MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!

Subject: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Peter T.
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 08:40 AM

Great evening at Rick Fielding's House of Strange Sounds (also known as the Acoustic Workshop), part II of our ongoing, superterranian, Dylan series -- with the special ambiance provided by the arrival of peripatetic Mudcatters flattop, Little Hawk, and CarolC (the elegant doyenne of West Virginia) who graced our presence. A little additional spice added by an Aussie friend of mine who once produced a documentary on Tiny Tim! We then went and took over the Free Times Cafe, and the only drawbacks were that Little Hawk and I didn't get to talk Dylanology, Rick only played his guitar once, and CarolC and I had only shards of a conversation. Surreal.....

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: GUEST,Matt_R
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 08:59 AM

This Saturday I got Bob Dylan's first album Bob Dylan from the library. I remember not liking it a few years ago when I heard it. So what did I say this time, upon listening? Same thing I said with the Radiohead and Ozzy tapes I was listening to with it...."HELL YEAH!"

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: GUEST,Steve Latimer
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 10:24 AM

Peter T.,

Sounds like a great night. I'm sorry that I missed it. I did hear the show and enjoyed it.

Matt R,

I was given the first Bob Dylan album in the seventies. At that time I was into Rock almost exclusively and gave it a few spins and filed it away. It wasn't until many years later that I put it on the turntable and really came to appreciate it. I have since replaced it on CD and it's now one of my favourite Dylan Albums. It is just so passionate & inspired. I was playing it for my sister awhile ago, she said "a lot of people say he can't sing, but you can't ignore him, he sure makes you listen".

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Big Tim
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 11:09 AM

Been a dylan fan since april'63, can anyone in Glasgow, scotland beat this. Saw him live in Newcastle in'65, still got the "ticket stub" (!) And again live in Glasgow (Odeon theatre) and Edinburgh the following night in'66. Was first in queue for tkts for Glasgow 10 o'clock in the evening for 10 the next morning and got my picture in the local paper,. Disappointed to end up in 3rd row, some tkts must have been set aside for those and such as those, probably Allen Ginsberg, etc!. Wee Bob is the songwriter, and singer, of this or any other century.

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Peter T.
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 11:23 AM

Big Tim, I saw the Pennebaker video two nights ago, which has snippets of performances from 1965 -- incredibly charismatic (The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll particularly). Offstage he is sort of weird and hateful, and even dull, but onstage, boom. I had no idea or recollection that he was so good in person, covered as my images were with his later ups and downs as a performer. I envy you the experience in those days. He must have been really, really something, if the 5 minutes or so in the film is any indication.
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Big Tim
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 11:44 AM

Peter, no pun inteded, honest, but he was electric.

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: GUEST,Steve Latimer
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 11:59 AM

I know what you mean about Bob in the sixties although it was before my time. However, the last two times I've seen him have been magical and I haven't heard a bad review in years. The first time I saw him, the eighties he was terrible and I understand that was to be expected then, but from all I've seen and heard lately, he's back.

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Giac
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 12:24 PM

First time I've heard Acoustic Workshop, and what a first one to hear! Really good stuff, guys.

Rick's discussion of Dylan's guitar ability was overwhelmed by his (Rick's) own artistry as he was illustrating techniques.

Looking forward to next week's and future programs.

Thanks.

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 12:54 PM

...Don't sing twice, Bob, that's all right...

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: catspaw49
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 01:03 PM

LOL Dick.........Yeah, I was thinkin' that if this thing goes on a couple more episodes, what y'all need id to have a contest! Here's what you do:

Go out on the streets and play a Dylan recording (I can think of any number that will work for this) for people who aren't familiar with Bob and then ask them what they thought the words were. Give the winner a free course in sign language or something.

Spaw

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Jeri
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 05:37 PM

Giac, I know what you mean.

Rick: "Well, Dylan played some amazingly complicated things - expecially with his thumbs. Segovia couldn't even play some of those things. Normal people need more than one thumb per hand to play them. They went sorta (guitar) 'pick,pick,pick,pick'."

(I personally would like to hear Rick do the Dylan stuff and let Bob take a breather. He's earned it, eh?)

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Matt_R
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 06:15 PM

I love the way he sings on that first album...it's unlike I've ever heard him. It's very personal, like he's talking to you. Sometimes very quiet. I think that him singing "House of The Rising Sun" is the best version I've EVER heard of the song. Really great stuff.

--Matt (Boboholic)

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: catspaw49
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 06:21 PM

You're coming along nicely Matt.

Spaw

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 07:20 PM

Matt, couldn't agree with you more. At his best, he gave me chills. Now if folks would just stop arguing (or caring) whether he was a "folk" singer, or not.

Just watched the movie "Don't Look Back". Astonishing. I saw it in 1969, and simply didn't "get" 99 percent of what was goin on. Oh myyy, do I "get" it today. Twenty minutes of that film told me more than the twenty biographies I've read.

