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SEVEN DAYS
A Week in Dylan News
Published Each Sunday
May 21 - 27, 2023
Seven Days in Dylan News
Bob Dylan on Tour
News Items About Bob Dylan
- Rare Photos of Baby Bob Dylan Surface (Duluth News Tribune)
- “Readers have submitted two rarely seen photos, including one of young Bobby Zimmerman with three generations of his mother’s family.”
- Best Served Naked: Bob Dylan’s Art (PopMatters)
- “The musical revolution that Dylan led in the mid-’60s had its roots in the Beat culture of the ’50s and its principles of free expression. However, Its first stirrings date back to New York City during World War II.”
- Elliot Landy on Famous Infared Photo (Best Classic Band)
- “In the summer of 1968, Landy, himself just 26, got a call from an acquaintance, the music journalist Al Aronowitz, who had been assigned a story on the musician for the Saturday Evening Post. “He calls me and says that Bob has agreed to have his picture on the cover,” recalls Landy.”
- Dylan’s Hibbing Inner Circle (Northern News Now)
- “Bob Dylan’s innermost circle included Melvin Raatsi and Dale Boutang. The three bonded over a shared love of motorcycles. Raatsi has passed away but his granddaughter says even as a teen, Dylan was writing poetry. One of his poems was about his friends. “They were all just sitting around and my grandpa started arm wrestling Boutang and Bob Dylan likes to write about things he sees so he saw that and wrote the poem.” said Hibbing native Hayley Raatsi.”
- Cat Power to Recreate Dylan 1966 in Australia (Concrete Playground)
- “Sydney is lucky enough to be the second-ever city to see Power perform this set, with Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert coming to the Sydney Opera House as part of the Vivid Live program.”
- Tulsa Adds An Unlikely Attraction: The Bob Dylan Center (Arkansas Democrat Gazette
- “The BDC might be a model for this type of tightly focused museum — it’s not hard to imagine a billionaire with the inclination giving Johnny Cash a similar treatment. Elvis Presley could use something more serious than the glorious sui genris roadside attraction that is Graceland.”
- Dylan’s Fan Mail Raises Privacy Questions (x)
- Living On Tulsa Time (Cleyburne Times Review)
- “It was good old Bob Dylan that brought me there. Somewhere a couple years back I heard word of a Bob Dylan museum in the works. News that, being a lifelong fan, piqued my interest but which I also promptly forgot.”
- Suze Rotolo Auction (Ebay)
- A cool bundle of signed promo cards from early village appearances and Freewheelin’ Albums.
- Bill Lee Played With Dylan, RIP


Dylan's 82nd Birthday Coverage
- May 24 Horoscopes for Bob Dylan (The Reporter)
- “Cover as much ground as possible.)
- 82 Comic Book Dylan References (CBR)
- “We pay tribute to Bob Dylan’s 82nd birthday by spotlighting 82 times that comic books have referenced Bob Dylan over the years.”
- Talking With Dylan’s Mom (Powerline)
- “As it turned out, we had better seats than Bob’s mother, Beatty Rutman, who was sitting with our friends the Applebaums about two-thirds of the way back in the auditorium. I wondered what she was thinking when Bob played “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” that night. I later got a chance to chat with Mrs. Rutman at a party Sid and Lorraine Applebaum threw at St. Paul’s old Hillcrest Country Club in the mid-1970’s. Beaming with a mother’s pride, she gladly talked about Bob.”
- Charlie Daniels Did It Dylan Style (Cowboys & Indians)
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- “Back in 2014, country music icon Charlie Daniels tipped his Stetson to another legendary artist, Bob Dylan, by recording Off the Grid — Doin’ It Dylan, a well-received and irresistibly entertaining album featuring The Charlie Daniels Band’s unique takes on ten Dylan-penned songs.”
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- Dylan Places (Smithsonian)
- “In celebration of his 82nd birthday this May 24, here are 11 landmark Bob Dylan sites you can visit.”
- His War on Power Echos (Empire Diaries)
- “Dylan’s dismissive answer to the most pertinent question one could ask him at that time defined his character and philosophy – disdain for the corporate press; disrespect for the social order; suspicion of the elite; and extreme anger towards Empire.”
- His 10 Most Jewish Songs for His Birthday (Forward)
- “Ha-Va-Na-Gee-La”
- Happy Birthday Bob Church Service (Dylanology)
- “Ten years ago today, the local church where I was living in Copenhagen at the time arranged its first Dylan service, where the priest and the organist stepped aside and left the stage to local musicians and their interpretations of Dylan’s songs.”
- Happy Birthday Mr. Dylan (Johnny Borgan)
- “So, one more year has already passed, and we can still be happy to be alive as the same time at this very special artist, busy being born, not busy dying. There are surely more masterpieces waiting, just around the bend.”
- Unravelling Dylan Impossible (Telegraph Online)
- “As Bob Dylan turns 82, the questions keep piling up. Why is he still on the road? And why is he hiding behind a piano on stage while singing his songs? Why, why, why? Who? When? Will we ever know? No.”
