Category: Dylan
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Bob Dylan Turns 84
Can one get tired of Dylan? That would be like getting tired of America. It would be like getting to the point where no passage in Kerouac brings a tingle to the spine or a tear to the eye, to the point where the earthly road ends and forever young must give way to knocking on heaven's door.…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Remembering Suze Rotolo and the Songs She Inspired
Suze Rotolo, depicted above, died on 25 February 2011 at 67 years of age. Dylanologists usually refer to the following as songs she inspired: Don't Think Twice. This Peter, Paul, and Mary rendition may well be the best. It moves me as much as it did 62 years ago in 1963 when it first came…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Radosh and ‘Spengler’ on Dylan
In October of 2016, I wrote, This brings me to Bob Dylan who was recently awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature. Now I've been a Dylan fan from the early '60s. In the '60s I was more than a fan; I was a fanatic who would brook no criticism of his hero. And I…
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A Complete Unknown
A lot happened to young Bob in a few short years, from Song to Woody to Like a Rolling Stone. I saw the movie and it moved me. How about you? Here is a good article about Dylan's falling out with Seeger. A Complete Unknown isn’t that interested in clarifying this point. Because the film almost…
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A New Morning
The morning is new! Why make it old by the rehearsal of yesterday's rants? The morning is alive! Why mortify it by the re-animation of useless memories? So I admonish myself, to little effect. Theme music
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi
Carl Orff, Carmina Burana, O Fortuna (With Latin and English). Better performance without lyrics. Joan Baez, There But For Fortune. The best rendition of a song written by Phil Ochs. Watch the short video. Ochs' version. I agree with this analysis of Ochs: The short, triumphant, tragic career of Phil Ochs illustrates one of the harder lessons of American popular culture: that audiences…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Some Suicides
First a positive note: A Dylan biopic is coming, A Complete Unknown. ………………………… Del Shannon (Charles Weedon Westover), December 30, 1934 – February 8, 1990, known prmarily for his Billboard Hot 100 #1 hit, Runaway, 1961. "Suffering from depression, Shannon committed suicide on February 8, 1990, with a .22-caliber rifle at his home in Santa Clarita, California, while on…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Forgotten and Unforgotten Folkies
Paul Clayton, Wild Mountain Thyme. Baez version from the "Farewell, Angelina" album. A snippet of the same song by Dylan and Baez with a beaming Albert Grossmann looking on. And while we're at it, here is Joan with Farewell, Angelina. Beautiful as it is, it doesn't touch the magical quality of Dylan's own version which is in a dimension by itself. Paul Clayton,…
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Dylan Turns 83
Scott Johnson of Powerline offers a couple of thoughtful retrospective pieces. Not Dark Yet Chimes of Freedom Can one get tired of Dylan? That would be like getting tired of America. It would be like getting to the point where no passage in Kerouac brings a tingle to the spine or a tear to the…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Lawrence Auster on Bob Dylan
I was surprised, but pleased, to find that the late Lawrence Auster, traditionalist conservative, photo above, 1973, had a deep appreciation and a wide-ranging knowledge of Dylan's art. Born in 1949, Auster is generationally situated for that appreciation, and as late as '73 was still flying the '60s colors, if we can go by the…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Celebrating Freedom and Independence
Not to mention resistance and defiance in these waning days of a great republic. Great minds on "All men are created equal." Johnny Cash, I Won't Back Down. Tom Petty wrote it, with Jeff Lynne. Byrds, Chimes of Freedom. One of Dylan's greatest anthems. Byrds, I Wasn't Born to Follow Good YouTuber comment: "I keep searching for that door back…
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‘Nuclear’ Thoughts on Dylan’s Birthday
We've gotten used to living under the Sword of Damocles: One of its more famous [invocations] came in 1961 during the Cold War, when President John F. Kennedy gave a speech before the United Nations in which he said that “Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Ramblin’ Charles Adnopoz
At a book giveaway hereabouts the other day I did snag me a copy of Dave van Ronk's memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street. I'll have to dig into it one of these Saturday nights and pull out some tunes that you've never heard before. In memory of the Mayor, here is his version of…
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Dylan’s Philosophy of Modern Song
From Variety: Of the dozens or even hundreds of singers and songwriters that Bob Dylan extols in his new book, “The Philosophy of Modern Song,” there is one that seems to stand out even more than the others, so effusive is Dylan’s praise. This performer, he writes, is “downright incredible” and “lived in every moment…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Tom Merton, Baez, Dylan, and Ry Cooder
Thomas Merton, though 51 years old in 1966, was wide open to the '60s Zeitgeist – all of it. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume Six, p. 93, entry of 10 July 1966: Borrowed a record player and played Joan Baez over again — and now really know "Silver Dagger" (before I had the melody confused with "East…