Rick

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 07:53 PM

So are you, Spaw. :-)

What a thrill it was to be in the studio during that show, and to watch Rick display those Dylanesque picking styles! It's too bad the listeners didn't get to hear the kibitzing that went on between Rick and Peter while the songs were being played off the Dylan CD's. Utterly hilarious stuff. At one point they were both blithering on in Indo-Pakistani accents as if they were two East Indian journalists conducting the public on a filmed tour through Bob's parents' house in Hibbing, Minnesota. Ha! Ha! Ha!

Did you people know that Rick Fielding loves doing impressions of old time film actors and suchlike? His mind is a repository of millions of bits of "pointless and useless knowledge". I can relate to this, cos that's the way my mind is too...

Turns out we both liked the same comic books too, way back then in the 60's...Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, and Classics Illustrated. Wak!

Matt - Right sizzlin' on!!!

Peter - Man, I regret not putting in an hour or two going over Dylan memorabilia...gotta do it some time.

What I want to do is play "I Pity The Poor Immigrant" on Rick's radio show, live, after explaining its hidden spiritual meanings. Mmmmmm....that would be fun.

Okay, gotta go now. Someone's breathing down my neck.

"She's got everything she needs, she's an artist, she don't look back..."

Yeah.

- LH

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Matt_R
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 08:42 PM

I think another reason I like the album so much is because his guitar playing sounds a lot like mine. I can hear the clicking of a soft pick on his strings, just like I use. And I guess the fact that all that killer music is coming from him all at the same time is another thing that makes it special to me. This much raving about it, and I've only had 1 listen! Lol!

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: catspaw49
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 09:50 PM

Matt, there is something so familiar in that "intimacy" to most of us. Folkies don't start out jamming with a group generally. Its an intimate and personal music. Dylan comes across as one of us more on that album than almost any other.

I have talked about the 30th Anniversary thing before, but when Dylan came on, he could have done his set anyway in the world, but it was Bob and the Martin and a dark stage, spot on Bob. the songs were from a later period, but the style took me back to that first album, a symbolic thing that was hard to miss. I wonder if that symbolic thing was intentional on anyone's part? What I do know is that for me, it tied the 30 years together.

Of course to offset that, Dylan sang songs I know well and I couldn't understand one word in ten..........just "Another Side of Bob Dylan" I guess.

Spaw

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Callie at work
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 09:55 PM

Ah - a timely discussion! I woke up the other morning (as you do) and was inspired to write a three part vocal arrangement (with guitar) of "Love Minus Zero" for my group. I love that song, and it's also very sweet for Dylan. (Sadly) We'll have to expect some flack when we sing at folkie gatherings.

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Matt_R
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 10:16 PM

Thanks you guys. This is the only place I get to talk about Dylan. My family thinks he's boring and people at school hate him. At least here I feel welcome to revel in utter Bob-ness.

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Callie at work
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 10:18 PM

Welcome to Dylaholics Anonymous.

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 10:54 PM

People who think Dylan is "boring" are toiling in the very depths of irony...but don't know it. No offense to your family, Matt, but I just had to say that. It's probably more unfamiliarity than anything else...

- LH

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Matt_R
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 11:06 PM

That's what I said! My sister has banned any playing of Bob Dylan in the car from now on...after I "forced" her to listen to Blonde on Blonde, then Bootlegs 2 later.

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Amergin
Date: 20 Feb 01 - 11:22 PM

I love his first album and Times They are A-Changin...there is just something in those two albums that speak to me.....

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: flattop
Date: 21 Feb 01 - 01:16 AM

Giac has a good point. Rick's rendering of Dylan's music was a special moment in the show Monday night. Rick's version brought back memories but it also seemed richer than my recollections of the music. The old record players didn't do the music justice and with Dylan singing, it was easy to miss the finer points of the music that Rick pointed out.

Yes, I can still remember. I was a young kid. We were visiting relatives in New Jersey when Hank, who was married to my distant cousin, Cathy, decided to share his love of Dylan with me.

Hank seemed a little odd even for me. I believe he got out of the draft for health reasons. He was working in a factory assembling missile parts and he liked to steal parts made from expensive metals, drill holes in them, nail them to boards and make primitive happy faces. In the days before home computers, he had two printing presses in his house, which he used to print cards that said things like 'Santa Claus picks his nose.' He wrote to the editors of Time Magazine every week and had a coffee table in his living room that he made out of a coffin. Hank disliked kids enough that he spent hours painting signs like 'Danger 50,000 volts, Keep Out', so the relative were more than a little bemused when Hank accepted me as a friend.

Hank proudly lays one of his Columbia LPs on the turntable and I hear the guy whining through his nose words like Oxford town, Oxford town, gotta go around to Oxford town. And I say to myself, 'You gotta be kidding. What a piece of shit!' I'd probably heard good singers like Leroy Van Dyke by then.

A couple years later, I'm in grade 11 at Riverview Rural High in Cape Breton. I get the mumps or measles (I can't remember which.) The doctor tells me I'm well enough to go back to school so I go fishing in the freezing rain and get pneumonia. I think I was near death and delirious. For a few weeks my mind resembled Little Hawk's. Fortunately, my sister had had the presence of mind to join the Columbia record club. Just when I thought there was no hope, Columbia sends out Highway 61 as the pick of the month. I put it on an old vinyl covered record player with a 5-inch speaker. Almost immediately, I realized that Dylan was singing to my delirium. "There's something happening here and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?"

