Here's a short - around 10 minutes - BBC documentary on the Liverpool kids who posed with Dylan while he was on the legendary 1966 tour.
"Dylan and Feinstein [the photographer] just seemed to have stumbled into what amounted to a kids' playground. They were all out in the streets because their parents were probably watching Everton in the Cup Final that day. It was such a clash of 1960s culture. The kids looked like Victorian street urchins and Dylan looked like a man from Mars with his loud shirt and wild hair - that's what fascinated me." Link to story.
You can find the photo in the booklet of the Live 1966: The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert CD. Dylan fan Chris Hockenhall tracked 9 of the 10 kids 40 tears later for the documentary.
It's a good thing Kerry also posts on SoT or we'd risk becoming the Series of Dylans. But, here's a nice riff on the cue card scene - yet again - first featured in Don't Look Back. All the Dylans take part.
A longish, 7-minute clip from I'm Not There, originating from Italy, where the film has already been aired. You may want to follow this link back to YouTube - or pause it and wait for it to load entirely - before viewing.
It's easy to make a prediction about reactions when the film sees full release - it will be loved by Dylan fans, like me, who know the story and the legends so well that we're like a bunch of ancients listening to a recitation of The Odyssey. We know about the 10-year voyage, the trials, the return already. We don't listen for the story. We listen because it is the story.
The general reaction will be that it's confused, senseless, boring, impenetrable, chaotic, self-referencing, unapproachable, yadda, yadda. Except for Cate Blanchett, of course, who already seems to have become the Teflon Doll of I'm Not There. And that's okay. It's not for them. It's for us.
I've just watched the clip once, but I already love the "Dylan Goes Electric" scene (and notice the white sound wash of noise - following the story that much of the audience was booing because the sound mix was so awful). And Christian Bale does more than a creditable job as the Gospel-era Dylan, preaching and singing in what seems to be a grammar school auditorium.
It's always nice to have something Dylanesque to look forward to. Chances are I'll never see I'm Not There in the thea-tah, but I'll be first in line for the DVD.
I have to say I like the Mick Ronson remix a helluva lot better when paired with this video. It's like a mini I'm Not There with Dylans throughout the ages.
Btw, you can catch our remix of the classic Subterranean Homesick Blues cue card clip both at our Ground Zero home (where we provide a trip report in 10 cue cards flat), and the Dreamtime blog, where we imagine a Dreamtime video promo... if we only had the do-re-mi.
A nicely-done fan created slideshow from a series of photographs taken of a very young Dylan and his then girlfriend, Suze Rotolo. It's obvious that Dylan was on a full James Dean kick at the time, especially in the scholarly poses with glasses, looking just like a studious Dean. According to Joan Baez, Dylan's eyesight was so poor he could barely see anything without glasses, but seldom wore them, even when driving.
Rotolo is now an artist who teaches at the Parsons School of Design in New York City. After decades of relative silence about her relationship with Dylan, Rotolo has given several interviews in recent years discussing their time together in Greenwich Village. She and her husband also were involved in putting on a memorial event for Dave Van Ronk after the singer's death in 2002.
Rotolo has a memoir coming out in 2008 - A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties - described as a "wonderfully romantic story of their sweet but sometimes wrenching love affair and its eventual collapse under the pressure of Dylan’s growing fame."
Farewell Angelina is one of those songs -- and Dylan certainly wrote more than one of them-- where an early challenge any singer has to face is, who the heck is this person singing the song? What point of view is this, and how does it all work together? Then there's the music to underpin it, to help the words make sense-- or words to help the music make sense, if you will. Here's Rani Arbo coming up with her unqiue approach to those tasks backed by an arrangement by Anand Nayak, the guitar player you see here. Other members of daisy mayhem are Scott Kessel on percussion and Andrew Kinsey on bass. The band has recorded the song on their latest CD, which is a really excellent bit of acoustic music, songwritng, harmony, and other fine stuff. It is called Big Old Life.
Here's an obscure nugget, Fairport Convention doing a French/Cajun version of Dylan's "If You Gotta Go..." written in 1965, but never officially released until 1991's The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3. It was covered by Manfred Mann, and appeared as a track on the first rock-and-roll bootleg, Great White Wonder. As to the story behind Si Tu Dois Partir, according to the (Mostly) English Folk Music site:
The story goes that Fairport Convention was playing a gig at the Middle Earth and thought it would be amusing to do Dylan's song in French cajun style, so the band called for volunteers from the audience to help with the translation. Richard Thompson: “About three people turned up, so it was really written by committee, and consequently ended up not very cajun, French or Dylan.”
Fred (and other readers), I'm going to have to think about that a bit to come up with a comment about Bob Dylan in Scots Gaelic.Many Irish and Scots artists have covered Dylan -- but they usually sing in English. Really fine versions of Dylan songs by Mary Black, Altan, Danu, Dervish, many others.
