So maybe I should be sleeping. Or writing up my photography assignment.

And yes, maybe it’s too soon to be thinking about our shooting setup for documentary. But I’ve been having ideas. I should draw a diagram of what’s in my mind, but I can’t really be screwed.

So I’ll talk about this imaginary setup. (it’s not fantastic, or grand or ambitious, but I still like it)

Essentially, the success of our film lies in establishing a good relationship with our subject, most likely Gita, at this point. We need profound statements, we need the right atmosphere and the right kind of discussion. What does this mean, in terms of setup? Here’s what I’m ‘envisaging’.

You hook up a lapel mic, so that Gita doesn’t have a boom in her face at all times (and also so you get less traffic noise). Hopefully she forgets she’s wearing a mic at all, and hence our interview becomes more personal. To further this, you could have the camera quite a distance away, zoomed in, obviously. As a result, we’d get a nice and shallow depth of field, and the camera’s going to be less obtrusive. The only danger is that telephoto increases the amount of camera shake. But if we’ve got a decent tripod it should be fine. Lighting-wise, a Kino on one side, and maybe a diffused dedo to fill on the other? Different colour temperatures, but it might look quite nice because of this.. maybe. And house lights? It depends on what the house is like, but in my head, I wouldn’t mind having the rest of the room really dark.. deep shadows, really draw attention to Gita and what she’s saying, and make the shot less mundane. I often find that shots inside houses look mundane and boring. There’s so much clutter, so many different colours and shapes..

I’ll return to this point later, but I’ve been looking through the TV2 DVD and I really liked the way in which Scorsese interviews Bob Dylan in a completely black space. There’s a reasonably soft, reasonably cool light to one side of Dylan’s face, maybe a Kino? And other than that, there’s not much going on. I like this.. I like controlling the environment and stripping it down to the essentials.. namely just the subject. You mess with the audience to some extent.. they don’t know where you’re shooting, they don’t have a clear sense of time or space. They could be anywhere.. maybe Bob Dylan is floating in the centre of a black hole, a complete vacuum of nothingness where his ideas resonate, unobstructed.

People in vacuums, people in shadow, kinos off to one side, shallow depth of field, tight shots, personal shots… this is what I’m picturing. For now.

The epic refrain of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is associated with a character easier to pin down and box in than Bob Dylan.  Born Robert Zimmerman, Dylan has evolved through the past five decades, defying easy definition and characterization at every turn in his career.  ”Bob Dylan” is a boy from Minnesota who channeled Woody Guthrie until he found his own voice.  Dylan is a fundamentalist Christian.  He is a fan of Allen Ginsburg.  He prefers Bound for Glory by Woody Guthrie to On the Road by Jack Kerouac.  Dylan is of Jewish descent.  He is a posterchild for the 60s countercultural movement.  Dylan is a painter, a poet, a singer, and a songwriter.  He has explored many genres, including folk, jazz, rock and roll, gospel, country, and swing.  He is loved and reviled.

He has won Grammy, Golden Globe, and Academy Awards.  He has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  In 2008, the Pulitzer Prize jury awarded him a special citation for his impact on popular music and American culture.

The Drawn Blank Series by Bob Dylan

Dylan is on a tour of minor league baseball stadiums with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp.  Dylan performs on the guitar, piano, and harmonica.  Currently, Dylan primarily performs on the keyboard.

You can’t help watch a Dylan show and wonder what kind of resentment and reluctance this performer feels when he hears his own name.  Who is Bob Dylan?  So many people project onto Dylan what they want to see, what they want to hear, and what they want to feel.  In the 60s, people claimed that Dylan had a gift for the prophetic.  When he claimed that Jesus was a prophet in the 1970s, they disowned him.  A Christian Dylan wasn’t the Dylan that the fans wanted.  Singing Woody Guthrie, Dylan seemed archaic to his fans until he began to embody the folk movement.  When he eschewed folk music and picked up an electric guitar, he was seen as a sellout.

Leaving a recent Dylan concert, I overhead fans complaining that his altered versions of Like a Rolling Stone and All Along the Watchtower were awful, that his changes were both unnecessary and distracting, and that he ought to stick to the original music he sang 50 years ago.  To make such a statement is to make the same mistake that many have before – it is to deny the very essence of Bob Dylan.  It is to seek to contain and control a man who has built his life and career on artistic evolution and creative development.

During a Time magazine interview in his early years, Dylan voiced his disdain for periodical magazines.  The interview follows:

The following quote is of particular note:

“It’s going to happen fast and you aren’t going to get it all and you might even hear the wrong words you know.  And then afterwards, I won’t be able to talk to you afterwards…I got nothing to say about these things I write.  I mean I just write them.  [...] There is no great message.  If you want to tell other people that, go ahead and tell them, but I’m not going to have to answer to it.  [...]  I’ve never been in Time magazine.  I don’t need Time magazine.  And I don’t think I’m a folk singer – you’ll probably call me a folk singer, but you know the other people know better.  [...] You know the audience that subscribes to Time magazine.  [...] It’s a class of people that take the magazine seriously.  [...] If I want to find out anything, I’m not going to read Time magazine.  They have too much to lose by printing the truth.  [...] Really the truth is just a plain picture. A plain picture of…let’s say… a tramp vomiting, man, in a sewer and, next door to the picture, Mr. Rockefeller or Mr. CW Jones, you know, on the Subway going to work.  You know any kind of picture.  Just make some sort of collage of pictures, which they don’t do.  They don’t do.  There’s no ideas in Time magazine, there’s just facts.  [] It can’t be a good article because the guy writing the article is sitting in a desk in New York – he is not even going out of his office.”

Who is Bob Dylan?

Bob Dylan – his music and personal identity – is best described in his own words as “some sort of collage of pictures”.  An embodiment of this insight, his music and life have detailed the contradictions, vicissitudes, and complexities of an examined life.  As such, his lyrics and life are not processed, prepackaged, and available for easy consumption – they are raw.  It is this dedication to “truth” as a plain picture that has drawn fans to Dylan for over 5 decades.

BOB DYLAN. You either love him or hate him. I of course LOVE him

I’m impressed by how SANE he was, in such an INSANE situation.
His music inspires me greatly.

xx Heather Rose

¿Qué es la felicidad? No lo sé, ¿lo sabe usted? ¿Bob, por qué cantas? Porque me apetece ¿Señor Dylan, se considera un poeta o un cantante? Ninguno de los dos ¿Por qué ha dejado de hacer canciones de protesta? No sé de qué me está hablando ¿Puede chuparse las gafas? ¿Cómo dice? Que si puede chuparse las gafas… Oh no que asco, chúpelas usted ¿Cuál es el mensaje de su música? No lo sé… Así solía responder Bob Dylan a las preguntas de los periodistas, en la época que le consideraban un vendido a la música pop y al mercantilismo.

