FROM SHETLAND TO FLORIDA: ODDS & ENDS

I'm home after an excellent weekend in the Shetland Isles, 1530 miles away. I managed to attend various other people's events as well as both of my own, and it's the first time I've ever walked to Tesco's entirely by strolling along a footpath by the edge of the sea and then crossing a road. We were all lucky with the weather too: it never rained and the sun shone. A local remarked that "this weekend is in fact our summer".

Meanwhile I note that yesterday would have been the 85th birthday of the postwar R&B/blues star Jimmy Reed (whose 1957 'Odds and Ends' suggests itself strongly when you hear Dylan's 'Pledging My Time'), and was the 25th anniversary of the death of Eurreal Little Brother Montgomery (in Chicago, aged 79) whose 1930 'No Special Rider Blues' is one of only four pre-war blues songs to use the phrase "special rider" - the phrase that Dylan inspiredly chose as the name for his main music-publishing company, making it, as I remark in Song & Dance Man III, a telling way for him to choose to refer to his muse.



Meanwhile too, I note that Dylan's current tour leg is over - Seattle on the 4th was the last date - but that he begins again with a mostly college tour of Florida in early October:

Oct 6: Don Taft University Center, Nova Southeastern Univ., Ft. Lauderdale
Oct 7: Sun Dome, University Of South Florida, Tampa
Oct 8: Stephen C.O. Connell Center, University of Florida, Gainsville
Oct 10: UCF Arena, University of Central Florida, Orlando
Oct 11: Tallahassee-Leon County Civic Center, Tallahassee.