I submitted my 10,000th track to last.fm this week. My current top ten artists:
I can’t see the top two changing anytime soon, what with The Mountain Goats’ new album out on 21 Aug — and Bob Dylan’s the following week… Happy music days ahead…
Woohoo – listening to Bob Dylan. I am in the processing of converting all my Bob Dylan CDs to mp3, for easy access and cataloguing. I have ripped 450 so far – approximately half of my collection. I like listening to Bob Dylan!
I have been to 24 Bob concerts so far, including the 5 London shows last month. Friends and family ask me why I needed to go to 5 Bob Dylan shows in a row. He is a great performer and he tweaks his songs and setlists depending on mood, audience, venue, etc. At the 5 recent shows, he played a total of 87 songs, 57 of them unique. He played 15 songs I had not heard live before:
Blue Monday
I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)
Million Dollar Bash
God Knows
New Morning
Queen Jane Approximately
She Belongs to Me
Shelter from the Storm
Just Like A Woman
Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You
John Brown
Mississippi
Waitin’ For You
London Calling
Rumble
Here are some statistics for the concerts I have attended to date:
Total Number of Concerts: 24
Total Number of Songs: 436
Total Number of Unique Songs: 117
Average Number of Songs per Concert: 18.2
You want a list of the songs I have heard live? Listed below:
I was taught to always avoid and eschew pleonastic redundancy in writing. Redundancy is, however, acceptable in the writing of songs. Bob Dylan has written about 89 of my all time top 100 favourite songs. He has written hundreds of songs with various types of lyrics: surreal, silly, wounded, hallucinatory, political, historical, bitter, sad, happy, and so on. I love the lyrics he writes, but more importantly I love how he performs the songs – both in the recording studio and in concert. So here are a few Dylan lines that may contain redundant words or phrases:
He unleashed His power at an unknown hour that no one knew
Come over here from over there, girl
I’m here to create the new imperial empire
I’ve made shoes for everyone, even you, while I still go barefoot
In a basement down the stairs (I suppose a basement could be down the escalator or the elevator)
Talking to myself in a monologue (I think this is ok because you could talk to yourself in a dialogue. Are you sure? Yeah, I reckon so.)
Above is a t-shirt I saw in Amsterdam a few years ago. It contains the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s Masters Of War.
Bob Dylan is everywhere at the moment. Bob Dylan albums are on offer in Sainsbury’s (go pick up Bringing It All Back Home for £3.99). Trailers are frequently shown on BBC for Martin Scorsese two-part Arena film (the highlight of the BBC’s Bob Dylan season) – tune in on 26th and 27th September. The soundtrack to this has been released as The Bootleg Series Volume 7 – a great collection of rarities and alternative versions of songs from Bob’s early career.
In November Bob pops over to the UK to perform some concerts. I have tickets to all five of the London shows. Can’t wait.
(But you won’t find any Bob Dylan CDs in HMV stores in Canada.)
Bob has announced concert dates for the UK later this year.
I have booked tickets for all of the London shows. I saw him at Brixton in 2003 and it was one of the best concerts I’ve attended, so thought it sagacious to attend all three. This will take my tally of Bob concerts to 22. Woot!
However, we don’t have to wait until November to see him live and in person. He is playing the Amazon 10th Anniversary concert on Saturday 16 July. This will be streamed live on amazon.com.
The show begins at 5pm PT, so 1am on Sunday for us in the UK. Set your alarm!
Bob Dylan, 64 today.
Some of my Bob bookmarks (Bobmarks, if you will):
Dylanfreak – One stop for up-to-the-minute Bob Dylan news, sports & weather. Featuring the first automated Bob Dylan newsfeeds on the Net.
Expecting Rain – One of the pioneer sites on the Web dealing with Bob Dylan, Dylan’s influences, lyrics, records and the latest concert reviews. Updated daily.
Dylan Pool - A Bob Dylan fantasy pool – predict the songs that Bob plays in concert, compete with Dylan fans around the world. Plus a great forum and community.
Dusty Old Fairgrounds – A Comprehensive Chronological Catalogue of Unreleased Bob Dylan Field Recordings, Studio Outtakes, Rehearsals, TV Performances, Interviews, Videos and more.
Bobsboots - a good guide to the many Bob Dylan bootleg recordings available (wonder how many I have now…)
The Bob Dylan CD & CDR Field Recordings Guide Of William J. Clinton – another detailed guide to Bob recordings
Dylanbase – and another one
DVDylan – Bob Dylan DVD Recording Database
Bob Links – links to everywhere Bob on the web
Bob Dylan – Wikipedia Article
A couple of weblogs that like a bit of Bob:
The Beat
grow-a-brain
Which Bob Dylan song are you? – I am Tangled Up In Blue, naturally.
And these are just some of the websites I have Bobmarked. More soon. Maybe.
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Bob Dylan’s long awaited (by me, at least) autobiography,
Chronicles: Volume One, is released tomorrow. You can hear Sean Penn read some excerpts here – scroll down to the bottom of the page.
Dylan’s poetic phrases permeate modern writing, or maybe people just nick them. Almost 40 years ago, Dylan sang about the ghost of ‘lectricity howling. In The Independent yesterday Will Self wrote:
I want Battersea to always be this great ruin around which the ghost of electricity howls, a dark castle keep, looming over the primitive little village of London.
Bob Dylan has just received an honorary degree from St Andrew’s University. He was made a Doctor of Music this afternoon. Congratulations.
I collect examples of graffiti pertaining to the songs of Bob Dylan. So far I have one example; I found this in Basildon town centre:
Ok, folks, you have repeatedly asked for it and here it is. I recently rediscovered this remix version I made of Subterranean Homesick Blues, which features KITT from Knightrider (it’s in mp3 format).
Download the thing
