tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-234192892024-03-23T18:44:29.563+01:00BOB DYLAN ENCYCLOPEDIA: A BLOG 2006-2012Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.comBlogger719125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-6196471311294542442013-10-20T16:49:00.001+02:002013-10-20T16:49:22.754+02:00ONCE-IN-BLUE-MOON POST TO LIST MY OWN UPCOMING GIGS<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]-->
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="color: red;">MONDAY NOVEMBER 4: GRANTHAM, LINCS
</span><span lang="EN-GB">audio-visually illustrated talk:</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: red;">Bob Dylan & the History of Rock'n'Roll</span></b><br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><b><a href="http://www.guildhallartscentre.com/" target="_blank">Guildhall Arts Centre</a></b>
St. Peters Hill, Grantham NG31 6PZ</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB">7.30pm; tickets £10, concessions £8 <b><a href="http://www.guildhallartscentre.com/shows/bob-dylan-the-history-of-rock-n-roll" target="_blank" title="">buy tickets, and more info here</a></b><span style="color: red;"> </span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="color: red;">WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 6: NEWPORT, S. WALES
</span>audio-visually illustrated talk:</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: red;">Bob Dylan & the History of Rock'n'Roll</span></b><br />
<span lang="EN-GB">Studio Theatre
<b><a href="http://www.newport.gov.uk/theriverfront/" target="_blank" title="">The Riverfront Theatre & Arts Centre</a></b>
Bristol Packet Wharf, Newport NP20 1HG</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB">7.45pm; tickets £11; <b><a href="http://www.newport.gov.uk/theRiverfront/index.cfm/whatson/226076/" target="_blank" title="">buy tickets, and more info here</a></b><span style="color: red;"> </span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="color: red;">FRIDAY NOVEMBER 8: BLANDFORD FORUM
</span>audio-visually illustrated talk:</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: purple;">Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues</span></b><br />
<span lang="EN-GB">Bryanston School, Blandford Forum, Dorset</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB">7.30pm; private gig; David Jones Lecture Theatre</span><br />
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<span style="color: red;">SATURDAY NOVEMBER 9: DORCHESTER
</span>audio-visually illustrated talk:</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: red;">Bob Dylan & the History of Rock'n'Roll</span></b><span lang="EN-GB"><b> </b></span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><b><a href="http://www.dorchesterarts.org.uk/" target="_blank" title="">Dorchester Arts Centre</a></b>
School Lane, The Grove
Dorchester DT1 1XR</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB">8pm; tickets £10, concessions £8; <b><a href="http://www.dorchesterarts.org.uk/9-november-%E2%80%A2-bob-dylan-and-the-history-of-rock-n-roll/" target="_blank" title="">buy tickets, and more info here</a></b><span style="color: red;"> </span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="color: red;">SUNDAY NOVEMBER 10: EXETER
</span>audio-visually illustrated talk:</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: red;">Bob Dylan & the History of Rock'n'Roll</span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: red;"> </span></b><span lang="EN-GB"><b><a href="http://www.exeterphoenix.org.uk/" target="_blank" title="">Exeter Phoenix</a></b> Voodoo Lounge
Bradninch Place, Gandy Street
Exeter EX4 3LS</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB">8pm; £10, concessions £8; <b><a href="http://www.exeterphoenix.org.uk/events/bob-dylan-and-the-history-of-rock-roll/" target="_blank" title="">buy tickets, and more info here</a></b><span style="color: red;"> </span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="color: red;">TUESDAY NOVEMBER 12: HALESWORTH, SUFFOLK
</span>audio-visually illustrated talk:</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: red;">Bob Dylan & the History of Rock'n'Roll</span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: red;"> </span></b><span lang="EN-GB"><b><a href="http://newcut.org/" target="_blank" title="">The Cut</a></b>, New Cut, Halesworth, Suffolk IP19 8BY
Box Office 0845 673 2123</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB">7.30pm; tickets £10; <b><a href="http://newcut.org/events/entry/988" target="_blank" title="">buy tickets, and more info here</a></b><span style="color: red;"> </span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="color: red;">THURSDAY NOVEMBER 14: LEAMINGTON SPA
</span>audio-visually illustrated talk:</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: purple;">Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues</span></b><br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><b><a href="http://leamingtonlamp.co.uk/" target="_blank" title="">LAMP</a></b> [Leamington Live Art & Music Project]
Riverside, Adelaide Rd, Royal Leamington Spa</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB">8pm; tickets £10; <b><a href="http://leamingtonlamp.co.uk/event/michael-gray-on-bob-dylan/" target="_blank" title="">buy tickets, and more info here</a></b><span style="color: red;"> </span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="color: red;">SATURDAY NOVEMBER 16: BELFAST
</span>audio-visually illustrated talk:</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: red;">Bob Dylan & the History of Rock'n'Roll</span></b><br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><b><a href="http://www.crescentarts.org/" target="_blank" title="">Crescent Arts Centre</a></b>
2-4 University Road, Belfast BT7 1NH</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB">8pm; £10, concessions £8; <b><a href="http://crescentarts.ticketsolve.com/shows/873495034/events?TSLVq=ea4b57cc-d083-44bf-b6db-f535a9847ab5&TSLVp=fd993529-9e92-47e7-a987-c394ca9ad2b4&TSLVts=1377697702&TSLVc=ticketsolve&TSLVe=crescentarts&TSLVrt=Safetynet&TSLVh=55ed9fcae11318613ec7d40c2b815441" target="_blank" title="">buy tickets, and more info here</a></b><span style="color: red;"> </span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="color: red;">WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 20: BURY, LANCS
</span>audio-visually illustrated talk:</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: red;">Bob Dylan & the History of Rock'n'Roll</span></b><br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://themet.biz/" target="_blank" title=""><b>The Met,</b> </a>Market St., Bury BL9 0BW</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB">8pm; £10; <b><a href="http://themet.biz/event/bob+dylan+and+the+history+of+rock%27n%27roll/1780/" target="_blank" title="">buy tickets, and more info here</a></b><span style="color: red;"> </span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="color: red;">THURSDAY NOVEMBER 21: HELMSLEY, ENGLAND
</span>audio-visually illustrated talk:</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: purple;">Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues</span></b><br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><b><a href="http://www.helmsleyarts.co.uk/" target="_blank" title="">Helmsley Arts Centre</a></b>
The Old Meeting House, Meeting House Court
Helmsley, North Yorkshire</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB">7.30pm; £9, concessions £8; <b><a href="http://www.helmsleyarts.co.uk/shows+on/21-11-2013" target="_blank" title="">buy tickets, and more info here</a></b><a href="http://www.helmsleyarts.co.uk/shows+on/21-11-2013" target="_blank" title="">
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Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-50664922733146650232012-10-03T16:31:00.000+02:002012-10-03T16:31:32.657+02:00BOB DYLAN & THE POETRY OF THE BLUES TOUR!In an attempt to reach the parts other blogs can't reach, I'm reviving this blog for this one new post:<br />
<br />
So. Here's the full itinerary of my UK October 2012 tour, which is
about to begin. Not quite every date is BOB DYLAN & THE POETRY OF
THE BLUES...:<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: red; font-weight: bold;">THURSDAY OCTOBER 4</span><br /> <span style="font-weight: bold;">ISLAND ARTS CENTRE, NORTHERN IRELAND</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Island Arts Centre</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">, The Island, Lisburn BT27 4RL</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Box Office: 028 92 509509</span><br /><span style="color: red; font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues</span><br />talk with loud music and rare footage</span><br /><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">8pm; tickets £10, £8, on sale now by phone:</span><br /><strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>their website seems irredeemably broken so please book via the Box Office</span></span></strong><br /> <br /><span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><strong style="color: red;">FRIDAY OCTOBER 5</strong><br /><span></span><strong>DOWN ARTS CENTRE, NORTHERN IRELAND</strong><br /> <a href="http://www.downartscentre.com/calendar/default.asp?id=3350&itemid=18" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank" title="">Down Arts Centre</a><span style="font-weight: bold;">, 2-6 Irish Street, Downpatrick, </span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Down BT30 </span></span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">6BP</span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">, UK</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Box Office 028 4461 0747</span><br /><span style="color: red; font-weight: bold;">Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues</span><br />talk with loud music and rare footage</span><br /><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">8pm; tickets £10, £8, on sale n</span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">ow</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-size: