DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary

Subject: Dylan on tube tonight and...
From: Bobert
Date: 26 Sep 05 - 07:52 PM

Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home, ad ocumentary on Bob DEyalns early years airs tonight and tomorrow night on PBS... Lots of never relaesed footage...

A must fir all Dylan fans...

Little Hawk???

Bobert

Subject: RE: Dylan on tube tonight and...
From: number 6
Date: 26 Sep 05 - 08:38 PM

Been waiting to see this for some time now ... should be good.

sIx

Subject: RE: Dylan on tube tonight and...
From: Bobert
Date: 26 Sep 05 - 08:50 PM

Yeah, I'm hyped as well, sIx....

It was 1964 and I was in 'bout to graduate from military school and this kid, who was from New York, invited me down to his room to hear this guy... Prior to that I had never heard of Bob Dyaln... But I listened to it an' 'bout a onth later bought my first guitar... Yeah, I wanted to sing them songs....

Firget them drums which I had been palyin' since I was 'bout 12 'er swo... I wanted to play a guitar and moan like Dylan....

Been playin''n moanin' ever since...

Yeah, there been other folks got my attention along the way but no one bigger than Bob Dylan...

Bobert

Subject: RE: Dylan on tube tonight and...
From: number 6
Date: 26 Sep 05 - 08:56 PM

Yeah, there been other folks got my attention along the way but no one bigger than Bob Dylan...

So true Bobert ... Mr. Z will persevere.

10 minutes and it's on.

sIx

Subject: RE: Dylan on tube tonight and...
From: Bobert
Date: 26 Sep 05 - 11:01 PM

Wow!!!!

Can't wait until tomorrow night...

This has been one heck of a a trip thru the past....

Bobert

Subject: RE: Dylan on tube tonight and...
From: number 6
Date: 26 Sep 05 - 11:23 PM

It has .... and it's just warming up!

Good interviews with Dave Van Ronk ... I liked his take on 'House of the Rising Son'

sIx

Subject: RE: Dylan on tube tonight and...
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 12:21 AM

Very well done. Looking forward to tomorrow night.

Subject: RE: Dylan on tube tonight and...
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 12:36 AM

It was very good. Quite a nostalgia trip. Lots of old friends were there. But so many are gone now! Mike Bloomfield sure as hell could pick!!!!

Art

Subject: RE: Dylan on tube tonight and...
From: Pauline L
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 01:24 AM

I very rarely watch TV, but I'm glad I did this time. I was spellbound. I had almost forgotten how talented and powerful Dylan was, but I was mesmerized all over again. I couldn't leave the room -- not even to eat -- and I was singing along and strumming my fiddle with him. I really liked listening to what other musicians said about him and how they said it. They were all so impressed. I liked someone's comment near the end of the show about Jung's racial subconscious and how Dylan articulated so well what so many of us were feeling.

Subject: RE: Dylan on tube tonight and...
From: Elmer Fudd
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 02:19 AM

I enjoyed the early and more recent footage of Allen Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, Irwin Silber, Dave Van Ronk, Mark Spoelstra, Suzie Rotolo et al. Also the early photos and footage of Dylan in Minnesota were a hoot.

Subject: RE: Dylan on tube tonight and...
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 03:46 AM

Yes very interesting. I learnt a lot too such as

1) He stole 25 LP's from a chap called Paul Nelson
2) He stole 400 LP's from another chap called John Glover
3) He stole Dave Van Ronks best guitar arrangements
4) He lifted old folk tunes wholesale, put new words to them, and called them his own.
5) He consistently lied about his background
6) During the period covered by the first part of this proogramme, he was no more politically aware or active than the average plumber!!!

No wander he shuns interviews!! Remaining enigmatic shields you from your indescrections!!!!!
                         Even strawberries get it!

Subject: RE: Dylan on tube tonight and...
From: mooman
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 03:56 AM

Watched it and found it excellent (also the early footage of some other favourites).

Looking forward very much to Part 2.

Peace

moo

Subject: RE: Dylan on tube tonight and...
From: Mr Happy
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 04:27 AM

Echoing Flamenco Ted's observations above, I also had my gut feelings confirmed of what a scoundrel this chap is/has been.

Of course, my perceptions are coming from the British way of folk which is predominantly done for the participants' own enjoyment, whereas the American folkies seem more commercially inclined.

Nevertheless, Zimmerman's opportunism & plagiarism came across very clearly in Scorcese's documentary.

On a positive note, he did compose some brilliant songs which were original & truly his own and was also astute enough to grasp the ethos of the period in his compositions such as 'God on our side' & other anti-war 'protest' songs.


As to his adoption of the name 'Dylan' after Dylan Thomas, the welsh pronunciation is 'Dullun'.

I guess he either wasn't aware of this fact, or if he did; in probability wouldn't have felt 'Bob Dullun' had quite the same sort of ring to it!

Subject: RE: Dylan on tube tonight and...
From: catspaw49
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 04:47 AM

Can't wait to see the other part.....and then we can have some fun on some of the topics already established. But for now.......No revelations that most Dylan folks didn't already know. I thought it funny they used the Brit audiences complaining about Dylan as a lot of American audiences felt the same way. The time sequence here is way out of whack. Anybody else notice the total lack of mention of Jack Elliott? He appears very briefly in one quick shot just standing somewhere but I didn't see anything else........No guilt over copping album collections but perhaps a bit of guilt about Ramblin' Jack?

Spaw

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: Beer
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 08:12 AM

Wow!!
Memories
Beer

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: greg stephens
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 08:26 AM

Flamenco Ted: not John Glover. that was Tony "Little Sun" Glover, I think, of "Blues Rags and Hollers" fame. Or pssibly Little Son, it was a long time ago.
    So, Bob nicked things, but was very charismatic, wrote some good songs and had the zeitgeist pretty much in his hand. Old Scorsese is obviously pretty much on the ball then.
I think the master's ability to change his face at will, like many superior performers, is stunning. He evn looked like Joan Baez for a while. And the extraordinary way he changed from being an American to looking English in the mid-60's was very revealing. Not just clothes, the whole persona.
    I dont think I learnt anything new, but it was agreat nostalgia trip. No attention given to the English 1962 trip(Castle St, Carthy, Tawney etc)....an omission I felt; that visit marked a huge Dylan change, basically from Song to Woody to Hard Rain persona.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 08:28 AM

Well, I don't think that anyone has ever accused him of being a Saint. I think that it's been pretty well documented that Bob took some liberties with the truth early in his career. However, I found it interesting to hear about him being a "Sponge", how when he returned to Minnesota after a few months he had learned all of these new styles, new songs and learned them well. He must have completely immersed himself in music to learn this stuff in that time. I enjoyed the fact that they played some clips of songs from that period, stuff that was either never released or wasn't released until many laters (Bear Mountain, No More Auction Block etc). Doing a documentary on Dylan takes some guts as there are millions of Dylan Geeks in the world (and I consider myself one) who are just waiting for a mistake. I really liked show one.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: GUEST,DB
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 09:20 AM

I've never liked Bob Dylan and last night's programme only confirmed my dislike. Nevertheless, the programme was fascinating, if a little superficial and given to skirting round the 'difficult' issues.
I too was shocked with the revelation that Dylan stole his friends' records - remind me not to let him near my record collection.

More importantly, the programme revealed some odd contradictions:

He came across as an arrogant, opportunistic, shallow, little git who, nevertheless, wrote these songs which really did seem to capture the spirit of the times - without actually saying very much - very odd.

Personally, I'm not too bothered that he 'borrowed' traditional tunes etc. - what better vehicles could he have used? It shows that, at least, he had some taste.

There was an article, in the Independent newspaper, recently, in which the 'Judas' shouter, at Manchester Free Trade Hall, stated that he he was really enraged because Dylan's electric set was a total shambles. Listening to the 1966 recordings, last night, suggested that he may have been right. I was suddenly struck by the realisation that I was hearing Punk 10 years before its time. This is not a compliment, by the way, I hate Punk with a vengeance - a hideous racket created by lazy, drugged up yobs!

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 09:26 AM

I'm amazed that people still take issue with items like:
He stole Dave Van Ronks best guitar arrangements
He lifted old folk tunes wholesale, put new words to them, and called them his own.
He consistently lied about his background
During the period covered by the first part of this proogramme, he was no more politically aware or active than the average plumber!!!

Big f#&king deal! People make it sound like he was the only one doing these things.   Looking back at the folk revival, back to it's roots in the 1940's, most artists were doing that.   Woody Guthrie would make Dylan look like a saint!

The fact that Dylan was probably no more poltically aware than the average "plumber" (as if something was wrong with plumbers)makes Dylans accomplishments even more brilliant.   He was able to make his songs reach an audience that the more obtuse "poltically aware" artists could not match.

I would not want him for a close friend or even a neighbor, and I would never let him borrow a record, but that isn't the point.

After all these years you would think that the die-hard folkies would give him a break. You can't live on bread alone!

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 09:38 AM

Precisely my reactions, Ron. (grin) Methinks they protest too much.

I would be happy to learn any kind of guitar or song arrangement from someone who plays better than I do... I don't call that stealing, and I sure hope no one else would either. I call it learning. I too have rewritten old trad songs. Imitation, remember, is the sincerest form of flattery. Dylan flattered Woody Guthrie and Ramblin' Jack Elliot, and Dave Van Ronk, and everyone else whose music he loved. And THEY did the same thing before HIM when they were learning their chops!

So like Ron says, gimme a fuckin' break, you holier-than-thou people.

Bobert, old buddy, I never even saw the show, because I don't have a TV. I had planned to go to Raptor's place to see it, but he had to work late. However, he and I are planning to buy the DVD very shortly, and watch it repeatedly with NO commercials! So there. I'm happy that Scorsese saw fit to do this movie. Good stuff.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: Lowden Jameswright
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 10:06 AM

Dylan came to London in the winter of 1961 and was ridiculed in most of the folk clubs he visited. His guitar playing was very basic and his harmonica playing laughable. His singing voice however, must have given him at least some credibility in that he sang through his nose in the time-honoured style of English folk singers like Martin Carthy.