A Robert Zimmerman se le quiso hacer un ídolo del movimiento antisistema y liberador de los años 60, pero Bob siempre fue libre e independiente, siempre quiso la música que quiso hacer aunque la gente se le fuera del escenario porque había traicionado al folk.  Le odiaban por Like a rolling stone, pero a la semana siguiente la sala volvía a estar llena. Dylan creció con el folk y luchó con la genial Joan Baez por los derechos civiles y contra la guerra de Vietnam, pero como ella misma diría Bob no seguía un camino, no tenía una etiqueta, hacía música y llegó a desvincularse de izquierdas, de derechas, de folk, de pop, de los parámetros y estereotipos culturales de un lado o de otro que querían encasillar a las personas, buscar una filosofía y un sentido detrás de todo, cuando sencillamente no lo había, porque Dylan acabó harto.

Hizo lo que quiso, y precisamente ahí reside la genialidad de este músico, que lejos de terminar siendo un drogadicto extravagante fue un genio, un artista total. Sin camino, sin dirección, libre al fin y esclavo de sí mismo, como sabría realizar en la pantalla Martin Scorsese en un gran documental: No direction home.

“Eu tinha vontade de sair e encontrar – como numa odisséia, onde eu iria pra minha casa em algum lugar. Eu meio que sentia que estava indo encontrar essa casa que eu havia deixado pra trás há muito tempo e não conseguia lembrar exatamente do caminho, mas eu estava indo. E encontrar o que eu encontrei pelo caminho foi como eu tinha visualizado tudo. Na realidade eu não tinha ambição alguma. Eu simplesmente nasci muito longe de onde supostamente deveria estar e portanto eu estou no meu caminho pra casa.”

Bob Dylan, em NO DIRECTION HOME de Martin Scorcese.

and this song on the No Direction Home soundtrack in particular. That moment after he shouts to The Band to ‘play it fucking loud’ weakens me.

Didn’t you?

Yesterday on a whim / on a walk home from a lame job interview, I decided to pick up Arcade Fire’s “Mirror Noir” and Leonard Cohen’s “Live in London”. I got to thinking about how awesome some music DVDs are, and how amazing it is when a film-maker is able to capture the experience of a concert in film.

So this morning I decided to compile a short run-down of some good music DVDs I’ve come across in recent years. To be fair I have tried to cover a broad spectrum of music DVDs, everything from classic rock to folk to metalcore-for-kids-who-wear-tight-pants.

A word on this, and many of my other entries: Please do not feel obligated to read these posts, or check out all the mentioned music, all at once. You can come back to this as a resource whenever you need music to listen to/watch. Think of this as a book with no paper, or a library without awkward people. Cheers.

1) Firstly, Leonard Cohen’s, Live in London-  Leonard Cohen is one of the most prolific songwriters of our time. Cohen took an unexplained hiatus from touring 15 years ago, using some of the time to do some profound soul-searching (Prior to recording “Ten New Songs” Cohen spent 5 years in a Zen monastery in California). Even after a long hiatus from performing, Cohen has still managed to produce a live-show filled with the depth and wisdom of a life-long artist. His voice is still deep and poetic, and his backing band comprises some of the best musicians I’ve seen in a while. I like it.

2) Mirror Noir, The Arcade Fire- This is Arcade Fire’s new DVD, filmed by Vincent Moon (the man behind a number of “La Blogotheque” videos, which I’ll discuss later). This DVD was filmed throughout the recording process of Neon Bible, and snapshots of the tours that followed. The mood and atmosphere of the film matches the feel of “Neon Bible”, and it gives some insight as to the reasoning Arcade Fire had in the recording process- why they used elaborate organ sounds, orchestras, and choirs. Definitely worth your time.

3) Rattle and Hum- This is u2’s travel documentary, recorded soon after The Joshua Tree. For this film u2 travels from Ireland to the US to discover the cultural/spiritual roots of American music. The best parts of the film are 1) A recording of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” in a church with a gospel choir and 2) A performance of “When Love Came To Town” with blues-legend BB King. This one is definitely a must own.

4) The Supernatural Experience- At the height of their career DC Talk recorded “The Supernatural Experience”, which centered on their last studio album, and tour, as a band. This DVD shows a some-what over-publicized band at their best moments. “Supernatural” was the definition of DC Talk’s years of seeking identity, before Michael Tait, Kevin Max, and Toby Mac felt the urge to pursue solo projects. Say what you will, underneath all the hype and baggage associated with DC Talk/Christian bands in general, they were pretty talented and creative artists.

5) Heima, Sigur Ros- Ah, Sigur Ros. This film captures a tour Sigur Ros did in small towns in Iceland. As they tour the band finds every atmospheric locale they can find to put an exclamation point on their already beautifully orchestrated music. The sounds used in this film range from high-technology, to rocks gathered on a hill that make different tones, to a large ice-field that cracks and groans (for lack of a better word) with it’s slow movements. This movie is poetry.

6) Where the Light Is, John Mayer- I haven’t seen this one yet, but I’ve been told it’s good. From what I’ve heard this is a more stripped down John Mayer set, reminiscent of his focused guitar-and-vocals performances before he got gigantically huge with Heavier Things and Continuum.

7) No Direction Home- A documentary about the early days of Bob Dylan’s career, directed by Martin Scorsese. This shows Bob Dylan both at his defining career points (such as challenging the entire idea of folk music by playing electric at a Newport Folk Festival) and his fun-loving character. It also shows Dylan’s reluctance to be heralded as the spokesperson for protest movements. I don’t want to say too much, because there are many conversations to be had with this DVD. Come over some time and we’ll talk.

8 ) Shine a light, The Rolling Stones- A documentary on the career of The Rolling Stones (a band that has been famous for a long time, and no-one can really say why) also directed by Martin Scorsese. I actually haven’t seen this one yet either… does someone own it? Was it any good?

9) Live From Chicago, u2- I don’t think any-one really expected “How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb” to be a great album, but leave it to u2 to keep reinventing themselves every couple years, never finding themselves in a creative rut. This concert was performed during the Vertigo Tour, which I didn’t get to see because I was still a skeptic when this tour came through Vancouver. My best friend went to the show and came back with 97 reasons for me to feel jealous. This concert shines a light on their past career, as well as highlighting the personal nature of “How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb”. U2 is one of those bands that you can’t afford to miss in concert… ever. They’re coming to Vancouver again in the fall, but I can’t find a ticket! I really should learn my lesson.