- The Best Albums Became Possible (Fatherly)
- “Believe in Zimmerman! On May 24, 1941, the best thing that ever happened music, ever, was born.
- The Best Dylan Song For Every Decade (The Hindustan Times)
- “Along the way, he’d change his name, move to New York, redefine protest songs, anger a lot of people by going electric, introduce The Beatles to Mary Jane, jam for a newly-born Bangladesh, find Jesus, ignore Woodstock in his backyard, star in ads, inspire Bengali atheists to use his lyrics for alpana..”
- 82 Reasons Why Dylan is The Greatest (Far Out)
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- “You see, Mr Mozart might be considered a virtuoso akin to the Albert Einstein of the arts, but aside from a microscopic coterie of the European elite between 1761 and 1791 (his first and last concerts), nobody ever heard the little pompous prodigy with the pompadour play.”
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- Billy Strings Delivers Three Dylan Covers (Jambase)
- Billy Strings Delivers Three Dylan Covers (Jam Bands)
- Listen To 10 Songs Dylan Rejected (Telegraph India)
- “Dylan’s habit of leaving out some of his best songs from his studio albums has agonised and befuddled fans for ages. The reasonsbehind these exclusions are known only to him.”
- 18 Covers for Dylan’s Birthday (Greg Mitchell)
Blog Posts About Bob Dylan
- Dylan Learns To Lead A Band (Peter Stone Brown)
- “When Dylan finally decided to drop the background singers and all that excess and go out with a little four-piece band, at first with G.E Smith, there was stuff to like and some interesting transitions happened like going right from Most of The Time into Watchtower.”
- What You See is Not What You Get – Shadow Kingdom (Johnny Borgan)
- “In Plato’s allegory of the cave, trying to explain the human condition, he describes the prisoners who are forced to just look at the shadows at the wall to understand what’s happening, not being able to see what’s really going on behind them, neither the fire nor the puppets used to make the shadows. One could possibly say that they are living in a shadow kingdom? “
- More Blood More Track (Peter Stone Brown)
- “Gone were the songs of domestic bliss that had marked every album of original material since Nashville Skyline. Several songs on Planet Waves showed at the very least that Dylan was starting to again stretch out his writing. In retrospect it was the bridge he had to cross to get to Blood On The Tracks.”
- Real Live Tour Rehearsals (Pt.1) (Pt.2) (Flagging Down The Double E’s)
- “Recently, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to two tapes of Bob and his band woodshedding ahead of the 1984 summer tour immortalized on the Real Live album. What a band too: Mick Taylor from the Stones, Ian McLagan from the Faces, Colin Allen from Focus, Gregg Sutton from a bunch of places. Oh, and Carlos Santana sat in for a ton of songs (including during the rehearsals).
- Dylan at 80 – Live at the Beacon (Dylan at the End of Time)
- “Why is an eighty-year-old man singing a kiss-off song? Who is he seductively warning, and who is Bob Dylan romancing? It’s us, it’s always been us. The audiences he’s been singing to all the years. The ones who have been left behind and the ones who have remained.”
- Tired Horses and Bob on the Stairs (Patti Smith)
- Happy Birthday Bob
- Not Dark Yet Pt.4 (Kees De Graaf)
- “The “He” in this prophecy from Zechariah points forward to Christ who would bring the Kingdom of Peace to the ends of the earth. This prophecy is beginning to be fulfilled in Acts 1:8 where Jesus says…”
- You Have To Feel Them (Peter Stone Brown)
- “That single was “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” I didn’t know what to think. I liked it and hated it all at once. I didn’t know whether he was selling out as Sing Out! and other folk magazines were soon to proclaim. Naturally I bought it as soon as it hit the local record store, and ended up playing it as well as the flip-side, “She Belongs To Me” endlessly.”
- New Wine in Old Bottles – 2012 Pt.3 (UnTold Dylan)
- “Although as the year rolled out problems emerged with his voice, there were criticisms of his piano playing and tales of audiences deserting his concerts, Dylan looked suave and on top of his game in January, 2012, performing ‘Blind Willie McTell’ to a celebrity-studded audience at the Hollywood Palladium in honour of film director Martin Scorsese.”
- Songs Requests For The Upcoming European Tour (Pt.2) (Untold Dylan)
- “Ring Them Bells: Dylan himself has not performed this song live as much, nor so recently as Lightfoot did. He did it about 25 times live and the last time in 2005. That last performance was also in
Europe.”
- “Ring Them Bells: Dylan himself has not performed this song live as much, nor so recently as Lightfoot did. He did it about 25 times live and the last time in 2005. That last performance was also in
- Other People’s Songs: Little Maggie (Untold Dylan)
- “Here the speed of the song and joy of the banjo sound keep emphasising the inter-connection of the happy and sad. The result is a great, lively song, which gives us the message that life can be happy and sad, and that’s ok.”