He learned much though from his experience, and has stood the ultimate test of time. Love him or hate him, you can't deny the brilliance of his song-writing and his ability to re-invent himself (musically) countless times in keeping him where he belongs.

My first impression of Dylan was based on hearing his 1st album played in our school music room before it was officially available in the UK. I was probably one of the first kids to hear him in the UK, and I thought he was shite.

Within 2 years I had a harmonica and guitar and cut my 1st record singing a Dylan song in a Blackpool (Golden Mile) recording booth that you cost two shillings and sixpence for the priveledge. Now that record WAS shite.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 10:06 AM

Catspaw - you wondered why they used the UK reaction to Dylan as opposed to the US reaction. The simple answer is - that is the only footage they had.   Pennebaker filmed the Dylan tours and has extensive outtakes that were used in this new movie.   In Part 2 they do address the U.S. reaction, and you will see footage from Murray Lerner made at Newport (by the way - a reminder from an earlier thread - Lerner's film "Festival", a great documentary on the Newport Folk Festival will FINALLY be released to home video on October 18).   They also discuss the reaction Dylan had on several tours and.... ooops, I won't spoil it! Watch Part 2!!!

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 10:17 AM

i prefered it when he went electric..


so does this mean the entire 'infamous' 1966 manchester gig
exists on colour film
and 'could' be available for DVD release..


ps.. the only Dylan album i'd save if my house was due to
suddenly & mysteriously explode in 10 minutes..

[ok.. as well as electric half of teh 66 gig]


is 'nashville skyline'

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: emjay
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 11:21 AM

Little Hawk, we watched on PBS so there were no commercial interruptions    but buying the DVD is probably a good idea. You don't have to like Dylan to enjoy the program. It was well worth watching, I am looking forward to the second half, it was the best folk music I've seen or heard on televison in a long, long time.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 11:41 AM

Even though I love Dylan's electric stuff, I have a great deal of sympathy for those attending his early electric performances - Newport, Manchester etc. During the electric set, at those gigs, I bet the audience couldn't hear a word Dylan was singing. And even worse than that! I doubt if Dylan could hear a word he was singing!
btw, I loved the first part of the documentary.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: Steve-o
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 12:05 PM

Thanks to Ron O. and Little Hawk for jumping on the whiners- they're around every corner these days. I thought the whole thing was wonderful- just loved seeing John Cohen and hearing his thoughts, not to mention, of course, Dave VanRonk. And Joanie was quite funny; I have heard she has a great sense of humor. And Izzy, and Harold, and...and... How about Alan Ginsberg actually choking up a little while remembering the first time he heard "Hard Rain"? Yow- what a bunch of priceless moments!

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: GUEST,rubber ball
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 12:10 PM

not enough screen time and historical detail devoted to the Bobby Vee connection..

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 12:19 PM

Brilliant and so evocative of the times, but nobody's mentioned drugs. It seemed to me that Dylan was high as a kite in Newcastle and singing the gibberish lyrics drugs induce. It was almost as though the young kid with the brilliant songs had just been taken over by an alien. And the sound balance with the band was atrocious!
No wonder an audience who had had been won over by his lyrics were annoyed when they couldn't understand a word he sang.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 12:20 PM

The biggest impression made on me by the old footage was the Dylan performing style, which was a unique mix of choir-boy innocence and a barely suppressed urge to grin as he laid out his brilliant lines for the audience or camera. I have always liked singer-songwriters who wear their hearts on their sleeves, like Springsteen, Steve Earle, Van Morrison, Gram Parsons, etc. Dylan is the apotheosis of this, a performer with a calculated agenda who clearly loved the adulation while disdaining it. I wouldn't want to have a beer with Bobby, and if we did, I'll bet I'd be buying.
He was brilliant, no argument. It was interesting to hear him explain his prolific songwriting in the early years as a fascination with the process. It was certainly much more than that, or he would be writing at the same level today. I think he was busy with his masterwork...creating Bob Dylan. Now that he's comfortable in that guise, he's not nearly as interesting.
I'll be watching tonight as smashes the folk icons.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: Amos
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 12:22 PM

I watched his first electric performance at Newport, and I understood the words just fine.


A

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: Ringer
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 12:26 PM

Did anyone else hear an excerpt from "Mad House on Castle Street" on BBC radio-4 yesterday am (Monday)? Apparently (I was half-asleep over breakfast) someone's mother recorded the music bits with a tape-recorder in front of the TV, thinking her son would like it, and those tapes are still extant. Since the beeb scratched the master-tapes, it's all that's left of the program.

Recording quality was less than excellent, naturally enough.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 01:13 PM

I watched it last night and was enthralled. I'm looking forward to tonight's thrilling episode, and I've checked and found that my local PBS affiliate will be repeating it Saturday night, both episodes, starting at 10:00 p.m. I've slapped a tape into the VCR, all set up to record it.

To be honest, I have never actually liked Dylan very much. Half the time I can't understand what the hell words he's singing, and most of the time he doesn't actually sing, he just sort of chants a song. As a performer, most of the time I find him a kind of an annoying bore. From what I've read about him in books like Positively 4th Street by David Hajdu, And a Voice to Sing With, Joan Baez' memoir, and The Mayor of MacDougal Street by Dave Van Ronk (with Elijah Wald), just as a person, I don't think I would like Dylan very much. Self-centered, egotistical, rude, and phony as a three-dollar bill. But somehow, he did have the knack of catching people's attention, even to the extent of having some people practically worship him. And he did put together some pretty punchy songs. It's obvious that he had something. Maybe I'm just not getting it!

In various interviews in the past, Dylan fed the interviewer all kinds of bullshit about who he was, where he was from, and how, in his (then) brief lifetime he had managed to be Woody Guthrie, Paul Bunyan, and a rough-hewn reincarnation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart all rolled into one. Born and raised in Fargo, North Dakota, born on an Indian reservation somewhere in New Mexico, and God knows where else (actually Hibbing, Minnesota), hopped freights and bummed around the country since he was twelve (actually finished high school in Hibbing, registered for college, never attended classes, then hitchhiked straight to New York), met Mance Lipscomb and learned his guitar playing from him (never happened), and all sorts of other fictional accounts, apparently simply making them up on the spot. BUT—in the parts when Dylan is talking to whoever the interviewer is for this program, he seems to be fairly straight and genuine. Maybe he's finally grown up. If he were that way all the time, I think I could get to like him.

What really blows me away about this program is that practically everybody is in it.

Here was a chance to see people I had heard a lot about, maybe seen pictures of, but had never seen in person or in action on film. John Jacob Niles singing, for example. Bizarre! Fascinating! Israel G. Young who ran the Folklore Center in Greenwich Village and knew everybody. Lots of commentary from him. I've seen Odetta in person, but the short bits of her singing nailed my right in the chest! My God, she's a force! I met John Cohen in Berkeley in 1960 (he was at the Berkeley Folk Festival with the New Lost City Ramblers), and there he was, doing a lot of commentary on Dylan. Also, lots of great comments and stories by Dave Van Ronk (now, Van Ronk I could really like! Loved his book. Got it from the library, read it, then decided I had to have a copy and bought one.). Clips of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Mike Seeger, Maria Muldaur, even brief clips of Cisco Houston, the Weavers, and many others, with a whole eight nanoseconds of Cynthia Gooding (if you blink, you miss her).

One helluva nostalgia trip. I'm looking forward to tonight's episode. And then getting it on tape so I can go back and watch portions of it again.

Like they say, "Don't miss it if you can!"

Don Firth

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 01:44 PM

Don, this one is worth investing in the DVD!   Not only will the quality be superior to your VHS dub from the broadcast, but there are a few nice extras. I really enjoyed the clips of the guest artists singing Dylan songs - especially Liam Clancy with "Girl From North Country".   Maria Muldaur is also terrific.

I'm not sure if anyone else noticed, but No Direction Home featured a very rare clip of Woody Guthrie.   The Guthrie family has numerous home movies shot of Woody while he was in the hospital, but they have been rarely shown in public - but they used a brief clip of Woody sitting on the ground and holding his guitar which clearly illustrated the battle he was facing with Huntington's. I do believe this is the first time that clip has ever been broadcast or used in a commercial venture like this.    Back in the 1970's I interviewed Marjorie Guthrie and asked her why there wasn't film on Woody. She told me that there were only two clips that they located. She did not mention the home movies because she was holding onto them and did not wish to have people remember Woody in that state.   Nora Guthrie now has a different view, and she has been showing excerpts from these films during lectures.   It gives us a vivid idea of what Woody was going through, but more importantly it showed how Woody's family interacted with their father. You realised what a loving family he had, and how Huntington's was dealt with in a very real way.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 02:02 PM

Ron

The fact that we are getting a closer look at Woody, as well as the Clancys, Van Ronk, Hammond, PP&M, etc is one of the best things about this special. I was too young at the time to appreciate these people, and all too often Folk Music is seen as "antique music" by young people, a stereotype which was reinforced by A Mighty Wind, as much as I enjoyed it. The scenes at Newport and in the Village showed Folk Music in its vital form, part and parcel with the beat movement and with the political upheaval that was about to sweep the country. Like Guthrie's music, the music that sprung out of Dylan was not just music of the past, but an accurate barometer of the youth movement of the time, and a harbinger of what was to come.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: catspaw49
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 02:07 PM

I'm impressed with the quality and length of the film clips. So often these things have a 10 second shot and that's it.Thanks Ron for the info and the bait (although unneeded) for Part 2!