10) Any concert DVD by Led Zeppelin- I think Nick Andopolis said it best: “I believe in God. I’ve seen him, I’ve felt his power! He plays drums for Led Zeppelin and his name is John Bonham baby!” Some friends of mine were watching a classic Led Zeppelin concert one time, and seeing the legendary drum solo by the late John Bonham was worth some attention. That man must have prayed a lot in his younger days to have been blessed with such a talent.

11) The Best of Radiohead- Radiohead is another one of those bands you have to see in concert! I saw them last year at Thunderbird Stadium, and it was raining most of the time which made it a pretty surreal experience. I’m not sure if they’ve released a decent concert DVD yet, but they did release “The Best of”- a collection of all their best music videos.

12) A Hard Day’s Night- This is the defining rock-movie of our time. The Beatles filmed this one at the height of their popularity, and it shows the band in their young prime- before transitioning into, arguably, the most influential music career in our lifetimes. It’s a glimpse into that point in a band’s career where they realize: “Ah! I’m famous! Now what???”

13) Danielson : A Family Movie – Danielson represents the influence of a humble, sincere approach to music (a common theme in artists like My Brightest Diamond, The Welcome Wagon, Rosie Thomas, Denison Witmer and a host of others). This documentary follows the development of Daniel Smith and his family- a group of his brothers and sisters who played with tooth and nail for awhile, gained a following over the years, then eventually started their own label (a very short synopsis). The result is a hopeful film that makes you feel at home, part of the family. It’s strange comparing Daniel Smith’s sincerity with his weird vocal style, and also comparing Sufjan’s shy quietness with his wildly famous and confident “Illinois“. I can’t say enough good about this movie. Download/Borrow/Buy it today!

14) I am trying to break your heart, Wilco- I still haven’t seen this one (how embarrassing). Is it any good? From what I’ve heard, Wilco is every independent band’s favorite band. They are a band that has maintained a loyal following over the years, but has never become highly successful (becoming the band that every person and their mom talks about). I could see this film centering a lot around the political side of being a smaller band who doesn’t always have the luxury of a major record company putting every aspect of their career in cruise control, so to speak. I will find this movie soon, then rethink my synopsis. Yes.

15) Tupac Ressurection- Tupac was an enigma in the music scene in his short life, leaving behind a wake of controversy and influence. This film strays away from the overtly negative aspects of Tupac’s life, focusing instead on his personal/artistic character. I think “Changes” alone is reason to revisit Tupac’s life and career.

16) La Blogotheque – La Blogotheque is a film company of sorts that films impromptu concerts with independent artists, most of them taking place in the streets of Paris. The best part about La Blogotheque is that you can watch all their movies online for free! The music is good too. (My favorites include: Fleet Foxes, Tallest Man On Earth, Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens). Spend a day or two with these videos, or subscribe to the podcast and carry them around on your IPOD or your zune (Do not carry them around on your zune! in fact, throw your zune away. I am not a fan).

17) This is Who We Are, As I Lay Dying- As I Lay Dying, from what I can tell, is an artist who is committed to working on the art itself and reaching a diverse audience, not limiting themselves to a Christians-only audience (similar bands are Haste the Day, The Chariot, Thrice, and Norma Jean). As well they come across as an intelligent group. I put them in this list because it would suck to write off all hard-music as bad. I think it’s a pretty legitimate art form, and there’s a lot of truth to be found in any genre of music.

18) Finally, This is Spinal Tap- The rockumentary of the ages. This is Spinal Tap is a mock-film that gives insight into the world of 80’s hair/metal bands. If you haven’t seen this one yet make it a priority. Cancel your kid’s soccer game and settle in for an evening of quality family time, or something.

Thus concludes my short list. Do you know of any other music DVDs I really should watch? If so… comment comment comment!

(Man I want some comments. What a horrible addiction. This is why I like using Tumblr).

Y llegó el momento, es difícil pero no puedo dilatar esto mucho mas, voy a hablar de Bob Dylan.

Esto no me resulta nada fácil, entendamos que me estoy metiendo con uno de los mas grandes, mas respetados y mas odiados de este mundillo rockpopero, para colmo de males no soy un conocedor de su obra a rajatabla, pero después de tantos años de rock en mi vida empiezo a entender el hombre que hay detrás del mito.

El detonante de este post fue empezar a leer su autobiografía “Cronicas”. Un libro muy interesante que cuenta en primera persona la génesis del personaje. Una de las cosas mas maravillosas que tiene el libro es ver como Bob fue recogiendo elementos de muchas influencias diferentes para construir una identidad propia, si a este libro le sumamos el documental de Scorsese “No Direction Home” podemos empezar a ver la punta del ovillo.

Yo llegue a Dylan por otros, durante años escuche muchas canciones de su repertorio interpretadas por personajes de todo tipo, de Nick Cave a Sonny and Cher pasando por Guns and Roses, U2, Rolling Stones y demás bestias del ambiente, y siempre sentía que me gustaba mas Dylan en la voz de otra gente. Pero llego un momento que tuve que abrir mi corazón al gran Bob y cuando eso sucede ya no hay vuelta atrás.

Tengo mis favoritas, “Hurricane”, “Simple Twist of Fate” o “Ballad of a Thin Man” son las que ocupan un lugar especial en mi vida, pero cuando uno empieza a internarse en el mundo Dylan pasa lo mismo que con Zappa, su producción es tan grande y variada que uno no puede quedarse con solo una parte, lo quiere todo y cuando mas lo conoces mas se mete en tu vida y no te lo puedes quitar de tus oídos.

Cuenta la leyenda que el gran cambio de la historia de la música pop de dio cuando Lennon y Dylan se conocieron, parece que la conversación entre Bob y John fue algo asi:

- Dylan:

 ” A ver si te empiezas a preocupar por las letras”

 A lo que Lennon respondio:

 ” y que tal si tu le metes electricidad a tus canciones”, 

Meses después de esta conversación vino el famoso grito de “Judas” para Bob y Sgt Pepper para John, el resto de la historia ya la conocemos todos.

Yo se que en estos tiempos tan neo posmodernos pedirle a los jóvenes que escuchen a un viejuno con voz nasal no es tarea fácil, pero se los recomiendo, si empiezan ahora van a poder disfrutar de la obra de este genio durante mas tiempo en su vida.  Y como última recomendación les sugiero que se hagan con el disco “I’m Not there” es el soundtrack de una peli basada en la vida del gran Bob, allí se encontraran con grandes canciones en la voz de lo mejorcito del patio en este momento, una buena forma de acercarse de a poco al universo Dylan.

If You See Her, Say Hello

If you see her, say hello, she might be in Tangier

She left here last early spring, is livin’ there, I hear

Say for me that I’m all right though things get kind of slow

She might think that I’ve forgotten her, don’t tell her it isn’t so.

We had a falling-out, like lovers often will

And to think of how she left that night, it still brings me a chill

And though our separation, it pierced me to the heart

She still lives inside of me, we’ve never been apart.

