Is Bob Dylan overrated?

Sorry, the song quote was tweeted by KG Miles Smiling face with sunglasses
@barberville

"I been looking for her even clear through Tennessee'Hugging faceBottle with popping corkBalloon❤Birthday cake"

top ten Dylan lyrics

"The Ballad of Hugging Face Bottle and Popping Cork Balloon" was a good Rolling Thunder era outtake

Good recent interview w Benmont Tench---1986 Wellington is the date of show download, link for that at end (several live vids are linked in here too, also pic of Dylan and Bacall):

The Heartbreakers' Benmont Tench Talks Touring and Recording with Bob Dylan
1986-02-05, Athletic Park, Wellington, New Zealand
Ray Padgett
Flagging Down the Double E’s is an email newsletter exploring Bob Dylan shows of yesteryear. Some installments are free, some are for paid subscribers only. Sign up for either option here/https://dylanlive.substack.com/p/the-heartbreakers-benmont-tench-talks?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMTI4NTEwMSwicG9zdF9pZCI6NDcxMjUyNDIsIl8iOiJZZ2gvSSIsImlhdCI6MTY0NDA4NDc2NCwiZXhwIjoxNjQ0MDg4MzY0LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMjQ5ODEiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.CXJAX4zuQk_swHwyKtM-YCzA0qclu84IcIefoAgQD4U

Goldmine magazine
@Goldmine_mag
Joy Harjo, the artist-in-residence for the new Bob Dylan Center, is the guest on the Goldmine Podcast. Harjo explains the importance of the May opening of the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. https://bit.ly/3HJzUtQ

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FNA4yHVX0AUnWKa?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

Should have put the sleazy Vietnam vet/cult leader Dylan from the cover of Trouble No More box on the side of the building.

new book coming, interesting
https://www.bobdylan.com/news/the-philosophy-of-modern-song/

Tim Easton
@Tim_Easton
·
1h
Powerful & historic day listening to the confirmation hearings of Justice Jackson as I drive North through Alabama. Last night I watched Bob Dylan perform right down the street from where Rosa Parks was arrested. #Alabama #History
@bobdylan
#equality #USA

pic part of tweet

"I been looking for her even clear through Tennessee'Hugging faceBottle with popping corkBalloon❤Birthday cake"

top ten Dylan lyrics

― Chappies banging dustbin lids together (President Keyes), Wednesday, January 26, 2022 10:09 AM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

Reminds me of
post your made-up tom waits lyric

Yeah that's a good 'un.
Just now catching with this:

Tim Easton
@Tim_Easton
·
23h
JP Olsen at Hank Williams’s grave in Montgomery, Alabama. We’re here to see
@bobdylan
perform tonight. His first record came out 60 years ago this week. On a radio show that same year he covered Hank’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” #hankwilliams #bobdylan #alabama

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FOfFnoBWYAgxjY8?format=jpg&name=360x360

In fall of 1965, Bob Dylan told Nat Hentoff of Playboy:

Last spring I guess I was going to quit singing. I was very drained and the way things were going it was a very draggy situation… I was playing a lot of songs I didn’t want to play. I was singing words I didn’t really want to sing. I don’t mean words like “God” and “mother” and “president” and “suicide” and “meat cleaver”. I mean simple little words like “if” and “hope” and “you”.

Columbia Records is promoting some 60th anniversary thing for May 6

SUBTERRANEAN HOMESICK BLUES
2022 VIDEO REMAKE
In celebration of 60 years of Bob Dylan on Columbia Records, the iconic "Subterranean Homesick Blues” video has been reimagined by a wide range of musicians, film makers, graphic designers and street artists. Watch it now.

AR LENS
As a companion to the new "Subterranean Homesick Blues” video, try on a virtual pair of Bob Dylan's iconic Ray Ban sunglasses with the new Augmented Reality lens in Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat!

Bob Dylan :: Pretty Good Stuff | Ep. 15 – Live Time Out Of Mindhttps://t.co/PMKkGfoIez

"Time Out of Mind" turns 25 this year. Dig into live versions from the album with performances stretching from a week after the LP’s release to the edge of the pandemic... pic.twitter.com/0zrocErbpX

— aquarium drunkard (@aquadrunkard) May 9, 2022

love that Dylan's "old man facing his mortality" album is 25 years old

Mortality at 56: I don't want to die!

Morality at 81: I've had a good run.

Morality at 75: I really like Frank Sinatra.

animality at 84: i'm a dinosaur

I'd go see Dylanosaurus.

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/muppet/images/5/5a/Folksinger.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20070523204016

Take 2

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/muppet/images/5/5a/Folksinger.jpg

When Dylan came to Tulsa for a concert last month, he did not visit the center being created in his honor, although his longtime bassist, Tony Garnier, did stop by.