Spaw

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 02:11 PM

EJ - you must check out "Festival" when it is released on DVD.   I was a bit too young to go to Newport during it's heyday, but watching the film was an eye-opener.   "Festival" was an amazing documentary, and you can see that the film makers who created "Woodstock" were using "Festival" as a "how-to" guide in many ways. Not the crazy cuts, but the intermixing of music with audience and performer dialogue. It really does give modern viwers an opportunity to see what really went on.

Also, I highly recommend the episodes of "Rainbow Quest" that Shanachie has released on DVD. This was a series that Pete Seeger hosted during the mid-1960's.   I've watched episodes with the Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem, Johnny Cash & June Carter Cash, and a few others. Another wonderful glimpse of how folk music was really offered during the time.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 02:11 PM

Around the first of the year, I got a new Hewlett-Packard notebook complete with a DVD player-burner, and it can handle wide-screen. Absolutely gorgeous screen! My wife and I have taken to watching a lot of movies on it. It's like HDTV. Looks almost three-dimensional, like you can practically step into the screen and join in the action.

Thanks, Ron. I'll go ahead and videotape the show, but in the meantime, I'm putting in an order for the DVD.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 02:23 PM

Thanks, Ron, I will.

You mentioned Pete Seeger hosting "Rainbow Quest". The film and still shots of Pete playing with the Weavers, Woody, Dylan, etc, and the quiet dignity and goodwill he still shines forth reminded me of what a living treasure Mr Seeger is to American music. Has Pete written an autobiography, and are their any documentaries that cover his life or his role in folk music?

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 02:32 PM

Pete "sort of" wrote an autobiography. I say "sort of" because with Pete, nothing is linear. There are two books that Peter wrote, I believe still in print, "The Incompleat Folksinger" and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone".   There are no documentaries that I know of, with the exception of the Weavers film "Wasn't That A Time".

While we are recommending books related to Seeger/Dylan/Folk Revival - check out Ronald Cohens book "Rainbow Quest".

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: catspaw49
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 02:55 PM

The Rainbow Quest series ought to be some kind of mandatory viewing for anyone with even the tiniest interest. What Seeger did there was the equal of anything he ever did and what he left us with those shows is truly a national treasure...or a worldwide one.

2 questions..........

Where is Peter T.? I hope he drops by for this thread at least....

Anyone else missing Fielding here?

Spaw

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 03:53 PM

Boy...to say that I can't wait to see this movie would be the understatement of all time. Ummm...mmm!

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 04:07 PM

Oh, and anyone who thinks Dylan's "electric" lyrics are merely a bunch of drug-inspired gibberish...

....just doesn't comprehend them in the least.

Kind of like "Mr Jones". "something is happening here, but you don't know what it is...do you, Mr Jones?" No wonder Bob's voice was underlined by such acid contempt as he spat out those lines in the angry songs on "Highway 61 Revisited". He was facing the emptiness of minds that only see and hear what they want to see and hear...which is something they already saw and heard 5,000 times or so before.

He broke the hidden rules of the mind. Not the mundane outer rules (like where you park your car or what poison you choose to drink or smoke in your spare time)...but the rules of enforced conformity, bland assumption, lifelessness, and unconscious, witless submission of people's lives and their children's lives to social idiocy. Modern society is largely meaningless, crass, corrupt, and insane, and he knew it. He said it. He said it plainly. People didn't like it. A lot of them still don't like it.

Dylan, like Mikhail Gorbachev in the 80's in Russia, was offering his audience something that a whole lot of them just were not aware enough to grasp or know what to do with. He was no ordinary entertainer, though he might have wished he was! It would have been a lot easier to deal with, after all, wouldn't it?

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 27 Sep 05 - 04:22 PM

'Spaw, do you think that Rick might have had some comments on it? ;-)

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 28 Sep 05 - 10:24 AM

I enjoyed last night's show even more than I did Monday's. I will definitely get the DVD. I am a fan of Bob's music through just about every era, I was seven when he went electric, so I heard that stuff first. But, to me the highlights of last night's show were the clips of him alone on on stage with his acoustic and harmonica. It's All Over Now Baby Blue, Visions of Johanna, It's Allright Ma, Love Minus Zero etc. Mesmerizing. I also enjoyed him sitting with Johnny Cash working out harmonies for Hank Williams' I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry.

Bob has had a bad rap with the media, but some of those questions!!! I loved the look that he gave the guy who asked what the significance of the Triumph Motorcycle on his tee shirt was on the cover of Highway 61 Revisited. It was "you're kidding me, right?". The guy was serious and had his own ideas what it went. There is the problem with Dylan geeks (hey, I'm a pseudo Dylan geek). It was just a flippin' tee shirt.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: Fortunato
Date: 28 Sep 05 - 10:41 AM

I liked the production and editing choices. Most of the footage I had not seen, and much of it was arresting. Best for me was Joan Baez's take on Bob and their relationship. By coincidence I had flown in from Oakland on the plane with Joan on Friday and seeing her had brought a memory. I had forgotten how phenomenal her voice was then. Joan's language was a surprise in the interview, apparently she and 'catspaw and I are enamored of some of the same @#$%ing words.

Also very funny were the British interviewers questions, and Bob's careful answers.

cheers, Chance

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: Amos
Date: 28 Sep 05 - 10:42 AM

LOL, Steve!

The wonderful thing about part 1 was that it captured the zany quantum collisons of the time -- the wild meanderings, the overttones from Kerouac and Ginsberg and Corso, the crossings and uncrossings of fates and live. And in some of those shots from the outside of the Cafe Wha, you get a glimpse of how these immemorial moments, these earth-shaking transitions (Bob meets Joan, the situation desk at CORE, the wilding tenor of Niles, all these amazing probes into the future) were absolutely disguised by the dirty streets and commercial ordinariness of the exteriors of the buildings, even in wild-ass Greenwich Village. There were no herald angels saying "Van Ronk is come!" or "Lo! Odetta!". It took a long time to percolate into the mainstream, largely thanks to Hammond and the people who operated gerdy's and the other sites. All this magic, hidden from the public eye.

What an amazing trip those years were. I am sure that, except for a couple of small lifechanging choices that took me to England and then to sea, I would have been in the brawl, sleeping on sofas and hitchiking to strange places.

I loved the show for bringing me back to that rich crossroads of endless possibility, when we were all in our teens or 20's and anything could happen, and most everything did.


A

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: Ross
Date: 28 Sep 05 - 10:47 AM

Help me

I was watching BBC4 last night; I think I saw Lulu singing 'Tambourine Man' dressed all in pink with 12 No. manic dancers swarming around her playing tambourines

Is this the first signs of madness?

Does Bob know this happened?

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 28 Sep 05 - 11:17 AM

These programs were such a heady rush through a rich time and history. Those tunes take you back faster than a time machine. I am intrigued by the corresponding musical growth in my family--like Don, my father (John Dwyer) was no fan of Dylan back then, and I don't think he ever changed his mind. Yet as I watched the first night and listened to so many of the groups and works that informed and inspired Dylan, I saw a parallel track to what Dad was following with his early music.

Part of the difference no doubt was that my Dad was about 20 years older than Dylan, was a librarian with a job and a family, and in the early years of learning music he decided to take the purist approach, learning the Child Ballads and working forward from there. Dylan took a lot of traditional music and words and processed them, coming out with songs as rich but in the end, more meaningful (because of its wider dissemination) to the popular culture of this modern generation. Dad was close to his research and found Dylan's work off-putting.

I've thoroughly enjoyed the program. As to whether I would like Dylan as a person in person or not, that question is not likely to be resolved. But I am, as someone else mentioned, happy to see the remarks from so many people of the era, collected into this film, especially people like Ginsberg.

Here's a clip to add to the collection of citations growing in this thread: "Fresh Air from WHYY, December 8, 2004 · Rock historian Ed Ward reviews Bob Dylan's new autobiography, Chronicles, Vol. I.

SRS

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: Grimmy
Date: 28 Sep 05 - 11:21 AM

There was a tantalisingly brief glimpse of a boyish John Renbourn, sitting cross-legged on some hotel room floor, picking away on his guitar while the mayhem went on all around him. I'll bet Bert was there too, but we didn't see him. Priceless images.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: Ebbie
Date: 28 Sep 05 - 11:22 AM

(Sorry, Bobert- I didn't see this thread before I started the other one.)

The thing just blew me away. As I've said before, I had missed the whole Dylan thing and this was fascinating to me. I think the man is a genius- and I think the people around him- many of them geniuses themselves at what they did - thought the same.

How many performers in their 20s ever have as their backup people like Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, PP&M, the Staples Singers and on and on! As Mavis Staples said, Bob Dylan was articulating THEIR perceptons, perceptions that he had no way of knowing other than by the gift of insight and empathy.

Judging by the reaction of the UK to the subject, they still hold a grudge. *G*

How many here, given such lightning speed of a career and in the context of those tumultuous times think that they would have handled themselves better than Dylan did? How many here - or anywhere - would not have flamed out?

Bob Dylan showed stunning focus on the things that mattered to him. One of the things I thought came through very clearly was the fans' and the media's demands that a performer meet their own needs and demands. It has happened to innumerable performers and there is no sign of that changing. Most human beings can't handle very well the combination of adulation and tons of money. Those who survive it or who make their own way in spite of it are truly remarkable.

The questions he was asked were beyond inane. I've little doubt that at times he didn't field them as brilliantly as he did in the clips shown, but I'm full of admiration for the times that he did.

Last night after Part 2 was over, Scorsese was interviewed by Charlie Rose, and that was interesting too.

It seems odd that the DVD was on the market before the shows were aired.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 28 Sep 05 - 11:59 AM

Someone should correct the title of this thread. It is Scorsese, no "c" in it. That may be moot if they are combined, however.

Here's a link to the program.

SRS

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorceseDocumentary
From: number 6
Date: 28 Sep 05 - 12:09 PM

"ow many here, given such lightning speed of a career and in the context of those tumultuous times think that they would have handled themselves better than Dylan did? How many here - or anywhere - would not have flamed out?"

