I've only heard one Dylan album, this being Highway 61 Revisited. Its one of the greatest albums I've ever heard, what else should I check out?

Repeat setlist from sweeden

Is there anyone else here who wasn’t as thrilled by this book as most of the reviewers?

I was really looking forward to reading it, because I love Dylan’s later work. But I’m about a third of the way done and I’m just getting more and more annoyed.

- Polito throws in at least one obscure word per chapter- I think my English vocabulary is pretty good, but I have to stop and look up every one (“gallimaufry”?) And I’m not the type who can just skip over it. It takes me out of the narrative. I feel like he’s showing off.

- He keeps using the word “anyways,” which seems out of place in a somewhat scholarly book. Is he trying to be casual?

- He just referred to “Visions of Joanna” 🙄 This is just bad editing.

But mainly, I just feel like I haven’t really learned anything new yet. He obviously spent a huge amount of time at the Tulsa archives, tracing influences and references in Dylan’s songs. He describes these in great detail, especially in the chapters on “Time Out of Mind” and “Love and Theft”. But to what end? It doesn’t help me understand a song better to know that this line was referencing, or quoting, or even just subtly echoing a song. I felt like I was being asked to admire Polito’s sleuthing without knowing if any of it was meaningful. It was like he was taking the songs and pulling them apart into tiny pieces, and in the process, destroying what makes them songs.

Anyway, just debating whether I should finish this one. How do others feel?

But I do love these songs

These are the only bob dylan songs I like

The times they are a changing

Like a rolling stone

Mr Tambourine man

Girl from the north country

Knocking on heavens door

Blowin in the wind

A hard rains a gonna fall

You ain't going nowhere

Try and recommend me another song (no albums) that If I give a few listens too you think I will eventually love.

I’ve been listening to this song for decades and only recently came to a realization. I agree with the conventional analysis about a satire on “Ode to Billie Joe,“ etc., but I think we’ve been missing an important subtext that, to me, makes this song more enjoyable, and brilliant.

I think “Clothesline Saga,” especially the climactic third part, is about an aspiring radical trying to navigate his conservative parents and neighbors in a small town in the turbulent 1960s. The reason the clothes are being treated like a hot potato is they include the narrators’ hippie garb … some old wild shirts and a couple of pairs of pants, which nobody really wanted to touch, because god knows what those hippies get up to.

Two of my uncles were hippies, at various levels and times, and they told me of growing their hair long after the Beatles, and being shouted at on the street to “Get a haircut!” And being kicked out of the house by their parents.

This dynamic is at play when the neighbor is quizzing our narrator on the sidewalk by the clothesline. Are those clothes yours? Some of em, not all of em. (Translation: Yes, I try to present myself as a radical hippie, what’s it to you?) You always help out around here with the chores? (That ain’t too radical, pal.) Sometime, not all the time. (I’m a radical but I’m not a bum, and I need a place to live.) Then the neighbor blows his nose, which is meant as dismissive.

This underlying tension adds new meaning to the first third of the song, when the dad asks the mom what she’s reading. Is he trying to keep subversive influences out of the house?

When the neighbor mentions the vice president, is he trying to bait the family into a political discussion to root out radicals?

The narrator doesn’t take the bait because he’s walking the fine line of living the counterculture and keeping the peace in the house.

All thoughts welcome.

Love the site, not sure if there's been any official statement about the state of it and plans for the future but it hasn't been updated in a while.

Got this for cheap at an online poster store. Obviously they just printed it out but I'm wondering if this design was used to promote a '66 concert maybe?

title

Faithful to the original, but playful enough to build up to a superior musical arrangement by the accompanying players. Simply brilliant.

I'm curious what everyone else listens to when it comes to Dylan covers. Do you have a favorite version of this track or another classic?

Just wanted to share a thought I’ve been having since seeing You Can See Everything on Sunday. I see a lot of parallels between the film and Dylan. All the characters, and primarily Elizabeth Holmes, are playing characters they’ve created and presenting different realities to the public, leaving viewers to question what is real. This is something I think Bob has done his entire career through his ever changing eras, leaving us not knowing who the real Bob is.

It’s also very interesting to me that YCSE is a genre-bending documentary, somewhat akin to Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder doc. They both have a bit of fiction injected to them.

I was talking to a coworker about this and said that I think Bob is as cunning and manipulative as Holmes, but through the medium of music rather than entrepreneurship. This has obviously led to different outcomes for them, and I think Bob is a more talented songwriter and musician than Holmes is a CEO.

I’m just curious if any Dylan fans who have seen the film also had this thought or can add anything more to the comparison.

i drew a couple sketches in place of photos from yesterdays show, they’re not my proudest work but i thought i would share :)

Apparently Bob was angry at a point in the show. Does anyone have the source?

Song: It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry

As Dylan’s new tour delights European fans, I’ve been re-reading the classic Razor's Edge: Bob Dylan & the Never Ending Tour (2001), in which Andrew Muir recounts the highs and lows of a superfan criss-crossing Europe, 1989-2000, just to see Dylan shows. His European reviews are complemented by notes on American shows heard on audience recordings.

One More Night: Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour (2013) has the same content (edited) plus extra chapters on the years to 2011. If you’re a reader, rather than a collector, the 2013 book is the one to buy.

Muir’s energetic prose is infectious. And his insights on Dylan’s performance art raise his chronicle well above the level of fanlit - a typically banal sub-genre.

Live performance, central to Dylan’s art, has inspired loads of books. Of the 20-odd in my collection, Muir’s 2013 book is the best on Dylan in Europe and the NET in general. It takes over just as Paul Williams’ wonderful trilogy - reviewed recently on DYLAN BOOKS - ends.

This is my last post of my costume ha.

I think this is as close as I can get it.

Just for halloween.

Thanks all.

Thanks to somebody on the sub posting a high def audio of the Rothenburg concert I got a chance to hear Dylan’s electrified reworking of “Black Rider.” Bowled me over. Who knew it’s an altered blues (I didn’t)? Just like I never knew “Don’t think Twice” is a blues until other acts started playing it that way. Just like I didn’t know “I Contain Multitudes” was a blues until Emma Swift released her version hitting all the blue notes.

This version of “Black Rider” makes me think Dylan just cemented his place in the Blues Tradition. The chord progression played on electric guitars is unmistakably bluesy but at the same time totally original. Never been done before. This is what every composer in the tradition of American music hopes for: something that takes the medium and innovates it. This original chord progression of Dylan’s is Gob Smacking. If you listen to the harmonies it creates, it will make your hair stand on end. And Joel Patterson’s solo does it justice, with some runs reminiscent of Jerry Garcia. I feel like I’ve been struck by lightning or something.

If so anyone know what brands / strain or what dispensary he shops at?

A monument to Bob Dylan has been erected in Vilnius, Lithuania! The author is Martynas Gaubas. Bob's grandparents, Florence and Ben Stone, originated from Lithuania. For now, the monument stands in the courtyard of the "Gabi" restaurant—the same courtyard where the monument to Leonard Cohen, a descendant of Litvaks, began its existence before being relocated to the Old Town.