Nostalgia is “not his thing,” Brinkley said. (The Bob Dylan Center was set to be inaugurated with concerts from his longtime friends and collaborators Patti Smith and Elvis Costello this weekend.)

An avid baseball fan, Dylan instead made time to quietly attend the season opener for the Tulsa Drillers, the town’s minor league baseball team, according to Brinkley. The next night, he hung a Drillers pennant on his piano before he sat down to play.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/05/06/bob-dylan-museum-tulsa/

that is one of the coolest and relatable bob dylan stories i've ever heard

Bob is the best.

when I saw that story somewhere in the middle of the article, it immediately resonated.

haha, never change <3

Partial video of Dylan's stunning "Restless Farewell" at Sinatra's 80th bash. I added the SBD audio to this VHS rip, and upscaled it (but there's a watermark due to using a cheapo demo mode). One of his best performances which no one ever talks about. pic.twitter.com/90eEWpuhbr

— 𝗗𝗘𝗔𝗗𝗦𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗 💀 (@DeadsoundApp) June 1, 2022

That's a great one - I think immortalized on one of the Genuine Bootleg Series installments too. (Those three 3CD volumes are mostly obsolete now, but at the time they were a perfect supplement to the official Bootleg Series Vol. 1-3.)

I wasn't much of a fan of that song - I thought Dylan should've set it aside and used "Lay Down Your Weary Tune" as the closing track for The Times They Are A-Changin' - but for the Sinatra tribute it was perfect, and IIRC Sinatra personally requested it.

This guy certainly impressed me in Don't Look Back and Buried Alive (striking Joplin bio) and was aboard Rolling Thunder too---also made at least one solo ab and one with John Cale, neither of which I've heard---Rolling colleagues etc. remember:
https://variety.com/2022/music/news/bob-neuwirth-remembered-t-bone-burnett-david-mansfield-steven-soles-rolling-thunder-1235284946/

Neuwirth’s Havana Midnight is one of my favorite albums, and Back to the Front and Look Up have their moments, too.

Mr. Dylan, in his book “Chronicles: Volume One” (2004), had his own description of Mr. Neuwirth:

“Like Kerouac had immortalized Neal Cassady in ‘On the Road,’ somebody should have immortalized Neuwirth. He was that kind of character. He could talk to anybody until they felt like all their intelligence was gone. With his tongue, he ripped and slashed and could make anybody uneasy, also could talk his way out of anything. Nobody knew what to make of him.”

I actually met Neuwirth through a mutual friend. I didn't let on that I was a Dylan fan because I imagine he got enough of that from strangers. By that point he was already past 70 and he was incredibly nice and polite - I still have a sharp memory of when he introduced himself (just as Bob, not Bobby) and it wasn't until he engaged with someone he already knew that a boisterous, hilarious side of him finally slipped out. Great guy, he had the best line in No Direction Home: "Back then it wasn’t money-driven - it was about if an artist had something to say. Whether it was Bob Dylan or Ornette Coleman, what people would ask was, ‘Does he have anything to say?" Very sad he's gone.

I like this one - didn't know about it until I saw Elvis Costello's recommendation in that Vanity Fair piece he did of of his 500 favorite albums.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJiq8igzd7E

Is there a link to that Costello VF piece?

Yes, courtesy of the Costello wiki pages:

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php/Vanity_Fair,_November_2000

I can't warm to that Restless Farewell performance because of the awful piezo-pickup sound of Bob's guitar. A travesty. I grew up in Ireland at a time when every pub had a bloke playing an acoustic with exactly that terrible sound, so I'm allergic. A pity.

FRANK SINATRA PERSONALLY REQUESTED THAT GUITAR TONE

Hahaha

LMAO

This took some turns!

Editor's note: This segment was rebroadcast on June 13, 2022. Find that audio here.

Mare Winningham was nominated for a Tony for her role in the play. And the show won the Tony Award for Best Orchestration. We speak with some of the actors.
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2022/06/13/girl-from-the-north-country

Broadway's "Girl from the North Country” is a powerful touch-down in Depression-era Duluth, Minnesota.
...anders, who plays the patriarch Nick, explains the non-traditional role of music in the show as “sort of an outer sphere to our inner sphere,” he says. “The outer sphere which is hope.”

Hope, of course, is hard to come by during a cold, bleak, cash-starved winter in 1934 Duluth — particularly as the bank prepares to foreclose on the boarding house that physically and metaphorically holds the family together.

As the only cast member who doesn’t sing until the final number, Sanders says that his character doesn’t have the relief or emotional outlet afforded to the other characters.

