Two Jersey Shore cops stop Bob Dylan, taking an afternoon walk in Long Branch, NJ. Neither recognizes him. He has no I.D with him. but the situation is soon peacefully rectified. At least he didn't start up with them like he might have long ago.Don't think twice, it's alright.
posted by Seekerofsplendor on Aug 14, 2009 - 173 comments

Dylan Mashed by French mashup artist ToToM. [more inside]
posted by Nomiconic on Jul 8, 2009 - 20 comments

400 years ago today, Thomas Thorpe entered into the Stationers' Register a book titled "Shake-Speares Sonnets". However, Clinton Heylin argues that - like Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes - the Sonnets were never intended for a wide audience. "In both cases, they were killing time and at the same time dealing with huge personal issues in a private way, which they never conceived of coming out publicly."
posted by Joe Beese on May 20, 2009 - 37 comments

Dr. John Rudoff is a cardiologist in Oregon, but before he entered medical school, he was the staff photographer at The Main Point, a coffeehouse in Bryn Mawr, PA associated with the early 1960s folk revival in the Philadelphia area. His photographs of the Philadelphia folk scene include unidentified local folkies, but also touring folk singers such as Dave van Ronk and John Hammond. Eventually, Rudoff got a press pass to the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where he took photos of Mary Travers sharing a moment with Mimi and Dick Fariña and Joan Baez with a pre-psychedelicized Chambers Brothers, but the most amazing discovery of all are the photos of when Bob Dylan "went electric." And now you can see Rudoff's whole collection, thanks to the magic of Flickr.
posted by jonp72 on May 7, 2009 - 13 comments

The occasionally updated The Celestial Monochord claims to be the "Journal of the Institute for Astrophysics and the Hillbilly Blues" [more inside]
posted by 1f2frfbf on Jan 23, 2009 - 5 comments

Back in 1963, a TV special called "Folk Songs and More Folk Songs" aired, which featured a cross section of the "folk" artists who were at that time just beginning to receive wider media exposure. Aside from the squeaky-clean, white bread embarrassment of groups like The Brothers Four, the show redeemed itself with performances by a very young Bob Dylan, who sang The Ballad of Hollis Brown (with banjo and bass accompaniment) and Man of Constant Sorrow. And here's two more very early Dylan TV appearances, from Canada, 1964: A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall and Girl From the North Country. Here's the same Girl From the North Country performed years later, once again on broadcast TV, in duet with Johnny Cash, from the Johnny Cash Show. [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite on Oct 4, 2008 - 23 comments

Chief Justice Roberts (mis)quotes Bob Dylan* in his dissent on Sprint Communications Co. v. APCC Services, Inc., making this the first known time that a Supreme Court Opinion has used a "rock song to buttress legal opinion," according to Alex B. Long of the University of Tennessee. Mr. Long knows a thing or two about this**, having authored [Insert Song Lyrics Here]***, a Washington & Lee Law review Article on the subject of Pop Music in legal writing. The article is funny†, insightful, comprehensive in its musical background††, and surprisingly knowledgeable about good taste in writing.††† [more inside]
posted by Navelgazer on Jun 30, 2008 - 43 comments

The things I like best about Michael Taft's Prewar Blues Lyrics Concordance, a subsection of T. G. Lindh's Web Concordances of Pre-War Blue Lyrics and Bob Dylan Lyrics, are the listings of the lyrics by singer: A - C, D - H, J - L, M - R and S - Y. And the nice thing about the blues lyrics is you don't need to ask for a log in and password. It 's all right there. Explore and enjoy. [more inside]
posted by y2karl on Mar 5, 2008 - 9 comments

"If Communists liked what we did, that was their good luck," said Lee Hays, founding member of the Almanac Singers. A fascinating portrait of one of the linchpins of the politically engaged folk movement of the '40s and '50s. Hays sang beside the more celebrated (and, on one important day in Bob Dylan history, infamous) Pete Seeger on such classic Almanac albums as Talking Union. [Listen here.]
posted by digaman on Feb 18, 2008 - 9 comments

At the Isle of Wight Festival, Dylan was the only monster on the bill capable of attracting a monster of an audience. In refusing to play the Woodstock Festival and in then letting himself be talked into playing the Isle of Wight, Dylan in effect was telling England's counterculture: ''C'mon. Let's hold our own Woodstock.'' And so, on the Isle of Wight, a dot of land that certainly wasn't the easiest place in the world to get to, Dylan almost single-handedly proved an enticing enough attraction to collect an audience sometimes estimated to be as few as a 125,000 and sometimes as many as 250,000.