If you get close to her, kiss her once for me

I always have respected her for busting out and gettin’ free

Oh, whatever makes her happy, I won’t stand in the way

Though the bitter taste still lingers on from the night I tried to make her stay.

I see a lot of people as I make the rounds

And I hear her name here and there as I go from town to town

And I’ve never gotten used to it, I’ve just learned to turn it off

Either I’m too sensitive or else I’m gettin’ soft.

Sundown, yellow moon, I replay the past

I know every scene by heart, they all went by so fast

If she’s passin’ back this way, I’m not that hard to find

Tell her she can look me up if she’s got the time.

.

Se a encontrar, diga olá

Se a encontrar, diga olá. Ela deve estar em Tangier

Daqui partiu no início da última primavera e hoje mora lá, pelo que ouvi falar

Diga, em meu lugar, que estou bem, mesmo que as coisas estejam indo devagar

Ela deve achar que a esqueci, não diga que isso é mentira.

Nós nos desentendemos, e isso é comum entre amantes

E pensar na forma como ela partiu ainda me dá calafrios

E apesar da nossa separação resultar em um grande vazio

Ela ainda vive dentro de mim, nunca nos separamos enfim.

Se você se aproximar dela, beije-a uma vez, da minha parte

Eu sempre a respeitei por ter fugido e alcançado a liberdade

Ah, e não me atreverei a me meter com quem a traz felicidade

Mesmo que aquele sabor acre permaneça, desde a noite em que tentei fazer com que ela ficasse.

Vejo tanta gente quando ando por aí

E eu ouço o nome dela aqui e acolá, aonde quer que eu vá

E eu nunca me acostumei, apenas aprendi a esquecer

Talvez eu seja sensível demais ou esteja ficando sentimental.

Pôr-do-sol, lua dourada, eu revivo o passado

Sei cada cena de cor, e todas se passaram tão rápido

Se ela voltar a trilhar esse caminho, não será tão difícil de me encontrar

Diga a ela que se tiver um tempo, pode me procurar.

Bob Dylan

Traduzido por Wagner Miranda e revisado por Lizandra Silva

I started out on burgundy
But soon hit the harder stuff
Everybody said they’d stand behind me
When the game got rough
But the joke was on me
There was nobody even there to call my bluff
I’m going back to New York City
I do believe I’ve had enough

(Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues, 1965)

Det var inte meningen. Men jag är tvungen att göra ett undantag.

Jag måste stoppa in en Dagens Dylan Bonus.

Jag lovar att det inte ska upprepas.

Eller så ska det upprepas.

Som Bob Dylan skulle ha sagt:

Let the echo decide if I was right or wrong.

Ekot härrör alltså från en sång vi släppte fri för några veckor sedan här på Dagens Dylan, då som # 28.

Men så satt jag här, the other day, och lyssnade på denna grymma version från Live 1966.

Råkade då också läsa att Michael Gray kallar den för:

The best live performance achieved by anyone.

Det är möjligen samma albums Like A Rolling Stone emot, tänkte jag.

Och läste vidare, när Michael Gray utvecklar här storheten i denna makalösa upptagning av Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues:

Liverpool in May 1966—the city that had so recently been the centre of the musical universe— and hurl at their audience rock music a thousand times more sublime, challenging, multi-layered and exciting than anything Liverpudlians had ever heard before? Impossible to say, but easy to prove. Play that night’s ‘Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues’. By this point Dylan’s cawing voice and searing harmonica were both perfectly integrated instruments in amongst those of the Hawks, whose hardwon knowledge of each other’s playing freed them all to ride each moment in a ceaseless interchange of fiery, creative levitation.

Det var då jag såg det.

Liverpool? Han skriver ju Liverpool?

Och inte om konserten i Manchester. Där ju Live 1966 är ifrån. Jag bläddrar allt hastigare i The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia igen. Jo, minsann, karln tjatar om upptagningen från Liverpool. Han är alltså så sjukt snobbig att han refererar till en upptagning som bara finns utgiven som B-sida på singeln I Want You. Det är således den singeln ni ska leta efter…

Det var så dags. Då var jag redan igång med denna denna DDB # 1, Dagens Dylan Bonus # 1. Och jag kan inte (vill inte) föreställa mig att det ska vara några oceaner mellan Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues i Manchester och i Liverpool. Därför: här är er bonus. Och jag nöjer mig inte med ett att ge er bara den fenomenala Live 1966-upptagningen här nedan.

No no, det finns inga gränser för den här bloggens generositet. Ni får två bonusspår.

Låt vara att de båda alltså härrör från samma turné. Och ingen av dem är från Liverpool

Titta först på några minuter från No Direction Home (från konserten i London) och avnjut därefter, i sin helhet, från Manchester, det nästan bästa liveuppträdandet som någon gjort.

This video is a understanding of who Bob Dylan is. Most of you may know him as a poet or folk singer but what people fail to grasp is that Bob Dylan is a rebel in the musical industry. The way the pre-story goes for this video is that Bob use to play the acoustic guitar and his fans fucking loved it and then he found his sound on the electric guitar and everyone hated him at first for giving up the old sound. It’s one of those things in the music industry that fans are apprehensive to change while for the artist change is all that they have been looking for and hoping for. This video shows the fans being pissed (they call him Judas) and it also shows Bob Dylan being a rebel (tells his band to play it fucking loud). You got everything you need to know about Bob Dylan wrapped up in a nice little video. Enjoy your daily track and never forget that Bob Dylan is cooler then you could ever be.

Clip is from [No Direction Home]

Oh the time will come up
When the winds will stop
And the breeze will cease to be breathin’.
Like the stillness in the wind
‘Fore the hurricane begins,
The hour when the ship comes in.

Oh the seas will split
And the ship will hit
And the sands on the shoreline will be shaking.
Then the tide will sound
And the wind will pound
And the morning will be breaking.

Oh the fishes will laugh
As they swim out of the path
And the seagulls they’ll be smiling.
And the rocks on the sand
Will proudly stand,
The hour that the ship comes in.

(When The Ship Comes In, 1963)

Om Bob Dylan blev hyllad som Gud inom folkmusikkretsar, redan efter sitt första album, så var han desto mer okänd utanför dem. Och tvärtemot vad man kanske kunde tro, så njöt han inte (enbart) av denna anonymitet. På så vis kom den här sången till. En liten hymn om konsten att besegra de rådande makterna. Det är Joan Baez som berättat denna sköna historia.

That was amazing, the history of that little song. We were driving around the East Coast, we were out in the boondocks somewhere, and I had a concert to give. I don’t know whether he was singing with me at that point, but he and I were driving together and we stopped. I said: “Run in and see if this is the right place”. So he went in and came out and he said: “Hey, there’s no reservations here”. I said: “You sure?”

