes. Dylan’s – usually extraordinary – ability to capture the essence of the song was utterly obliterated by Manuel’s on the official Big Pink reading. The extraordinary anguish in Manuel’s voice added exponentially to the already heartbreaking lyrics. The slower composition, Garth Hudson’s haunting organ, Robbie Robertson’s swirling guitar, the unparalleled rhythm of drummer Levon Helm and bassist Rick Danko (who also provides backup vocals), as well as Manuel’s own piano work combined for one of those very rare occasions in which Dylan was completely schooled on one of his own songs (ironically, Manuel does it again on the same album with his version of “I Shall be Released”).

Sadly, the mood of “Tears of Rage” was forebodingly symbolic of the pain and suffering that would eventually consume Richard Manuel – who hanged himself in 1986 after two decades of extreme substance abuse. Perhaps the rarest attribute of The Band was the deficiency of a definitive front-man. With three lead singers and all five members’ status as exceptional musicians, there was no member of The Band who was more important to its achievements than the other; but for the first five minutes of their first album, they seemed to revolve around one genius.

[Click to read more of Tears of Rage: Richard Manuel is Dead | Sound Affects | PopMatters]

Robbie Robertson’s greed re: publishing credits probably had some contribution to Manuel’s early death. Anyway, here’s a YouTubed searing live version from 1969.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI6QdS3jiT8

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzXHj4SIlv4

On the topic of Robbie Robertson, and The Band, Levon Helm’s autobiography is a good, fun read. Highly recommended.


“This Wheel’s on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of the Band” (Levon Helm, Stephen Davis)

The Band, who backed Bob Dylan when he went electric in 1965 and then turned out a half-dozen albums of beautifully crafted, image-rich songs, is now regarded as one of the most influential rock groups of the ’60s. But while their music evoked a Southern mythology, only their Arkansawyer drummer, Levon Helm, was the genuine article. From the cotton fields to Woodstock, from seeing Sonny Boy Williamson and Elvis Presley to playing for President Clinton, This Wheel’s on Fire replays the tumultuous history of our times in Levon’s own unforgettable folksy drawl. This edition is expanded with a new afterword by the authors.


Music from Big Pink

Little Red Bike

Seth Anderson2 Comments


“The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” (Michael Gray)

From Michael Gray’s excellent book, the Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, about Buckets of Rain (from Blood on the Tracks):

The closing track on the Blood on the Tracks album, this is an immensely likeable, modest song of barbed sanity. A blues- structured work, it also neatly conflates other old song titles within its lyric, as when Dylan sings


‘Little red wagon, little red bike / I ain’t no monkey but I know what I like’.

In a genre so riddled with sexual innuendo and double entendre as the blues, it’s sometimes hard to know whether a phrase or a line belongs in the nursery or the porn shop, and this is a good example. One long-term Dylan collector was told years ago that the phrase ‘little red bike’ was a blues term for anal sex: which certainly puts a different perspective on Dylan’s lyric. But it is not a common blues term: there isn’t a single ‘little red wagon’ in Michael Taft’s Blues Lyric Poetry: A Concordance.

‘Little Red Wagon’ is, however, a recording by the pre-war blues artist Georgia White, and by a happy coincidence the very next track she laid down at the same session is called ‘Dan the Back Door Man’.

I’ll never hear that song quite the same again.

From the official Bob Dylan lyric site:

Little red wagon
Little red bike
I ain’t no monkey but I know what I like.
I like the way you love me strong and slow,
I’m takin’ you with me, honey baby,
When I go.