The Set List

Dylan Disciples To Deliver A Concert

The Bob Fest taking place at  the Skirball Cultural Center on April 23 has added Lucinda Williams, Tim Easton and Meiko to a roster that already includes  Zack de la Rocha, John Doe, Michael Franti  and Maria McKee.
Billed under the banner of "Like A Complete Unknown," concert is the first event to bear the name of the Grammy Museum as a presenter. The museum, which will be part of downtown's L.A. Live, is co-presenting with the Skirball.
Each artist will perform acoustically Dylan compositions of his of her choice.
Concert is in conjunction with "Bob Dylan's  American Journey, 1956-1966" currently on exhibit.

Dylan Works As A Spirit On The Water

Bob Dylan, who has used a considerable amount of water imagery over the course of 45 years, has reworked "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" to focus attention on the theme of Madrid's Expo Zaragoza 2008, Water and Sustainable Development. The Daily Swarm had the story - and this very cool video - first.

Nick Hornby Proclaims Bob Dylan a Deity

Author Nick Hornby gets it correct on his blog: Dylan is god; "I'm Not There" is a fine rock film; and any time Bob's '80s albums are referenced, those of us who have memorized the work from the other decades get sheepish when it come to reciting things like the order of side 2 on "Infidels."

Dylan Set List Arcana: Tracking the Titles

Gotta love the Dyan obsessives, like this guy who created a compendium of every Dylan show this year.
In 98 concerts this year, he sang 1,616 songs. There were 80 unique titles, only two of which he did not write or co-write. "Thunder on the Mountain" was the only song performed at every show.
If you want to feel like you saw something special - and what Dylan concert isn't? - he performed the following songs only once:
Cold Irons Bound, Floater (Too Much To Ask), Friend Of The Devil, House Of The Rising Sun, Man In The Long Black Coat, Meet Me In The Morning, Not Dark Yet, One More Cup Of Coffee, Outlaw Blues, She Belongs To Me, Shooting Star and Sugar Baby.

Dylan's 'There' Found In Neil Young's Lair

Bob Dylan's recording of "I'm Not There" that appears on the soundtrack to Todd Haynes' film sounds plenty different from the version that appears on "Basement Tapes" bootlegs. Thank Neil Young's fanaticism and pack rat mentality for that.
The newly unearthed version clearly has the Band backing him as opposed to the popular bootleg version, a mostly acoustic reading by Dylan with a bit of rhythmic thumping in the background.
"It's pretty much just a sketch," Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo said in an interview for a piece on the soundtrack. "The lyric is open ended. It's hard to tell if (the words) make any sense."  Sonic Youth recorded a version of the song that runs over the end credits.
Soundtrack producers and Haynes were creating 5.1 mixes of songs and still using a bootleg copy of the tune when the suggestion arose that they find a better copy of the title track.
Joel Bernstein, a rock photographer who has been shooting Dylan and Young since the early '70s, was working with the team as an archivist and he suggested contacting Elliot Mazer. Mazer, who has produced a number of Young's albums, had worked with Dylan's manager in the '60s, Albert Grossman.
After Dylan's period of inactivity following his 1966 motorcycle accident, Grossman began to work on the publishing side for Dylan and started amassing a collection of tapes of songs that were not released over the next several years. Naturally, copies of the tapes were made; the Band's Garth Hudson even brought in a collection for the "I'm Not There" team to sift through.
Mazer, it turns out, had made a copy for his friend Young, who had tucked it away.
Randall Poster says his partner on the soundtrack, Jim Dunbar, "had to be Sam Spade, trying to make all these connections. What helped us get it quick was having the support of the Dylan camp."
What struck recording engineer Greg Calbi, who has worked extensively with Dylan, was the distinctiveness of the version in Young's vault.
"Every engineer who ever got a copy would put their stamp on it," Poster said, relaying Calbi's observation. "It was mutated over the years. We got the raw version."
Coincidentally, Young revisits his unreleased past with "Chrome Dreams II," which was issued last week; the "I'm Not There" soundtrack is released Oct. 30.
 
