Bob Dylan

[Jazzrook]

Came across this extract from a remarkable Bob Dylan video available(at a price!) on the 'Gods and Generals' soundtrack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_7x-1BxTAM

JR

[johncorrigan]

Came across this extract from a remarkable Bob Dylan video available(at a price!) on the 'Gods and Generals' soundtrack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_7x-1BxTAM

JR

Thanks for the reminder, JR. Bob wandering through the world observing. It is amazing to see how Bob has hoovered up influences to create such a song, and stored them allowing them to come to the surface when the situation demanded it - http://alldylan.com/cross-green-moun...ylan-analysis/
But in the wake of his Laureate there is a sense that all his great work was done in the 60s and he was a busted flush by the mid-70s. I'm not one to subscribe to such things. I'll listen to the likes of 'Love and Theft' or 'Tempest' any time of the week. 'Cross the Green Mountain' is a fine example of just this. For me Bob still creates wonderful stuff.

I was interested to read the following in an article about Leonard Cohen written by David Remnick:


'Over the decades, Dylan and Cohen saw each other from time to time. In the early eighties, Cohen went to see Dylan perform in Paris, and the next morning in a café they talked about their latest work. Dylan was especially interested in “Hallelujah.” Even before three hundred other performers made “Hallelujah” famous with their cover versions, long before the song was included on the soundtrack for “Shrek” and as a staple on “American Idol,” Dylan recognized the beauty of its marriage of the sacred and the profane. He asked Cohen how long it took him to write.

“Two years,” Cohen lied.

Actually, “Hallelujah” had taken him five years. He drafted dozens of verses and then it was years more before he settled on a final version. In several writing sessions, he found himself in his underwear, banging his head against a hotel-room floor.

Cohen told Dylan, “I really like ‘I and I,’ ” a song that appeared on Dylan’s album “Infidels.” “How long did it take you to write that?”

“About fifteen minutes,” Dylan said.'

But also this from the same article, Bob shows the way he thinks about music talking about Cohen - caught me by surprise:

Dylan, who is seventy-five, doesn’t often play the role of music critic, but he proved eager to discuss Leonard Cohen. I put a series of questions to him about Number 1 (Cohen), and he answered in a detailed, critical way—nothing cryptic or elusive.

“When people talk about Leonard, they fail to mention his melodies, which to me, along with his lyrics, are his greatest genius,” Dylan said. “Even the counterpoint lines—they give a celestial character and melodic lift to every one of his songs. As far as I know, no one else comes close to this in modern music. Even the simplest song, like ‘The Law,’ which is structured on two fundamental chords, has counterpoint lines that are essential, and anybody who even thinks about doing this song and loves the lyrics would have to build around the counterpoint lines.

“His gift or genius is in his connection to the music of the spheres,” Dylan went on. “In the song ‘Sisters of Mercy,’ for instance, the verses are four elemental lines which change and move at predictable intervals . . . but the tune is anything but predictable. The song just comes in and states a fact. And after that anything can happen and it does, and Leonard allows it to happen. His tone is far from condescending or mocking. He is a tough-minded lover who doesn’t recognize the brush-off. Leonard’s always above it all. ‘Sisters of Mercy’ is verse after verse of four distinctive lines, in perfect meter, with no chorus, quivering with drama. The first line begins in a minor key. The second line goes from minor to major and steps up, and changes melody and variation. The third line steps up even higher than that to a different degree, and then the fourth line comes back to the beginning. This is a deceptively unusual musical theme, with or without lyrics. But it’s so subtle a listener doesn’t realize he’s been taken on a musical journey and dropped off somewhere, with or without lyrics.”

If you want to read the article, which I found fascinating, as we prepare for a new LC release it's here on the New Yorker website.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/17/leonard-cohen-makes-it-darker?mbid=nl_TNY%20Template%20-%20With%20Photo%20

[Lat-Literal]

Came across this extract from a remarkable Bob Dylan video available(at a price!) on the 'Gods and Generals' soundtrack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_7x-1BxTAM

JR

Excellent.