And I went in and they said. “Hello, Miss Baez, we’ve been waiting for you”. And I said: “Hold it, a minute. I want an extra room, please”. And then Bobby walked in, and he was all innocent and looking shitty as hell and I said: “Give this gentleman a room”. And they said: “Oh certainly”. But they wouldn’t talk to him.

He had said: “Does Joan Baez have a room here?” And they had said: “No”. And he went out. So then he went to his room and wrote When The Ship Comes In: Your days are numbered. He wrote it that night, took him exactly one evening to write it.

Clinton Heylin, engelsk författare av ett antal Dylan-biografier, spekulerar i att When The Ship Comes In dessutom skulle hämtat inspiration från Bertolt Brechts och Kurt Weills Tolvskillingsoperan, närmare bestämt Jenny’s Song. Han skriver:

As Pirate Jenny dreams of the destruction of all her enemies by a mysterious ship, so Dylan envisages the neophobes being swept aside in ‘the hour when the ship comes in.

Heylin berättar vidare att Suze Rotolo, Dylans flickvän de tidiga åren i New York, erinrat sig att hennes intresse för Brecht påverkade Dylan:

My interest in Brecht was certainly an influence on him. I was working for the Circle in the Square Theater and he came to listen all the time. He was very affected by the song that Lotte Lenya’s known for, ‘Pirate Jenny’.

Som framgår av Martin Scorseses No Direction Home lyckades Dylan omvandla det personliga nederlaget från hotellet till ett storslaget statement. I filmen kan vi se hur Dylan och Baez framför den tillsammans vid The Civil Rights March i Washington den 30 mars 1963, samma dag som Martin Luther King höll sitt klassiska tal om I Have A Dream.

Möjligen låter sången bättre i originalversionen på The Times They Are A-Changin’ eller i demoinspelningen från The Bootleg Series Vol 1-3. Men jag väljer ändå att visa Dylan och Baez från 1963. Det är en fantastisk scen. Det är samtidshistoria. Och Bob Dylan från Hibbing i Minnesota är fortfarande bara 21 år gammal.

I thought it would be a good  idea to celebrate the life and extraordionary work of Odetta, who passed away today at the age of 77.

Many of you may remember Bob Dylan nodding his cap to this core-shaking singer on his Scorsese documentary ‘No Direction Home’, as her earthy ‘Water Boy’ vocals tumbled out of her.

In a 1978 interview, he said: “The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta.”

In fact, it was Odetta’s integral handprint on the American folk music revival in the 1950s that convinced the freewheeler to sell his electric guitar and play an acoustic one instead.

In her own right, she was a striking performer and freedom fighter, best-known in the US for taking part in the 1963 civil rights march on Washington, where she sang ‘O Freedom’.

Meticulous to her art, Time magazine even wrote in 1960. “To understand the emotions of a convict in a convict ditty, she once tried breaking up rocks with a sledge hammer.”

A raw talent. A defiant legancy. Odetta will be sorely missed. 

Please click onto this YouTube video in tribute and memory:

Notes on No Direction Home, three years on

Whether Bob Dylan knows this or not (he doesn’t seem to really want to know about these things), his early years of brilliance are still an inspiration. Even just hearing someone else sing one of his songs can cause an emotional episode.

I was sitting next to my wife in Walk the Line, listening to Joaquin Phoenix doing Johnny Cash doing Dylan’s It Ain’t Me, Babe, and it made me cry. I remember being wound up tighter than a tampon. The song softened me up good.

I wasn’t embarrassed at all; in fact I got quite into it. Crying does you good; you forget that. My wife was embarrassed, of course. I had my face buried in her shoulder but I was sending shudders through our row of seats, crying big, noisy man sobs. I wasn’t holding back. I figured the noise of the song was drowning me out, and I thought everyone would be too enthralled to notice me in the glare from the screen, but my wife noticed. There was no explaining Dylan and his effect on me to her, or my sudden realisation that he would die one day and that I would have to deal with it and be dealt with when this happened.

Anyway, here I am three years later, watching No Direction Home. I’m alone and I have my notebook. This time I aim to tell someone something about the Dylan effect on susceptible people. I don’t want it to be a serious review; it’s going to be more like some margin scrawls in the life-long story of Bob Dylan, a kind of library graffiti.