While I am thinking about this, I would not want you to be without a video. The people in your post are talking of Scots Gaelic, and she's singing in Irish, of which Scots Gaelic is an offshoot, but anyway, here is a link to a quicktime video of Cathie Ryan singing PeataBeagDoMhathar.
I'm breaking my self-imposed rule, as there is no music video connected with this one - yet - but I found the story so fascinating that I decided to post it anyway. And it looks like it would be perfect for my colleague, Kerry's, plate.
via Northings - the Highlands and Islands Art Journal - comes this fascinating, if occasionally dense, article by Rody Gorman, a Skye-based Gaelic translator and poet. Unfortunately, the main body of the article is in PDF format, which requires you to use Acrobat Reader to open. I hope Rody or someone eventually puts this into HTML. I volunteer to do it gratis if you're reading this, Rody.
Inspired by Roddy Woomble's Ballads Of The Book project melding the talents of the contemporary Scottish writing and music communities, Woomble and Gorman are working on a spin-off to produce a CD of Bob Dylan songs translated and sung in Gaelic. Here's an excerpt of Gorman's translation of Dylan's Buckets of Rain.
Sileadh (Buckets of Rain)
Sileadh gun euradh, sileadh nan deur, Cur thairis le sileadh, mo thruaighe gheur, Sileadh on ghealaich na mo chròg. Bheir mi dhut gaol gu sìorraidh, mo rùn geal òg.
Even though I know more Yiddish than Gaelic, I can hear those words singing in my head.
Well worth the hassle of loading the PDF file and dealing with the article's occasional academic rat-hole digression, Gorman explores and translates Dylan songs including Knockin' On Heaven's Door, and It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry, and a few older songs where Dylan's music has its roots, such as Corrina, Corrina.
It's hard to tell from the article how close Gorman is to making the CD reality. Have any takers, Kerry?
I haven't researched this one thoroughly, but the original poster claims it to be an unreleased video originally created to promote Dylan's single release of Positively 4th Street. Since that single was released in 1965, the first thought to occur to me was, "a promo for where?" What venue would Columbia possibly have used this for in 1965? Certainly not television. For a sales meeting? It looks more like a promo for either Don't Look Back, or even No Direction Home, as most of the visuals appear to be from the 1965 tour, and it appears way too modern to have been released in `65. The opening few seconds are Dylan doing a sound check of Tell Me, Mama in an empty hall, which looks like it's direct from the Manchester Free Trade concert.
In any case, it's a somewhat weird, even creepy, video, with near-hysterical Beatlesque-type fans, people noting their distaste for Dylan, people claiming to be friends of Dylan, one person claiming to be Dylan. A pretty accurate reflection of that insane time, I would guess, but understandable why it was shelved if it's real.
Because we love - and listen to - our readers here at Series of Tubes, here's an excerpt of Mr. Bolton performing Steel Bars in Dublin - the somg he co-wrote with Mr. D. :-)
Bob Dylan has done a number of songwriting collaborations over the years with partners as varied as Jacques Levy to Michael Bolton. There's even been some imaginary Dylan collaborations, such as his mythical team-up with ex-Monkee Mike Nesmith to supposedly create Nesmith's song Rio.
Here's a real Dylan collaboration with an unusual twist. Dylan originally developed Rock Me, Mama, a.k.a Wagon Wheel, during the 1973 studio sessions for his under-appreciated movie soundtrack album - Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. As with many of the songs recorded during the Mexico City and L.A. sessions that produced the movie's soundtrack, Wagon Wheel never was completed much past a basic melody and the refrain,
"Rock me, mama, in the wind and the rain, Rock me, mama, like a southbound train. Rock me, mama, anyway you feel. Rock me mamma, like a wagon wheel."
As noted in a Wikipedia article, the inspiration for Rock Me, Mama probably derives from Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's original song of the same name, although I couldn't find any evidence of the writer's assertion that any version of Crudup's original ever contained the line, "roll me like a wagon wheel."
In any case, Dylan's take on Rock Me, Mama was left off the final release of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, but surfaced in the bootleg Peco's Blues [sic], which can also be found under the alternate title Lucky Luke. As an aside, if you can lay your hand on the bootleg under either name, the completist Dylan fan will probably find it rewarding, as it contains several nice instrumentals that never made it to the finished album, plus lots of studio chatter from the recording sessions.
Ketch Secor, a member of one my favorite Americana/Roots groups Old Crow Medicine Show, must have come across Rock Me, Mama at some point and revised/finished the song under the title Wagon Wheel. The adaptation was obviously done with Dylan's blessing, as the copyright reads: Wagon Wheel by Bob Dylan and Ketch Secor (Bug Music, BMI).
The band apparently was performing a version of the song as early as 2001; one of its first uses was to commemorate Dylan's 60th birthday during an OCMS live performance in Nashville. Wagon Wheel was officially released on Old Crow Medicine Show's 2004 album, O.C.M.S. The song was one of the hit singles of that hit album (and a major hit among Americana fans, selling well over 100,000 copies), and numbers among its fans Garrison Keillor, who regularly requests Wagon Wheel during Old Crow Medicine Show's frequent appearances on A Prairie Home Companion.
