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SEVEN DAYS

A Week in
Dylan News

April 22- 28, 2024

Seven Days in Bob Dylan

This is Seven Days, our weekly summary of the best Bob Dylan news and links and everything new. No Bonus Edition this week.

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The Week's Best News & Posts

  • How Many Roads: Bob Dylan and his Changing Times (Dylan Center) [5]
    • “The Bob Dylan Center will premiere a new exhibition, “How Many Roads: Bob Dylan and his Changing Times, 1961–1964,” highlighting the artist’s growing political awareness, including the civil rights and anti-war movements of the early 1960s, on May 24, 2024.”
  • Time Out of Mind on the Horizon (Flagging Down) [5]
    • “Knowing that Time Out of Mind was already in the can, I listened to this tape with the question: Can you hear it? Can you tell he’s been newly inspired after a long dry spell?”
  • Helping Bob Dylan Audition Guitarists (Flagging Down) [8]
    • “This was not Romersa’s only connection to Dylan around this time. An accomplished drummer as well as engineer, he and Epstein served as Dylan’s pick-up rhythm section on a day when Dylan was auditioning new guitar players at his home in Malibu.”
  • Lyrics and Music: Jokerman (Untold Dylan) [8]
    • “The chorus is then the conventional eight bars, and overall none of this sounds odd or strangely extended, because of two other factors that distract us musically.  One is the constant use of the bass primarily on one note through the verse, and the pauses between the lines (bars 5 and 6, and then again after bars 9 and 10).”
  • Gender Performance Pt.2 (Shadow Chasing) [8]
    • “More recently, Dylan drops in a couple Nelson allusions on Rough and Rowdy Ways. He namechecks Nelson’s “Hello Mary Lou” in “False Prophet,” and the line “Take me out traveling, you’re a traveling man” in “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You” nods toward Nelson’s hit “Travelin’ Man.” Dylan also devotes a chapter to Nelson in The Philosophy of Modern Song.”
  • Street-Legal: Dylan Plays the Tarot Card (Critical Conditions) [5]
    • “The sound of the album is just too crowded, a dozen musicians, background singers who shout at the end of each line, the lyrics cryptic even for Bob Dylan. Each song has many verses, but few are leavened by bridges or choruses. They just amble on, a litany of complaints and observations without relief.”
  • The NET Extended: I Don’t Believe You (Untold Dylan) [5]
    • “In the case of “I don’t believe you” my thought is that from the start Bob was trying to find ways to do something different with the song from the way it appeared on the album, but perhaps not always as successfully as we might wish.”
  • Dylan Cover a Day: Where Are You Tonight? (Untold Dylan) [5]
    • “But it is also possible that the problem is the music. Basically there are six couplets which musically are identical, rotating across two chords. Then you get the chorus which is a relief. But then there are six couplets, and a chorus again.  Then there are not six but eight couplets, and then the final chorus.”
  • When I Paint My Masterpiece Pt.4 (Jochen Markhorst) [5]
    • “Masterpiece does not return until the early summer of 1991. Reluctantly, it almost seems. The performances are less scintillating (especially compared to the sparkling Rolling Thunder renditions), and Dylan seems unable to make up his mind about the girl’s identity: the date with-line is rehashed and frayed, and is first again a girl from Greece, without pretty.”
  • Taylor Swift’s ‘Tortured Poets Department’ Has Blood On The Tracks (Forbes) [3]
    • “Like Taylor Swift, Bob Dylan began his professional career extremely young: 20 in his case, 16 in hers. They both began working in genres with strong boundaries and conventions, exhibiting early facility with songwriting combined with a singular focus and ambition.”
  • There are Unique Challenges to Making a Bob Dylan Biopic (The Signal) [5]
    • “This brings me to my biggest concern surrounding a project like this: the entire point and interest of Dylan as a public figure is his elusiveness. Throughout his long career, Dylan has been shrouded in a veil of mystery and intrigue, utilizing the intrinsic human desire for knowledge to his advantage.”
  • How Bob Dylan honored Woody Guthrie, who had Huntington’s (Disease News) [3]
    • “As a young man, Dylan read Guthrie’s 1943 autobiography, “Bound for Glory.” The older singer behind “This Land Is Your Land” was born on July 14, 1912, in Okemah, Oklahoma, and grew up to become Dylan’s idol and inspiration.”
  • Unique Bob Dylan Poster on ‘Antiques Roadshow’ (Chicago Tribune) [3]
    • “So Rice and his wife made the 400-mile drive from Naperville to Akron, his Bob Dylan poster and album safely tucked away in a blanket.”
  • Once or Twice: Only a Hobo (Untold Dylan) [3]
    • “So now we come onto what I think is the one and only live version, recorded 12 April 1963, according to the official site. Two different online sources as noted above, in case one of them vanishes or is not available in your area.”
  • Goodbye Jimmy Reed: Rough and Rowdy Ways Pt. 16 (Untold Dylan) [3]
    • “There’s quite a fiddly introduction before we hit the 12 bar blues format complete with 12 bar accompaniment, but that unexpected ending and the last line with the extra guitar accompaniment which we find in the recording is still there.”
  • Duke Robillard is American Blues Guitar Royalty (Guitar World) [1]

New Bob Dylan Podcasts

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  • Dylan’s Lost Songs Vol.1 (The Flowers of Indulgence)
  • Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid (Criterion Collection 4K)
    • Re-issue Blu-Ray with Bonuses (Amazon)

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