So true Ebbie .... I was explaining that point to someone today, this individual was born out of that era and couldn't grasp the whole Dylan phenomeonon.

I enjoyed both episodes and will also purchase the DVD.

sIx

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: mooman
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 02:38 AM

Saw Part 2 as well. Even better than Part 1.

Mesmerizing and historic stuff and I particularly enjoyed the clip of Bob singing my favourite "Visions of Johanna", plus the associated footage of those heady times.

Peace

moo

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 03:44 AM

What came out loud and clear is that he has always been who he is, not who his fans want him to be, nor how the rest of the world perceived him to be. I thought the way he handled all the really stupid questions that have been put to him was superb - not merely put-downs (which would have been easy) but a clear indication of his bemusement at the perceptions people had of him and the boxes they wanted to put him in.

The protestors came across as ridiculous; just the same as the jaundiced, anal views expressed about him on this forum now and again....and again. He never, ever, claimed to be politically aware, so any jibes about his politics demonstrate a 100% misunderstanding of what he was about - ask Joan Baez (wasn't she great). And anyone who knows anything about him will know that there never was a Dylan Thomas connection. Though the "pundits" widely claim that Thomas was his "favourite poet", Dylan categorically denies that, and particularly denies that is where the name came from, no matter how it's pronounced. In fact, he was Dylan long before he discovered poetry and long before he ever wrote a proper song.

Altogether a fantastic film that shows his brilliance and confirms the almost total adulation of his peers then and now. And in his quiet way, "Bob Dylan now" might just have stolen the show.

cheers, Terry

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: catspaw49
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 06:13 AM

Excellent comments Terry.

MOOMAN.....Well ol' Bud, why am I not surprised that you too find "Visions of Johanna" a favorite? I was also pleased to hear Joan singing a rare one, "Percy's Song" in the background while Dylan typed. AND ... Another of my absolute favorites, "Lay Down Your Weary Tune" was used over the closing credits!

Spaw

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: kendall
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 07:25 AM

I've never met the man, so all I can say is, he wrote some great songs which I much prefer to hear someone else sing.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 10:52 AM

Then I will sing them for you, Kendall. ;-) I am known by some around here as "George Dylan"...

It is a delight to read all the good thoughts and comments here.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 12:10 PM

That nasal whinging was more than I could bear, and that last song he did with Joan Baez was pitiful! He was way off key. So lost his photo should be on a milk carton.
Great songwriter, piss poor performer.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Ebbie
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 12:31 PM

I was amazed and delighted that they ran the entire 'Lay Down Your Weary Tune' through the credits. I expected there to be a fade out

At Friday's song circle I will definitely be asking the Dylan songsters to do a few more of them.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: DonMeixner
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 01:10 PM

I have never been a fan of Bob Dylan and I am no more a fan now than I was before. I think the true artist here is Martin Scorsese. Not because of the way he showed Dylan but the way he showed a time in our lives around a focal point for that time. I will admit that no matter how much I am unimpressed by Bob Dylan as a musician and a writer I must admit he was a magnet that drew together people and causes.

As a kid from 1950 I was coming of age through the middle of all the things that shaped and charged my generation. Civil rights, assassinations, a stupid war, religious deconstruction, riots, rallies and constant change. All seemingly taking place in 15 years and coming to a head in 1970 or so. The music of the day being a focal point that seemed to change as each change in the society is taking place. I think Bob Dylan
By virtue of the fact that he was willing to change along with the times and take his music along with is what gives this movie its center.

I find it interesting that people claimed of him to be something he never claimed to be. I recall a number of times when he said he just wrote down words and it was every one else said they were poetry.   He maintains this stand to this day. This shows a constancy that is in itself admirable and worthy of mention.

It is also interesting as a film by the people who are not there at all or minimally mentioned. Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, Malvina Reynolds, Judy Collins, Carolyn Hester, Dick and Mimi Farina are a few. All of whom were shaped in some ways by the same times and moved in the same directions as Bob Dylan. And I think they too must have effected and been effected by Bob Dylan in greater or lesser ways.

So I will buy this film and watch it and enjoy it. Not because of Bob Dylan but because of how well this film tells the story of a pivotal point in my life. And Bob Dylan just happens to be the catalyst.

Don

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 01:22 PM

A catalyst? Yes, he certainly was that. I find it interesting that while the folk establishment in '65-66 was hailing Phil Ochs as the torch bearer and Dylan as the "betrayer" of the folk movement, Phil Ochs himself was defending Dylan in letters to "Sing Out" magazine and telling them they were full of shit. Now, that's amusing! Bob always got a lot of respect from the vast majority of his fellow folk performers (despite personal differences...he and Ochs weren't on speaking terms at the time), and they were in a far better position to rate his performance and significance than the audience was, in my opinion. They knew more about it.

As Ochs pointed out, he was leading the way for all the rest of them. He showed the way to go, and the rest played catchup...some of them VERY well indeed, by the way!

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Steve-o
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 01:58 PM

Hmmmmm- "unimpressed by Dylan as a writer"- you have to wonder what actually does impress some people. Yes, I'm missing Fielding, as he would have lots of insights here. I've been reading these posts with such pleasure, I forget who asked about a biography for Pete, but I have just finished a book that is very close- "Lonesome Traveler- the Life of Lee Hays", by Doris Willens. Fabulous- with lots of wonderful tales about those "earlier days", and Lee's life that constantly intertwined with Pete's life.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 03:00 PM

I was at the Newcastle concert in 1966 (shown in the opening clip)and had to suffer the dissent and walk outs from those around me, the same people who an hour earlier had been laughing with Bob, cheering and applauding his solo first half. Both "Bringing It All Back Home" and "Highway 61 Revisited" has been in the shops for months and "Blonde on Blonde2 was just about to hit the streets so surely they knew what to expect! Funny how nobody here has actually admitted to walking out of one of his concerts at that time. I would dearly love to know what sort of music has ben added to their record collections over the ensuing forty years.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 03:12 PM

DaveS - I would imagine that many of those people came around to understanding.   Change is never easy.   The fact that folk music did not die (as evidenced by Mudcat!) and the fact that Dylan remained creative, writing some of his greatest songs AFTER he "went electric", proves that he was right and his critics were wrong.   That doesn't mean everyone has to like his songs, but I do think that the overwhelming majority of "boos" came from people who did not want to see things change.

Also overlooked is how concert sound has changed over the years. I remember going to venues in my early days of concert going and the sound was awful. Going to the same venue in 2005, I often find myself remembering how bad it was and how good it sounds now. Not being able to hear clearly surely added to the discomfort of his critics back then.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: DonMeixner
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 03:30 PM

C'mon Steve-O everyone knows Bobby Goldsboro wrote Dylan's really good tunes.

:-)))

Don

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: voyager
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 04:48 PM

I liked BOB JOHNSON's comments about BD's creative talents (
paraphrase here -

"He couldn't help it.
The man was kicked in the ass by God".

For what it's worth.

See also --
   Interview with Bob Johnson (Dylan Producer)

voyager

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: akenaton
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 05:22 PM

Perhaps it was an accident,or a directors sleight of hand, but I like to think it was Scorseses little joke. A gentle reminder on the difference between fantasy and reality, on the hopelessness of the journey when you dont know the direction home.

In the Dylan film there was a small piece of newsreel footage, It showed student leader Mario Savio address a large crowd of protesters in front of the University of California in Berkeley. It was 3rd Dec 1964.

I've read the transcript of Savio's speech many times,but this was the first time I had heard him say the words, they were inspirational, full of certainty and direction.
Many believe that speech helped radicalise the youth of America, gave them strenght to win the battle for human rights and ultimately to hasten the end of the Vietnam war.

Some say Dylan epitomised an era, but contrasted with Mario Savios speech his verses are merely sound bites and word pictures.

Looking back as a great fan of Dylan, he now seems an univolved outsider. An amazing wordsmith, in the right place at the right time, carried along on a tide of political change and record company money. Insular emotionless an enigma.

Unfortunately, Dylan ,not Mario Savio became the voice of a generation....and today we've all been fucked .....Ake

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Don Firth
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 05:51 PM

I watched a program on PBS last night entitled, "Get Up, Stand Up: The Story of Pop and Protest."

Did anyone else see this?

Although not part of the Dylan program, it was a pretty good follow-up. Here's some info from one of the local PBS stations HERE and Some NY Times comments. Starts with the songs of Joe Hill ("No pamphlet, no matter how good, is ever read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over."). Comments by Oscar Brand, Bob Marley, Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson, and others, along with Pete Seeger and a whole bunch of people we just saw in the Dylan special. Check your local listings.

Reaffirms the idea that music can be, and still is, a real force in the world.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 07:40 PM

Bob Dylan and Joan Baez singing together was pretty awful, wasn't it?   But I'd say that was more down to Joan. Beautiful voice, but a beautiful voice wasn't what was needed on those occasions, and with those songs.
.....................................

It strikes me there is a touch of Doctor Who about much of this.

You'd just get used to one Doctor, and learned to appreciate his idiosyncracies - and then, whoosh, and he'd regenerate and come back as a completely different person. And there'd always be loud complaints about how the new one wasn't a patch on the earlier one; and new viewers who'd come in at that point, and for the thisn one would always be the reral Doctor, and the earlier (and in time the later ones) were inferior.

Dylan's been much the same. We've all got our favourites or our pet-hates. But there's never been a Dylan yet who didn't come up with something I value that nobody else could coem up with.

Someone in the movie says how they talked of him as a shape-changer. And there was one point where Dylan was joshing about how the band would have to get a new Dylan next week, becausen the current one was gettimg worn out.

Dylan as a Time Lord... And if ever they decide there should be an American Doctor Who, he'd be pretty good at that I reckon.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: DonMeixner
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 08:04 PM

As the supercilious wardens of taste and style advance on the seemingly doomed team of adventurers side kick Joanie clutches her hands to her mouth and says," Oh! Which way do we dare go now Doctor?"