large;"><strong style="color: red; font-weight: bold;">SATURDAY OCTOBER 6</strong><br /><strong style="font-weight: bold;">CRESCENT ARTS CENTRE</strong><span style="font-weight: bold;">, BELFAST</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> <a href="http://www.crescentarts.org/" target="_blank" title="">Crescent Arts Centre</a>, 2-4 University Road</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Belfast</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">BT7 1NH</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Box Office 028 9024 2338 or <a href="https://crescentarts.ticketsolve.com/shows/873483673/events#" target="_blank" title="">online</a></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: red; font-weight: bold;">Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues</span><br />talk with loud music and rare footage<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">8pm; tickets £10, £7, on sale now</span></span><br /> <br /><span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="color: red;">FRIDAY OCTOBER 12</span></span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> THE TOLBOOTH</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">, SCOTLAND</span><br /><a href="http://tolbooth.stirling.gov.uk/tolbooth.htm" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank" title="">The Tolbooth Arts Centre</a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Jail Wynd, Stirling FK8 1DE</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Box Office 01786 274000</span><br /><span style="color: red; font-weight: bold;">Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues</span><br />talk with loud music and rare footage<br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">8pm; tickets £10, £8 on sale now</span></span></span><br /> <span></span><br /><span></span><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">SATURDAY OCTOBER 13</span><br /><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">PAISLEY MUSEUM, SCOTLAND</span></span></span><br /><a href="http://www.renfrewshire.gov.uk/events" target="_blank" title=""><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Paisley Museum</span></strong></a><strong><span style="font-size: large;">,</span></strong> <span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">60 High Street</span><br /><span></span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">Paisley PA1 2BA<br /> 0141 889 3151<br /><span></span><span style="color: red;">Working with Gerry Rafferty</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">lunchtime talk</span><br /><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;"><span>12.30pm; free admission</span></span><br /><span></span><span></span><br /><span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">SATURDAY OCTOBER 13</span></span><br /> </span><span style="font-size: large;"><strong style="font-weight: bold;">PAISLEY ARTS CENTRE</strong><span style="font-weight: bold;">, SCOTLAND</span></span><br /><span></span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://boxoffice.renfrewshire.gov.uk/PEO/show.asp" target="_blank" title="">Paisley Arts Centre</a>, New Street, Paisley PA1 1EZ<br /> </span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">Box Office</span> <span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">0141 887 1010</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: red; font-weight: bold;">Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues</span><br />talk with loud music and rare footage</span><br /><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;"><span>7.30pm; tickets £10, £6 on sale now</span></span><br /><span></span><span></span><br /><span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: red; font-weight: bold;">TUESDAY OCTOBER 16</span><br /><strong style="font-weight: bold;">GUILDHALL THEATRE</strong><span style="font-weight: bold;">, DERBY</span></span><a href="http://www.derbylive.co.uk/" target="_blank" title=""><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">Guildhall Theatre</span></a><br /><span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Market Place, Derby, DE1 3AH</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Box Office 01332 255800 or </span><a href="http://www.derbylive.co.uk/Public_Event.aspx?ID=1495" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank" title="">online</a><br /><strong style="color: red; font-weight: bold;">Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues</strong></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br />talk with loud music and rare footage<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> 7.30pm; </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">£13.25, £11.25 (but cheaper online) on sale now</span></span><br /> <br /><span></span><span style="color: red; font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 17</span><br /> <span style="font-size: large;"><strong style="font-weight: bold;">THE MET, BURY</strong></span><br /><span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://themet.biz/" target="_blank" title="">The Met</a>, Market Street, Bury, Lancs BL9 0BW</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">Box Office 0161 761 2216</span> <span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">or <a href="http://themet.biz/timetable/" target="_blank" title="">online</a></span><br /><span></span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;"><span style="color: red;">Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">talk with loud music and rare footage</span><br /><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">8pm; tickets £10 on sale now</span><br /><br /><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">THURSDAY OCTOBER 18</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">GALA, DURHAM</span></span><br /> <span style="font-size: medium; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.galadurham.co.uk/" target="_blank" title="">Gala Durham</a>, 1 Millennium Place, Town Centre,</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;">Durham DH1 1WA<br /> Box Office 0191 332 4041</span> <span style="font-size: large;">or online</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: red; font-weight: bold;">Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues</span><br />talk with loud music and rare footage</span><br /> <span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">7.45pm; tickets £15 on sale now</span><br /><span></span><br /> <span style="font-size: large;"><strong style="color: red;">FRIDAY OCTOBER 19</strong><br /> <span style="font-weight: bold;">QUEEN'S HALL, HEXHAM</span><br /><a href="http://www.queenshall.co.uk/whats-on/seasons-diary/628" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank" title="">Queen’s Hall Arts Centre</a><span style="font-weight: bold;">, Beaumont Street</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Hexham, Northumberland NE46 3LS</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Box Office 01434 652477 or online <a href="http://purchase.tickets.com/buy/TicketPurchase?agency=QUEENSHALLARTS&organ_val=24717&schedule=list&event_val=2992" target="_blank" title="">here</a></span><br /><span style="color: red; font-weight: bold;">Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues</span><br />talk with loud music and rare footage</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">7.30pm; tickets £10; on sale now</span></span><br /><span></span> <br /><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;"><span style="color: red;">MONDAY OCTOBER 22</span><br /><span>UNIVERSITY OF YORK</span></span><br /> <span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">The Berrick Saul Auditorium<br /> Humanities Research Centre<br /> University of York</span><br /><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;"><span>Heslington, York </span></span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">YO10 5DD</span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;"><span style="color: red;"></span></span><span style="color: #ff6600;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></strong></span><br />
<span style="color: #ff6600;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Bringing It All Back Home: </span></strong><strong><span style="font-size: large;">York’s Pioneer of Dylan Studies</span></strong></span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;"><br /><span>6.30pm; free public admission but by ticket;</span></span><br /><span></span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;"><span>ticket details <a href="http://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/public-lectures/autumn2012/bringing-home/" target="_blank">here</a></span></span><br /><br /><span></span><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 24</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">CANTERBURY FESTIVAL</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">2012</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> <a href="http://www.canterburyfestival.co.uk/what%27s-on/talks/michael-gray.aspx#" target="_blank" title="">Canterbury Festival</a><span style="color: #33cc00;">,</span> </span></span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">Canterbury Cathedral Lodge,<br /><span></span>The Precincts, Canterbury, Kent CT1 2EH</span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;"><span>Box Office </span>01227 787787</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: red; font-weight: bold;">Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues</span><br />talk with loud music and rare footage</span><br /> <span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">5.30pm</span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">; tickets £8</span> <span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">on sale now</span><br /><span></span><span></span><br /><span></span><span style="color: red; font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">THURSDAY OCTOBER 25</span><br /> <span style="font-size: large;"><strong>ARLINGTON ARTS CENTRE, BERKS</strong></span><br /><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.arlingtonarts.co.uk/whatson/details.php?whatsOnID=239" target="_blank" title="">Arlington Arts Centre</a>, Mary Hare, Newbury RG14 3BQ <br /> Box Office 01635 244246</span> <span style="font-size: large;"><strong>OR <a href="http://tinyurl.com/d4vxnbs" target="_blank" title="">ticketweb</a></strong></span> <span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">OR</span> <a href="mailto:boxoffice@arlingtonarts.co.uk" title=""><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">boxoffice@arlingtonarts.co.uk</span></a><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: red; font-weight: bold;">Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues</span><br />talk with loud music and rare footage</span><br /><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">8pm; tickets £10 on sale now</span> <br /><span></span><br /> <span style="font-size: large;"><strong style="color: red;">FRIDAY OCTOBER 26</strong><br /><span></span><strong>BEDWORTH ARTS CENTRE</strong>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">nr. COVENTRY & NUNEATON</span><br /><a href="http://www.bedwortharts.org.uk/" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank" title="">Bedworth Arts Centre</a><span style="font-weight: bold;">, High Street, Bedworth</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Warwickshire CV12 8NF</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Box Office 024 7664 3255 </span><a href="http://www.ticketsource.co.uk/bedworthartscentre" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank" title="">www.ticketsource.co.uk/bedworthartscentre</a><br /><span style="color: red; font-weight: bold;">Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues</span><br />talk with loud music and rare footage<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">8pm; all tickets £10, on sale now</span></span><br /><span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><strong><span style="color: red;"><span>SUNDAY OCTOBER 28</span></span></strong><br /><strong>TOTNES STUDIO LOUNGE, DEVON</strong><br /><span></span><strong><a href="http://www.studioloungetotnes.com/#" target="_blank" title="">Totnes FM Studio Lounge</a>, Unit A, The Scope Complex<br />Wills Road, Totnes TQ9 5XN<br />Box Office: 01803 862 267 / <a href="http://www.tickettailor.com/checkout/view-event/id/5472/chk/ee7e" target="_blank" title="">buy online here</a></strong></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: red;"><strong>Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues</strong></span><br />talk with loud music and rare footage</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span><strong>8pm; tickets £8 in advance, £10 on the door; on sale now</strong></span></span><br /> <br /> Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-74171969051431693982012-01-15T22:20:00.001+01:002012-01-15T22:21:40.027+01:00GOODBYE BOB BLOG<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">I've decided to call a halt to this blog. It was first created almost six years ago at the prompting of my publisher, who regarded it as a marketing tool. I'm glad it grew, and has continued to grow, into something more - not least an often provocative discussion forum - but I want to stop before it becomes a treadmill.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">I shall continue to monitor and publish comments that come in for another ten days or so from today, but after that the blog will become, frozen in cyberspace, a record of what's been contributed and published - be me and by you.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">I thank every person - and there have been many thousands - who has read the blog down the years, and I thank most gratefully all those who have participated in it more actively. Except the rude people, of course.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">That said, I've created a new blog, OUTTAKES. This can be accessed either <a href="http://michaelgrayouttakes.blogspot.com/">here</a> or from the drop-down menu cunningly titled 'Blogs' at <a href="http://www.michaelgray.net/">www.michaelgray.net</a>. I hope some readers might come with me.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">News of what I'm doing will also continue to be posted on my website and I can always be contacted directly by e-mail at <a href="mailto:michael@michaelgray.net">michael@michaelgray.net</a> . Meanwhile thank you again.</span>Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-8647029415255999502012-01-14T13:17:00.000+01:002012-01-14T13:17:17.503+01:00DYLAN DISCUSSION WEEKENDS - AN UPDATE<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I'm pleased to say that one of the three Bob Dylan Discussion Weekends coming up here at our home in May-June is now fully booked. No more places are available for May 11-13.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Places can still be booked for Friday May 4 to Sunday May 6, and for Friday June 15 to Sunday June 17.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">More details <a href="http://www.michaelgray.net/dylan-weekends.html">here</a>. </span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-47952465698767622772012-01-13T13:51:00.000+01:002012-01-13T13:51:21.992+01:00BOB PAYS TRIBUTE TO SCORSESE - AND McTELL<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/e4a1PeL5mzY" width="462"></iframe></div><br />
Great to see him so upfront, without the hat, without the keyboards and without any faltering over the words.Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-76042168082008598092012-01-13T11:53:00.000+01:002012-01-13T11:53:47.345+01:00ALLEN GINSBERG'S FARM<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://gordonballgallery.com/EastHillFarmJacket1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="302" src="http://gordonballgallery.com/EastHillFarmJacket1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<br />
It would be hard to take much of an interest in Bob Dylan's work, let alone the poetry of the 20th Century, without taking an interest in Allen Ginsberg - and having devoured his <i>Collected Poems</i>, his terrific exchange of letters with his father, and Barry Miles' fine biography, I'm pleased to learn from author Gordon Ball that his book <i>East Hill Farm: Seasons with Allen Ginsberg </i>has at last been published - in US hardback (Counterpoint, though their stated publication date is still given on amazon.com as 1 May 2012) and in a <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/East-Hill-Farm-Ginsberg-ebook/dp/B006542OJA">Kindle edition</a>.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">One of the reader reviews says this: "A fascinating and disturbing time in U.S. history is echoed in Gordon Ball's riveting memoir of a period in Allen Ginsberg's life that was pivotal in Ginsberg's move to a truly serious Buddhist practice. The Cherry Valley farm commune of upstate New York is breezed over even in Ginsberg's own poetry. But here, Ball's training as a filmmaker gives us a slowed down gander at the often hilarious interactions of visitors Gregory Corso, Herbert Huncke, Ray Bremser, Charles Plymell and Andy Clausen with Allen and longtime companion Peter Orlovsky. At the same time, Ginsberg's voluminous correspondence and exhaustive traveling, as well as Ball's own adventures with Harry Smith, Bob Dylan and John Giorno in NYC, serve up a truly satisfying feast of well-documented detail. A book I didn't want to end."</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I look forward to starting it. </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Gordon Ball is the man who proposes Bob Dylan for the Nobel Prize for Literature every year. There is an entry on him in my <i>Bob Dylan Encyclopedia.</i></div>Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-42193224489953828862012-01-10T11:29:00.000+01:002012-01-10T11:29:52.393+01:00NEW SERIES OF DYLAN DISCUSSION WEEKENDS IN FRANCE<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEion61pNDE5mqfdua9pJV7i45bRPiMdNZPYrsyyuG_Qt-smmTGRnKc3QIHmIdHuZX1PvaxcEXTQta5bhHtEGIRZRcM60lFLk5k2TF7tgTR08-a5VacHTFu_ok92yXjdDBgVbJbiUg/s1600/drawingvillaleon1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEion61pNDE5mqfdua9pJV7i45bRPiMdNZPYrsyyuG_Qt-smmTGRnKc3QIHmIdHuZX1PvaxcEXTQta5bhHtEGIRZRcM60lFLk5k2TF7tgTR08-a5VacHTFu_ok92yXjdDBgVbJbiUg/s320/drawingvillaleon1.jpg" width="308" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">We have just clinched dates for a new series of Dylan Discussion Weekends here in southwest France. There are three weekends on offer - two in early May and and one in mid-June, and details have just been posted <a href="http://www.michaelgray.net/dylan-weekends.html">here on my website</a>. We hope to see you then!</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
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</span></div>Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-71365868961292826802012-01-09T16:43:00.000+01:002012-01-09T16:43:09.839+01:00OCCASIONAL PHOTOGRAPHS: A CAFE IN JAISALMER, INDIA<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinmJq3d62U2q1RY5V0ojr8Y405Pi26N5cOGLS9ZmHtZ29OX2n-qB_utxLnLdfkWHDOeSi3CwjMH993Nw54LaDuUJK09148rWUlXHm0cjELqHL04DXrV1QQOeSrxgvBdyKwqjq6Ig/s1600/DylanCafeJaisalmerSmall.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinmJq3d62U2q1RY5V0ojr8Y405Pi26N5cOGLS9ZmHtZ29OX2n-qB_utxLnLdfkWHDOeSi3CwjMH993Nw54LaDuUJK09148rWUlXHm0cjELqHL04DXrV1QQOeSrxgvBdyKwqjq6Ig/s400/DylanCafeJaisalmerSmall.JPG" width="400" /> </a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">photo </span><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