My Dylan Papers: Part 2 The Isle of Wight

Another scrap from the late Al Aronowitz, the self-styled Blacklisted Journalist, and former Dylan courtier, recalling the only full concert Dylan gave solo or with the Band between 1967 and 1973 and sung in his Nashville Skyline voice, to boot, no less. And now you can have it all to yourself.... [more inside]
posted by y2karl on Jan 26, 2008 - 10 comments

Audio of Dylan Thomas reading his poem "A Child's Christmas in Wales". (real media and mp3)
posted by Brandon Blatcher on Dec 25, 2007 - 7 comments

Well, someone's gone and made a feature-length biopic on Bob Dylan. It was bound to happen, right? Didn't necessarily expect Cate Blanchett (along with 5 others) to be cast in the role of Bob, but, hey, she looks great with the flyaway hair and the cigarette. Here's a clip, wherein Cate as Bob meets Ginsberg in a golfcart. Here's a trailer and an IMDB page. Here director Todd Haynes talks about the film. He discusses his casting of Blanchett, and offers observations on other aspects of the movie here and here. And if you want to read reviews, there's plenty of 'em.
posted by flapjax at midnite on Nov 21, 2007 - 27 comments

You walk into the room
With your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked
And you say, "Who is that man?"
You try so hard
But you don't understand...

Jeffrey Owen Jones, a film professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and, inadvertently, the featured metaphor in Bob Dylan's Ballad of a Thin Man, has died.
posted by y2karl on Nov 15, 2007 - 29 comments

... After take seventeen, Dylan heeds the producer Johnston’s advice to start with a harmonica swoop. Crescendos off of an extended fifth chord, led by Paul Griffin’s astonishingpiano swells (“half Gershwin, half gospel, all heart” an astute critic later wrote), climax in choruses dominated by piano, organ, and Bobby Gregg’s drum rolls; Robbie Robertson’s guitar hits its full strength at the finale. Intimations of the thin, wild mercury sound underpin rock & roll symphonics. Johnston delivers a pep talk before one last take—“keep that soul feel”—and Gregg snaps a quick click opener, and fewer than five minutes later, the keeper is in the can.

Mystic Nights - The Making of Blonde On Blonde In Nashville
An account of how the many strands of that thin, that wild mercury sound were woven. And the annotation goes on. Via email via St Urbain's Horseman
posted by y2karl on Sep 28, 2007 - 36 comments

Rewrite Musical History with the Dylan Sign Maker. (previously)
posted by Dave Faris on Sep 5, 2007 - 23 comments

Many a music fan out there in MeFitown and beyond was delighted with and intrigued by that now-vanished website, Dylan Hears a Who! It featured backing tracks that captured, with an astonishing believability, both the sound and the feel of Highway 61-era Bob, not to mention an uncannily good Dylan vocal imitation. And of course, as is now legend, "Dylan" was singing lyrics straight out of the wonderful works of the good Dr. Seuss. Well, back in April Salon magazine broke the story of the very, very talented individual who put the whole thing together. Those for whom this is old news please forgive me, but it's news to me, and I can't find any notice of it here at MeFi, so, here it is.
posted by flapjax at midnite on Aug 28, 2007 - 13 comments

"I don't know anyone who calls himself that" Bob Dylan insulted in Australia 20 years ago. It's a wonder he still does interviews at all, and he tours down under regularly. He's resiient (Part 2 of a double YouTube link).
posted by St Urbain's Horseman on Aug 27, 2007 - 27 comments

Highway 61 Revisited: Like a Rolling Stone (1966); Tombstone Blues (2000); It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry (1971); (Rolling Thunder version); From a Buick 6 (NOT DYLAN); Ballad of a Thin Man (1966); Queen Jane Approximately (1998); Highway 61 Revisited (1969); Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues (1995); Desolation Row (1998).
posted by OmieWise on Jul 23, 2007 - 29 comments

Aside from the usual crap, YouTube has a great selection of one the most covered song of all time: All Along the Watchtower. Classics like Hendrix (live and studio), Neil Young (at DailyMotion with better sound) and U2--and some great contemporary versions like Keziah Jones' blazingly-fast version, Bradley Fish's 12-instrument (including Chinese Zither) version, Michael Hedges’ reason-to-be-excited cover, and even a quite good version of DMB's much-maligned cover. What doesn't really rank: Dylan's original.
posted by FeldBum on Jul 2, 2007 - 43 comments