The Mop-topped Galifreian places his hand on her shoulder and says,
"Why, mum bla fragen my lille wand sango songfer me."

Where by Joanie says, "Wow, I mean its so, you know, I can't.... Yeah!"

Then hand in hand they step into the T.A.R.D.I.S. and whirl off to confound and perhaps enlighten another society in another place .

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: akenaton
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 08:30 PM

LoL...Don thats funny..Ake

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Ebbie
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 08:35 PM

LOL, Don M. Funnily enough, I understood Dylan's words far better than I had expected, given the parodies I have heard.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Mr Happy
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 09:13 PM

fesh

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: akenaton
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 09:14 PM

BTW..was talking to a friend yesterday who knows Jack Elliot. This guy's a writer and was given the chance to do an authorised biography.
He told me he didn't do it because Jack's too hard to pin down on any subject. He didn't think he could Jack interested long enough to get the book written!!

What he did say is that Jack is bitter about Dylans' teatment of him years ago, although Dylan did speak well of him in "Chronicles".

Apparently the name was supposed to be Dillon..as in Matt Dillon, but was subsequently changed..Ake

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Mr Happy
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 09:33 PM

o i c, 'Bob Dillon'- not 'Bob Dull 'un' !!

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: akenaton
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 09:41 PM

LOL...Could be either ..or both

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: catspaw49
Date: 29 Sep 05 - 11:41 PM

Hey Don Firth......I watched theo other special anticipating something great and was disappointed......not bad in the first 35 minutes but went right downhill after that.

The Dylan special had one great thing about it that was refreshing and set it apart from almost EVERY OTHER MUSICAL TRIBUTE program. Nowhere in it did Bone-Ass and U2 have anything to say. Anymore it seems you can't amke a tribute special without that fuckin' tool showing up.

Spaw

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: greg stephens
Date: 30 Sep 05 - 09:57 AM

It didnt need a lot of words and analysis to figure out what an extraordinary innovator Dylan was. It's hardly an exaggeration to say he invented a new species of human being, and all you had to do was watch poor little old world Joan Baez trying to sing along with the New Human Dylan. It wasnt the incompatibility of voices, it was the incompatibilty of absolutely everything. It was the Readers Digest meeting Last Exit to Brooklyn, a warthog marrying a cheetah, Doris Day holding hands with KLaus Kinski. Just not on, really.
    The other telling thing, that spoke louder than a thousand essays, was to listen to Dylan's guitar chords for Blowing in the Wind, and then hear the voice harmonies that Peter Paul and Mary added. Yuck!

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 30 Sep 05 - 10:01 AM

The best bit of the film was seeing the lovely Donovan sat in Dylan's hotel room.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Don Firth
Date: 30 Sep 05 - 01:09 PM

This seems to be a heavy week for the Sixties on Seattle's PBS affiliate, KCTS Channel 9. The Dylan American Masters documentary on Monday and Tuesday evenings, Get Up, Stand Up: The Story of Pop and Protest on Wednesday, and last night I watched The Sixties: The Years that Changed a Generation. All excellent.

There is the old gag that "If you can remember the Sixties, you weren't really there." Well, if one either wasn't there at all (not born yet) or too stoned to know what was going on, this past week was a good opportunity to get a real overview.

I don't know if all PBS affiliates around the country are running all of these programs, but they are definitely worth checking for. Most PBS affiliates repeat such programs a few days or a week or two later, often in the wee hours of the morning, so you can catch them if you have a VCR. All of them have engendered videotapes and/or DVDs, so libraries may have them soon.

Helluva history lesson. Most informative!

Don Firth

P. S. Spaw, much of the "Get Up, Stand Up" program was on pop music in general, not just folk. The protest element in a lot of current pop music took its clue from the protest songs of the Sixties, and it's still very much there. I hope you stuck around with the program long enough to get the comments made by several current pop and rock singers right at the end.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: katlaughing
Date: 30 Sep 05 - 01:22 PM

Don, maybe you could add some comments about the Sixties show over here? Thanks!

FWIW, Rog and I both thought Dylan and Baez looked stoned/hammered/wasted and, yes, it was godawful!

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: van lingle
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 04:31 AM

Does anyone know what type of instrument John Jacob Niles was playing in that short bit? It was sitting on a table top (or some level surface) and looked and sounded kind of guitarish and didn't appear to be an autoharp or a zither.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 08:54 AM

John Jacob Niles was just disturbing. But now I know who Tiny Tim's influences were.

To me, the only really enjoyable part of the Dylan film was the beginning--up through the Village scene stuff. Other than that, it just seemed like a "poor Dylan" sort of piece. Poor Dylan, the journalists were so stupid. Poor Dylan, the folk purists were so savage. Poor Dylan, everyone was putting all this baggage upon his countenance. Yeah, tell it to the wall.

Like I said elsewhere, I don't know that Dylan is or was a genius. A few days after watching the film and talking with a bunch of my daughter's friends who watched with us, I'm not even convinced he will be remembered as a great songwriter. As they pointed out to me, it isn't like there is a mad rush by subsequent generations of musicians to cover Dylan's stuff. He was very much a man of a certain time and place. His music appealed to the children of the liberal and intellectual elite, which meant that he has been more or less canonized by the rock press (which was controlled by children of the liberal and intellectual elite). He was very popular among that group of Americans and Europeans, but not so much beyond those groups. Which means his music hasn't had the universal appeal that some other musicians of his era had (mainly the Beatles). Dylan was definitely a phenomenon amongst white liberal kids, though. And now has even become a legend in his own mind.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 09:01 AM

The more interesting phenomenon to me has always been how everyone from Pete Seeger to Dylan to Springsteen look to Woody as a main influence on their songwriting. All those musicians wrote what were IMO really good songs. But Woody still stands like a giant, towering above them all.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: DonMeixner
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 09:10 AM

Hello Guest,

"As they pointed out to me, it isn't like there is a mad rush by subsequent generations of musicians to cover Dylan's stuff."

Even I, who is definately not a supporter of the "Dylan is God" phylosphy can't say I agree with this comment at all. I can find recordings and performances of new and old Dylan stuff all over the place. I attend three open mics a month with three different crowds of performers and audiences and all have at least one identified to me anyway Dylan tune a week.

I think Dylan's place and popularity is secure for the ages as long as it is kept in context with what the topical songs were about. And the other songs that aren't topical but more lyric will always have there place.

I just don't think he is the greatest thing on the planet but that doesn't mean he isn't in others ears.

Don

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Maryrrf
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 09:22 AM

I think John Jacob Niles was playing a dulcimer.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 09:24 AM

I believe he is in peoples' ears. I just don't know how much appeal his songs have beyond the folk world though. Considering the majority of his work was more rooted in pop rock music than folk, I think it is legitimate to hold up his body of work using the standard that my daughter's generation is using. Her youth music scene has been the punk scene, but these kids (who are musicians themselves) also love a lot of kinds of music, just like we did. Dylan was also part of a youth music scene (as they pointed out to me--which hadn't occurred to me until they said that). He was definitely an icon of that youth music scene the same way whazzisname from Nirvana was an icon of a youth music scene. And for that matter, so was Frank Sinatra. Watching the film with a bunch of 20 somethings was sure an eye opener for me.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Peter T.
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 09:34 AM

As I intimated on the other thread on this topic talking about Rick Fielding's opinion of Dylan's playing, one of things that always surprises me is that no one ever analyses the technicalities of how people play, as if people would be frightened away by it or something, when it is really the heart of the whole thing. The same is true in this documentary, except for a few remarks on the later recording sessions and the weary story of stealing the House of the Rising Sun. Everything is about the words and the "going electric". No one talks about what Dylan learned to play and who from, just that he stole. But what? And how? I would have given a lot for someone to have spent two minutes demonstrating the styles of people Dylan took stuff from.   

From the visuals in the documentary you would get the notion that all he ever did was rudimentary strumming with a flatpick; and no one talks about the sources of his harmonica playing.   Everyone is talking about the music, but no one is TALKING ABOUT THE MUSIC!!


yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: DonMeixner
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 09:39 AM

At one point Tony Glover mentions his mediocrity as a musician then alludes to the Cross Roads/ Devil. He says Dylan came back in few months playing well and cross harping the harmonica. Tony is a musician of significant skill and I'd accept his opinion on lots of things. But he must have heard Dylan play a different style of harmonica at some point than he usually plays when performing.

Don

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 09:46 AM

Niles was famous for both playing and building dulcimers.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 10:03 AM

I agree with you Peter. The film was an exercise in frustration, for the most part. As I said, the beginning of it, up through the Village stuff, was all that interested me much. I felt like I was getting some sense of "the scene" Dylan put himself at the center of--and that does help me understand why he would later ask Sam Shepard to write the script for the Rolling Thunder Revue, which eventually became (to be polite) "Dylan's art film". The focus is ALWAYS on Ginsburg and Guthrie when it is coming from Dylan, I guess.

Remember, this is the film Dylan wanted made. So you would have to ask Dylan why he didn't want it to be about his music. Once again, it was about the stupid icon building crap that Dylan has been obsessed with throughout his career. It would be nice if he would give it a rest for once. But he won't, IMO. We will just have to wait for some biographer with a serious interest in putting Dylan in a realistic, objective context--in his own time, and in an historic context.

