When I want to freak myself out, “I” think about “me” thinking about having an “I” The only thing stupider than puppets talking to puppets is a puppet talking to itself.
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Bob Dylan
Posts about Bob Dylan
READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
Two great new collections are coming out -- the latest entry in the Bob Dylan Bootleg Series is The Witmark Demos: 1962 - 1964, coming out on the 19th with 50 tracks from Dylan's earliest years recording -- including some of his all-time finest work, and including some tracks which have never seen official release before. As Michael Simmons says in his review at Mojo:
I'm betting a lot of young people of the 21st century will find comfort listening to this young man of the 20th as he begins his odyssey. All eras set challenges for young minds - and Lord knows everyone gets the blues. True artists make their own mistakes and learn their own lessons, but it never hurts to know where giants have trod before embarking on a journey of your own.
You can listen to several tracks at NPR's First Listen; the sound quality from what I've heard so far is just stellar. Note: Amazon is offering as a freebie to those who pre-order, a previously unreleased concert tape from Brandeis University, May 10, 1963.
Meanwhile from the other end of the sixties, EMI is releasing An Introduction to Syd Barrett, with a mix of tracks from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and tracks from Barrett's two solo records, the latter newly remixed by David Gilmour, who produced the records. (And with magnificent cover art!) You can preview many of the tracks at 3DiCD.
posted evening of October 13th, 2010: Respond ➳ More posts about Music
Bob Dylan has been in the world for 7 decades today. That's a good long time, and for about the last 5 of them he has been contributing some beautiful, significant art to the world. I'm not sure what to say about this but, happy birthday, Bob! Many happy returns of the day! The Guardian has a slide show of images from his career.
Below the fold, some of my own memories that involve Dylan and his music.
I became a fan of Dylan's music in 1983, when I was 13 years old. I had always known about him and recognized some of his songs; but in the summer of my 13th year I spent a couple of weeks staying with my parents' friend Jim Higgs (r.i.p.), who had a lot of Dylan's records and the book of his lyrics. This was the summer Empire Burlesque came out, and Jim was talking it up a whole lot; but I started reading the book and became entranced by "Subterranean Homesick Blues". I listened over and over to Bringing It All Back Home; and when my family came back to town and I went home, I raided my parents' collection of Dylan records. That year and the years that followed, I listened very heavily to Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited; and less heavily to Blonde on Blonde, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, and The Times They are a-Changin'. In autumn of 1983 Jim took me to see Dylan and Tom Petty play Sacramento fairgrounds; it was the first rock concert I ever went to.
At some point in high school I came into possession of a copy of Dylan's first album, self-titled, I think from Replay Records on McHenry -- that was where I got most of the music I bought in high school. I don't remember listening to this record a whole lot in high school, but later it would become one of my very favorite records.
I remember seeing Steve Ewert and Tim Lechuga playing at Mondo Java -- it was one of the first concerts I went to at Mondo Java, in 1989 or so -- and getting them to let me sing "Subterranean Homesick Blues" with them. That was great even though I didn't remember all the lyrics. Not as great was the second time I saw them, when I got them to let me sing "Desolation Row" with them -- I had rehearsed and knew all the words, but the spontaneity that had made the first time so much fun was gone and it came off pretty flat. Also IIRC I brought and played bongo drums without understanding going in, how lame that was.
In 1993 I bought Dylan's two new records, Good as I Been to You and World Gone Wrong. This was well before I really got into old-time music -- I loved these two records at the time but I don't think I really understood at the time, how great they are. These two certainly were part of the process that got me interested in old-time.
And since then? Well... Dylan is just part of my psychic landscape, one of the places I go when I think of music. I'm glad he's here and glad I've got his music around me.
Speaking of "Subterranean Homesick Blues": The city of Duluth, MN has hit on a distinctive way of honoring its favorite son.
(I always thought the lyric after this was "Don't wear sandals/ You can't afford the scandal" but apparently, per his home page, the second line is "Try to avoid the scandals".)
(Just found out about Saadiq today via his fantasic contribution to the new Amnesty International record, Chimes of Freedom. Saadiq covers "Leopardskin Pillbox Hat" in a way that has given me a whole new way of understanding the song, more blues than honky-tonk.)
Allow me to direct your attention as well to Saadiq's rhythm guitarist here, the extraordinary Rob Bacon, and to the instrumental duet about 9 minutes in.
Lots of fun things happening music-wise this weekend. Here is an interview with Ravi Shankar, who is still going strong at 91. Here is a writeup of Bob Dylan's debut record, which was released 50 years ago on Monday. Both links via Bob Dylan examiner Harold Lepidus.
Today I finished mixing Mountain Station's set for Lazlo's Blow Up Radio (where NJ rock lives) -- very happy with it. We'll make a podcast of this at some point, after it has aired on Lazlo's show. Tracks:
Mountain Station *¡LIVE!* at Lazlo's Den: a Rollo and Crazy Grady production
All Around You (0:00)
NJ Transit (3:29)
Up to Valhalla (6:37)
East Tennessee Blues (trad.) (11:39)
Take Me to the River (Al Greene) (13:35)
Come Down Easy (Howard Eliott Payne) (16:36)
Red Overalls (20:01)
23 ½ minutes! And it seems to hold together pretty well, it is a nice listen.
John came over today and we played a Dylan-heavy set of new-to-us songs...
Gates of Eden (John singing)
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll (me singing, a couple of times in a couple of different keys...)
Weary Day (a Delmore Bros. tune, with me singing -- we have played this before but not for a long time...)
So, so much fun to find a Dylan lyric in a Spanish language text!
Remorseful at the news, there were a few of the men who wanted to call an emergency union meeting, to see what could be done; but the union leaders were in Antofagasta, waiting to meet with the provincial authorities. They would not be back until after Christmas. And then others, the most political, the ones who knew something was happening, but weren't sure just what -- in a low voice they were urging that we take the dynamite which the patizorros had cached (in case the strike lasted too long, and the military was called in -- they had seen that happen in other salitreras), and attack the guards head-on. But in the end common sense reigned, the decision was just to keep watch and make sure they didn't do Maguita any harm.
Best picture of Robyn Hitchcock I was able to get this weekend (and looks like tomorrow's show is going to be snowed out) is this, during the encores last night:
Rolling Stonereporta que el duo madrileño Unomasuna compone 33 canciones, cada una dedicada a uno de los mineros chilenos quienes están hoy seguros. Puedes escuchar algunas de las canciones en el artÃculo. (Gracias por el enlace, CK!)
Today's Podcastle is Norm Sherman reading Ramsey Shehadeh's "Creature."
It bears some comparison to Robyn Hitchcock's "Happy the Golden Prince" but is ultimately a much more fully realized work, more I think on the level of a Miyazaki film.