...Rembrandt's last self-portrait, for instance, shows an old man having a good laugh at the ways of the world, even as he is about to leave the stage. The Western world may be ageing, then, but, far from this amounting to a 'dying of the light', a case can be made for the very opposite, certainly where Bob Dylan's renaissance as an artist is concerned. Neither should age be confounded with a heavier tread. For while a perception and characterisation of the surreal nature of much of human life was a defining quality of Bob Dylan's first golden creative period in the 1960s, it's also a delightful characteristic of his artistic renaissance in the 'noughties' of the new millennium.

Bob Dylan and the ageing of the West
In other news, May 24th is International Talk Like Bob Dylan Day

Of course, he was 23 in 1965, the year when he recorded Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde, but, gosh darn it, he's still writing songs and touring and he still isn't dead yet..."
posted by y2karl on May 24, 2007 - 38 comments

"If you had Bruce playing with you," Dylan wrote, in his 2004 autobiography, Chronicles, "that's all you would need to do just about anything."

Bruce Langhorne has quite the discography. And a hot sauce, to boot. And he's led quite the life. Here is Richie Unterberger's interview with Langhorne in Parts One and Two. And here he talks with Unterberger about working with Mimi and Richard Fariña.

On a personal note, I will add that his hot sauce is hot indeed. Will buy it again.
posted by y2karl on Apr 13, 2007 - 6 comments

Dylan Hears a Who! Bob, that is. Caution: autoplaying audio. (Via)
posted by staggernation on Feb 27, 2007 - 43 comments

The Ecstasy of Influence, A Plagiarism
posted by Captaintripps on Feb 24, 2007 - 20 comments

Bob Dylan recites "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" Dylan reads the Christmas classic from his radio show.
posted by flarbuse on Feb 15, 2007 - 20 comments

What If...Bob Dylan wrote almost every song of the last 30 years in his heyday, but never got around to recording them properly? New York City's Post Show Ensemble dredges up lost footage for No Direction, Period.
posted by beaucoupkevin on Jan 17, 2007 - 38 comments

His fog, his amphetamines and his pearls
Lofi shot off the monitor at the recent EMP exhibit, the entire footage of an Eat The Document outtake recently edited by Martin Scorcese for No Direction Home.

I don't entirely get the Chaplinesque--To paraphrase crunchland, Hey, Skeezix--it's a talkie...
posted by y2karl on Oct 27, 2006 - 31 comments

"None suspect that idealistic committed little folk-singer Bob Dylan is in fact the amazing Zimmerman -- faster than a proxy ballot, more powerful than an ulterior motive, and able to buy tall buildings with a single bond!" [More inside]
posted by Alvy Ampersand on Oct 9, 2006 - 45 comments

Artur J's Annotated Lyrics of Bob Dylans Love and Theft has expanded and now features Annotated lyrics for Street Legal, Knocked Out Loaded, Oh, Mercy and Modern Times. And he is already on top of Dylan's quotes of Henry Timrod on the new album. On a related tip, someone waved a lawyer at Eyolf Østrem, so he removed all his tabs from his Dylan tablature site, My Back Pages. But, fortunately there are some mirrors and the blog of this one has a tab page for Modern Times already.
posted by y2karl on Sep 14, 2006 - 13 comments

"'It's metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up.'" Louis Menand on the mercurial nature of Bob Dylan's interviews.
"Dylan's sound [is] 'very much like a dog with his leg caught in barbed wire.'" Nat Hentoff's profile of Dylan for the New Yorker from 1964.
posted by OmieWise on Aug 30, 2006 - 32 comments

Townes van Zandt. In some theaters now is a new documentary about his life called Be Here to Love Me--a life that followed the all-too-typical path of a star that burns too bright: the promise of talent, addiction, and untimely death. (see the trailer here or here). Townes van Zandt was a singer/songwriter, often included in the folk or country genres, whose biggest accomplishment was when Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard took his song Poncho and Lefty to the top of the charts. But even though he never was famous, he has achieved legendary status. Steve Earle once said "Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that."
posted by dios on Jan 18, 2006 - 40 comments

