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Seven Days: Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2023 (Bonus)

[vc_row full_width=”stretch_row” css=”.vc_custom_1654295754149{margin-top: -40px !important;border-top-width: 1px !important;border-right-width: 1px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;border-left-width: 1px !important;}”][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2023″ font_container=”tag:h2|font_size:38|text_align:left|color:%23aaaaaa” google_fonts=”font_family:Open%20Sans%3A300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C600%2C600italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C800%2C800italic|font_style:300%20light%20regular%3A300%3Anormal” css=”.vc_custom_1699221845091{margin-top: 20px !important;}”][vc_custom_heading text=”Seven Days (Bonus)” font_container=”tag:h1|font_size:38|text_align:left” google_fonts=”font_family:Open%20Sans%3A300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C600%2C600italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C800%2C800italic|font_style:700%20bold%20regular%3A700%3Anormal” css=”.vc_custom_1691342510626{margin-top: 5px !important;}”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row full_width=”stretch_row” gap=”35″ css=”.vc_custom_1669589654602{margin-top: -20px !important;border-top-width: 1px !important;border-right-width: 1px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;border-left-width: 1px !important;}”][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1695580670799{margin-bottom: 20px !important;padding-top: 5px !important;padding-right: 5px !important;padding-bottom: 5px !important;padding-left: 5px !important;background-color: #eaeaea !important;}”]This Bonus Edition is for Premium members only and includes the complete collection of links for the week, plus additional videos.[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Tour News” font_container=”tag:h1|font_size:26|text_align:left” google_fonts=”font_family:Open%20Sans%20Condensed%3A300%2C300italic%2C700|font_style:700%20bold%20regular%3A700%3Anormal”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1699232037854{margin-top: 20px !important;padding-left: 30px !important;}”]