The other mystery to me is, as someone alluded to elsewhere (perhaps it was you) why Dylan keeps insisting his songs weren't political or topical. Certainly his early stuff was almost exclusively political and/or topical. Maybe he just doesn't want to consider his "greatest work" has a shelf life.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 10:14 AM

It also occurred to me that Dylan might have been influenced by John Jacob Niles' persona building more than the music. Because Dylan has created a persona that isn't terribly unlike the one Niles created for himself.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 11:50 AM

Yes, yes.... (yawn)

Boy, I bet Bob is losing a whole lot of sleep over your comments, Guest. ;-)

I know I'm not.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: greg stephens
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 12:22 PM

Boy, LH, I bet Bob is just purring with pleasure, knowing that you take such a lively and positive interest in his songs.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Don Firth
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 02:27 PM

Van Lingle, the inimitable John Jacob Niles made most of his own instruments. They were essentially Appalachian dulcimers and were played pretty much the same way, but he tried different body styles and sizes and added a lot more strings than the standard dulcimer has, I've been told that once or twice he tried to get away with passing one of his instruments off as a lute, but when this was met with a great rolling of eyes, he backed off a bit.

I think GUEST — 01 Oct 05 - 10:14 AM makes an interesting point about the self-invention of both Dylan and Niles. I doubt, however, that Dylan thought of Niles at all, or perhaps at first even knew who he was, but even though their styles were miles apart, the mind-set seems to be pretty similar. Sometimes people who create their own image actually come to believe it themselves.

Here's some info about Niles. Be careful when you click on this, because the audio starts right away, and if you're not prepared for it, it can give you the hiccups and a nervous tic. Steady now . . . CLICKY!

Actually, if I have a couple of stiff drinks ahead of time and fasten my seat-belt, I kind of enjoy ol' J. J. Niles. Probably the sweetest sounding falsetto around and a real way with a song, and you've gotta admit, the guy's got chutzpah!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 02:50 PM

Yep, John Jacob had a unique approach, but I have to say he has a beautiful voice. Go to the site Don lists above and see what you think. I think his singing style has more in common with the high tenor singing associated with medieval sacred song than anything I've heard elsewhere in folk.
Let's put it this way...if it was between Niles and Glen Yarborough's nauseating tremolo voice, I'd take Niles every time.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 02:58 PM

He loves me almost as much as I love him, Greg. ;-)

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 03:07 PM

And I would choose none of the above!

I don't think Dylan consciously constructed his persona to be like any one person in particular. But he was a student of a lot of people who did that sort of thing, Niles being but one. Woody was another. The Beat poets he was surrounded by another influence. Sam Shepard, a theatrical influence that obviously hit Dylan where he lived. Which begs the question: why no mention of Shepard in the documentary either? Shepard was likely one of the stronger absurdist influences on Dylan, and they seem to have maintained this odd relationship over the years, which began when they were both young pups living in the Village.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 03:10 PM

A more significant model for that kind of self-creation, with its adjustment of the facts to match was surely Woody Guthrie, who did exactly that.

But in one sense it's what everybody does, most especially at times when we are breaking away into some new envuironment, for example, going to college, or getting in to a new relationship, or moving to a new part of the world, or taking up a new type of work in a different setting, or playing our music in a different environment. We emphasise some stuff, and we play down other stuff.

Some of us carry it a lot further than others, and Dylan clearly did, but what earthly need is there to get all heavy and judgemental about it?

This was how Dylan negotiated his way through pretty difficult and demanding times, and managed to produced some pretty good stuff along the way. As the saying goes "To hell with the begrudgers."

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 03:22 PM

...if Dylan's music isn't canonized and sought after by the younger generation now (and there are exceptions to this rule, of course: I walked into a shop the other day and a young woman all of about 19 was playing an old tape of early Dylan stuff and singing along enthusiastically) ...

Just wait until he's dead.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Jim McLean
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 03:23 PM

To dismiss any form of criticism as 'begrudging' means that we should end this thread now ... and all others.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 03:26 PM

Discussing it critically isn't getting "all heavy and judgmental". It is simply discussing it. If you have any interest in Dylan beyond just the music, ie what kind of artist he was, what his artistic influences were beyond Woody Guthrie (territory already too well covered, retreaded, and covered again and again and again...), then you look critically at his work, at the artists who were his contemporaries in his formative years, and at the artists he chose to work with over the years.

It may come as news to some of you, but there are patterns to be discerned from that sort of critical analysis that not only inform us about Dylan the artist, but also inform us about the art of his times. Which is something I'm interested in, so why not discuss it?

God, you people are a fearful, conformist lot.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 03:30 PM

He was influenced by a tremendous number of performers. Among them:

Elvis
Buddy Holly
Little Richard
Hank Williams
Johnny Cash
Robert Johnson
Odetta
Ramblin' Jack Elliot

and I could go on and on...

You could probably list 50 key performers Dylan was inflenced by besides Woody Guthrie.

What makes you think anyone here is afraid to discuss it?

And who the fuck are you? You apparently have no name. That must really suck. Even dogs have names (usually).

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 03:42 PM

Most the artists active in the Village at the time Dylan arrived were, in some way or another, trying to making traditional art forms contemporary and meaningful to them. Dylan did it musically (as did other folk revivalists), the Beats were doing it with poetry (Ginsburg's masterpiece 'Kaddish' is a good example), Shepard was doing it theatrically (he was heavily influenced by Beckett as a young man), and artists like Warhol were doing it through the visual arts. All of them influenced Dylan at the time, just as he influenced them.

All those artists were also busy challenging the American myths, especially the myths related to family and relationships, which were changing rapidly and dramatically at the time.

I mean, is there someone who may still doubt that 'Desire' was made to be the soundtrack to 'Reynaldo and Clara' and the Rolling Thunder Revue Tour the visual narrative, to Dylan's disintegrating marriage and his failed relationships with women?

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 03:59 PM

I am amazed that after thirty years , it still hasn't been made public what is blindingly obvious to anybody who has been involved in therapy.

Dylan is a classic example of a man who has been abused as a child, probably sexually, maybe violently, perhaps both.

The signs are crystal clear, for those who know, and it is to be hoped that one day he will find the strength to be able to tell all.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 04:09 PM

So if the signs are crystal clear 3:59, what are they?

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Peter T.
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 04:31 PM

I think the key comment in the whole film is Dylan's remark about Woody Guthrie's songs that "you could learn how to live a life from them." This is to me how Dylan began to do something interesting with the "play-acting persona" -- he began to write songs like Rimbaud, from the unconscious (he was writing all the time) and then would take that cue, and live like that, and then write the next, and so on. It is the iteration of a new poetic self from year to year that is what was so stunning to watch. Exactly the same thing was going on with the Beatles. That is what makes them so important for the 60's generation: they were reinventing themselves in public over and over: they showed that this is what you can do if you push beyond the limits of your self.

There is lots about Dylan I hate, but I give him that courage.   It is worth 100 lesser people.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Ebbie
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 04:35 PM

Even if that's true, Guest - and I have no idea - I see no reason why Dylan should feel compelled to 'fess up. After he is dead, perhaps. But before his death he would be eaten alive. Confession in our culture is so often co-opted and corrupted into a prurient feast. imo

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 04:37 PM

Labelling some kinds of comment as begrudging isn't the same as dismissing the value of criticism. In fact, begrudging is a refusal to exercise critical faculties. Not that different from the refusal to exercise critical faculties which is shown by people who treat artists as idols to be worshipped.

And, as some of the reactions to Dylan at various points have shown, idol worshippers can easily turn into begrudgers. Whether the opposite is true, I am unsure - but I suspect it is. Particularly when they turn their attention from one artist to another.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 04:39 PM

Well said, Peter.

Guest, I know a therapist who has a personal obsession of her own. She thinks that 99.9% of all the people in the World were sexually abused as children. And most of them "don't remember it"! So she kindly remembers it for them. ;-) Are you her? If so, I can see why you dare not have a name here, but must skulk in the shadows.

The vast majority of men have experienced failed relationships with women...and vice versa. Why not Bob Dylan? Most people's romantic relationships "fail" (meaning: they end sometime prior to death). Most business ventures fail too.   These are not failures, they are learning experiences. You can see them as failures if you choose to, though...which is a sad and bitter choice to make.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Jim McLean
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 04:46 PM

McGrath, I'm familiar with the Irish phrase 'to Hell with the begrudgers' and know what it means. I remember Dominic Behan saying 'I don't why he hates me, I never did him any good'!

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Peter T.
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 04:57 PM

There is something weird about Dylan's relationship with other people, especially women (not that I think he was abused). He never seems really to blame himself for things that have gone wrong, ever. Even when people put forward songs like Idiot Wind, or If You See Her Say Hello, he never really comes out in the songs and says he was the one at fault, there is always mutual blame. A song like "You're a Big Girl Now" is classic Dylan: he acts badly, and the song is about how the woman has been tempted away from him, and is to blame.    There is something eerily slippery about this aspect of him, his irresponsibility, that gives me the creeps, always has.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 06:02 PM

Well, then I think you should probably avoid getting into an intimate affaire with him, Peter! ;-)

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 07:11 PM

It's often enough been said that just because a song is written in the first person doesn't mean it's necessarily a personal statement, any more than would be true of a short story or a novel. Charlotte Bronte wasn't actually Jane Eyre.

Writers use their own lives and relationships as material, along with the lives and relationships of other people. Sometime's there is a strong autobiographical element in a song or a story, but it's not safe to extrapolate from that in a too simplistic way.

And I can't see how it's too important. I'm interested in what Dylan has written, and in what he has sung, but I'm not sure I'm that interested in what he hasn't written or sung, and I can't really see how it's got much to do with us.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 11:14 PM

And still, we are no closer to knowing why he made those rubbish lingerie commercials that made him look like a sleezy creepy stalker perve.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 11:36 PM

It is very easy to figure out why he did that commercial. They asked him, they paid him, and they let him work with gorgeous women.   If he said no, THEN we would be asking why!

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 11:40 PM

I'm a man, and I'm asking why. Why do such a rubbish piece of commercial tripe with a bunch of undie bimbos?