And here is 'You Either Get It or You Don't:' Conversion Experiences and The Dr. Phil Show. Also on hand, are They Refused Jesus Too: A Biblical Paradigm in the Writing of Bob Dylan and Popular Music on Christianity in the United States: Christianity's Failure to Love. Taste, perhaps, A Potion too Strong?: Challenges in Translating the Religious Significance of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings to Film. Or consider Curses and Catharsis in Red Sox Nation: Baseball and Ritual Violence in American Culture.
All are selections from The Journal Of Religion And Popular Culture.
posted by y2karl on Nov 27, 2005 - 34 comments

Mickey Jones, ubiquitous yet frequently forgotten or ignored character actor (warning: WMV trailer) and drummer is the Zelig of both the '60s folk and rock scene (very recently seen in No Direction Home) and television and film, linking Don't Look Back (1996) to Don't Look Back (1967).
posted by Hat Maui on Sep 28, 2005 - 18 comments

Honest With Me: Musical Stories on Bob Dylan "KEXP [Seattle] presents a series of stories on the musical life of Bob Dylan. Told by Dylan’s friends, scholars and fans, 'Honest With Me' features firsthand accounts from Joan Baez, Al Kooper, Izzy Young and the Band’s Robbie Robertson." And they're all pretty great, even if you've heard some of the stories a hundred times.
posted by ericost on May 6, 2005 - 8 comments

On "Love and Theft" & On On "Love and Theft" and the Minstrel Boy & The Annotated Love And Theft...    In melody, Bye and Bye comes by way of Billie Holiday's Having Myself A Time and Floater by way of Bing Crosby's (& Eddie Duchin's & Kate Smith's & Isham Jones's...) Snuggled On Your Shoulder--and lyrically, by way, in part, of Junichi Saga's Confessions Of A Yakuza, which was not a crime novel, as StupidSexyFlanders once surmised, but an outright As told to memoir, which makes it four or five degrees from Yakuza to Dr. Saga to translator to Dylan to Plagiarism in Dylan, or a Cultural Collage?

Oh, who's going to throw that minstrel boy a coin ?
posted by y2karl on Apr 14, 2005 - 18 comments

"Stray Prose" of Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth fame. Semicoherent Bob Dylan review, a paean to Kerouac, and an entertaining interview with William Burroughs. Pretentious, but, uh, you know, if you're into that sort of thing... There's some more stuff of his around his official site
posted by ITheCosmos on Apr 10, 2005 - 12 comments

Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. "As far as I could determine, this 1969 session features tracks from a CBS Studios session in Nashville, TN that did not see an official release." Nineteen largely unknown MP3s of the two greats singing together.
posted by BackwardsCity on Mar 9, 2005 - 44 comments

Be careful what you wish for, the cliché goes. Having aspired from early youth to become stars, people who achieve that status suddenly find themselves imprisoned, unable to walk down the street without being importuned by strangers. The higher their name floats, the greater the levy imposed, the less of ordinary life they can enjoy. In his memoir, Bob Dylan never precisely articulates the ambition that brought him to New York City from northern Minnesota in 1961, maybe because it felt improbable even to him at the time. Nominally, he was angling for Leading Young Folksinger, which was a plausible goal then, when every college town had three or four coffeehouses and each one had its Hootenanny night, and when performers who wowed the crowds on that circuit went on to make records that sometimes sold in the thousands. But from the beginning Dylan had his sights set much higher: the world, glory, eternity—ambitions laughably incommensurate with the modest confines of American folk music. He got his wish, in spades... 'I Is Someone Else'
posted by y2karl on Feb 19, 2005 - 34 comments

Yo! Check out Dylan's video blog! Does 11-year old Dylan point us towards the future of video blogs? [via waxy & eyebeam]
posted by gen on Dec 23, 2004 - 28 comments

Chapter 1. Excerpt from Bob Dylan's autobiographical book, Chronicles, Volume One.
posted by semmi on Oct 20, 2004 - 4 comments

"It was surprising how thick the smoke had become. It seems like the world has always needed a scapegoat --someone to lead the charge against the Roman Empire. But America wasn't the Roman Empire and someone else would have to step up and volunteer. I really was never any more than what I was -- a folk musician who gazed into the gray mist with tear-blinded eyes and made up songs that floated in a luminous haze. Now it had blown up in my face and was hanging over me." -- from Bob Dylan's new autobiography, Chronicles, with a brief interview, via Newsweek
posted by digaman on Sep 26, 2004 - 14 comments