- Never Ending Tour Highlights: Restless Farewell (Untold Dylan)
- “I love this revised version of this song, and indeed I included the Sinatra performance on my mythical album Dylan Obscuranti and you can hear that performance through this link. Yet it is not just my love of the song that makes me put it in as an absolute highlight, nor its rarity, but I really do think this is a great performance.”
- Not Dark Yet – Another Look at Bob Dylan (Untold Dylan)
- “I left the Warfield theatre determined to find another source of musical guidance. For me, Dylan was finished. About a month later, I bought the album. “I Believe in You” is one of Dylan’s most heartfelt honest songs. The following year, Lou Johnson, a classical guitarist, suggested we see Dylan when he returned to San Francisco. I resisted.”
- I Contain Multitudes Pt.1 (Untold Dylan)
- “Time, or the illusion thereof, remains a motif on the album after this opening – there is a hint of it in every song (as the ensuing “False Prophet” opens with “Another day that don’t end”, for example), most prominently in Side C’s prize track, “Crossing The Rubicon”, in which between the first and last lines it is both morning and evening, and it is both Indian summer, spring, autumn and also winter.”
- Duluth Festival (Day 1-2) (Day 8) Ennyman’s Territory
- “Not only did he expand our understanding of why and how Dylan has been so influential, Matt demonstrated in no uncertain terms how much Minnesota has been in Dylan’s DNA and the values that formed the foundation of his career–and has never forgotten his roots.”
New Reviews & Releases
- New Review: Bob Dylan (Brutally Honest Album Reviews)
- “Perhaps the most committed vocals of this entire discography. There would be times in the future when he would affect a cool detachment in his singing. There would be times fifty years later when his vocals would be little more than a gruff croak. But his singing inhabits these songs in a way they wouldn’t in any of the many albums to come.”
- New Review: Shadow Kingdom (The Arts Desk)
- “Shadow Kingdom comes at a standard price, but it still contains treasures. The sound is warm and close and clear, the drum-free and largely acoustic backing, sometimes spare to the point of silence, giving a sympathetic setting to Dylan’s aged voice and ageless phrasing – still a joy to hear at such close range.”
- New Review: Shadow Kingdom (Americana UK)
- “‘Shadow Kingdom‘ sees Dylan revisiting and reinventing his back catalogue, and although the styles of the songs change across the album there is a great consistency in feel and tone which make it a more valuable undertaking than many other such pandemic albums – this is no quick bit of filler, it’s a thought out and carefully constructed whole.”
- New Review: Reconsidering Masked & Anonymous (The Arkansas Democrat Gazette)
- “Glenn Kenny wrote when he reviewed the 2020 Blu-ray release on his Some Came Running blog. ” … I think I was being kind of a d*** about it. Not to say that the strained allegory suddenly holds up … but its points seem rather more salient now for some reason. In any event, the star-studded procession certainly qualifies as A Unique Object. Digitally shot, it looks more so here than I recollect it looking back in the day.”
- Top 10 Dylan Releases By Value (Goldmine)
- “Released worldwide in 1973, the rarest of all the single’s international incarnations is probably the Thai EP which, incredibly, included the song alongside hits by the DeFranco Family, Conway Twitty and Marie Osmond, inside a full-color sleeve depicting Dylan alone. But even novelty cannot push its current value beyond $150.”
- The Meaning Behind The Times They Are A Changin’ (American Songwriter)
- “It was influenced of course by the Irish and Scottish ballads …’Come All Ye Bold Highway Men’, ‘Come All Ye Tender Hearted Maidens’. I wanted to write a big song, with short concise verses that piled up on each other in a hypnotic way. The civil rights movement and the folk music movement were pretty close for a while and allied together at that time.”.
- Chapter from New Blood On The Tracks Book (Racket)
- “Perhaps most central to the successful midcourse correction that resulted in the final version of Blood on the Tracks is that those five re-recorded songs were performed by Dylan with musicians who shared his Minnesota DNA. Every note played on the Minneapolis sessions was executed by players who had come of age in the land of 10,000 lakes, 67,000 farms, and 220,000 snowmobiles.”
- 12 Rounds With Bob Dylan The Pugilist Poet (CUNY Academic)
- “The over-arching objective of this writing is to construct a framework for the originally written and composed songs by Bob Dylan and define them as belonging in twelve different, distinct, chronological artistic periods that span the nearly sixty years of his songwriting.”
- PDF of the book
- Amazon Order
Bob Dylan Events
- May 31: Cat Power Sings Dylan ’66 Royal Albert Hall (Sydney AU)
- June 2-4: The World of Bob Dylan (Tulsa)
- June 4: Melbourne on Dylan Premiere (Melbourne AU)
82rd Birthday Bashes
- See 40+ Dylan Birthday events at location all over the world.
See our full list of all upcoming Dylan events at: Dylan Events Calendar
Photo Of The Week
81 Years Ago, A 1-year old Bob Dylan pictured with his Mother, Grandmother and Great-Grandmother (newly discovered photo)
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