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: GUEST,Matt_R
Date: 21 Feb 01 - 10:57 AM

Lol, someone mentioned "Bob Dylan's Dream" as one of those "Powerful yet disturbing songs"...LOL..so I downloaded "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" thinking it was the same song. Boy was I wrong! Heh heh! This song kicks ass!

They asked for collateral and I pulled dowm my pants

Classic line!

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Peter T.
Date: 21 Feb 01 - 12:16 PM

"Don't Look Back" is one of the most amazing films I have ever seen. Every music documentary stole everything from it. Like Rick I saw it 20 years ago, and it did nothing for me. But I was etc., etc., then. The scene with Albert Grossman and the British management is so staggering, I had to replay it twice -- the editing is superlative throughout the film, but especially good here -- and Grossman produced the film!!! The scenes with the two reporters (Time and the British reporter, who has no idea what is going on anywhere) are so vicious that the film should get a R for on-screen evisceration. You cannot watch, and cannot turn away.
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Feb 01 - 01:56 PM

Yeah, Bob was obviously so completely fed up with the press by that time that he had lost all sense of common decency when it came to dealing with them...which is really not all that surprising. When has the press shown any common decency to anyone?

At the same time, there's always this kind of dark humour peeking out through his putdowns, so maybe if they really listened they might get something out of it that they could find valuable and useful.

I think if they had had enough presence of mind NOT to get mad or upset, there were opportunities there for real communication.

I like it when the infuriated young Englishman says "You're just a big noise!" and Dylan replies "I'm a bigger noise than you!" You could call that arrogant...or just downright brutally honest. He was definitely a very big noise, and has remained so right to this day, whether he likes it or not.

- LH

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Big Tim
Date: 21 Feb 01 - 03:54 PM

Apropos one of my comments above. By the time of the Edinburgh concert (gigs came later)in '66 we had Bob's routine figured; at the final bow drop the guitar and run for the exit, while the audience was still applauding or slowly filing out. So just before the end of the last number my friends and I dashed out, and bumped into Dylan! When he saw us he was laughing his head off, he dashed for the limo and gave us a wave and a smile as he was whisked off to his hotel. We had supported Bob vocally at those early electric shows, shouting "shout up we want to hear Dylan" at those shouting "traitor", etc. We were total fanatics in those days, still are, with t-shirts printed "Dylan For God", happy days!

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Matt_R
Date: 21 Feb 01 - 03:58 PM

Wow! I want one of those T-shirts!!

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Big Tim
Date: 21 Feb 01 - 04:03 PM

Hey man, I'm talking '66!!!!!!!!!

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Feb 01 - 04:12 PM

God, I wish I'd been there...

- LH

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Matt_R
Date: 21 Feb 01 - 04:15 PM

Hey man, I'm Talking Havah Negilah!

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Feb 01 - 03:22 PM

And then...IT STRIKES AGAIN!!!

- LH

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 23 Feb 01 - 10:22 AM

Peter T.,

Did you rent don't look back? I haven't seen it in the video store that I go to.

Steve

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: GUEST,Matt_R
Date: 23 Feb 01 - 10:28 AM

I saw it at our little college video store. I went "OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!!". My rolled her eyes. Hmmph!

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 23 Feb 01 - 10:54 AM

I've been looking for a copy of it, but can't find one anywhere.

- LH

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 23 Feb 01 - 11:10 AM

Little Hawk,

I just checked www.chapters.ca and they show it for $16.49 CDN. I'll have to add it to my wish list.

The one that doesn't seem to be "in print" anymore is the 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration.

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: catspaw49
Date: 23 Feb 01 - 11:45 AM

Not as good, but have you seen the one of the tour with Tom Petty?

Spaw

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 23 Feb 01 - 11:52 AM

No, but I've heard good things about it.

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Peter T.
Date: 23 Feb 01 - 01:36 PM

Hi Steve, you can get it at Suspect Video in Toronto, tucked around behind Honest Eds. They have a 5 day loan period.
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: voyager
Date: 23 Feb 01 - 01:57 PM

3 comments....

1. Bear Mountain Picnic - get's my kids laughing

2. rec.music.dylan - (for USENET addicts)

3. "you had to have been there moment" - I has 25, on a date in Beverly Hills, CA, watching "Children of Paradise", and when the lights came on Dylan was spotted in the audience (wearing dark glasses in a movie theater). What a dude.

voyager FSGW Ghetto

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 23 Feb 01 - 02:13 PM

Peter T.,

That Toronto sounds like a wonderful place. Whitby on the other hand...

Do you know if they're open on Sundays?

Steve

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 23 Feb 01 - 05:42 PM

Hey, guys...

Thanks!

- LH

Subject: RE: MUDCAT DYLANOMANIA STRIKES!
From: Peter T.
Date: 24 Feb 01 - 12:12 PM

Yes, they are open on Sunday. yours, Peter T.