My Back Pages--Interesting in his own right Eyolf Østrem still maintains the fan's fan tab, chords and music site, the standard by which all others are judged. I just revisited it the other night, while trying to recall how that little run in Dylan's version of Delia went, and dang, if it didn't have the back story of that ballad. I love this kind of stuff. The source of that account, John Garst, is the folklorist king of such research--he puts John Henry at a railroad tunnel near Leeds, Alabama, just east of Birmingham on September 20, 1887, for example. Murder and heroic death ballad back stories are of extreme interest to me, so I decided to post a few more here: Frankie and Albert, Frankie and Johnny, Casey Jones and Stagger Lee. Did I say I love this kind of stuff?
posted by y2karl on Sep 23, 2004 - 10 comments

No Article of Mr. Dylan's Clothing Was Removed During The Filming Of This Commercial
posted by y2karl on Apr 8, 2004 - 36 comments

The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind was on individual bands in the 'Blonde on Blonde' album. It's that thin, that wild mercury sound. It's metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up.

Bob Dylan 1978

Blonde On Blonde--Seven mixes, four or five covers, four or five women, some missing photographs and one leather coat... (story within)
posted by y2karl on Nov 19, 2003 - 26 comments

Custom Mix CD - Sony Music is burning to sell 12 track Bob Dylan and Train mixes to continental US customers. [via AO]
posted by boost ventilator on Mar 10, 2003 - 7 comments

From one of the most underrated performers on the 1960's came one of the most mysterious records of all time, which inspired not only a movie but an answer record from none other than Bob Dylan. Greil Marcus devotes a chunk of a book(ostensibly about Dylan) to "Ode," where he makes connections between it and Bonnie & Clyde, released around the same time. Someone once said that "Ode To Billy Joe" sounded ancient the day it came out and that may be some part of it's appeal. I remeber hearing the song on oldies stations as a kid and even then being drawn into the mystery of it. I listened to it as I typed this post and I'm still plumbing it's depths today.
posted by jonmc on Jan 26, 2003 - 38 comments

The Mysterious Norman Raeben, the son of Shalom Aleichem, the man behind Bob Dylan's Blood On The Tracks.

Norman Raeben was one of the most influential people in Bob Dylan’s life. It was Norman Raeben, Dylan said, who, in the mid ‘70s, renewed his ability to compose songs. Dylan also suggested that Norman’s teaching and influence so altered his outlook upon life that Sara, his wife, could no longer understand him, and this was a contributory factor in the breakdown of the Dylans’ marriage. (More inside)
posted by y2karl on Jan 11, 2003 - 16 comments

Bob Dylan Live at Newport, 1965: Maggie’s Farm. 10 MB Quicktime mp3 A notorious and historic moment, that began a legendary year of touring , stolen moments of which are available in several sometimes bootlegged formats .Sometimes, perhaps revised , stories differ at what happened, and, now, post-ironically enough, He appears at Newport again this Saturday.
posted by y2karl on Aug 2, 2002 - 35 comments

American Magus

Without Harry Smith I wouldn’t have existed!

Bob Dylan

… I put Harry Smith with the three most dear to me GRAND INTELLIGENCE!! Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Harry Smith…These were sharp motherfuckers… and heavy… talk about heavy!!

Gregory Corso

Harry Smith, a central figure in the mid-20th-century avant-garde, was a complex artistic figure who made major contributions to the fields of sound recording, independent filmmaking, the visual arts, and ethnographic collecting. Along with Kenneth Anger, Jordan Belson, and Oskar Fischinger, Smith is considered one of America’s leading experimental filmmakers. He would often hand-paint directly on film creating unique, complex compositions that have been interpreted as investigations of conscious and unconscious mental processes. Smith began as a teenager to record Native American songs and rituals. He is best known for his Anthology of American Folk Music, a music collection widely credited with launching the urban folk revival.

The Anthology is the focus here, but Harry Smith, the artist, avant garde film maker, polymath, musicologist and quintessential hipster must be mentioned, too. Details Within
posted by y2karl on Jul 10, 2002 - 32 comments

Is This The Best Bob Dylan Site Or What? Every single song of his reminds us how deeply in debt we are.
posted by MiguelCardoso on Mar 21, 2002 - 52 comments

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue : Gore hints on CNN that he'd consider appointing Bob Dylan as Poet Laureate. But there's no folk gap quite yet. "Times Are Changin' Back" scribe Senator Bob Roberts endorsed Dubya at a Nader rally two weeks ago.
posted by kevincmurphy on Oct 31, 2000 - 12 comments