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Oct 05 - 11:54 PM

I am sorry, nameless one, but I can shed no light on that either... ;-) None whatsoever. Bob can do what he likes, I will still like his songs.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 01:18 AM

What do you mean you don't understand? I'm not sure why he needs to explain it either.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Peter T.
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 07:29 AM

Of course the big omission in the documentary was the act just before Dylan went electric.   I believe it was cousin Emmy doing her famous "Turkey in the Straw" beaten out on her cheeks. Makes you think.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 09:23 AM

That would have been interesting as an electric version.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST, Sophisticated Beggar
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 09:31 AM

He does it. You talk about it, and for as long as you do he spends the cash. What more of a reason does a man need, before you call him a man?

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 11:27 AM

If you love people, you can see a lot of good in them. If you don't, then not.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST,Sophisticated Beggar
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 12:24 PM

Still a man hears what he wants to hear

And disregards the rest

Lie lie lie ....,

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 12:31 PM

and "the naked truth is still taboo whenever it can be seen"

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 01:06 PM

This thread is starting to resemble a dissection table. . . .

Don Firth

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: robomatic
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 01:56 PM

GUEST with no name - 01 Oct 05 - 08:54 AM
I think the name of the critical analysis you espouse was "Dialectical Materialism" which called forth a dialect so obscure, full of its own definitions that it obfuscated rather than enlightened. Whether or not your argument holds water that BD was popular among certain classes does not call forth why you are so interested in this thread. By not identifying yourself you are more of a lightweight troll than a contributor.

It is just such trendy (or in this case defunct) analyses that bedevilled BD and made him such a hard press interview. I enjoyed the scenes where he was obviously trying not to be pigeon-holed by the press, including avoiding saying he was trying to avoid being pigeon holed, because THAT would have been a pigeon hole.

Guest, you would have fitted right in with the press of the time, even if you felt really cool that you were fronting the "Daily Worker".

So you obviously hold it against BD that he did not then nor does he now espouse those particular false ideals of class warfare that you embrace.

As for being involved in a recent commercial with some good lookin' women, it's his own affair and doesn't call into question anything in the Scorsese documentary.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 03:20 PM

Robomatic evidently has an awful lpot of information about GUEST with no name. Some kind of psychic reading I suppose...

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: akenaton
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 03:21 PM

Making a lot of assumptions there Robo....

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 07:59 PM

Actually, I didn't say it was just a class thing, did I? If I did, my bad. It was a class and race thing.

In my mixed race high school, I didn't know a single black Dylan fan. And we actually had a fair amount of inter-racial dating going on in Westchester County back then.

Smokey Robinson and the Miracles OTOH...

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 08:30 PM

I have almost never met a black Dylan fan either. So? What difference does that make? Dylan was certainly a fan of a whole lot of black musicians, and some quite notable black musicians were his friends and have covered his songs. You can see some of them in concert films, like the big Dylan anniversary show. Dylan gets along great with black musicians, it seems.

Does the fact that folk music was being marketed to a predominantly white audience back then invalidate it in your eyes? Why? What difference does it make? There were some styles of music that were marketed to an almost entirely black audience at that time. So? What difference would that make either?

The ethnicity of his audience is no argument against the quality or significance of his work.

You don't find too many black hockey players either. So what? It doesn't fucking matter! (and there ARE a few of them here and there)

It's a cultural thing. How many Sikhs do you find who are rodeo riders in Oklahoma? Does it matter. No. It doesn't.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: DonMeixner
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 09:10 PM

Little Hawk,

Actually to be rodeo rider anywhere I think the Sikhs would have to wear the wrong kind of hat. It would be a religious issue.

Don (ducks low to escape serious notice) Meixner

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Bobert
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 09:22 PM

Well, this past Saturday was the first time in six months that I've been able to make it up to Archie Edwards Barber Shop in NE Wsahington, DC, where more of the blues players are black than white...

But, hey, guy (okay, white) played "Maggie's Farm" and then I played "She Belongs to Me" an veryone seemed to diggin' the songs... Black, white, don't matter none... Everyone was playin'.... Sometimes foklks will walk out front if they don't like the songs but no one was walkin' out...

Now, I know that don't prove nuthin' an' maybe Dylan ain't been presented properly to the black community... If so, that's real sad 'cause Dylan plays a lotta blues...

As fir the other commentatries 'bout Dylan's influences and all... Hey, he is and was a friggin' folk singer... If we ain't caharged to look around at what's going down and report back in song, then who the heck is?????

Any criticism of Dylan because he was influenced by__________ (fill in the blank, is a lot of crap...

We are all influenced....

He did more than be influenced.... He reported what he saw... That's what make him a very, very special ( okay, maybe lucky) but special person...

MO....

Bobert

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Elmer Fudd
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 09:27 PM

No black Dylan fans????? What about Jimi Hendrix doing "All Along the Watchtower?" Richie Havens also sang Dylan songs and knew him in the Village.

Elmer

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Owlkat
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 10:05 PM

Meow y'all,
I was just channel flicking and watched it for a while. What I saw was an attempt to present an moving portrait of an apolitical, amoral, and pathalogically self-involved and very clever wordsmith, and his successful attempt to remake himself into a cultural icon and musical mystic, and profit. Oops. Freudian slip. He did nothing special in adopting/borrowing every popular style on his journey to stardom. So did hundreds of thousands of other urban folkies. Big deal.
I loved the part where he was working as a carnie. Boy, does that speak volumes.
He is a very sharp and opportunistic entrepeneur, who spotted music and cultural trends in their infancies, and surfed their leading edges to wealth, influence, and semi-godlike admiration. His anti-war songs were tailored to fit the sentiments of the day, but, all talk and no action is like a good intention. He never went to jail for protesting the war in Viet Nam, or walking in civil rights marches, or making any kind of significant gesture to really show his solidarity with the songs he was singing, and as far as Corporate America is concerned, I remember his songs being used for bank commercials.
So here's to Robert Zimmerman; con-man, and self-proclaimed guru. It's no wonder the documentary had little substance. So did its subject.
And I so totally mean it.
Cheers,
Owl

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 10:24 PM

Why the race and class issue matters? Because white boy liberals don't speak for "an entire generation". Nor did Bob Dylan. Sure he influenced a few black musicians. But that ain't the same as saying he wrote an anti-war anthem that kept them out of the draft or out of Vietnam, now is it?

White liberal males from middle class families, who loved Dylan, found ways to stay out of Vietnam though, didn't they? He did speak for them, I'm sure.

But did Dylan speak for an entire generation?

No way.

Thank god.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 11:25 PM

I thank God he didn't speak for you. You have no name, and probably nothing much else worth remarking on either.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 11:30 PM

And get this: NOBODY speaks for a "whole generation". Nobody.

After all, you'd have to have everyone agree for that to happen, wouldn't you?

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Elmer Fudd
Date: 03 Oct 05 - 01:22 AM

I like to speak for myself. I like to listen to others, Dylan included.

Elmer

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Oct 05 - 09:44 AM

Do people who run rodeos have some religious objection to riders wearing turbans then, Don?

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: robomatic
Date: 03 Oct 05 - 06:53 PM

Guest with no name I'm guessin' you watched that documentary through a monocle...so's you wouldn't see more'n you can understand.

You are saying pretty much about Dylan what he said about himself, only YOU have a hangup about it.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Oct 05 - 07:00 PM

Yeah, that's what I noticed too, robomatic. Ironical, isn't it?

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: DonMeixner
Date: 03 Oct 05 - 07:39 PM

NAh! I'm just enjoying a Sikh sense of humor.

Don

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: robomatic
Date: 04 Oct 05 - 09:23 AM

LOL had dinner with a child of the 60's last night (He's a bit older'n me). I brought up the Dylan 'mystique'. My friend is as with-it as anyone else, but he is also an experienced chorister and he could never stand Dylan's voice, which I find not at all hard to understand.

We also talked about a phenomenon which one of you folks may have a name for: Listening to music much later and developing a like or dislike for it very different from your earlier feeling. I grew up not listening to pop music, then enduring a trip across the United States by car where for some reason there were no classical radio stations until I hit Chicago (and I didn't hit Chicago). Two weeks later I was listening to pop for life. My friend used to listen to a particular Marshall Tucker album before every ski trip. Recently he heard it for the first time in years and had a profound negative reaction.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Oct 05 - 09:15 PM

I couldn't STAND Dylan's voice between 1963 and 1969 (when I was listening to virtually all the other well known folksingers with great enjoyment). Then I converted to absolutely LOVING his voice in '69, and have remained that way ever since. I had actually never given the man a chance until that year. If you point blank refuse to listen to something at all, how are you going to find out if it's any good or not?

(by way of explanation: I simply did not listen to commercial radio as a kid, except by accident. If I had heard Dylan on some radio, I probably would not even have known it was him. I listened to records that I or my parents had bought. Lots of them. We bought no Dylan albums.

After '69, and my discovery of what Bob had to say, I bought every friggin' thing he had ever recorded, and have continued doing so to this day. What Bob says gets my attention.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Oct 05 - 09:59 PM

"White liberal males from middle class families, who loved Dylan, found ways to stay out of Vietnam though, didn't they? He did speak for them, I'm sure.

But did Dylan speak for an entire generation?

No way."

I have to agree with you on that Guest!

sIx

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 04 Oct 05 - 10:29 PM

Of course he didn't speak for everyone. Neither do guests.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Peter T.
Date: 04 Oct 05 - 10:32 PM

I hate Dylan's voice since 1966, and it has gotten progressively whinier and miserable. I have to tune out his voice and listen to it as if it were someone else singing.   The last two albums were excruciating to listen to.    Amazing what you will go through in the expectation that there is a pearl in all these oyster shells (or a pony under, etc....)



yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 04 Oct 05 - 10:36 PM

... but obviously you listened to them Peter T if you came to that conclusion.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: number 6
Date: 04 Oct 05 - 10:38 PM

Sorry .... Guest 9:59 is me.

