Defend the indefensible - Bob Dylan.

I wouldn't be too surprised to wake up to similar threads betales, rolling stones and beethoven. its unfortunate but its ilm.

ew

(i said that.)

What's that crap?

(Dan Perry: That's not crap, that's shit, that is.)

kogan, in response: 'i know, who does he think you are? bob dylan?')

Bob Dylan=0.17Robert Forster
Bob Dylan=18.90Tom Petty

Therefore Robert Forster=111.17647Tom Petty

Alex, you rock, but 'Oh the ironing' etc

Bob Dylan is a vocalist, not a singer - crap.

sorry, for the most part bob dylan just doesn't connect with me. there's the odd song here and there that i like -- "positively fourth street," (title? it's the one where he goes "you've got a lot of nerve ..."), "lay lady lay," and "it's all over now, baby blue" -- and i recognize his importance. but my honest reaction is -- BFD. there are some things about him and his music to which i'm just not predisposed in the first place -- the singer-songwriter schtick, his "rootsy"/folksy music, and yeah his voice -- though i've made exceptions re the foregoing for certain others (neil young comes immediately to mind), i just don't connect AT ALL to dylan's music.

09/13/2005 4:04 PM, E! Online
Charlie Amter

Canadians attempting to buy Bob Dylan albums may temporarily be left blowing in the wind.

One of the nation's largest record chains, HMV Canada, has pulled the entire Dylan catalog from store shelves to protest the folk-rock icon's deal to exclusively sell his latest album in Starbucks stores, according to Toronto's Globe and Mail.

Bob Dylan: Live at the Gaslight 1962 collects songs recorded at the famed New York venue, including early versions of the classics "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" and "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright." It went on sale Aug. 30 at Starbucks' 4,600 outlets in the U.S. and Canada for $13.95. The coffee giant has exclusive rights to the Dylan disc for 18 months before the disc is available at regular retailers--the longest such window that Starbucks has secured yet.

Felling miffed, HMV Canada, a subsidiary of U.K.-based retailer HMV, reacted by yanking all Dylan discs for the duration of the Starbucks' promotion. The retailer's Dylan diss isn't unprecedented: HMV did the same earlier this year in retaliation for native daughter Alanis Morissette's similar deal with Starbucks.

While it's not immediately clear how much HMV's protest will end up hurting Dylan sales, the timing couldn't be worse for his Sony-based label, Columbia Records.

Columbia had been preparing for a Dylan sales renaissance this fall thanks in part to the release of Martin Scorsese's highly anticipated documentary, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, which gets its world premiere Saturday at the Toronto International Film Festival. It will be released on DVD Sept. 20 and run on PBS the following week. The soundtrack, featuring 26 previously unreleased tracks, drops Tuesday. There will also be a companion coffee-table book. Meanwhile, Dylan's best-selling memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, has just been released in paperback.

HMV Canada's president, Humphrey Kadaner, told the Globe and Mail his company "will not be actively stocking, displaying nor promoting Dylan." He also proudly noted that his efforts in the past to stop exclusives from happening outside of his 108 stores "has prevented other exclusive products from crossing the U.S. border into Canada."

So far, the HMV's U.S. stores have not followed suit, but other traditional music retailers like Virgin and Tower are on record as intensely disliking the exclusive marketing agreements struck by record labels and retail giants like Best Buy and especially Starbucks.

Name-brand artists of Dylan's ilk have been increasingly drawn to the latte-slinging megachain; the Seattle-based company has ramped up its music efforts in recent years, catering to its customer base.

Caffeine junkies can now buy a variety of adult-alternative CDs--from Elvis Costello to Joni Mitchell to Michael Buble--and even make customized discs at some outlets. It was Starbucks that was credited with the massive success of Ray Charles' Genius Loves Company, accounting for a full 25 percent of the Grammy-winning disc's nearly 4 million copies.

Ken Lombard, president of Starbucks Entertainment told Billboard last month the Dylan exclusive was "a win-win for everybody involved."

Starbucks doesn't always get its way, however. In May, the caffeine-enabling chain was unable to lock up a deal to exclusively selle Bruce Springsteen's Devil & Dust. Starbucks tried to claim the deal fell through because of racy content on one of the tracks, but Springsteen's camp insisted the blue-collar rocker pulled the plug on the disc because he loathes merchandising his music.

I've tried to "get" Bob Dylan, but I can't get past the fact that he sounds like a knackered old mule slowly expiring in the noonday heat.

The only way I can rationalise his appeal is by concluding that some people like listening to Dylan in the same way that other people like being hogtied and sodomised with baseball bats.

I also strongly suspect there is a large subset of people who like to do both.

fuck off.