Thanks for the reminder, JR. Bob wandering through the world observing. It is amazing to see how Bob has hoovered up influences to create such a song, and stored them allowing them to come to the surface when the situation demanded it - http://alldylan.com/cross-green-moun...ylan-analysis/
But in the wake of his Laureate there is a sense that all his great work was done in the 60s and he was a busted flush by the mid-70s. I'm not one to subscribe to such things. I'll listen to the likes of 'Love and Theft' or 'Tempest' any time of the week. 'Cross the Green Mountain' is a fine example of just this. For me Bob still creates wonderful stuff.

I was interested to read the following in an article about Leonard Cohen written by David Remnick:


'Over the decades, Dylan and Cohen saw each other from time to time. In the early eighties, Cohen went to see Dylan perform in Paris, and the next morning in a café they talked about their latest work. Dylan was especially interested in “Hallelujah.” Even before three hundred other performers made “Hallelujah” famous with their cover versions, long before the song was included on the soundtrack for “Shrek” and as a staple on “American Idol,” Dylan recognized the beauty of its marriage of the sacred and the profane. He asked Cohen how long it took him to write.

“Two years,” Cohen lied.

Actually, “Hallelujah” had taken him five years. He drafted dozens of verses and then it was years more before he settled on a final version. In several writing sessions, he found himself in his underwear, banging his head against a hotel-room floor.

Cohen told Dylan, “I really like ‘I and I,’ ” a song that appeared on Dylan’s album “Infidels.” “How long did it take you to write that?”

“About fifteen minutes,” Dylan said.'

But also this from the same article, Bob shows the way he thinks about music talking about Cohen - caught me by surprise:

Dylan, who is seventy-five, doesn’t often play the role of music critic, but he proved eager to discuss Leonard Cohen. I put a series of questions to him about Number 1 (Cohen), and he answered in a detailed, critical way—nothing cryptic or elusive.

“When people talk about Leonard, they fail to mention his melodies, which to me, along with his lyrics, are his greatest genius,” Dylan said. “Even the counterpoint lines—they give a celestial character and melodic lift to every one of his songs. As far as I know, no one else comes close to this in modern music. Even the simplest song, like ‘The Law,’ which is structured on two fundamental chords, has counterpoint lines that are essential, and anybody who even thinks about doing this song and loves the lyrics would have to build around the counterpoint lines.

“His gift or genius is in his connection to the music of the spheres,” Dylan went on. “In the song ‘Sisters of Mercy,’ for instance, the verses are four elemental lines which change and move at predictable intervals . . . but the tune is anything but predictable. The song just comes in and states a fact. And after that anything can happen and it does, and Leonard allows it to happen. His tone is far from condescending or mocking. He is a tough-minded lover who doesn’t recognize the brush-off. Leonard’s always above it all. ‘Sisters of Mercy’ is verse after verse of four distinctive lines, in perfect meter, with no chorus, quivering with drama. The first line begins in a minor key. The second line goes from minor to major and steps up, and changes melody and variation. The third line steps up even higher than that to a different degree, and then the fourth line comes back to the beginning. This is a deceptively unusual musical theme, with or without lyrics. But it’s so subtle a listener doesn’t realize he’s been taken on a musical journey and dropped off somewhere, with or without lyrics.”

If you want to read the article, which I found fascinating, as we prepare for a new LC release it's here on the New Yorker website.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...ith%20Photo%20

Thank you JC.

I don't know if you heard AK on "The World at One" (R4) talking about him from a motorway service station. He was delighted about the news but felt that "Blood on the Tracks" (1975) was Dylan's last great album, adding that "Desire" was a very good one and cases had been made for "Infidels" and one other. I can't remember if it was "Love and Theft" or "Time Out of Mind". I like "Blood on the Tracks" best of all but also love "Desire", "Slow Train Coming", "Saved", "Oh Mercy" and "Time Out of Mind" to name but five since 1975.

I also like a lot of the others.

[Globaltruth]

So the man who wrote 'Masters of War' has accepted a prize set up by a man who made his fortune from selling arms and inventing dynamite? Funny old world innit?

He's not exactly the first to accept this contradictory award though (Gunter Grass, Seamus Heaney, Solzhenitsyn, Singer et al) and definitely deserves some global acknowledgement.

[Lat-Literal]

So the man who wrote 'Masters of War' has accepted a prize set up by a man who made his fortune from selling arms and inventing dynamite? Funny old world innit?

