There’s a lot to love in Scorsese’s film, which repurposes an enormous trove of backstage and concert footage into a representation of the fall 1975 iteration of the Rolling Thunder Revue tour. Considered as a traditional documentary, Rolling Thunder Revue is fairly embarrassing. Considered as a Bob Dylan movie in the tradition of the films the songwriter has had his hands in over the years, it’s a grand achievement. The project swerves from fact in similar ways that Dylan’s Chronicles swerves from traditional memoir, with fictional constructs serving the biographical needs of the moment, just as they have since the largely bullshitted notes to Dylan’s 1962 debut LP […]
Category: Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan :: More Blood, More Tracks: The Bootleg Series Vol. 14
It’s a golden age for Dylan fanatics – and a gluttonous age as well. For the past few years, like clockwork, we’ve been gifted with massive boxed sets that unravel – and somehow deepen – […]
Different Points of View: Dylan’s “Tangled Up In Blue”
More Blood, More Tracks – The Bootleg Series Vol. 14 , the latest slab of previously unreleased Bob Dylan recordings, lands in early November. The six-disc collection features the complete New York City recording sessions for Blood On The Tracks, giving listeners a fly-on-the-wall […]
Bob Dylan: Trouble No More – The Bootleg Series Vol. 13, 1979-81
As anyone with a passing knowledge of the life (lives?) of Bob Dylan knows, in late 1978, the singer-songwriter had a born again experience, and devoted the next few years to writing and performing (mostly) […]
Dylan & The Hawks :: Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues (Liverpool, 1966)
After a few months of rumors, Sony has finally announced another massive Bob Dylan box set — The 1966 Live Recordings. Weighing in at 36 (!) discs, it collects every known recording of Dylan’s confrontational 1966 tour of Australia and the UK (along […]
Link Wray :: Girl From The North Country
This fall, my first feature film, Shangri-La Suite , will be released in theaters. It tells the story of two lovers-on-the-run during the summer of 1974. Their names: Jack Blueblood and Karen Bird. Their aim: to kill […]
Wax Wonders :: Bob Dylan – From A Buick 6 (Alternate Take)
Happy 75th to a poet, a rock ‘n roll icon, a folk sensation, and a living legend. Stop and take a moment to fathom that number; 75 years. Bob Dylan has spent 54 of those […]
Bob Dylan w/ Robbie Robertson: I Can’t Leave Her Behind
Rumors were flying all summer about a massive Bootleg Series covering Bob Dylan’s unbelievable, earth-shaking 1965-66 period. And hey, the rumors were true. The Cutting Edge (available in 2-, 6- and 18-(!!!) disc versions) draws back […]
Bob Dylan: Blood On The Tracks – The New York Sessions
‘Eventually I would record an entire album based on Chekhov short stories–critics thought it was autobiographical…’ Chronicles: Volume I Meet Me in the Morning (Early Take) The bloodletting began, fittingly, in a red notebook. Estranged from his wife at the time, living on a farm […]
Bob Dylan :: Dylan (1973)
If you spotted our Late Autumn Light mixtape, you likely noted Bob Dylan’s woolen, gospel rendition of the traditional “Mary Ann”; via the widely, yet incomprehensibly reviled 1973 album, Dylan . One of the least appreciated albums in […]
Bob Dylan & The Band :: I Ain’t Got No Home – Carnegie Hall, ’68
I know we’re all busy having our minds blown by the new Basement Tapes Complete box set that landed last week … but take a couple minutes to dig this very Basement-y recording of Bob and the Band (who may still have […]
Bob Dylan And The Band :: Oakland, CA 1974
Seven and half years off the road, Dylan returns with the Band. Oakland Coliseum Stadium Feb 11, 1974. Bob Dylan And The Band :: Oakland, CA 1974 (zipped folder, external link)
David T. Walker :: Lay Lady Lay / Plum Happy (1970)
In the hands of David T. Walker , “Lay Lady Lay,” a cornerstone of Dylan’s Nashville Skyline, slides into a jazzy, languid, space residing somewhere just shy of early 70s porn groove and after-midnight lounge. I use neither […]
Bob Dylan :: Hero Blues (Freewheelin’ Outtake), December 6, 1962
Happy birthday to your hero and mine, the forever inscrutable Bob Dylan. For more than five decades, he’s brilliantly confounded expectations and confused audiences in an extremely entertaining manner. And that seems to have been […]
The Four Seasons Do Dylan
While spinning the recent reissue of Dylan’s Gospel , I was reminded of two incredibly odd Dylan “reinterpretations.” To that, introducing Bob Dylan’s music through the lens of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. First up is […]