• I can’t connect the querulous-looking older guy being interviewed in the film with the halo-haired, frail-looking, explosive singer that came out of nowhere and conquered New York and the world. Here are some of the many words that occurred to me during the movie that can be used to describe him: improbable, strange, authentic, sweet, perplexing, himself, utterly, utterly right. More of those later on.
• As regards perplexing: People like my ex-wife don’t, have never and in all probability never will understand the very first thing about Bob Dylan, namely ‘why Bob Dylan’? Why listen to a man with a voice like a broken reed in a gale, when there’re sweet voices like, say, Shayne Ward? Why get so bent out of shape about the life of a guy who so obviously thrived on being misunderstood, probably out of a fear of being understood and ripped off? Why? The closest my ex ever came to engaging me on the subject of BD was to listen to ‘Just like a Woman’, quietly and politely, only to ask at the end why he’d found it necessary to say a woman is just like a woman. Another time she laughed at one of his drawn-out, out-of-time deliveries. While the first question is answered easily enough (sometimes a woman is like herself, at others like a little girl), the second isn’t. Maybe the thing to say is that the rules don’t always apply where Dylan is concerned.
• Those closest to Dylan didn’t get him either. John Cohen (great photographer of that era) appeared in interviews in the film. He recalls that, in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Dylan asked him to sing with him. The song was ‘You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone’. Cohen sang, but thought, ‘hang on, there isn’t going to be anyone left to miss us! What is this?!’. He meant for it to be funny, supposedly, but I can’t help feeling he was really making a judgment. The problem that many other signers with a ‘social conscience’ had with Dylan was that he always refused to be called a political singer, a protest singer. It’s a limiting classification, I think he felt (I agree), not to mention a repulsive one. He was capable of far more, and he sang what he felt like. He got the whole protest thing better than anyone, certainly enough to write and sing protest songs, but really, he was just a singer. An artist. Does my writing this piece make me a reviewer? No. I don’t give a shit about Westlife, and nobody can make me write anything about them. It’s not really possible to fully show the hateful little attitude behind Cohen’s comment, the limiting and limited outlook squirming beneath it, until he talks again later: Another singer (the girl from Peter, Paul and Mary), had come back from Florida to icy New York after her first big break. Cohen asked why she didn’t have a tan, and she explained her manager had told her to stay indoors to fit in with the biblical theme he was creating for the group in a time of serious folk mania (another band member changed his name at the manager’s suggestion). Cohen’s skin ‘crawled’. ‘She had the chance to go to Florida while I was in New York, and she didn’t go outside,” he said. He was happy to hog the moral high ground, why? Because he was jealous, the poor fool.
• Naïve, obstinate, passenger, player, vulnerable all the same… (Dylan, not Cohen).
• Dylan: “God, I hate it when they boo. All that booing. I can’t get in tune when they do that. You can’t hear anything. I don’t even know if I want to get in tune.”
• Dylan: “They said they would kill me? Do they do that a lot? I don’t mind getting shot, I just don’t want to be told about it, you know?”
• Liam Clancy: “He was Charlie Chaplin, Dylan Thomas. He was a Shapeshifter. It wasn’t necessary for him to be a definitive person. He was a receiver. He was possessed.”
• Paul Rudd (I Could Never be Your Woman, with Michelle Pfeiffer): “I don’t have to be a real man. I’m an actor.
• Me again: I think I have calculated how long it takes for genius to become mainstream. Forty years.
• From http://www.amazon.com/Bootleg-Vol-Dylan-Albert-Concert/dp/B00000D9TO: Live 1966: The “Royal Albert Hall” Concert has surfaced on two discs mixed and mastered from three-track source tapes that put the myriad pirated recordings to shame. More important, Live 1966 documents a momentous artistic showdown between a wilful, inflamed, and utterly fearless performer and his headstrong core following. The Dylan of the mid ’60s had made the leap from socially conscious voice of his generation to surrealistic electric poet, a transformation that was met with contempt by a vocal element of his audience. The most telling moment of the recording centers on the standoff: A folk zealot in the audience shouts, “Judas!” earning cheers from the contentious crowd. Dylan responds by snarling, “I don’t believe you. You’re a liar,” then turns to his group, the Hawks (soon to become the Band), and, as the intro to “Like a Rolling Stone” takes shape, commands, “Play loud!”
• I remember other such gems that make you laugh and feel sad, alternately.
• But why call his life unprecedented? Wasn’t Mozart a rock star? Sure, he didn’t play the electric guitar.
• Sometimes he was just fucking with everyone. Or not, you couldn’t tell. (“Awlll ah reely wanna dohooooo, is baby be friends with you…”)
• He looks and sounds uncannily like Cate Blanchett in I’m not Here.
• He called himself an ‘expeditionary’ (experimental) singer, who had to immerse himself in different kinds of music. He stole hundreds of records from people who took him in. Joan Baez stole a song from him, but like you would steal a lock of someone’s hair. He was lucky to have her; she loved him. And while she took him on stage when he looked like a ragamuffin and she was famous already, he wouldn’t share the stage with anyone when he became famous.
• Baez: “When he was light and happy, it was spectacular. When he was dark I would have to deal with him. I was already doing that (being his motherly girlfriend).”
• Baez: “One night he’d play it in waltz time, the next in 2-4, just to fuck you up.”
• Dylan: “You can’t be wise and in love.”
• Me: He let them guess their way through all the wrong questions.

Journalist: “Do you have anything special to express when you sign?”

Dylan: “No.”

Other journalist: “Why do you sing, then?”

Dylan: “Because I feel like it.”

J: “Don’t you think your first albums were better?”

D: “Who said that?”

J: “That fella.”

D: “Are you American?”

J: “No, I’m French.”

D: “That explains it.”

J: “Do your songs have a message?”

D: “Where did you hear that?”

J: “I read it somewhere.”

J: “Do you think you should be the leader of all singers with a message?”

D: “No. I don’t know what that means.”

• He’s the boy you love who won’t stand still for you to dress him nicely.
• He writes, sings and speaks well.

Carel Alberts

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005)

I’d been depressed for a month. I might have been feeling that way for a long time and not known it, I don’t know; accepted it as the lot of someone who works because he has to, not because it allows him to say something with his life. Day in, day out, two years into my own business and still trying to be a businessman, but still sucking at figuring out why it is that I’m working constantly and earning good money and yet never actually have any, and never see the light of day for lack of time, or anyone to share the day or the office or a cup of coffee with.

All this, I thought, would pass. I’m a pretty hard worker and self-tinkerer, tinkering, tinkering at my chinks until this task, too, is easy in the end, and this, and this, and I’m better for it. I was working on two tax consultants at once: one was on my 2007 return and in the middle of filing season when she had a stroke. Nobody could talk to her to find out what she’d been busy with or at what stage things were. I had sent my tax invoices to her in the post – someone had signed for it, but nobody knew who. I pored over the PostNet slip with its uptight little female or teenage signature, worked out the surname wrong and phoned everyone by that name in and around the neighbourhood in this remote town where this obscure tax consultancy operated, a company that a friend (now dead) had said was “good, maybe too good, but for that reason probably a safe bet”.

With all this happening to me, I’d fallen more than a year behind filing deadline by the middle of this year. It was time to start working on the next (2008) return, so I got another tax consultant, this time local. I figured I was in trouble – I probably owed the revenue service a whack of money, and through a weirdness of my self-unemployed tax status, I owed all of it now. Meanwhile the business papers were taking an interest in a billionaire businessman who was being hounded by the tax commissioner. I was starting to feel physically sick with worry and lack-of-closure-overload. But I was working on things – one way or another (either paying the tax man much less than I thought or landing in jail), soon all this would be behind me and I could move on to current things.

Suddenly, it was behind me. I didn’t owe nearly as much as I’d thought, but nothing changed. I couldn’t sleep. I woke up in the mornings feeling like death, even though I’d quit smoking and drinking months before. I went to bed depressed, wondering what disfiguring antisocial programming I was planting in my kids’ brains without knowing it (everyone else is doing it), what fears they already harboured that I hadn’t resolved in my own life. What kind of a son and grandson I’d been; what a complete bastard, my entire life, to every girl who’d ever given me affection. Normal stuff, if you don’t block shit out.

Then, one day, as I put the finishing touches to an article I’d written, painstakingly perfecting it, I realised where all this unhappiness-turning-to-delusion was coming from. I had written something that was way more than it ought to have been, if not a work of art then at least a thing of modestly beautiful craft, and it was going to end up in the sponsored section of an IT trade rag as a laptop feature. That’s what the hell the matter was. All my life was like this. It was meaningless. Anyone would have hated it; dutifully, doggedly, doing their best for – what?

So I decided to change my life, and the first thing I did after that was to look for a self-publishing space on the Web. Hence Everymag. It’s where I come to be myself after work. Next thing I did, even before I wrote this article, I wrote an entry called ‘No direction home’. But that’s for next time.

Meanwhile to all the other poor working stiffs out there, here’s my advice: work even harder. But make it something you want to do. And don’t quit the day job.