The above is the "official" video of Wagon Wheel, with a slightly ribald 1800 hootchie-cootchi flavored carnival theme. As a special bonus, look for a cameo by OCMS friends and sometimes collaborators, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.
Neither "over the hill" nor "past his prime," as the crowd-pleasing lyrics have it, Dylan in 2007, in full Vincent Price mode.
The fan-shot video is one of the better I've seen, not shaky, complete, and with some great close-ups. Note the (wedding?) band Dylan is wearing on his ring finger, which you can spot when he pulls out his harmonica towards the end of the song. Lots of speculation about that ring, which appeared on Dylan's hand sometime around the 2006 baseball stadium tour.
Note that the first few seconds of this 9-minute clip - Johnny Cash's introduction of Dylan - has no audio. Mislabeled on Google Video as simply the duet of Girl from the North Country with Johnny Cash, this is actually Dylan's full May 1969 performance at the legendary Ryman Auditorium in Nashville for The Johnny Cash Show.
As with the One Too Many Mornings clip below, this shows Dylan in full "new" country-western voice that he'd use for Nashville Skyline and for many of the songs on 1970's Self Portrait where the very Hank Snow-like Living the Blues would appear.
Dylan seems very nervous throughout, licking his lips between songs, looking everywhere except at the the audience. Probably not all that surprising as it was only Dylan's second public performance after his 1966 motorcycle crash (in 1968 Dylan had performed at a tribute for Woody Guthrie in New York City, and later in 1969 he would take the stage again for the Isle of Wight Festival). Added to that was the pressure of his performing in front of a Nashville audience that might react poorly and the risk Dylan was taking of alienating his core audience with this radically changed approach to his music.
After the show, a visibly relieved Dylan returned to Johnny Cash's house with a group that included Earl Scruggs, Graham Nash, Nash's then-girlfriend Joni Mitchell, and Kris Kristofferson. Nash recalls Sara Dylan sitting there crying at the drama of the moment.
From the Nashville Skyline recording sessions, February 17, 1969 in Nashville, Tennessee. The video is probably from either the documentary Johnny Cash: The Man And His Music, released in 1979 or The Other Side Of Nashville, released in July 1984.
The Cash/Dylan sessions over February 17-18 generated only one commercial release on Nashville Skyline, a duet of Dylan's Girl From The North Country, which had originally appeared on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, but most - if not all - the material from the sessions have appeared on various bootlegs over the years. This excerpt from a comment on the Between Thought and Expression blog details an interesting history of the origin of the bootleg material:
"... A little history about the source: These were bootlegged in the late 70s or early 80s in poor quality. In 1985 or 86, my friend, Chris D., worked in a video store in Nashville (I lived near there). I had helped him get some space shot videos from NBC, so to return the favor, he called one day and asked if I wanted a cassette of the Cash session. He got it from a guy who found it in his attic, in a box marked "BDJC". That guy's father worked for CBS Nashville in 1969 and made a 1 inch mono reel-to-reel copy of the original session tape. He made Chris a cassette from the 1 inch tape. Chris copied the cassette, and gave me the original. In the fall of 1986, I went to a Dylan collectors meet in Chicago, and we daisy-chained 15 cassette decks together. I was second in the chain, and everyone past me copied my tape. By then, I had added the second "One Too Many Mornings" and the three songs from a betamax tape of the JC TV show, so this CD is one generation down from my original cassette. The original bootleg CD came out about two months later. "Mornings" has a tone shift in the middle, from the video when they change from the studio footage to the control room footage..."
It's not really Dylan's "first" television performance; that would be the lost "Madhouse on Castle Street," broadcast in 1962, which also included the first broadcast of Blowin' in the Wind, but the above is Dylan's first U.S. television performance, on "Folk Songs And More Folk Songs," broadcast on WBC TV in May 1963.
As more than one blogger has mentioned, it appears that Cate Blanchett studied Dylan's Don't Look Back persona in order to develop her interpretation for I'm Not There. This clip is from the infamous British press conference that Dylan held upon his arrival in England.
A "support your local blog" note: As you've certainly noticed, I'm experimenting with an advertising tool that overlays a static ad over the video. You click the "X" or the "Close Ad" text to make the ad go away. I get a small fee for displaying the ad to you; a larger one if you click on it; and many bags of gold if you actually buy something... well, not the last, but you get the idea.
I'm not wedded to the idea, it's just an experiment, and I expect to run it for a month or so. Like the Google Adsense block, I expect always carry some form of advertising on the site. If you have a strong opinion about the ad overlay on the video one way or the other, leave a comment, and I'll take that into consideration when I make the decision whether to continue. Thanks!
Here's a short - around 10 minutes - BBC documentary on the Liverpool kids who posed with Dylan while he was on the legendary 1966 tour.