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</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> </div>Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-21099705942929290812012-01-08T11:29:00.000+01:002012-01-08T11:29:59.331+01:00HAPPY NEW YEAR<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic56PV2UHRZ182AsG6-E3RdElessSe1MIvUm8tFgCTNraYfvJYbMuSKFOTQ2Njubw8cI-X3Oe-ZEUPBRniQSONrEGoHstmgTLPuKtd3I9i0AVJIqSU_f70-obmX6wwb1_Clhkzwg/s1600/BrendaLee%2526Elvis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic56PV2UHRZ182AsG6-E3RdElessSe1MIvUm8tFgCTNraYfvJYbMuSKFOTQ2Njubw8cI-X3Oe-ZEUPBRniQSONrEGoHstmgTLPuKtd3I9i0AVJIqSU_f70-obmX6wwb1_Clhkzwg/s400/BrendaLee%2526Elvis.jpg" width="312" /> </a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Brenda Lee reaches for Elvis; details unknown </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Hi there pop-pickers (as Alan Fluff Freeman used to say). Happy New Year to all.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I'm back from an unusually long Christmas break - first one in England since moving to France almost four years ago - and have very little Dylanalia to report. With an extravagant number of people helping decorate the tree this year, at a secret location on the south coast, we were forced to foreshorten the traditional music-while-we-work playing of our trusty Xmas records: those by Phil Spector's acts and Elvis Presley, and those on an extraordinary home-made selection compiled and given to us some years ago by Scarborough's Dr. Rock (Charles White, author of Little Richard's remarkable biography) mainly by people like Otis Redding (he actually sings 'White Christmas', and without a hint of irony or guile) but which quite rightly starts with the pubescent Brenda Lee's 'Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree'.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">For the last couple of years, naturally, our playlist has been augmented by Bob's <i>Christmas in the Heart</i>, but this time it fell victim, in its entirety, to the foreshortening process, and so we first found ourselves playing it in the car while driving around England on about the eighth day of Christmas. I must say the car speakers do it no favours, but it was removed prematurely when another family member, who was in the back seat and shall remain nameless, declared of 'Hark The Herald Angels Sing': "This is dreadful! It sounds like an old drunk in a pub."</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
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</div>Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-68548706835204476232011-12-18T13:54:00.001+01:002011-12-18T13:56:44.612+01:00<div style="background-color: #cc0000;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: #cc0000; text-align: center;"><br />
<b><span style="color: #ff6600; font-family: Almonte Snow;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #ff6600; font-family: "Almonte Snow"; font-size: 36pt; font-weight: bold;">happy christmas</span></span></b><br />
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<b><span style="color: #ff6600; font-family: Almonte Snow;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #ff6600; font-family: "Almonte Snow"; font-size: 36pt; font-weight: bold;">& new year TO ALL</span></span></b><br />
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<b><span style="color: #ff6600; font-family: Almonte Snow;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #ff6600; font-family: "Almonte Snow"; font-size: 36pt; font-weight: bold;"> </span></span></b></div>Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-26177097782921518002011-12-12T14:26:00.000+01:002011-12-12T14:26:01.010+01:00JOKERMAN by CAETANO VELOSO (1992)<div style="text-align: left;">This morning I had my attention drawn to this version of the great Dylan song 'Jokerman', thanks to our old friend C.P. Lee and via BBC radio producer Peter Everett. On first hearing of the first few lines, I thought it was just going to be one of those clumsy, slightly embarrassing vocals by someone whose first language is so obviously not English, but then I changed my view and have come to appreciate the rhapsodic shine of the musical performance, including the vocal.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><centre><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/hgaSNPhQ9vo?rel=0" width="420"></iframe></centre></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">I'm curious to know how others respond.</div>Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-78767260043175898102011-12-09T22:02:00.000+01:002011-12-09T22:02:00.597+01:00TO RAMONA 1969<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">A beautiful thing...</div><br />
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<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Thanks to zimmermanlive on YouTube and @bobdylantheband in Twitter</div>Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-30843905246707827172011-12-09T11:47:00.002+01:002011-12-09T12:13:28.452+01:00HAPPY TRAUM'S ACCOUNT OF HIS 1971 BOB DYLAN SESSION<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>I've just discovered this fascinating and warm account by Happy Traum of the very informal, relaxed recording session he did with Bob Dylan in 1971. I love the way Traum went down from Woodstock on the bus. The account, first online on November 24 this year, is here at </i><a href="http://www.homespuntapes.com/_blog/Homespun_Blog/post/A_Recording_Session_with_Bob_Dylan/"><b>Happy Traum's Homespun Blog</b></a> - <i>including a fine rare photograph. I'm re-publishing his words below, but you have to go to his site to see the photo:</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i> </i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="s1"><b>A SESSION WITH BOB DYLAN</b></span> </div><div class="p1" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>by Happy Traum</b></div><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="p1" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="s1">Just about 40 years ago, in October of 1971, I got a call from Bob Dylan asking me if I'd like record some songs with him for his "Greatest Hits, Volume II" compilation. Could I do it tomorrow, and would I bring my guitar and banjo -- and, oh yeah, how about a bass, too? (Never mind that I didn't own a bass, and had never played one in public before. I borrowed one -- fast.)</span></div><div class="p1" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="p1" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="s1">Now I realize that for most fair-to-middlin' guitar fingerpickers the odds of getting a call like this are about as likely as John Glenn calling to see if you'd like a seat on the next space shuttle, but I was fairly casual about the whole thing. You see, I had been friends with Bob since the early sixties, and had already recorded a song with him on a Folkways recording called "Broadsides, Vol. I." Of course, that was when he was recording his first lp for Columbia; now he was the best-known singer/songwriter in the world! Nevertheless, as neighbors in Woodstock, NY, we often picked together informally, so it wasn't a great leap to take what we had been doing in the living room into the studio. But was I excited? You bet I was!</span></div><div class="p1" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="p1" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="s1">So, laden with all sorts of instruments, I took the bus from Woodstock to New York City and made my way to the Columbia studios on West 54th Street. To my surprise, the entire session consisted of just Bob and me (and the engineer) in the big, nearly-empty studio. The first song Bob suggested was "Only a Hobo," one of the tunes he had recorded eight years earlier (as "Blind Boy Grunt") on our "Broadsides" session. The machines were turned on, Bob started playing, and I followed along as best I could. After two takes it was obvious that it wasn't coming together, so Bob dropped the song.</span></div><div class="p1" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="p2" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Fortunately, the next one, "I Shall Be Released," immediately caught the right spirit and we relaxed into the music. We started the song with a slightly more bouncy feel than I had heard on the Band's famous recording of the song, and it fit right into the bluesy fingerpicking style that I have always favored. Bob played it in A, so I capoed up to the fifth fret and played out of the E position, accenting the ends of lines with bass note hammer-ons and sliding 6ths and pull-offs in the treble. I joined in singing on the chorus, and before I knew it Bob was grinning and we were on to the next song. Now I was starting to have a good time!</div><div class="p2" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
<span class="s1"></span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="p2" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I had heard "Down in the Flood" in bits and pieces during the Basement Tapes sessions, but the version that we did at this recording was totally impromptu -- at least for me. It's a blues in G, so it wasn't hard to find some things to play. Again, Bob was strumming the rhythm with his flatpick, so I just tried to compliment his singing with some sliding licks and bluesy, fingerstyle fills on the high strings. The whole thing went by so fast that I didn't realize it was a take until we played it back.</div><div class="p2" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="p1" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="s1">Finally, we cut what turned out to be my favorite of that day's session, "You Ain't Going Nowhere." Bob set the pace with a strong rhythmic strum, and I tried to give the tune a rollicking, joyous feel with a frailing banjo part. I think it worked. We nailed it in two takes, singing and playing together, again with no previous rehearsal. After listening to it we decided it needed a little extra kick, so I made my debut as a bassist. I must admit it was a pretty visible way to start playing in public, but Bob and the engineer seemed to like what I did so my part stayed in. Not long after that session, Bob invited me to play bass on a date he was producing for Allen Ginsberg, so my career as a bassist stayed high-profile for a little while longer before disappearing into a merciful obscurity.</span></div><div class="p1" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="s1"><br />
</span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><br />
