Category: Dylan
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: ‘Spengler’ on Dylan
In mid-October, 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 still maintain…
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Bob Dylan on Moby Dick
Bob Dylan finally gave his Nobel Prize for Literature lecture. I'm impressed. Besides his musical he mentions his literary influences. He cites many of the books I read as assigned readings in high school, books he claims to have read as assigned readings in grammar school! I'm talking about some serious tomes: Moby Dick, Ivanhoe,…
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Not Dark Yet: Bob Dylan Turns 76 Today
He has been called "rock's greatest songwriter." A better description is "America's greatest writer of popular songs." Bar none. We can discuss the criteria later, and consider counterexamples. Maybe this Saturday night. His earliest four or five albums are not in the rock genre. I'll permit quibbling about #5, Bringing It All Back Home…
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Patti Smith at Dylan’s Nobel Prize Ceremony
If you are a Dylan fan you will want to read this New Yorker piece.
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Ron Radosh Defends Dylan’s Nobel Prize for Literature
Here. Radosh addresses Andrew Klavan's objections. I wonder if Radosh is aware of Dylan's 1983 song in defense of the Rosenbergs. See below. Did you see Radosh on 60 Minutes Sunday night during the segment on Julius and Ethel Rosenberg? Radosh and co-author Joyce Milton definitively showed that the Rosenbergs were guilty as charged, or…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Kitsch and Sentimentality and Dylan
April Stevens' and Nino Tempo's version of Deep Purple became a number one hit in 1963. I liked it when it first came out, and I've enjoyed it ever since. A while back I happened to hear it via Sirius satellite radio and was drawn into it like never before. But its lyrics, penned by Mitchell Parish,…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Did Johnny Mercer Ever Write Songs Like These?
Just Like a Woman, Cutting Edge take. Blonde on Blonde version. It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Take a Train to Cry, Cutting Edge take. Perhaps you prefer Mercer's On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe. Visions of Johanna It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) A Hard Rain's a Gonna Fall Desolation Row…
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Not Dark Yet: Bob Dylan Turns 75 Today
25 things you might want to know know about Dylan. Excellent, except for the introductory claim that he is "rock's greatest songwriter." A better description is "America's greatest writer of popular songs." Bar none. We can discuss the criteria later, and consider counterexamples. Maybe this Saturday night. His earliest four or five albums are…
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On This Date 31 Years Ago and 50 Years Ago: Jim Fixx and Bob Dylan
It was 31 years ago today, during a training run. Running pioneer James F. Fixx, author of the wildly successful The Complete Book of Running, keeled over dead of cardiac arrest. He died with his 'boots' on, and not from running but from a bad heart. It's a good bet that his running added years…
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Zimmi Turns 74
Bob Dylan's Love Affair with New York City Happy Birthday Bob Dylan! Bob serenades Studs Terkel with a hauntingly fine version of "Boots of Spanish Leather." A great s0ng covered numerous times. Nanci Griffith's version. Joan Baez's uptempo version. Happy Birthday, Professor Bob Dylan “If I had to do it all over again, I'd be…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Bob Dylan, Traditionalist
The Left owns Dylan as little as it owns dissent. Every Dylanologist will want to read Christopher Caldwell's Weekly Standard piece, AWOL from the Summer of Love. It begins like this: In the mid-1960s the most celebrated folk musician of his era bought a house for his growing family at the southern edge of the…
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Bob Dylan’s 2015 MusicCares Person of the Year Speech
Here. (Link via Frank Beckwith's FB page. Interesting how many conservatives are Dylan fans. Lawrence Auster is another.) It is a fascinating, rich speech by a living repository of musical Americana and without a doubt the most creative interpreter of our musical legacy, the "bard of our generation" as Auster puts it. One is…
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Saturday Night at her 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…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Ramblin’ Charles Adnopoz
David Dalton, Who is That Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan, Hyperion, 2012, p. 65: As Dave van Ronk pointed out in his autobiography, many of the people involved in the first folk revival of the 1930s and '40s were Jewish — as were the folkies of the '60s. Van Ronk reasoned that…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Jim Fixx Remembered
It was 30 years ago tomorrow, during a training run. Running pioneer James F. Fixx, author of the wildly successful The Complete Book of Running, keeled over dead of cardiac arrest. He died with his 'boots' on, and not from running but from a bad heart. It's a good bet that his running added years…