  • Last Night in Montreal (Flagging Down The Double E’s) [8]
    • “How was the cover? I was almost scared to listen back to the recording. In the room, it was transcendent. No tape, no matter how good, will capture the feeling of being there. I worried hearing it again would spoil the magic, that I’d discover he actually screwed up all the words or mumbled throughout or sang off key.”
  • Bob Dylan pays tribute to Leonard Cohen (LeonardCohen.DE) [5]
    • “The Montreal audience immediately recognizes the song and dares to let the next spontaneous standing ovation last a little longer. The song stands for the fact that everything will come to an end. Bob performs the waltz-like song in a very dylanesque way, without straying too far from the original.”
  • At 82, Bob Dylan Retains the Element of Surprise (Montreal Gazette) [3]
    • “Think about Bob Dylan in 2023, days away from his Place des Arts show on Sunday, and you can’t help but think about the passing of time. He is 82 and remains a vital artistic and commercial force. That’s a fact worth contemplating at length.”
  • A Big Hit at Toronto’s Massey Hall, Bob Dylan Played No Hits (The Globe and Mail) [5]
    • “These were fans, not tourists. They had not come for the man who used to sing, “The line, it is drawn; the curse, it is cast/ the slow one now will later be fast.” That Dylan is gone, perhaps only existing in the time that virtuous thought had occurred to him in the first place. On stage he is a dutiful singer and player.”
  • Dylan’s Dance Me to the End of Love Review (Cult Following) [8]
    • Dance Me to the End of Love then, given a neat Rough and Rowdy Ways spin in a similar style to the other covers of Dylan’s tour lineup, is a real treat. Dylan now has the gruff and thick voice necessary to deliver justice to this piece.”
  • Bob Dylan sings Leonard Cohen at Place des Arts (Actual News) [5]
    • “His felt interpretation of Dance Me to the End of Love will nevertheless remain the most unforgettable moment of this superb evening, a moment at the end of which the entire crowd, where twenty-somethings and people of the same generation as the artist on the bill rubbed shoulders, stood up.”
  • Hear Bob Dylan’s Stunning Surprise Cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Dance Me to the End of Love’ (RollingStone) [5]
    • “On the surface, “Dance Me to the End of Love” seems like a love song. But it’s actually about the Nazis playing classical music as they marched Jews into gas chambers. “A string quartet was pressed into performance while this horror was going on, those were the people whose fate was this horror also,” Cohen said in 1995.”
  • Dylan A Hit at Massey Without Hits (Globe 2 Go) [5]
    • PDF: A concert like this is a simple exchange of performance by the artist and unabashed admiration and affection from the audience.
  • Bob Dylan @ Proctors (Nippertown) [5]
    • “Time and again, songs showed his writing flows free of any specific era. The overused “timeless” misses the point. For all the references to train tracks and Cadillacs; to putting on a suit, forced to marry a prostitute, everything is now AND then, like The Band; of course, that’s no coincidence.”
  • A Reinvigorated Bob Dylan at Proctors Theatre (Everything Is Broken) [5]
    • “Supporting these various new approaches to vocals, instrumentals, and arrangements is the cleanest, sharpest sound ever. Unlike in the past, the band never overrode Dylan’s vocals or piano licks, and the picking and strumming by all the string virtuosos shimmered with acoustic delight.”
  • Rogovoy on Dylan Schenectady (WAMC) [3]
    • “He rules the roost from the baby grand, and after several years of muddy fumbling with the black and whites, he is an eloquent player, well-versed in styles ranging from honky-tonk to bebop abstraction to Gershwin-like discordances to the basic boogie-woogie chords that he first learned to play as a teen-ager modeling himself after Little Richard.”
  • Bob Dylan Shows ’em How It’s Done (Boston Herald) [3]
    • “Dylan as a barn-burning piano player might seem far-fetched for anyone who hasn’t checked in on him since the Rolling Thunder Review, but he’s excellent behind the keys, hinting at decades spent listening to stride, swing and boogie woogie. These skills and a crack five-piece band behind him had Dylan sending songs new and old back in time.”
  • At the Orpheum, Bob Dylan does Bob Dylan Things (The Boston Globe) [8]
    • “Planted at a piano for the duration — where it was easy to miss the sparkles on his pants, a wink of showmanship from a man who barely addressed his audience the entire night — Dylan at times recalled no one so much as John Lee Hooker, with both his playing and his singing operating on their own primal sense of time.
  • Bob Dylan at the Orpheum — Far From the Same Old Song (The Arts Fuse) [8]
    • “In 2021, Dylan had an upright piano on stage, and he sort of moved around it, played it a little, adding occasional flourishes to the superb work of the five musicians he was conducting. Now he is authoritatively driving the music from his piano bench. Dylan, his longtime bass player Tony Garnier, and drummer Jerry Pentecost, who joined the band this year, were locked into a tight groove from the start, pushing and pulling the dynamics from song to song and often within songs, shifting the pacing mid-tune.”
  • What to Expect When You’re Expecting Bob Dylan (The Boston Globe) [5]
    • “Dylan’s been playing substantially the same songs that he played at Milwaukee’s tour kickoff way back in November 2021: the bulk of “Rough and Rowdy Ways” — plus a song apiece from albums like “Blonde on Blonde,” “John Wesley Harding,” “Nashville Skyline,” and “Slow Train Coming” alongside a cover or two. If you’ve got tickets, here’s hoping you’re all in on “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” is the point.”
  • Bob Dylan’s Piano Playing Stands Out (The Times Union) [5]
    • “Leaning heavily on his 2020 album “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” Dylan delivered a 17-song, 100-minute set where he was off-key sometimes, frequently brilliant (especially while playing piano) and consistently compelling to watch. In short, it was a quintessentially Dylan performance.”

ALSO

[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_custom_heading text=”News Items About Bob Dylan” font_container=”tag:h1|font_size:26|text_align:left” google_fonts=”font_family:Open%20Sans%20Condensed%3A300%2C300italic%2C700|font_style:700%20bold%20regular%3A700%3Anormal”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1699234839783{margin-top: 20px !important;padding-left: 30px !important;}”]