<div class="p1" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="s1">As I re-listen to the CD today I can still hear the informal, home-style picking that so many listeners have told me they like about those particular performances. There's a relaxed intimacy there that I like to think is partly due to our friendship, and to the many occasions in which we sat around the house playing the old songs. Of course, much of it was due to Bob's studio technique at the time: establish a good "feel," play the song as if you really mean what you're singing about, and get it in one or two takes. If you need more than that, it's not happening, so move on. It's a way of working that has created some unbelievably great recorded performances over the years, and I have always been incredibly proud to have been a part of these three.</span></div><div class="p1" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="p1" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i> </i></div>Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-75806980341411423512011-12-09T10:03:00.001+01:002011-12-09T11:49:30.541+01:00HUBERT SUMLIN POSTSCRIPT<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">I'm delighted to learn that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are going to pay for Hubert Sumlin's funeral. The story, announced by Hubert's partner Toni Ann, is in <i>Rolling Stone </i>magazine <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/mick-jagger-and-keith-richards-will-pay-for-hubert-sumlins-funeral-20111208"><b>here</b></a>.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I'm told that Keith Richards also paid for Sumlin's cancer treatment.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">It's good to see rich rock stars put their hands in their pockets to help those whose music has so helped them...</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-26454004470000638342011-12-08T14:23:00.000+01:002011-12-08T14:23:52.061+01:00INTERVIEW BY THE BOB DYLAN EXAMINER<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Harold Lepidus, who runs the site <i>Bob Dylan Examiner</i>, has just put up an interview he conducted with me earlier this week. It's <a href="http://www.examiner.com/bob-dylan-in-national/the-dylan-holiday-gift-guide-no-1-michael-gray-s-bob-dylan-encyclopedia-cd"><b>here</b></a> and also here, including his very complimentary intro:</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">What do you get for the Bob Dylan fan who has everything? Chances are he or she already owns the usual suspects - <i>Christmas In The Heart, </i><i>The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams, </i><i>Brandeis 1963, The Witmark Demos, The Original Mono Recordings</i>. It's time to think outside the box set.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">My first suggestion for this holiday season is an audio CD by renowned Bob Dylan expert Michael Gray. Earlier this year he released <i><a href="http://bit.ly/rGTEfZ" rel="nofollow">Bob Dylan Encyclopedia Greatest Hits</a>, </i>a compact disc featuring eleven "chapter" readings from his mammoth book, <i>Bob Dylan Encyclopedia.</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i> </i></div><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">If you are not familiar with Gray's work, you should know he wrote <i>Song & Dance Man, </i>the first serious, long form study of Dylan's music back in the early 1970s. That seminal work, which has since been updated twice, is the bedrock of all current Dylan criticism. When I read the second edition of <i>Song & Dance Man </i>in 1981, it opened a door into Dylan's musical and literary roots that I could not have imagined existed. Gray's writing was so insightful and powerful that it took me a while to figure out my own separate opinions of Dylan's oeuvre. It reinvigorated my own Dylan fanaticism, landed me in used record stores all over Boston, and made me an outcast among my co-workers who couldn't understand my fascination with this supposed has-been.</div><div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
Gray still loves to discuss and dissect Dylan's work. He even sounded envious that I saw Dylan and the Band in 1974, though he witnessed the legendary 1966 Liverpool show with the Hawks that produced the much sought after live b-side, "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues."<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF-0xXGnPlyRqF1Y8yiFc_9GTeJL6XLPrkf6PjxPK9zkHJ9jNmT0bJORLPxlWSg-qzwYKLSX7j8jg817or7KsYStukuXP9RYZoo4IRUQ3v1teITmDZ3s_FVtVbleGbiKdbfY-vww/s1600/CDfrontcoverthumbnail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF-0xXGnPlyRqF1Y8yiFc_9GTeJL6XLPrkf6PjxPK9zkHJ9jNmT0bJORLPxlWSg-qzwYKLSX7j8jg817or7KsYStukuXP9RYZoo4IRUQ3v1teITmDZ3s_FVtVbleGbiKdbfY-vww/s1600/CDfrontcoverthumbnail.jpg" /></a></div>Here is Gray discussing <a href="http://bit.ly/rGTEfZ" rel="nofollow">his new CD</a>, writing liner notes for the recent live Brandeis CD, and talking about Dylan for a living.<br />
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<i><b>How was your recent speaking tour?</b></i><br />
<br />
I couldn’t call it a tour - it was a short trip to deliver a talk at a Dylan Birthday Celebration Conference at the University of Cardiff in South Wales, and also to take part in a panel discussion about connexions between Bob Dylan and the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (who had been a hero to the Beats). In the end, because of the illness of one of the other scheduled speakers, I gave two talks rather than one. And after Cardiff, those of us on the platform for the panel discussion staged a similar event at the lovely Taliesin Arts Centre in Swansea (also in South Wales).<br />
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<i><b>How did you come up with the idea of putting out your own spoken word CD?</b></i><br />
<br />
Well, I’ve been noticing the increased popularity of audio-books for a long time now - people get tired of trashy radio stations when they’re driving around, and the new technology - things like the iPod - make it so much easier to listen to things doing other stuff. And while most people feel they’re too busy to have much time for reading, an audio-book means someone else can be reading to you while you’re doing other stuff. But of course the book <i>The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia</i> is 750,000 words - far too big to be an audio-book (or, for that matter, to be translated into other languages) - so the only option was an audio-book of <i>selected</i> entries. So it’s about an hour’s worth, a reasonable single-CD’s length, in a really attractive digipak. Well I think so, anyway. Of course, you don’t have to buy it as a CD, you can download either the whole thing or just individual tracks.<br />
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<i><b>My favorite aspect of the CD is when you place Dylan's activities in the context of its time (Records found in the rear of department stores behind vacuum cleaners, only going to one local concert per tour, etc.). How important was that in your writing?</b></i><br />
<br />
Placing Dylan’s past in the context of the time has always been important to me. Dylan’s work is music, but it’s also history. And the work you’re referring to in those examples is from the 1960s, and the world was different then in so many, many ways. In my case I’m old enough that I can describe how things were, and how they were perceived, in the 1960s from personal experience - and part of the pleasure of being able to draw on that experience in writing about it almost half a century later is to be able to smile, ruefully and fondly, at my own generation’s innocence, folly, enthusiasm and hope. Naturally if you just drone on about the 60s, people who are young now will turn off - but if they’re interested in Bob Dylan’s work, and as you know, many are, then they’re interested in the context. All kinds of things they might assume are as natural as the air we breathe in fact had to be invented, and so for today’s youthful music fans, the odd shaft of light received from the quaint, vanished world of the recent past can be compelling. Mostly people can relate easily to the music of the 1950s onwards, but they’re hearing it from within a very different reality. And few things have changed as radically as how we access music now.<br />
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<i><b>The CD reminds me of a great lost bootleg, with all periods of Dylan's career covered in a random order, from long, rhapsodic meditations of great works like </b></i><b>Blood On The Tracks</b><i><b> and </b></i><b>"Love & Theft"</b><i><b> to imagining Dylan frying an egg on stage. How did you choose what to include, and in what order? Did the thought of a Dylan bootleg even cross your mind when deciding what would make the final cut?</b></i><br />
<br />
Never thought about Dylan bootlegs at all, at the time. I just wanted a broad sample of kinds of entry - in terms of period, of length of text (and therefore length of track), of subject and of mood. I found that process of choosing very challenging, but fun. I decided early on, for instance, not to try to include any of the entries on specific literary or musical figures who had been big influences on Dylan - not because they’re less interesting than other kinds of entry: on the contrary - but because unless it was going to become a 5 or 6-CD box set, it would be really out of balance to have, say, 15 minutes on Robert Johnson or 10 minutes on Hank Williams or, you know, 42 minutes on William Blake when so many other equally important influences would have to be missed out. And this made it so clear that one of the main criteria for choosing entries had to be, <i>how long does it take to read this entry aloud? </i>Which led to deliberately looking for a couple of really short ones and balancing that out with a couple of long ones. It wasn’t hard to remember the one about frying an egg on stage, when I was thinking about short ones, and for lengthy ones it seemed only right to choose entries that concentrated on major Dylan <i>works.</i> The entry in the book on <i>Blonde On Blonde</i> is too brief, but we tried <i>Blood On The Tracks</i> and that came in at just over 10 minutes, which seemed appropriate - and then I especially honed in on <i>“Love and Theft”</i> because I’ve always felt, right from the moment I first heard it, that it’s one of his major albums, and it has the extra virtue of being from the 21st Century, and I didn’t want the audio-book to just be harking back to the earliest decades. It was also the album that doesn’t feature in my previous large Dylan book, <i>Song & Dance Man III</i>, because that book was completed before <i>“Love and Theft”</i> existed. And the entry on Duluth, the place, begged to be included in the audio-book because it took us all the way back, way back further than the 1960s, to Bob Dylan’s birth.<br />