      

CMJ: Reaching Into the Bag of Tricks

  It doesn't matter if it's a film festival or a music festival, there's always a stuffed goodie bag to greet an atendee's arrival. As usual, one has to wonder: How much of this stuff is useful? What does this tell us about the confab we're about to step into? I already had PJ Olsson's show on my list of acts to check out, but the inclusion of an ad in the bag reaffirms some belief I have that certain acts have a company behind them,  CBS Records in this case, that wants their acts to stand out. Well, without making too many judgments, CMJ attendees now have in their possession:

6 compilation CDs (New Zealand, OurStage, Austin, Severe Records, Filter and CMJ being the providers)
5 postcards/pamphlets for online services
4 handbills for showcases
4 cards enabling free donloads including one for Mark Ronson's remix of Bob Dylan's "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)"
3 maps
3 production serves postcards
2 coupons (clothes and bowling)
2 postcards for actual musicians performing at CMJ
2 ads for films
2 educational brocures
1 Zune ad
1 insurance brochure
1 menu for a pizza joint
1 bookmark advertising R. Crumb's "Heroes of Blues, Jazz and Country"
1 cable TV show ad
and, what else? - a single condom.

Dylan Keeps His Radio Gig

XM starts the second season of Bob Dylan’s “Theme Time Radio Hour” on Sept. 19.Week one is devoted to "Hello" songs; soon they'll do "Young and Old."
Among Bob's more obscure "Hello" choices: "Hello, Mello Baby" by the Mardi Gras Loungers; "Hello, Aloha! How Are You?" by the Radiolites and the Carter Family's "Hello Stranger."
“Young and Old” has some obvious yet killer selections - "Young Man's Blues" by Mose Allison and "Old Man" by Neil Young - as well as some tunes with an intriguing twist, Muddy Waters' "Young Fashioned Ways," "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" by the Ramones and The Flying Burrito Brothers doing "Older Guys."

Dylan at Newport DVD Gets a Release Date

The Bob Dylan at Newport concert DVD, "The Other Side of the Mirror,"  now has a release date of Oct. 30. For people who pre-order the Dylan box set, the DVD will show up earlier.

Singers Identify Perfection

Q Magazine has polled 50 recording artists, among them Michael Stipe, John Legend and the leader of Travis, to create a list of "Perfect Songs." (Since Leonard Cohen wrote "Hallelujah," they actually mean perfect records).
The winners, in no particular order:

Bitter Sweet Symphony - The Verve
Blowin' In The Wind - Bob Dylan
Born To Run - Bruce Springsteen
God Only Knows - The Beach Boys
Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley
Life On Mars - David Bowie
Perfect Day - Lou Reed
Strange Fruit - Billie Holiday
Strawberry Fields Forever - Beatles
Sympathy For The Devil - Rolling Stones

A few of the indidviduals provide their picks here while Q provides the videos.
Personally, I'll agree with Blowin' In The Wind, Born To Run, God Only Knows and Hallelujah and throw in Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, John Coltrane's Naima, Paul Simon's Graceland, Thelonious Monk's 1947 version of 'Round Midnight, R.E.M.'s Nightswimming, Otis Redding's I've Been Loving You Too Long, NRBQ's Riding in My Car and Junior Murvin's Police and Thieves. Naturally, the list changes depending on the day.

'I'm Not There' Trailer Released

The Weinstein Co. has released the trailer for the Bob Dylan biopic "I'm Not There."

The Elvis and Bob Show: Costello Opens for Dylan

Elvis Costello will be opening shows for Bob Dylan and his Band, beginning Sept. 22 in Duluth, Ga. Most of the 13 shows featuring Costello, playing by his lonesome,
are in the Northeast in secondary and tertiary markets. Amos Lee is also on the bill.