  • A multitude of musical excellence brings Al Kooper into the Rock & Roll Hall Fame (Cleveland.com) [3]
    • “That luck played out during the June 1965 sessions in New York where Kooper found himself creating the organ riff for Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.”
  • The Story of the Incomprehensible Bob Dylan Musical (Classic Rock) [8]
    • 2006 from Twyla Tharp, Not ‘Girl From The North Country’
    • “When he called to suggest that we collaborate on a dance musical, it was clear that I would be filling in most of the dotted lines. And that was a blinking yellow light, for Dylan’s catalogue is massive.”
  • Dylan’s Lyrics Sometimes Feel Like what God Might’ve Said (Wyoming Tribute Eagle) [5]
    • “As a preacher, I taught that God was big enough to inspire not only Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but also Cervantes. Dickens. Baldwin. W.E.B. Dubois. Sojourner Truth. Bob Dylan.”
  • Dylan’s Whiskey Brand Just Dropped the Latest Release in Its Premium Bootleg Series (Whiskey Raiders) [3]
    • “Bottled at 114 proof, Heaven’s Door Bootleg Series Volume V is available from the Heaven’s Door website and via select national retailers. The Bootleg series is named for Dylan’s series of rare, unreleased tracks. Each bottle is decorated with ne of Dylan’s original paintings on a ceramic bottle and comes presented in a bespoke leather journal.”
  • How Heaven’s Door Captured the Spirit of Bob Dylan (Moodie Davitt Report) [8]
    • “Marc got in touch with Bob Dylan’s manager. They began discussing and Marc presented the Heaven’s Door concept, which Dylan loved. That was the genesis of where we are today. So the brand started in 2017 and we started shipping the same year. It has performed exceptionally well, winning numerous awards.
  • Heaven’s Door Bootleg Series Is Bob Dylan’s All-American Masterpiece (Men’s Journal PAID PLACEMENT) [3]
    • “Its high-end, limited-edition Bootleg Series—yearly releases featuring rare whiskeys and special blends—are packaged in ceramic bottles with Dylan’s paintings on them. These pay liquid homage to our co-creator and his famed series of albums.”
  • Listen to Bob Dylan’s ‘All the Tired Horses’ from Black Cake (Leo Sigh) [3]
    • “The women singing are Hilda Harris, Albertine Robinson, and Maeretha Stewart, but both the song and the album were released as a joke to some extent, as Dylan was tired of being called “the spokesman of a generation” and thus treated like a God. He then titled it Self Portrait to be even more obnoxious.”

[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_custom_heading text=”Mixing Up The Medicine (Book Reviews)” font_container=”tag:h1|font_size:26|text_align:left” google_fonts=”font_family:Open%20Sans%20Condensed%3A300%2C300italic%2C700|font_style:700%20bold%20regular%3A700%3Anormal”][vc_single_image image=”17422″ img_size=”large”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1699235000760{margin-top: 20px !important;padding-left: 30px !important;}”]NOTE: We’ve collected all the Mixing Up The Medicine Reviews onto one page. Here are the latest:

  • The Most Comprehensive Book Ever on Dylan (Abe Books) [5]
    • “This magnum opus spans an impressive 608 pages, adorned with nearly 1200 images by 135 photographers and artists. It also boasts a rich tapestry of 150,000 words, including 30 essays by renowned contemporary writers. “
  • Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door: Bob Dylan Details “A Literal Visit” from Jesus in New Memoir (Patheos) [3]
    • “War. Peace. Freedom. These are the themes Bob Dylan has spent a lifetime writing and singing for the world to hear. Some have heard it. Others have not. But one thing is clear, there is an answer to be heard. Even Bob Dylan knew that.”
  • Bob Dylan’s Ephemera (Boca Mag) [3]
    • “Well worth its $100 price tag for Dylanophiles, Mixing Up the Medicine is a coffee table book full of revelations, one that helps piece together some of Bob Dylan’s puzzles from his formative years as a musician through his still-fertile contemporaneity.”

[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_custom_heading text=”Blog Posts About Bob Dylan” font_container=”tag:h1|font_size:26|text_align:left” google_fonts=”font_family:Open%20Sans%20Condensed%3A300%2C300italic%2C700|font_style:700%20bold%20regular%3A700%3Anormal”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1699233828250{margin-top: 20px !important;padding-left: 30px !important;}”]