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<i><b>After decades of music analysis and criticism, what was it like to record your own CD?</b></i><br />
<br />
I can’t say it felt strange to be recording an audio-book - after all, it’s entirely spoken word, and I’ve been giving talks at arts festivals and colleges and so on for around ten years now: and <i>that </i>is the tremendous contrast to writing the books. When I’m writing, my working life is spent alone at the word-processor. To get out and have a live audience, and meet some of my readers, and to be standing on a stage speaking in public instead of sitting at home writing in private: that’s the great contrast. And actually one of the tracks on <i>Bob Dylan Encyclopedia Greatest Hits</i> is about the song ‘Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat’ - about how it’s so uniquely Dylan yet also coachbuilt on the chassis of an old Lightnin' Hopkins song - and that’s an entry I’ve often read out to audiences at my talks. So I’ve known how that works when it’s read aloud: and of course for people who buy the CD version of the audiobook at the end of one of my talks, that track works as a souvenir of the event.<br />
<br />
<i><b>I can imagine Dylan fans enjoying your CD on a long drive (preferably to a Dylan concert), or as a surprise track when listening to their iPod on shuffle. Did you have any preconceived notions of how Dylan fans would listen to the CD, and what has been the feedback so far?</b></i><br />
<br />
My only preconception was that people would probably use a shuffle feature, much like the way that people use the book - by dipping in and out of it, opening it at random, that kind of thing. Feedback has been good - but, you know, it hasn’t soared up the charts or anything!<br />
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<i><b>What was it like to write the liner notes to the second version of Dylan's</b></i><b> Brandeis </b><i><b>CD? How did it come about?</b></i><br />
<br />
It was a pleasant surprise to be asked, though it is, I have to say, a very minor album. The notes I wrote necessarily had to big it up - but yes, a good surprise to be approached. I was e-mailed by someone at Special Projects at Sony-Legacy, and they asked me, and I said I’d be happy to do it, and they FedEx’d me the material (though of course I had it anyway!) and then when I’d written the piece, I sent it to them and they ran it past Jeff Rosen and he said it was “great” and there you have it. I have to say I don’t like the design they’ve used for the notes on the CD, but the vinyl version looks really terrific - the whole sleeve, back and front, has been made to look exactly as if it’s an LP <i>from</i> 1963... except that, very kindly, they let me put my website address under my name: which of course is a jarring note in terms of period, but a kindness to me.<br />
<br />
<i><b>How can people order the CD, or any of your books?</b></i><br />
<br />
They can get <i>Bob Dylan Encyclopedia Greatest Hits </i>as a download from the record company, <a href="http://www.lookatmedance.co.uk/" rel="nofollow">www.lookatmedance.co.uk</a> or from all the usual suspects, iTunes included, and they can buy the CD directly from my website: and if they do that, they have the option to either receive it still shrinkwrapped or else unshrinkwrapped but signed. My books, well, <i>Song & Dance Man III </i>is finally out of print, after eleven years, but the 2008 <i>Bob Dylan Encyclopedia</i> paperback and my biography of Blind Willie McTell, <i>Hand Me My Travelin’ Shoes</i>, can be bought from any good bookshop or from Amazon, and if people want a signed and/or inscribed copy, they can get them from<a href="http://www.michaelgray.net/shop.html" rel="nofollow"> my website</a><a href="http://./">.</a> Meanwhile, thanks Harold - pleasure to talk.<br />
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</div></div>Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-82082727261810557472011-12-07T13:22:00.000+01:002011-12-07T13:22:35.421+01:00THERE IS A BOB REFERENCE IN HERE...<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="width: 340px;"><tbody>
<tr> <td colspan="2" style="padding-bottom: 0cm; padding-left: 0cm; padding-right: 0cm; padding-top: 0cm; width: 255pt;" valign="top" width="340"><h1 style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Awakenings: A Kronos Quartet Residency</span></h1><h2 style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Early Music</span></h2><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span class="black16"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">27 January 2012 / 19:30</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"><br />
<span class="black16">Wilton's Music Hall</span></span><br />
Graces Alley<br />
London<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
E1 8JB<span class="apple-converted-space"><br />
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For this concert, the group is interpreting "early" in broader ways than the common definition of Early Music. In some cases they are early works in a composer's output; in the case of Lizee's<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Death to Kosmische</span></i>, it's a reference to early electronic music - and the group plays some rudimentary electronic instruments like Stylophones in the piece. "Early" can also refer to a different mode of human existence, as in the traditional works programmed. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Nicole Lizée</span></b> </span><br />
<span class="apple-converted-space">Death to Kosmische<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">UK premiere</span></i><i><br />
</i><b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Hildegard von Bingen (arr. Marianne Pfau)</span></b> </span><br />
<span class="apple-converted-space">O Virtus Sapientie<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Traditional (arr. Kronos, transc. Ljova)</span></b> </span><br />
<span class="apple-converted-space">Tusen Tankar (A Thousand Thoughts)<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Anton Webern</span></b> </span><br />
<span class="apple-converted-space">Six Bagatelles, Op. 9<br />
<b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Philip Glass (arr. Kronos Quartet)</span></b> </span><br />
<span class="apple-converted-space">Modern Love Waltz<i><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"> European premiere</span></i><i><br />
</i><b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Valentin Silvestrov</span></b> </span><br />
<span class="apple-converted-space">String Quartet No. 3<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">World premiere</span></i><i><br />
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INTERVAL</span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Charles Ives</span></b></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: small;">Scherzo<br />
<b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Morton Feldman</span></b> </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: small;">Structures<br />
<b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Bob Dylan (arr. Philip Glass, additional orchestration by Kronos)</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span> </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: small;">Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">UK premiere</span></i><i><br />
</i><b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Dan Visconti</span></b> </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: small;">Love Bleeds Radiant <i><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">UK premiere</span></i><i><br />
</i><b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Traditional (arr. Jacob Garchik)</span></b> </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: small;">“Zari” Ritual Lamentation<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">UK premiere</span></i><i><br />
</i><b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Traditional (arr. Jacob Garchik)</span></b> </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: small;">Boyiwa (Song of Mourning over a Corpse)<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">UK premiere</span></i><i><br />
</i><b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Witold Lutoslawski</span></b> </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: small;">“Funebre”<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">from</span></i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>String Quartet<br />
<b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Rahul Dev Burman (arr. Stephen Prutsman / Kronos)</span></b> </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: small;">Nodir Pare Utthchhe Dhnoa (Smoke Rises Across the River)<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Alfred Schnittke (arr. Kronos)</span></b> </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9pt;"><span style="font-size: small;">Collected Songs Where Every Verse is Filled with Grief</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