Next instalment: No direction home

Bob Dylan – No Direction Home DVD

It’s virtually impossible to approach No Direction Home without a cluster of fixed ideas. Who doesn’t have their own private Dylan? The true excellence of Martin Scorsese’s achievement lies in how his documentary shakes us free of our comfortable assumptions. In the process, it plays out on several levels at once, each taking shape as an unfailingly fascinating narrative. There is, of course, the central story of an individual genius staking out his artistic identity. But along with this Bildungsroman come other threads and contexts: most notably, the role of popular culture in postwar America, art’s self-reliance versus its social responsibilities, and fans’ complicity with the publicity machine in sustaining myths. All of these threads reinforce each other, together weaving the film’s intricate texture.

Scorsese’s 200-plus-minute focus on Dylan’s earliest years allows for a portrayal of unprecedented depth, with multiple angles: a rich composite photo is the result. The main narrative has an epic quality: it moves from Dylan growing up in cold-war Minnesota through Greenwich Village coffeehouses and the Newport Folk Festival, climaxing in the controversial 1966 U.K. tour that crowned a period of unbridled and explosive creativity. In his transition from Robert Allen Zimmerman to Bob Dylan, we observe him concocting his impossible-to-describe, unique combination of the topical with the archaic, like an ancient oracle. Scorsese was able to access previously unseen footage from the Dylan archives, including performances, press conferences, and recording sessions. He also uses interviews with Dylan’s friends, ex-friends, and fellow artists, and, intriguingly, with the notoriously reclusive Dylan himself (who looks back to provide glosses on the early years), fusing what could have turned into a tiresome series of digressions and tangents into a powerful whole as enlightening, eccentric, contradictory, and ultimately irreducible as its subject.

Some of the deeply personal bits remain unrevealed, but Dylan’s preternatural self-assurance acquires a slightly self-deprecating, even comic edge via some of his reflective comments. Alongside the arrogance, we see touching moments of the young artist’s reverence for Woody Guthrie and Johnny Cash. Joan Baez, in a poignant confessional mood, comes off well, and the late Allen Ginsberg is so seraphically charming he almost steals the show a few times. A crucial throughline is Dylan’s hunger for recognition and ability to shape perceptions so that would be singled out as not just another dime-a-dozen folk singer. It’s illuminating–particularly for those familiar with the artist’s latter-day aloofness on stage–to see his reactions to audience booing in the wake of his “betrayal” in this fuller context. No Direction Home also makes clear–in a way that wasn’t possible in D.A. Pennebaker’s iconic Don’t Look Back–how Dylan’s ability to manipulate his persona always, at its core, protects the urge for expression: Dylan’s ultimate mandate, as an artist, is never to be pinned down. As Scorsese masterfully shows, the myth around Dylan only grows bigger the more we discover about him. –Thomas May

Had a request yesterday for the following vid.  Wasn’t so much a request as it was a threat, but still…I appreciate the gesture.  Not to mention, this song is pretty fun.  You’ll recognize the tune and probably get a laugh out of who they choose to cut to when they first show anyone in the audience.  Totally racist.

And that’s fun and all, but I think I like this one even better:

Also, want to just take a minute to sing the praises of VH1 Classics.  Hands down, this is the best music television channel in America (and possibly elsewhere).  I know saying that is basically like proving I’m over thirty without having to show a birth certificate, but so be it.  For starters, they show music videos.  Lots of music videos.  And then they also show concerts, documentaries, and music related movies.  Last night they ran the three hour Scorsese-directed Dylan documentary No Direction Home.  It’s a great, revealing look at Dylan’s attitude about what he was doing when he started more so than even featuring the music itself.  The collected footage from concerts and interviews is pretty astounding and I highly recommend seeing it if you can (I’m sure they’ll replay it or it’s on DVD).  Here’s “Maggie’s Farm” from another doc called Festival to get you in the mood:

More tomorrow, beatniks.

Greil Marcus, Bob Dylan And Martin Scorsese

A Review of the Movie

No Direction Home by Martin Scorsese

by

R.E. Prindle

Texts:

Scorsese, Martin:  No Direction Home- A Film

Marcus, Greil:  http://www.powells.com/essays/marcus.html

     I’m not the only one that shakes  his head over the rants of Greil Marcus.  The perspective he’s coming from deserves some attention.  Greil Marcus in the disciple, probably the successor. of the decadent leader of the Situationist International, Guy Debord.

     The SI is a crank organization.  Like Hitler they place a lot of emphasis on architecture.  Architecture seems to go with the totalitarian personality.  Unlike Hitler whose goal was a Roman grandiosity to match his Thousand Year Reich, we can’t be sure what SI architecture would be like other than ‘human to make people happy.’  In other words Debord found fault with architecture that the majority were happy with but displeased him.  He seemed to think that he could create some stunning new architecture that might please someone other than himself.  We all know how hard a feat  that is.

     But he ranted and raved actually being influential in the moronic disturbances in France in 1968.  Whatever beauty he proposed we’re still waiting to see.  Greil Marcus still thinks the ability of the SI to transform God, life and beauty is within his grasp.  He runs around America at the public expense trying to drum up the Revolution.  Bob Dylan seems to be the centerpiece  of his plans.  Greil’s reaction to Martin Scorcese’s Dylan movie might then be a little more understandable.

     As film biographies go, and they don’t go very well on average, I thought Scorsese’s effort made the most of not too much.  After all there is really very little earth shattering in the career of Bob Dylan.  Greil thinks Bob brought in something new; at best Bob just brought in something a little different no matter how startling it seemed from the perspective of the times.  From the perspective of this time  one wonders what the fuss was all about.  Nevertheless Scorcese maintained a nice tension of interest.  But not for Greil.

     Martin Scorsese’s Dylan documentary- a shape-shifting assemblage of 1950s and 1960s film footage, still photos, strange music, and interviews with Dylan and compatriots conducted over the past years by Dylan’s manager, Jeff Rosen- never holds still, it allows, say, the Irish folksinger Liam Clancy, telling stories of Dylan in Greenwich Village, to contradict Dylan telling his own stories about the same thing;  the film contradicts itself.  There is nothing definitive here; within the film there is not a single version of a single song that runs from beginning to end.

     So now we’re essentially back to Guy Debord’s SI architecture argument.  Whatever has been created is no good and must be replaced by Debord’s ideas which unfortunately for us we cannot evaluate because Debord gave no examples.  It doesn’t really matter, of course, because if he did their ‘definitive’ beauty and utility would not be, perhaps, so apparent to the rest of us as it was to him.

     So, as Debord’s successor Marcus implies that Scorsese has made a movie as ugly as the architecture that Debord and presumably Marcus despises.  The implication is the Greil would have done much better.