  • How Does Dylan Write His Songs? (Dylanology) [10]
    • “I will break my answer down into three main issues: (a) the general harmonic language of pop song, particularly Dylan’s version of pop song; (b) the specific genres and styles that Dylan relates most directly to; (c) and Dylan’s own particular idiosyncracies, including a full-scale masterclass in songwriting by the man himself.”
  • If Bob Dylan Could Sing About Israel and Hamas… (Religous News Service) [3]
    • “In this song, Dylan presents the history of the Jewish people in galut: “The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land; he’s wandered the earth an exiled man…”
  • It’s All Over Now: Take What You’ve Gathered (Chris Gregory) [5]
    • “One of the most remarkable things about the song is its adaptability to different musical genres, from Joan Baez’s folk purity to Hole’s grunge rock. Bryan Ferry treats it as a sprightly, up tempo sing-a-long. The Byrds’ version is slow and ruminative. Marianne Faithfull makes it anguished confessional. The Grateful Dead transform it into a reflective epic that goes through a number of different moods. Barb Jungr gives us a light, jazzy take.”
  • A Light Within Reach, A Time Out of Mind (The Causal Tentacle) [8]
    • “As ghosts live on in arrearview mirrors, Dylan recollects these perceptions we Kant quite shake: that even as things in themselves apparently change, “the next 60 seconds could feel like eternity.” Dylan, then, this martyr we might call our own, devises us something in his will—some Key West real end state where the long-gone horse and rider can be foreseen “coming out of Luxembourg and Budapest” and back into the Cantor.”
  • Inside Llewyn Davis, Just Not Dave Van Ronk (Peter Stone Brown Archive) [8]
    • “Let’s get one thing straight. This film is not about Dave Van Ronk. It uses Van Ronk’s repertoire and certain facts and stories to tell the story of this basically loser folksinger who goes nowhere. Or maybe it’s the story of the cat that gets out of an Upper West Side apartment and then comes back, just like in the song “The Cat Came Back.”
  • Ask Greil: October 30, 2023 [8]
    • “There’s pleasure and play in the way they seize the arrangement and don’t back off from the rough metal edges. Unlike the singing in “Born in Chicago,” which seemed like a pro forma tribute, with the rhythm on automatic and the singing only making me miss Paul Butterfield’s timing, toughness, and regret, here he’s both following the beat and pushing it. It’s alive; it won’t sound the same the next time it comes up.”
  • Stories in the Press: Madison 1996 (Flagging Down The Double E’s) [8]
    • “During ‘Rainy Day Women #12 & 35’ the last of his three-song encore, Dylan allowed dozens of fans who had jumped onstage to dance around him while he blasted away on guitar.” Tragically there is no video, but believe it or not this was a thing at the time.
  • NET Extended: Love Sick (Untold Dylan) [5]
    • “There is a particular gentleness about the rendition, particularly in the vocal part that Bob delivers.  The solid pounding beat through the verse which is the hallmark of the piece is there, but the feeling is nevertheless one of deep sadness and regret – something which was lost in some later performances I feel.”
  • Goodbye Jimmie Reed Pt.7 (Untold Dylan) [5]
    • “This third verse of “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” seems to do something similar. At least: the narrator of this third verse and the subsequent fourth verse is a musician, a narrator who plays guitar as well as sings – they are the only verses (of the six) that could be inspired by Jimmy Reed’s biography.”
  • Dylan Covers: Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll (Untold Dylan) [5]
    • “Here’s my selection, but not because I think each is necessarily a stand-out contribution to music, or to understanding Dylan, but because to my amazement the song has been treated so differently across the years and some of these versions really do move me.”
  • Bob Dylan’s Hymns Pt.4  Pt.5  [5]
    • “Another antecedent for “Ring Them Bells” might be heard in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Bells,” which Dylan’s sometimes colleague Phil Ochs adapted for his beautiful song “The Bells” in his 1964 album “All the News That Fits.”
  • NET Extended: Things Have Changed (Untold Dylan) [5]
    • “What is interesting is that already in this earliest recording we have from the Never Ending Tour series, Bob is playing with the delivery of the lyrics, emphasising the world-weary nature of those lyrics.”
  • Lyrics & Music: High Water (Untold Dylan) [5]
    • “The first thing to say is that, unlike the Charley Patton song, this is not a 12 bar blues. This is a song with no chord changes at all (12 bar blues have three chords within them). And that lack of chord changes, for a rock or pop, or indeed blues song, presents a challenge, because we have all become utterly used to chord changes being of the essence in pop, rock and blues music. .”