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Programme subject to change<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">The Kronos Quartet :</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><b> </b></span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">David Harrington</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><b> </b></span>violin<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">John Sherba</span></b>violin<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Hank Dutt</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><b> </b></span>viola<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Jeffrey Zeigler</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><b> </b></span>cello<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9pt;">Tickets</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9pt;">: £20 / 25 Unreserved seating</span><br />
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</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9pt;"><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-71478312775378968832011-12-06T11:02:00.000+01:002011-12-06T11:02:49.242+01:00THE LATE, GREAT HUBERT SUMLINHubert Sumlin, guitarist, died the day before yesterday, at the age of 80. My own tribute was written while he was still alive, inside the entry for Howlin Wolf in <i>The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia</i>. I wrote that...<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">... the main guitarist Wolf used from 1954 onwards was the consummate Hubert Sumlin, whose best work is amongst the finest electric guitar playing in the universe. He plays solos of divine, deranged descending notes, tense as steel cable, grungy as hot-rod cars crashing, and as piercing as God cracking open the sky. Howlin’ Wolf brought Sumlin up to Chicago from the south... Hubert Sumlin’s influence is as plain as lightning on MIKE BLOOMFIELD - you can hear it on ‘Maggie’s Farm’, Dylan’s electric début performance at the Newport Folk Festival of 1965 - and on ROBBIE ROBERTSON, as you can hear equally on the 1966 Dylan concert performances and the later album <i>Planet Waves</i>.</blockquote>I'd like to add that regardless of whom he influenced, Hubert Sumlin was <i>it. </i>If you want just one sample of his shuddering prowess, listen to Howlin Wolf's completely brilliant 'Goin' Down Slow' (on which the monologue is not by Wolf but by Willie Dixon). Sumlin was young then, while the song asks the singer and speaker to sound old, and the way Sumlin brings together the pent-up passion of youth and the song's dramatic thrust is sheer genius. It's my single all-time favourite slice of guitarwork, and it's here:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w0MIQHymToA?rel=0" width="420"></iframe></div>Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-36072289295451452222011-12-05T18:33:00.000+01:002011-12-05T18:33:02.025+01:00WHEREVER THE CHILDREN GO, I'LL FOLLOW THEM...<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">And now, Bob Dylan for children: the <i>Blowin' In The Wind </i>children's book: <a href="http://celebritybabies.people.com/2011/12/02/bob-dylan-blowin-in-the-wind-childrens-book-and-cd/"><b>here</b></a> - a page on which you'll see Bob involuntarily keeping very bad company: <i>Piers Morgan </i>even. I mention it as a public service warning. Just writing his name makes me feel unclean.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div>Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-35413887923924987152011-11-29T09:59:00.000+01:002011-11-29T09:59:04.018+01:00PETER NARVAEZ<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheow-lynh73czpWpF1a9xxoYZF1SypiA1rAcpTwoia79_RYFVsnTpw23Tffo9uXTm1sofHgKJKAZ0K_lPI9gsbvEqZ-Y69JjLBeYOjP3_vtcszf8UllfKdlO_DvX5MlbFOKaNF0A/s1600/NarvaezPeterSomeGoodBlues.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="353" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheow-lynh73czpWpF1a9xxoYZF1SypiA1rAcpTwoia79_RYFVsnTpw23Tffo9uXTm1sofHgKJKAZ0K_lPI9gsbvEqZ-Y69JjLBeYOjP3_vtcszf8UllfKdlO_DvX5MlbFOKaNF0A/s400/NarvaezPeterSomeGoodBlues.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I have been very saddened to learn of the death, earlier this month, of folklorist, blues musician and cultural historian of Newfoundland, Peter Narváez. He died of lung cancer, aged 69, on November 11.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">He was an important figure on the music scene, as <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/newfoundland-musician-was-a-man-of-many-talents/article2251569/print/">this <i>Globe and Mail</i> obituary</a> describes. He was also proud to be able to say that he had played music with Skip James, Sleepy John Estes, Yank Rachell, Big Joe Williams, Bukka White, Victoria Spivey, Johnny Shines, Fred McDowell and others, and it was his resourceful recording of Skip James’ concert in Bloomington IN in March 1968 that was given official release in 1999.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">He was also a good friend to innumerable people - in my case initially and especially in the mid-1980s when I spent three months in Newfoundland and got to know him almost immediately I arrived.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Peter introduced me to the several invaluable 1000-pages-each hardbacks <i>Blues Lyric Poetry: A Concordance</i> and <i>Blues Lyric Poetry: An Anthology</i> by Michael Taft - from which I came to realise how enormously Bob Dylan had drawn upon, and must have known inside-out, that great ocean of pre-war blues work. Without Peter’s lead, the huge chapter on Dylan and the blues in my book <i>Song & Dance Man III</i> could not have happened - nor the many talks on <i>Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues </i><i></i>I have given in recent years.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Peter also gave me a great deal of other material about, and intelligent, enthusiastic comment on, the pre-war blues, including photocopying for me the sleevenotes of many rare vinyl albums that featured Blind Willie McTell - an invaluable help when, 20 years later, I was writing <i>Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell</i>. I owe Peter a great deal.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">He shared his time very generously - at his home, at the Ship Inn in St.Johns (a live-music pub still numinous in my memory) and in showing me rural outposts he loved. He visited us in England a couple of times in later years, endearing himself immediately to our then-small children, and always sent me advance copies of his CDs. (The photo above is of the front cover of the most recent.)</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">He last wrote to me, as cheerfully as ever, four days after his birthday this year. We have all lost a first-rate guitarist and a distinguished folklorist; some of us have also lost a gregarious, warm-hearted, shrewd-minded friend.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
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</div>Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-51833862311613804192011-11-27T12:29:00.000+01:002011-11-27T12:29:21.672+01:00DON DeVITO<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.positively-bobdylan.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/don_devito.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://www.positively-bobdylan.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/don_devito.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Harold Lepidus, of <i>Dylan Examiner</i>, has published (online) a (possibly unconfirmed) report that Don DeVito, producer of <i>Desire </i>album and several other Dylan albums, has died. The report is <a href="http://www.examiner.com/bob-dylan-in-national/bob-dylan-producer-don-devito-columbia-records-a-r-executive-has-died"><b>here</b></a>.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
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</span></div>Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-18523267613681763582011-11-27T12:12:00.000+01:002011-11-27T12:12:34.978+01:00JEROME ARNOLD: HAPPY 75th BIRTHDAY<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYzTFg-0RyYNO12rmo_1vHnhyphenhyphenahOvTa26h_A9aGNjI0t_be4n3cNj9vn97OhZyQnT7mot-ckuucvYhHBLcVBB8wad9ZMR1tfqQJRbP0kC3FLXFPNJBRT1HVi3z5GRKgQZ7cbaa/s400/dylan-newport-sepia%5B1%5D.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYzTFg-0RyYNO12rmo_1vHnhyphenhyphenahOvTa26h_A9aGNjI0t_be4n3cNj9vn97OhZyQnT7mot-ckuucvYhHBLcVBB8wad9ZMR1tfqQJRbP0kC3FLXFPNJBRT1HVi3z5GRKgQZ7cbaa/s400/dylan-newport-sepia%5B1%5D.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i> Jerome Arnold, bass-player for Howlin Wolf and in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band - and thereby the man who played bass at Newport 1965 for Bob Dylan's debute electric performance - turned 75 yesterday. An interesting man, who subsequently changed his name to Julio Finn (which Wikipedia still doesn't seem to know), here's his entry in my</i> Bob Dylan Encyclopedia:</span><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><b><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Arnold, Jerome [1936 - ] </span></b><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Jerome Arnold, a year younger than his more famous harmonica-playing brother Billy Boy Arnold, was born in Chicago on November 26, 1936. He was playing bass guitar in the city in the 1950s and from around 1957 played in HOWLIN WOLF’s band (though he didn’t play on Wolf’s records till the 1962 session that yielded ‘Tail Dragger’, to which the lyric of Dylan’s 1990 blues ‘Cat’s In The Well’ slyly alludes.) He and SAM LAY were poached from Wolf in 1963 by PAUL BUTTERFIELD, who was forming the pioneering Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Arnold and Lay were the bi-racial band’s black members, and the authentic Chicago blues rhythm section on which the band’s white soloists built. Arnold kept things solid when MIKE BLOOMFIELD introduced Indian music into the band on their second album, East-West, yet while reportedly uneasy with the ‘progressive’ organ-playing of Mark Naftalin (who joined in 1964), he was more than capable of laying down jazz-rooted bass lines flowing around behind Bloomfield on