Bob Dylan - Civic Theatre, San Diego, CA, June 18, 2022 https://t.co/s9CaotqLbf

— Tyler Wilcox (@tywilc) June 20, 2022

No download here---at least not in this free version, maybe notatall--- but watchful description of his latest L.A. show:
https://dylanlive.substack.com/p/last-night-in-la-by-tim-heidecker

This does have downloads:

I had fun a few months ago compiling a Before the Flood companion set, so I decided to do the same for one of my favorite Dylan live albums, 1978’s At Budokan. Today’s the anniversary of the beginning of the second full leg of the 1978 mega-tour — the first of six consecutive shows at London’s Earls Court — so today’s a perfect day to share the compilation with you all.

The concept is the same as Before the Flood II: A version of every song played that year that was not included on the official live album. Because he played many more shows than the ’74 Band tour, there were many more songs. At Budokan, after all, was only pulled from the first few concerts of the 1978; there were over 100 more to come.

So what I’m calling Not At Budokan has two sections, each arranged roughly like a typical ’78 show. They open with an instrumental then go into a blues cover, just like most of the shows. They have an intermission where you’d flip discs in the CD-burning era, and end on one of the year’s big encore staples: “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” and “Changing of the Guards.” Speaking of “Changing,” they also include a whole lot more Street Legal songs, as At Budokan’s recording predated that album and only featured “Is Your Love in Vain.” He also plays original songs never aired elsewhere: “Am I Your Stepchild,” “Stop Now,” “Love You Too Much,” “Coming from the Heart” (the latter two co-writes with singer Helena Springs).

I adore At Budokan, but it only scratches the surface of a wild and wonderful year, full of sax and flute solos, wailing backing singers, surprising blues covers, and splashy big-band remakes of old hits. He even took requests. Some guy in Osaka yells out “One Too Many Mornings!” and Bob mutters, “We’ve never done it before, but we’ll try it.” Some guy in the front row in Philadelphia writes “It Takes a Train to Laugh” on a piece of paper, and they do that one too — another one-off. When he hit Oklahoma, he even busted into a song he’d recorded with the state’s native son Leon Russell, “Watching the River Flow.”
Bob’s chatty, too. Before “Tangled Up in Blue” in Richmond, Ohio: “This is a ballad I wrote a few years back about three people who were in love with each other all the time” (really leans into the all). Yucking it up during the “Tomorrow Is a Long Time” backing singer intros in Tokyo, Japan: “In the middle, my ex-wife Jo Ann Harris. On the left, my current girlfriend Helena Springs.” And this extended intro to “Señor” in Charlotte, North Carolina:

This has the '74 tour w Band adds he mentions above, recordings not on Before The Flood--- More ads than usual popped up when I clicked the download link, but then I saw it was indeed downloading the music file (FLAC, even, like my choice for the xpost Not At Budokan stash):
https://dylanlive.substack.com/p/before-the-flood-ii-electric-boogaloo?s=w

Bob Dylan and his Rolling Thunder Revue entourage – including Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Roger McGuinn, Kinky Friedman, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Mick Ronson – arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah on May 25, 1976 to play the final show of their all-star caravan tour at the Salt Palace arena...
It was a night filled with unique moments for Dylan: the only time in his entire career that he performed the nine-minute Blood on the Tracks epic “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts,” the first rendition of “Gates of Eden” since 1965 and, according to one contemporaneous report, a performance of the Desire deep cut “Black Diamond Bay,” which has never been played before or after.
Dylan is returning to Salt Lake City on June 30 for a show at the Eccles Theater, and a group of hardcore fans are using it an excuse to join forces and reach out to anyone that might possibly have a recording of the show via a new website and social media campaign.

Bob Dylan gets an electric toothbrush pic.twitter.com/EwnFcxuhrv

— Peter Stone Brown Archives (@ArchivesPeter) July 2, 2022

Caption contest?

Rod Stewart's party at the Greenhouse in Los Angeles, CA on March 17, 1975
Sara Dylan (standing), Paul and Linda, Gregg Allman and Cher, and Bob Dylan pic.twitter.com/hWXJDiOvkS

— Pat Thomas (@PatThomas1964) July 6, 2022

Easily the strangest, most compelling Dylan gig I’ve seen.

The pink-dressed woman in the luxury box dancing arrhythmically for the entire show added a bit of extra Black Lodge surreality. pic.twitter.com/l1oaVEFaPe

— the Heat Warps (@theheatwarps) July 6, 2022

xp SARA: Bob, I’m sorry Linda spilled her tequila from the round you bought the table, but you know that’s what happens when a vegetarian ends up with the worm in her glass.