• Belafonte on Giving Dylan His First Big Break (Mojo)
  • “And this skinny kid appeared, and he had a paper sack with him full of harmonicas in different keys. I played the song for him and he pulled one out of the bag, dipped it in water, and played through a single take, and it was great. I loved it. I asked him if he wanted to try another take and he said, “No.” I asked him if he wanted to hear it back and he said, “No.” He just headed for the door, and threw the harmonica into the trashcan on his way out.”
• Dylan on Belafonte Track (1962 Rehearsal Take) (YouTube)
• Belafonte Covers Tomorrow Is A Long Time (YouTube)
• Belafonte Covers Forever Young (YouTube)
• RIP Billy ‘The Kid” Emerson
  • If Lovin’ is Believin (1954) is blueprint for ‘False Prophet‘
• Basement Tape Drawing At Antiquarian Book Fair (NYC) (Billboard)
  • “Fans in the New York City area will soon have an opportunity for a close encounter with some odds and ends drawings done by Dylan circa the 1967 recording sessions for the legendary The Basement Tapes album (released in 1975). And if you have a spare $60,000, you could be the one bringing it all back home.”
• Someone May Be Joan Baez in Next Dylan Movie (Hollywood Reporter)
  • Lots of people are considering doing things, and some are definitely doing things. Long list of names.

• Dylan In Cincinnati: March 1965 (Shadow Chasing)
  • “Ahead of Dylan’s first show on Friday night, the Enquirer primed the pump with a piece on him in the Sunday paper. Gerald White’s article attempted to account for Dylan’s special appeal to university students. “For many Cincinnati students, their conscience will sing at the Taft Theatre next Friday night. Their conscience is Bob Dylan, a nationally-known folk singer, who seems to represent the modern, college student” (4-F).”
• Dylan’s 21st Century Gospel (Flagging Down The Double E’s)
  • “Hearing “Saving Grace” during this reader-requested 2003 Nashville show caught me by surprise. I’d forgotten that Saved song ever escaped Dylan’s gospel era. But it did – and, during about two years in 2002-3, a lot of other songs from the Christian period did too.”
• True Fandom: The American Songbook Records (Bob Dylan At The End of Time)
  • “I rarely listen to the three American Songbook records (five discs) released from 2015 through 2017. This chapter presents a couple of essays I wrote in this time frame — the first on the occasion of Dylan’s seventy-fifth birthday and the second a review of a concert I attended at a Seattle area winery in 2016.”
• A Brief Encounter with Bob Dylan (At The End of Time)
  • “Now we travel a bit further back in time. In 1993 I had a brief encounter with Bob Dylan — not enough to say I met him, but more than a passing glance — and I share it here for a couple of reasons. First, don’t we all imagine what we might say to the Troubadour if we ran into him?”
• Is Bob Dylan A Good Singer (Far Out)
  • “So, is Bob Dylan a good singer? Well, I certainly don’t claim the man can or could ever emulate Pavarotti. Nor, however, do I believe Pavarotti could emulate Dylan. I imagine Pavarotti would have also had difficulty covering the same vocal range as Céline Dion. Being “good”, as far as I’m concerned, is doing something outstanding within your own physical limits. “
• Dylan Photographs in Denmark 1966 (Far Out)
  • “In May 1966, Rej was lucky enough to join Bob Dylan during the folk-rock star’s world tour.”
  • INCREDIBLE PHOTOS – CLICK THAT LINK
• Other People’s Songs: Can’t Help Falling In Love (Untold Dylan)
  • “An unusually melodic harmonica part from Bob at the start.  And a bit of a feeling that as he sings he always makes a grab at the word “help” for some reason, which I find a bit odd – but as ever that’s just me.  It’s a nice, relaxing recording, but it is not something of Bob’s that I’d ever feel like listening to when I could choose what to play next.”
• Abandoned Love; Lyrics and Music (Untold Dylan)
  • “Of course, the lyrics are really engaging, although they don’t actually follow a logical sequence or make obvious sense. Rather they are an ongoing reflection on a relationship which the singer is about to end. People and situations seem to appear and then vanish from the song as if in and out of the fog, so what we are left with is an overall vision of unhappiness but no certainty as to what is going on.”
• Dylan’s Favorites: Boom Boom Mancini (Untold Dylan)
  • “The song has the power and “push” if I can use that word, of the earlier two Warren Zevon songs that we have considered, although of course each has delivered that “push” in a different way, in a reflection of the lyrics. “
• NET Highlights: Wicked Messenger (Untold Dylan)
  • “Bob Dylan tried a dramatic re-write of Wicked Messager in 2001 (this recording from Seattle on 6 October that year) and made a few variations along the way.   It was a very similar approach to that used for “The Drifter’s Escape” – but far more successful in my view.”
• Black Rider (2020) Pt.3 (Untold Dylan)
  • “… where the Dylan fan will notice that Dylan, with every step of the way, chooses exactly the same words as the opening words of “Mississippi”. Remarkable, as Dylan has a documented aversion to repetition – but apparently his need to use the equivalents path, way and road in this verse trumps that aversion to repetition.”