The Tour:

Sat 9/22 Duluth, Ga.
Sun 9/23 Clemson, S.C.
Tue 9/25 Norfolk, Va.
Thu 9/27 Charlottesville, Va.
Fri 9/28 Columbia, Md.
Sat 9/29 Kingston, R.I.
Sun 9/30 Bridgeport, Conn.
Tue 10/2 Worcester, Mass.
Thu 10/4 Portland, Me.
Fri 10/5 Manchester, N.H.
Sat 10/6 Albany, N.Y.
Mon 10/8 Syracuse, N.Y.
Tue 10/9 Rochester, N.Y.

Bob Dylan art exhibit hits Germany

The first-ever exhibition of Bob Dylan's artwork will open at Kunstsammlungen in Chemnitz, Germany, starting October 28.

Although Dylan has been a committed visual artist for over forty years, "The Drawn Blank Series" marks he first museum showing of his art

For the exhibit, Dylan is producing over 200 color variations on the largely incomplete drawings and sketches found in the out-of-print 1994 art book Drawn Blank (Random House).

An extensive catalogue (in German and English) with numerous color and black-and-white reproductions will be published by Prestel Munich, New York, and London to mark the exhibition.

Hear Ronson on Bob

You can now hear a snippet Mark Ronson's officially sanctioned soul-dance reworking of Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde classic "Most Likely You Go Your Way (and I'll Go Mine)." It's only about 45-seconds, but you get the gist of it pretty quickly: Cleaned-up Dylan vocals layered over a Stax-style rhythm section, some bouncy horns and even a high-pitched trumpet squawk that recalls the early '90s hip-hop of DJ Muggs (Cypress Hill, House of Pain). The sonic preview is to hype the forthcoming 3-disc best-of which promises to be the "definitive" greatest hits package (and, in addition to 50 classic Bob tracks, will include Ronson's redo). Dropping October 1, the deluxe box includes postcards, three cool mini vinyl sleeves and a 40 page booklet.

Everybody Must Get Remixed

It was the lead track at every show during the 1974 tour with the Band and now it will be the first Dylan recording to ever be remixed. "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)" will be remixed by Mark Ronson and included on the Dylan compilation being released Oct. 1. The track will be released to radio - globally - on Aug. 1. Track originally appeared on 1966's "Blonde on Blonde."
Mark Ronson told Click Music, "I'm a huge Dylan fan, so it's a great honour, and the fact that he heard it and approved it, as you imagine he'd be quite picky."

Unreleased Dylan Hitched to Trailer

A trailer for Todd Haynes' Dylan pic "I'm Not There" has been posted on YouTube and features Dylan's recording of "I'm Not There (1956)," which he recorded during the Basement Tapes sessions but has never been released.

Sonic Youth has recorded a version of the song for the film.

Columbia Records lets fans pick Dylan songs they already own for Dylan compilation

"Dylan," a 51-track collection covering his entire recorded output, will be released Oct. 1 by Columbia Records. The track list has yet to be determined, but  the A&R folks behind this swear they will read submissions posted on www.dylan07.com.  (Please, no voting for "Ugliest Girl in the World.") But why would anyone wax on about a song they don't already own? Seeing as how this will duplicate his three volumes of greatest hits, one has to wonder if the packaging and the inclusion of "One Too Many Mornings," "High Water (for Charley Patton)" or "If Dogs Run Free" will be enough to generate significant sales. Site does include a trailer that is pretty impressive.

Rumors are flying that this won't be the only fall release from the Dylan archives.

PS Dylan starts his summer tour Friday in Atlantic City, N.J.

Not the Staten Island Ferry

If recorded music becomes all downloads, what in the world will musicians autograph?

Keeping CDs on shelves might be the one way for big box stores to continue attract musicians -- even major stars -- on promo visits. Bryan Ferry will be signing copies  of his newest, "Dylanesque," on June 27 at J&R Music in New York. Ferry did have a great quote about Dylan's art: "As far as the words are concerned it's a bit like an actor tackling Shakespeare.  I like finding the melodies that Dylan's hidden away in there."