He's not exactly the first to accept this contradictory award though (Gunter Grass, Seamus Heaney, Solzhenitsyn, Singer et al) and definitely deserves some global acknowledgement.

A very good point GT.

In a rare visit to 5 Live I managed in the early hours to sit through Dotun Adebayo's Virtual Jukebox. The objective was to find Bob Dylan's best lyric and in the process a range of cover versions was considered. Some were predictable; others not so. Apparently Dotun was speaking with Dennis last week. The good news is he's working albeit in Copenhagen. But imagine my horror on discovering that my copy of "Empire Road - The Best of Matumbi" does not include the Bob song he and they did. Luckily it is on You Tube and here it is:

Matumbi - Man in Me - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsXLrivjeEo

[gurnemanz]

So the man who wrote 'Masters of War' has accepted a prize set up by a man who made his fortune from selling arms and inventing dynamite? Funny old world innit?

He's not exactly the first to accept this contradictory award though (Gunter Grass, Seamus Heaney, Solzhenitsyn, Singer et al) and definitely deserves some global acknowledgement.

Yes, but of course the raison d'être for the instigation of the prizes was as an act of expiation on Nobel's part when he was stunned to read the headline "Le marchand de la mort est mort", when his brother, Ludwig, died and a French newspaper published an obituary of Alfred instead by mistake.

Thanks, Lat, for The Man in Me by Matumbi. I will admit I had not paid much attention to the song. I do have New Morning but don't play it often.

[johncorrigan]

As a fan of Rabindranath Tagore's work I had briefly wondered if he might in fact have been the first songwriter to get the Nobel Prize for Literature, which he received in 1913 for 'Gitanjali'. I was therefore interested to read Amit Chaudhuri's 'Point of View' piece in Saturday's Guardian Review entitled 'Bob Dylan is not the first songwriter to win the Nobel prize for literature' . What interested me more was the comparison of the two great Rabbies as both being Bricoleurs. To quote from the article: 'The “bricoleur addresses himself to a collection of oddments left over from human endeavours”, said Lévi-Strauss, and his motto, according to the critic Gérard Genette, is: “That might always come in handy.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/21/dylan-is-not-the-first-songwriter-to-win-the-nobel-prize-for-literature

For the purpose of the piece Chaudhuri refers to Rabbie D's 'Who Killed Davie Moore?' As Dylan said way back: “It’s got nothing to do with boxing, it’s just a song about a boxer really ... It’s got nothing to do with nothing. But I fit all these words together... that’s all ... It’s taken directly from the newspapers ... Nothing’s been changed ... Except for the words.”

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IssR_J0QWr4

*Warning!!!! Contains boxing!!!!

[johncorrigan]

Bit of a Bob weekend. As well as the showing of 'No Direction Home' which Stanley celebrated on the Arts string, Radio 6 are airing one of Bob's excellent Theme Time Radio Hour shows tomorrow afternoon (Sunday) at 1pm...Theme...Radio.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jl3f

[johncorrigan]

Great bit of Bob doing a crackin' version of 'It ain't me', which had me wondering, 'Is it really you, Bob?'. Great to hear him on the moothie too and dancing around like the old codger he is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwdyHcw9tr4&feature=youtu.be

[johncorrigan]

Here's a fine old version of Hattie Carroll by Bob stranded in a hut with some gentlemen, as far as I can see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNS5ToK-nmc&feature=youtu.be

[johncorrigan]

I see that Dylan's on track to arrive on Hogmanay...I reckon we should all seek Shelter from the Storm.

[DracoM]

[Globaltruth]

I see that Dylan's on track to arrive on Hogmanay...I reckon we should all seek Shelter from the Storm.

Hard rain etc...

(Must do better)

[Globaltruth]

https://youtu.be/R1xjvoDYENM

Came across this in a random Sunday sort of way...

[johncorrigan]

https://youtu.be/R1xjvoDYENM

Came across this in a random Sunday sort of way...

Great postcards of Buenos Aires there, GT, which looks brilliant at the turn of the 20th Century, does it not? And talking of postcards, my pal sent me this one of Dylan from 1962 in NYC. I had said to him during the Dylan concert back in May that Bob was reminding me of Charlie Chaplin in his moves...so here's the young Chaplin!

http://www.tfaoi.com/cm/3cm/3cm772.jpg