• Modern Times (Far Out)
  • “Contrary to its name, Modern Times is a nostalgic record that hears Dylan reflect on his life through a present philosophy. With derivative rhythm and blues and country styles and a couple of lines seemingly influenced by those found in old texts, Dylan came under fire for plagiaristic tendencies. However, these few borrowed phrases and melodies cannot detract from the album’s undeniable lyrical power and instrumental beauty.”
• Rethinking Good As I Been To You (Updated Playlists) (Dylan.FM)
  • “So if the album isn’t the thing to dig into (although it does deserve some focused critical listening if you haven’t done that in a while) and the stories surrounding it are all kind boring and probably at least half wrong, and we don’t yet have the Bootleg Series with outtake and outtake (as Micajah described) then how can you dig in?”
• (BOOK REVIEW)
  Time Out Of Mind: The Rising Of An Old Master (David Marx)
  • “Quite possibly, one of the most inspired and quintessential, ambidextrous, fool-proof-fans’ of Ye Bard’s every collective/chronological lyrical persuasion as well as musical pronouncement, this side of Robert Shelton meets Clinton Heylin meets an unexpected Expecting Rain scenario of the most rampant clarification.”

• April 27 – May 20: Paolo Brill – Stolen Moments (Milan IT)
• May 10: Michael Gray at The Bob Dylan Center (Tulsa OK)
• May 14 – June 2: Girl From The North Country Coming to LA
• May 20-28:Duluth Dylan Festival (Duluth MN)
• May 21: The Kabbalah of Bob Dylan (Online)
• May 26: Michael Gray presents Dylan’s Greatest Rejected Tracks (Sussex)
• June 2-4: The World of Bob Dylan (Tulsa)
• June 4: Melbourne on Dylan Premiere (Melbourne AU)

83rd Birthday Bashes

• May 19: Birthday Bash Concert (NYC)
• May 24: Bob Dylan Birthday Bash (Brooklyn NY)
• June 10: Forever Young (Melbourne AU)
• July 8: Bob Dylan Tribute (Sewell NJ)

See our full list of all upcoming Dylan events at: Dylan Events Calendar

The World Gone Wrong Cover (Photo: Anna Maria Velez Wood) put through some AI filter in the iPhone app ‘Photoleap’. Reality was fun while it lasted.

• Dylan.FM
  • The Good As I Been To You Originals and Covers (Ray Padgett)
• Pod Dylan
  • Live In Japan (Jason Emde)
• Bob Dylan Album By Album
  • Bringing It All Back Home (Pt.2)
• Hard Rain & Slow Trains (Vault Episode from 9/3/2020)
  • Last Ones Standing: Harry Belafonte

Best stuff is after 12:20 – particularly around 14:45: “There’s a line in Chimes of Freedom: “<Striking> for the guardians and protectors of freedom of the mind” – we’re living in an era there is no mind – it doesn’t exist anymore in the culture –  mind is zero. It’s all Dylan was was mind.”