Sodomy is great! Why don't you try it?

Is that jeffk's brother or something?

His 'Theme Time' radio show is so good. I want to listen to more and more of it. He's a smart, competent and highly amusing presenter without relying on anyone else.

Its like i keep telling people "theres an important and crucial difference between having a good voice and being a good singer. Take Bob Dylan and Michael Bolton. One is a great singer with a terrible voice, the other has a fine voice, but is a terrible singer."

OTFM

Mark Ronson remix of Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine) on the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning. And Zane Low yapping about it. Ugh.

The only way I can rationalise his appeal is by concluding that some people like listening to Dylan in the same way that other people like being hogtied and sodomised with baseball bats.

I also strongly suspect there is a large subset of people who like to do both.

-- PhilK, Wednesday, August 1, 2007 4:39 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Link

Clearly, you only enjoy the latter.

Sorry, but you really *opened yourself up* for that.

What I like most about BD isn't his voice or his lyrics (though some are very good) but the melodies he wrote. I haven't broken down what makes them work but even or especially with many of his most obvious, familiar songs like "Just Like a Woman" and "Blowin' In the Wind," the melodies just seem perfectly crafted and essential, like I can't imagine a world without them. Usually I need to get past his voice to get to them though. Often, I got into the songs via other people's covers of them.

Haha what just happened. I lol'd at the last few moments.

I found this embedded and at first I thought it was a caricature.

horace freeland judson is a historian of molecular biology

Horace Freeland Judson OTM

The film's producer Pennebaker does not believe the tirade was planned, but notes that Dylan backed off, not wanting to come across as being too cruel. However, Judson believes the confrontation was contrived to make the sequence more entertaining. "That evening," says Judson, "I went to the concert. My opinion then and now was that the music was unpleasant, the lyrics inflated, and Dylan, a self-indulgent whining show off".[5]

more on horace:

horace judson was my prof!

i guess whatever judson wrote was never published, but pennebaker claims to have a copy.

This may be old hat, but I missed it if so...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090814/ap_on_re_us/us_people_bob_dylan

By WAYNE PARRY, Associated Press Writer Wayne Parry, Associated Press Writer – Fri Aug 14, 6:29 pm ET

Rock legend Bob Dylan was treated like a complete unknown by police in a New Jersey shore community when a resident called to report someone wandering around the neighborhood.

Dylan was in Long Branch, about a two-hour drive south of New York City, on July 23 as part of a tour with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp that was to play at a baseball stadium in nearby Lakewood.

A 24-year-old police officer apparently was unaware of who Dylan is and asked him for identification, Long Branch business administrator Howard Woolley said Friday.

"I don't think she was familiar with his entire body of work," Woolley said.

The incident began at 5 p.m. when a resident said a man was wandering around a low-income, predominantly minority neighborhood several blocks from the oceanfront looking at houses.

The police officer drove up to Dylan, who was wearing a blue jacket, and asked him his name. According to Woolley, the following exchange ensued:

"What is your name, sir?" the officer asked.

"Bob Dylan," Dylan said.

"OK, what are you doing here?" the officer asked.

"I'm on tour," the singer replied.

A second officer, also in his 20s, responded to assist the first officer. He, too, apparently was unfamiliar with Dylan, Woolley said.

The officers asked Dylan for identification. The singer of such classics as "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Blowin' in the Wind" said that he didn't have any ID with him, that he was just walking around looking at houses to pass some time before that night's show.

The officers asked Dylan, 68, to accompany them back to the Ocean Place Resort and Spa, where the performers were staying. Once there, tour staff vouched for Dylan.

The officers thanked him for his cooperation.

"He couldn't have been any nicer to them," Woolley added.

How did it feel? A Dylan publicist did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment Friday.

Do cops actually DO anything?

missed it by that much

what is the meanest bob dylan song?

elsewhere on this site i have written about being at the 1999 show at tramps in new york, which was great (elvis costello was there and got on stage for an encore, singing 'i shall be released'). great audio from the soundboard. incredible version of Visions of Johanna. crowd VEWRY rowdy.

https://www.wolfgangs.com/music/bob-dylan/audio/20022342-814.html?tid=54412

https://www.boblinks.com/072699r.html

i'm sure i remember the flacs being available somewhere, or on youtube

Bizarre Bob Dylan melody -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBe8zZ0OKlk

Only actor/singer George Maharis is credited, but there's also folk duo Joe and Eddie, Dionne Warwick and the Animals (their classic line-up) doing a very not-like-the-Animals-at-all rendition of "It Ain't Me, Babe."

Enjoying “philosophy of modern song” and an accompanying playlist on YouTube.

Extraordinary

hoping for some defenses of the indefensible: bob dylan today