You can imagine Rosen driving up to Scorsese’s door with a truck and dumping thousands of pounds of books, interview tapes, film  reels, loose photographs, a complete collection of Dylan albums along with a few hundred or a few thousand bootlegs, and then leaving, trusting that a fan who also knows how to make a movie to make you watch…could wave his hands and just like that a movie would emerge…

     Well, why not?  I’m not aware of Scorsese’s process but a very fine movie of its type does emerge.  With unerring insight Scorsese seeks out key influences, the most important artists in Dylan’s life, introduces them to the viewer, very likely for the first time, and brings some coherence into the Dylan story.  It’s only a movie though, no substitute for study.

     I do not consider it a fault that Scorsese presents all the high points covered by the four main biographies.  His purpose seems to be to cover the years from Dylan’s high school beginnings to Bob’s nervous breakdown in 1966 which he does.  Although already a long film it is never boring while to cover more ground it would be necessary to condense and eliminate to add anything beyond 1966 making the film unintelligible- something like Greil’s own prose.  Of course, the Situationist International that believes in magic might be able to snap its fingers and make it happen, although I think their blank screen notion might be easier to conceive than something with content.  Besides I don’t believe in magic.

     Greil apparently doesn’t believe in differences of opinion or else he feels that loyalty to his ideal requires everyone to ask what Bob said and confirm it.  Marcusian version of freedom of speech.

     As it is I thought Scorcese very skillfully selected song snippets to bring out the very best of artists like Hank Williams, John Jacob Niles, Makem and the Clancys and others.  His interviews with Dave Van Ronk, Liam Clancy, John Cohen and Suze Rotolo were apt and to the point presenting each as attractively as possible.

     I mean Bob left some bad vibes behind that were not accentuated, nay, even glossed over.

     The key point of the movie was the actual monologue or dialogue carried on with a very careworn looking Dylan.  Time has treated him fairly viciously.  Bob revealed himself as much as a modest man could.  There was very little braggadocio while Bob explained himself in a very natural droll manner.  He was much more charming than first person reports of him would lead you to believe.

     Of course, Greil is fixated on what he considers the revolutionary break with the Folk Tradition with Bob as the Promethean figure bringing electricity to ‘weird old America.’

     Greil apparently believes we viewer have been hoodwinked by Scorsese of malevolent intent as a result.

     So you enter the movie with your ideas suspended and your prejudices disarmed, thrown back- eager to be moved- as in moved from one place to another- as you were.  You’ve been set up; you’re ready for anything.  You’ll buy whatever the movie is selling.

     But by the end- when the film has taken the viewer from Dylan’s childhood to those halcyon days in the spring of 1966, then cutting the story off, cold, with just a little card to indicate that the story went on, Bob Dylan continued to do various things, but it’s not the movie’s problem so good night- you don’t know how it got to “Like A Rolling Stone” starting up on stage one more time.

     By this point Marcus has divorced himself from reality and vanished into the pure rhetoric of his armed prejudices.  He’s no longer talking about the content of Scorsese’s movie.  Greil is contrasting the movie he thinks he would have made, Debordian architecture, with the movie or architecture that actually exists.  An inability to perceive reality that is quite mad in its own way.

     It’s what the Jews call building a fence around Torah.  A mad attempt to prevent reality from disturbing the lovely inner version of not only the way they think things could be but shoud be.  Once again as with Debordian architecture or Marcus’ movie not a vision likely to be shared by many others.  One’s private dreams never would be.

     Greil even disagrees with Scorsese’s title in a rather vehement way:

     …despite that title, “No Direction Home,” from Dylan’s greatest hit, “Like A Rolling Stone”- already used as a title for Robert Shelton’s 1986 Dylan biography- such a cliche, isolated like that, so “On The Road”, so “it’s the journey, not the destination,” so corny.

     LOL.  I suppose so, but it didn’t bother me nor affect my enjoyment of the movie.  The running interview with Dylan unifies the movie while giving us an open window to Bob’s motivations and the working of his mind.  While no song was finished Scorcese has great taste and selected the most moving passages from the songs he showed displaying the remarkable vocal talents of the singers.  I was astonished at the mad approach of John Jacob Niles with its odd setting of his auditors standing over him as he sang.  I melted before Tommy Makem’s rendition of the Butcher Boy. (Don’t know the real title.) while the Clancys were superb.  I’d heard all these artists on record before but the recordings lost all the dynamics of the performances.  Even the old Red Pete Seeger really put his song across live.  The New Lost City Ramblers unfortunately were as stiff as their recordings.

     By this time I suppose most people reading this have seen Scorsese’s movie but for those Dylan fans who haven’t the movie is highly recommended.

     As for Greil I can only cite the words of the old Children’s game:  Greil Marcus, Greil Marcus, come out, come out, from wherever you are.

En las películas de Scorsese siempre encontramos una aguda y documentada disección de la sociedad americana, sus problemas con la violencia, el dinero, el poder… Dentro de varios siglos serán un estupendo documento para estudiarla.
En ese sentido, no podía dejar de lado uno de los elementos imprescindibles que ha servido a los americanos para expresar su frustración y desahogar todos esos problemas como es la música.

Sólo quiero aprovechar para recomendar su trabajo en esa línea, dirigiendo y produciendo documentales como “No Direction Home. Bob Dylan”, en el que profundiza en la personalidad del cantante inconformista, siempre huidizo con los clichés y las etiquetas, o produciendo la serie de documentales sobre el Blues: “The Blues”. También colaboró como asistente de dirección en “Woodstock” (1970) y dirigió “El último Vals” en el 78, sobre la última actuación del grupo The Band. Más reciente, su trabajo sobre Los Rolling Stones: “Shine a Light” merece nuestro acercamiento por su mirada al mundo del rock y al fenómeno de los Rollings desde su peculiar y siempre interesante punto de vista.

Por último (y esta anécdota me encanta), el primer actor en quien Martin pensó para nada más y nada menos que “Taxi Driver” fue nada más y nada menos que Bruce Springsteen, el cual, que siempre ha sabido estar en su sitio y ha demostrado una carrera más que coherente durante más de 35 años, sensatamente nos hizo el enorme favor de rechazar el papel en favor del entonces no tan conocido Robert de Niro, dándole así la oportunidad de hacerse un sitio en el panorama cinematográfico y convertirse en la estrella que nos ha regalado escenas como la del perdón de los indios en “La Misión” tras subir las cataratas de Iguazú haciendo penitencia… con la música de Morricone, por supuesto. Y es que me jode enormemente cuando un cantante es también modelo, actor, diseñador de ropa, periodista… en fin, lamentable, quitándole una oportunidad a quien realmente la necesita y se prepara para ello. ¡¡¡Qué mundo éste de los artistas, madre mía!!!