Category: Dylan
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
This, Dylan's second album, and one of my favorites, was released in May of 1963 by Columbia Records. Here are my favorites from the album. Blowin' in the Wind, with its understated topicality, enjoys an assured place in the Great American Songbook. London Ed uploaded this Alanis Morissette version which is one of the better covers. Thanks, Ed!…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Literary Allusions
Linda Ronstadt, 1967, Different Drum. Cf. Henry David Thoreau: "“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden Byrds, Turn, Turn, Turn, 1965. Lyrics almost verbatim…
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Three Days Before the Music Died Dylan was Born
Patrick Kurp sends this: On this Day in Duluth in 1959, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Richie Valens, Jiles Perry “the Big Bopper” Richardson, Dion and the Bellmonts [sic], and others played to a sell-out crowd at the Duluth Armory for a “Winter Dance Party” promoted by Duluth’s Lew Latto—three days before Holly, Valens, and…
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Dylan’s New Album
In lieu of oldies this Saturday night, a taste of Bob Dylan's latest, Tempest. Duquesne Whistle. Sampler. 1962 version of "Roll on, John" 50 years of assimilation and creative reworking of musical Americana by the unlikely Jewish kid from Hibbing, Minnesota. Jody Rosen's New Yorker review. Insightful: The hunt for Dylan in Dylan songs is a…
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All Along the Watchtower
The Book of Isaiah, Chapter 21, verses 5-9: Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink: arise ye princes, and prepare the shield. For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth. And he saw a chariot with a couple of horsemen, a chariot…
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Robert Paul Wolff: “The Left Has Had All the Good Songs”
Anarchist philosopher Robert Paul Wolff, over at The Philosopher's Stone, writes, While I was making dinner, Susie put on a CD of Pete Seegar [sic] songs. I was struck once again by the oft-remarked fact that for half a century, the left has had all the good songs. That cannot be irrelevant. By the way,…
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Bob Dylan Awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom
He deserves it for the hundreds of unforgettable songs ineliminable from the soundtrack of so many of our lives over the past 50 years: 1962-2012. "Blowin' in the Wind" is the most famous of his anthems. You may be surprised to learn that London Ed uploaded this outstanding rendition by Alanis Morissette. Another of Dylan's great…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies Deferred: 50 Years of Dylan
This year we celebrate 50 years of Dylan's music. 1962-2012. Here is a sampler. The kid who put together this video is to be commended for his excellent selections. A good intro to Dylan, but it only scratches the surface of his many-sided genius.
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Surprising How Many Conservatives are Dylan Fans
Lawrence Auster appears to be another as witness these comments on Dylan's I Shall be Released made on the occasion of Levon Helm's death. The Left does not own Dylan, not by a long shot.
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Bob Dylan Albums Ranked From Worst to Best
A plausible ranking! Blonde on Blonde is numero uno as it should be. Bob's debut album, Bob Dylan (1962), comes in at only 26th place. Admittedly, this album was Dylan before he was Dylan, but I would have ranked it higher. In the '60s I argued that there was and could be no such thing…
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Music = Dylan?
Purdue philosopher Jan Cover appears to maintain a Music = Dylan Identity Thesis. I wouldn't have gone that far even in the '60s. (Though I was a bit of a fanatic. I wrote for a high school 'underground' newspaper under the pen name 'Dylan's Disciple.') Cover's Dylan page is short but well worth a look.
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Bob Dylan Turns 70
In lieu of the proper post that I intended to write today, here is a video on Biblical elements in Dylan's work.
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RightWingBob and RightWingJack
One difference between these two websites is that the first exists while the second doesn't. It borders on a paradox: two major countercultural influences, Kerouac and Dylan, display significant conservative tendencies in their art. I recommend RWB's post Times Changin' with its links to First Things articles and to a very nice Dylan performance in which…
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Fr. Robert Barron on Bob Dylan
Insightful commentary on the Biblical elements in Dylan's work. Here and here. While you're at it, check out his commentary on the New Atheists.
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How Bob Dylan Got Unpoliticized
The story is told in My Back Pages. "Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."