[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Reviews & Releases” font_container=”tag:h2|font_size:26|text_align:left” google_fonts=”font_family:Open%20Sans%20Condensed%3A300%2C300italic%2C700|font_style:700%20bold%20regular%3A700%3Anormal”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1699235022400{margin-top: 20px !important;padding-left: 30px !important;}”]

  • Another Self Portrait (Peter Stone Brown) [8]
    • “Forty-three years later, Another Self Portrait, the 10th volume of the ongoing “Bootleg Series,” puts that era of Dylan’s music making in a different light, by putting the majority of the focus on Dylan’s New York sessions, both for Self Portrait and New Morning which followed a few months later. “
  • Halloween at Philharmonic Hall 50 Years Later (Peter Stone Brown) [8]
    • “Listening to the album today, the thing I noticed is how clearly Dylan articulated each word emphasizing the lyrics. For the past five decades, comics imitating Dylan will mumble incoherently usually in the Blonde On Blonde voice, as well as critics who clearly weren’t paying attention saying they couldn’t understand him when in reality he was making his words quite clear.”
  • The Poetic Meaning Behind “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” (American Songwriter) [5]
    • “The CIA was engaged in efforts to overthrow the Castro regime in Cuba. Fidel Castro convinced Nikita Khrushchev, the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, to place nuclear missiles in Cuba to deter any more actions from the Americans.”
  • The Dark Meaning Behind “Masters of War” by Bob Dylan (American Songwriter) [3]
    • “When he performed this song at the United States Military Academy in 1990, he didn’t sing the last verse. He might have had second thoughts about adding it in, but given the frustration of many during the Vietnam era, it’s understandable how his rage boiled over into this seething track.”
  • ‘Girl From the North Country’ review: Drama Disguised as Musical (The News-Herald) [5]
    • “That character is Nick Laine, one of the show’s central figures and the proprietor of a modest guesthouse off Lake Superior. His wife, Elizabeth, suffers from a form of dementia, and her state fluctuates wildly, from near-catatonic to say-whatever’s-on-her-mind-freewheelin’.
  • ‘The Girl From the North Country,’ Isn’t Your Typical Jukebox Musical (Cleveland Scene [5]
    • “The boarding house is run (or run down) by Nick Laine (a strong but properly befuddled John Schiappa), who is staring foreclosure in the eye while dealing with his wife Elizabeth, who suffers from a form of dementia that results in Tourette’s Syndrome-like outbursts that emerge from her otherwise catatonic state.”
  • The Data-Spew About Bob Dylan Never Ends (The Spectator) [5]
    • Heylin’s Secret Life of Bob Dylan Vol.2
    • “He was also something of a misogynist. ‘I hate to see chicks perform,’ he told Rolling Stone in 1987. ‘Hate it. Because they whore themselves. Especially the ones that don’t wear anything. They whore themselves.’ Rolling Stone omitted that quote. Heylin, to his credit, does not.”

[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_custom_heading text=”The New Link Rating System” font_container=”tag:h2|font_size:26|text_align:left” google_fonts=”font_family:Open%20Sans%20Condensed%3A300%2C300italic%2C700|font_style:700%20bold%20regular%3A700%3Anormal”][vc_column_text]

Each link above has a ‘quality score’ listed as [#] with a 1-3-5-8 after the publication name. This is designed to help you choose articles and links worth reading.

Simply put, higher numbers reflecting better content and writing. At each of these levels, the quality should be more than twice as high. One way to translate the values is:

1 = Limited Value
3 = Minor
5 = Substantial
8 = Outstanding

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/4″ css=”.vc_custom_1654542553362{background-color: #efefef !important;}”][vc_custom_heading text=”Prior Weeks” font_container=”tag:h2|font_size:26|text_align:left|color:%23ffffff” google_fonts=”font_family:Open%20Sans%20Condensed%3A300%2C300italic%2C700|font_style:700%20bold%20regular%3A700%3Anormal” css=”.vc_custom_1654542433138{margin-bottom: 30px !important;padding-left: 10px !important;background-color: #000000 !important;}”][ult_layout grid_style=”4″ image_size=”full” s_icon_lightbox_image=”0″ s_icon_link=”0″ s_excerpt=”0″ s_categories=”0″ s_metas_o=”0″ s_metas_t=”0″ query_types=”1″ query_include_children=”0″ title_font_weight=”800″ d_i_filter=”79″ e_taxonomies=”77, 80″ query_offset=”1″ title_font_size=”12px” post_count=”8″][/ult_layout][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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