Of course Bob didn't speak for everyone or 'his generation' ...many years later after 'that' period in the 60's history gives a rather one sided perception at that 'generation' of 'that period'. Many faces are missing from that snapshot many years later.

sIx

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST,Rich
Date: 04 Oct 05 - 11:45 PM

I don't think I'd ever paid much attention to Odetta, but hearing her clip in part one of the documentary just blew my mind. Does anyone know what song that was she was singing? The one where she was making these wonderful percussive sounds while she sang? I must find this.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Oct 05 - 12:45 AM

Odetta was marvelous.

Peter, why would you not like Dylan's voice in '75, with the Rolling Thunder Revue? He was in great form. Or on "Blood On The Tracks"? Or on "Street Legal"? Or on "Infidels"?

I know his voice is different after '66, but it certainly wasn't lacking in either strength or range until about the early to mid-90's. It was almost gone in the last concert I saw.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Oct 05 - 08:47 AM

Yes, many faces are missing from "The Sixties Generation" snapshots, to be sure. Minorities and women especially. I can't think of that many women who, over the years, felt that Dylan spoke to them about much of anything. I think the so-called "Dylan phenomenon" is the construct of a white middle class male mind, and nothing more. And before you all come storming in to tell me you know just TONS of women who absolutely LOVE Dylan: there are always plenty of female appeasers to go along with the boys. Those sorts of women tend to always "love" whatever their significant male of the moment (be it a respected and beloved friend, boyfriend, father, brother, husband, etc) loves.

Not that Dylan doesn't have female fans. He does, and I've even known a few. But Dylan devotees these days seem to be mostly middle age and older men. Or at least that's what a friend of mine told me after attending a recent Dylan concert. Said he thought maybe he'd stumbled into a heavy metal gig for elders by mistake. ;-)

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 05 Oct 05 - 09:17 AM

I would not generalize about women so much guest.

I don't think it is unusual that people gravitate toward music from someone of their own gender. I would say I know more women who were Joni Mitchell fans then my male friends. I think we tend to follow music that speaks to us personally, and often it is hard to relate to the feelings being expressed by an artist of the opposite sex.   That doesn't mean we don't learn and experience their music, it just isn't something that we cling to.

Back in the 60's I was in middle school. We had an art teacher that would allow the students to bring in albums while we worked on our projects.   There was one girl in our class who would always bring in Bob Dylan albums. It was not a case of teen idols like those that were bringing in Beatle and Rolling Stones albums.   At that age, I was just a sponge - usually listening to whatever was on the radio or being offered by Ed Sullivan.   I do remember being struck by the words and Dylan's delivery.    Sure his voice was rough, but I don't think the power would have been there if a vocalist like Perry Como or the like tried to sing the song.   

No one is being forced to like Dylan.   I do find it interesting that MOST of the Dylan detractors in this thread tend to show up as an anonymous guest. That speaks volumes.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: number 6
Date: 05 Oct 05 - 10:25 AM

I'm a very big fan of Dylan. I admire his artistry (and his singing voice) to the up most. My peers, my outlook at that time in the 60's, and somewhat still to this day reflect that liberal image. That very image that is displayed by the media these days, giving a perception of that was what the 60's were completely about. But I have to agree with Guest. I remember vividly that we were definitely in the minority (my peers and I) in our outlook on liberalism, philosophy, art and 'rejection of the then rules and mores of society'. We were the outlaws of society. We were the outlaws that Dylan was reaching to.

Dylan certainly did speak to us, but he was not speaking for a large portion of the western world population. Don't forget, a majority of women did not work and those who did were generally relegated to the 2nd class jobs. They accepted it at that time. Let's face it, Dylan's voice couldn't match the smoothness and romance of Jonny Mathis. It wasn't until the 70's that they began to see the light, and the source of this light was certainly not the songs of Dylan.

He was not heard by the Afro Americans. Don't think all segregation was specific to the American south (another false perception of the media), there was (and still is) a large population 'caged' (thank you Randy Newman for that expression) in the ghettos of every major city in the U.S. These people in the 60's were venting their anger and frustration in violent riots in Detroit, Newark, and L.A. Let's face it, they were not and could not relate to some white middleclass kid with a hillbilly voice.

Dylan's songs did not reach the majority of the male population from the Midwest, and the industrial centres who were putting their lives on the line for their country. For a war they thought was just. Dylan was a hippy, he represented everything that was not God, country and the values of hard blue collar work

It is these people I have mentioned above whose faces are missing form that old photo of the sixties.

sIx

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 05 Oct 05 - 10:33 AM

the faces aren't missing, it just depends on which photo album you are looking at.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: number 6
Date: 05 Oct 05 - 10:58 AM

Yes there are other phot albums to be looked at, but there only is one sitting on the coffe table. ... the sixties will always be remebered for love-ins, happenings, Woodstock, anti-war protests ... and yes the civil rights movements will be in that photo, but always with a perception of the south.

Not everyone was a 'hippy', women did not have rights, segregation was not fully eliminated.

sIx

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Chris in Wheaton
Date: 05 Oct 05 - 11:17 AM

the 60's didn't really hit the mainstream until the 70's - and then got lost in self-absorbtion - like Our Hero
my take -
more interesting songs than Irving Berlin's
less talented than Gershwin
worse actor than Edd Kookie Byrnes

Chris in Wheaton

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Oct 05 - 12:18 PM

GUEST, Rich, I agree, Odetta is fantastic!

I taped a repeat of the Dylan special. I haven't had a chance to watch it yet, but I'm pretty sure the song Odetta was singing was a chain gang song called "Take This Hammer." The first verse goes like this:

Take this hammer (WHUP!), carry it to the captain (WHUP!)
Take this hammer (WHUP!), carry it to the captain (WHUP!)
Take this hammer (WHUP!), carry it to the captain (WHUP!)
Tell 'im I'm gone (WHUP!)! Tell 'im I'm gone (WHUP!)!

There are a whole bunch of verses to this (DT gives a few verses HERE), and a lot of the verses were improvised, much like those of a sea chantey. The percussive "WHUP" or "WHOP" in the song was the grunt as the prisoner swung the hammer or pick-axe. Best Loved American Folk Songs (also published under the title Folk Song U. S. A.) by John and Alan Lomax has a song called "Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder," with essentially the same tune and a lot of the same verses—and more than likely, it's merely a variation of the same song. The first verse goes

I've got a rainbow (WHUP!) 'round my shoulder (WHUP!) [3 times]
But it ain't gonna rain (WHUP!). No, it ain't gonna rain (WHUP!).

The "rainbow" is the flash of the sun on the hammer-head or pick-axe.

I hope this helps.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Peter T.
Date: 05 Oct 05 - 04:55 PM

I think it is possible to be the voice of a generation without people knowing it at the time, or without unanimity -- Beethoven is the voice of the beginning of the 19th century, though there were certainly lots of Austro-Hungarians who would have disagreed if asked.

I don't think Dylan was the voice of his generation, because there were lots of other "voices" at the time -- the fascinating thing is that there were so many at one time.   Perhaps the Zeitgeist just was so full it burbled up in many people.

I think if there was a voice it was the Beatles. And that was partly a kind of accident of timing, everyone fixated on few TV channels, the death of Kennedy so recent, etc. -- if you were in America in February 1964, there was no doubt that the earth shook, and kept on shaking!! Dylan himself says that the Beatles changed everything. Then he turned around and did it to them -- which is schematically true, but the truth is that the Beatles were everything, and Dylan was an interesting phenomenon to 90% of those who had ever heard of him which was not a lot of people, the recent hype notwithstanding. "Like A Rolling Stone" did not change everything: "She Loves You" did.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Oct 05 - 05:54 PM

a majority of women did not work

Meaning that unless it's waged employment it's not work? By which definition an enormous chunk of the world's population over the ages, men as well as wome, have never worked.

I know that's drifting the thread, but it annoys me when I come across people using that lazy and innacurate way of talking, and the last few days I've kept on coming across people in the media doing it.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: GUEST,Bo in KY
Date: 03 Jan 06 - 01:28 AM

I got this DVD and the "scrapbook" as a Christmas present and, having missed the PBS airing a few months ago, just watched it the other night. As one who was busy being born in the timeframe of the documentary, and thus an ankle-biter in folk music, I was awed and amazed by Dylan's story. The one thing that jumped out at me, though, was sheer number of classic, brilliant songs he wrote, and styles he went through, in .... 5-6 years???!!!! He must have been a man posessed, or had a hyperactive muse, or something....

I also have to wonder how all of this poetry with allusions ("stealing"?) and musical references could have come from a man who a few years before was an isolated teen-ager in a tiny Minnesota town. It's almost like the Shakespeare thing - how could he have known so much, regardless of who he was hanging out with? How could he have anticipated musical directions years, even decades, in advance?

It was curious that beyond the first few minutes there is no mention of his family. While I don't subscribe to the "child abuse" conjecture of an earlier poster, I do think the child is father to the man. Was Dylan ever a child?? Apparently not, according to this film of his "early years". What happened to his parents - did he even contact them again after taking off for NY?? I assume that he was an only child, as there is never any mention of siblings, but does anyone know??

Just wondering ... this moving film got me thinking and got me inspired!!   

Shalom,   Bo

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: John O'L
Date: 03 Jan 06 - 01:46 AM

There is a little about his parents, aunts & uncles in his autobiogrphy 'Chronicles', but not much. I think he regards his life as being
(a) The part to which the public is entitled, and
(b) The part to which it is not entitled.

Regarding his amazing output at that time, it has been suggested that he went 'down to the crossroads'...
It wouldn't surprise me if he did.

Subject: RE: DylanOnTube-PBS/ScorseseDocumentary
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 03 Jan 06 - 03:19 PM

Thr Robert Shelton book "No Direction Home" has quite a bit in about his parents Abe and Beatrice plus his brother David. A more recent publication, Howard Sounes "Down The Highway" also features plenty about his family