the 8-minute-long ‘Work Song’, which emerged on the Bloomfield compilation <i>Don’t Say That I Ain’t Your Man: Essential Blues 1964-1969</i>. He continued to play on Howlin’ Wolf records after joining the Butterfield outfit. </span><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> Arnold, described by Butterfield Blues Band enthusiast Charles Sawyer as ‘quiet and unassuming; a conservative dresser given to double knits and loafers’, was nevertheless one of those who played behind Dylan - with Bloomfield, AL KOOPER, BARRY GOLDBERG and Sam Lay - at Dylan’s controversial electric début at the 1965 NEWPORT FOLK FESTIVAL. It was the only time he played behind Dylan; he continued with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which Butterfield disbanded in 1972. </span><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> By 1978 he had changed his name to Julio Finn and moved to London. Now playing more harmonica than bass, he played with jazz acts, including Archie Shepp (for instance on the album <i>Black Gipsy</i>) and the Art Ensemble of Chicago (<i>Certain Blacks</i>, recorded in Paris in 1970). On the 1970 eponymously-titled album by Archie Shepp & Philly Joe Jones, Finn is credited as composer of the 21-minute-long ‘Howling in the Silence’, on which he contributes vocals as well as harmonica. </span><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> In 1981 he was asked to write the sleevenotes for the UK label Charley’s album <i>Crying and Pleading</i>, by his brother Billy Boy Arnold. He agreed, mentioned their relationship in his notes but still signed as Julio Finn. Interested in gay rights and in black history, he wrote the 1986 book <i>The Blues Man: The Musical Heritage of Black Men and Women in the Americas</i>, which was published in London by Quartet Books. </span><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> Finn / Arnold still keeps open his playing and academic options, and still ranges widely without abandoning the blues. In 1998 he played harmonica on the Linton Kwesi Johnson album <i>Independent Intavenshan</i>; in 2000 he was the respondent at a panel discussion on ‘The Blues as Individual and Collective History’ at a conference on ‘The Blues Tradition’ at Penn State University. </span><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">[Bob Dylan with Jerome Arnold et al: ‘Maggie’s Farm’, ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ & ‘It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry’, Newport RI, 25 Jul 1965. Charles Sawyer quote from ‘Blues With A Feeling: A Biography of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band’, 1994, online Jul 2 2005 at <a href="http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/%7Esawyer/bwf.html"><i>www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~sawyer/bwf.html</i></a>.] </span></span><br />
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<br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /> <br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /> <br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /> <br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" />Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-63535763517705001522011-11-24T12:10:00.000+01:002011-11-24T12:10:41.298+01:00TWO NIGHTS AT HAMMERSMITH: GUEST POST BY NIGEL HINTON<i>I'm delighted to give over this post to the writer Nigel Hinton. It seems to me to encompass all the pros and cons of current Bob Dylan - and to be full of humanity and verve:</i><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Of course, so much of how one reacts to a live show can depend on circumstances and mood. My c + m on Saturday were not very good. I’m the same age as Bob and it was hard <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>work standing, still and squashed, for 3 and a half hours. I was surrounded by newbies agog at seeing Knopfler and Bob - "You know that Denzel Washington film about a boxer? You know, he's accused of murder. Well, Dylan made a song about him. It's eight minutes long!" "Eight? He's a legend, innit.". I also fell into brief conversation with a Norwegian guy in his fifties who had seen him over a hundred times and admitted that 60% of those shows had been mediocre at best. "But it is when he is great that makes it worth it. I think tonight he will be great."</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">After about four songs of Dylan's set, a young guy in his early twenties and his fat little girlfriend came back towards us - probably because, being so short, the girl hadn't been able to see where they had been - and peremptorily displaced us. The Norwegian was edged sideways to behind a tall guy where he couldn't see and me back a couple of steps where I could still see. The Norwegian leaned in and said something to the guy - I can't imagine it could have been anything other than a mild rebuke. Whereupon the young guy grabbed hold of the Norwegian by his jacket, pulled him close and said, "What? Don't fucking speak like that to me. You fucking hear? Speak nice or I'll tear your fucking throat out!" Then he pushed the guy who staggered into some other people before righting himself and trying to go on listening to the show. A couple of songs later the young guy turned again to the Norwegian who had said and done nothing and twice repeated his threat to "Fucking tear your fucking throat out". This was the end of the exchanges and the young guy continued to appear to be enraptured by the music when not necking his girlfriend who twice spent some longish time reading her text messages. He particularly responded to those crowd-pleasing, climactic build-ups that Bob understands gets the audience going and feeling that they are seeing something good and powerfully significant rather than the primitive rabble rousing which it is.</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">So, I was not really in the mood to enter into the spirit of what all those people round me obviously thought was so wonderful that they were obliged to record it for posterity on their annoyingly, distractingly, held-aloft mobile phones. I was feeling misanthropic. So, tough on Bob. I thought the show started reasonably - the voice was not too phlegmy and it seemed strong. Don't Think Twice was OK-ish. Things Have Changed was OK too but a bit of a blur. I was happy to hear Mississippi live and it was respectable. Then it all started to go downhill for me. Honest With Me was forceful but I dislike the song and could hardly hear a word. Then he seriously started to get into that find-a-doodle-on-the-organ-and-then-adapt-the-melody-of-the-song-to-it mode, especially on Hattie Carroll and Hard Rain. I actually was less offended by Hattie Carroll , because I thought the silly melody he found was quite pretty, though obviously inappropriate. The nadir for me was Hard Rain, where the three note baby fairground nursery jingle was completely inane. People round me went apeshit. And even madder when he whipped them into a frenzy with Highway 61. Then came Thin Man and its echo which I found sad and cheap - though he delivers it with some force. I can't even be bothered to remember the rest. Although I did notice the "Oh I am so bored" hand on hip while I play a few silly doodles with two fingers on my organ stance which I suppose other people take as charming or amusing.</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">So, you can imagine I was not expecting much for Monday, and Bob goes and confounds me again. </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Was it me? Mood and circumstances? I was seated, so easier on my hips, but a long, long way back in the balcony and only able to get close through the use of binoculars. And seated or not, I was still depressed by much of humanity, and still prey to murderous thoughts as people bobbed up and down and shuffled along rows to get their drinks - is it because they were demand fed as babies that they can't last 90 minutes without shoving something down their throat? And seemingly more intent on talking to their neighbour, or texting to absent friends - "Hi I'm on the train. Oh no I'm not - I'm at a rock concert. Freaking Bob Dylan for chrissakes", or waving their phones around recording the moment rather than living it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Or was it him? Certainly there were none of the more grotesque manglings like Hattie Carroll and Hard Rain and much less of that doodle riff becomes doodle sung melody. And he sang Forgetful Heart and Man In the Long Black Coat and It's All Over Now Baby Blue and Desolation Row and Forever Young - and I like all those songs and haven't had them done to death. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Me? Him? I honestly don't know. But whatever, all I can report is the effect of whatever it was, and I wasn't alone: my wife and the two friends who came with us had the same reaction, I felt privileged to be there. It was as if all the failings and inconsistencies which were still indubitably there did not matter. Somehow the overall effect reached out and touched me and evaded my critical mind. And moved me. And filled me with love and gratitude to the guy standing on stage, for all he has given me over the years. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I genuinely don't know if the show was a good show and perhaps recordings of it will sound awful and give the lie to my reaction. All I can say is how it felt for me. My heart opened. And everything – this time his gauche movements seemed to make him look like a toreador: stylish arrogant hand on hip like the imagined young bridegroom in Romance in Durango with his new boots and an earring of gold; his clumsy keyboard playing; his sudden darting leg movements; the stuttering and tentative harmonica playing; even the rabble rousing band thrashes; everything - came together and made sense (and that is definitely not the right phrase but as close as I can get). Fitted, perhaps. It came together and took me into its embrace and made me feel the vulnerablity and transience of song, and me, and Bob, and Life. The first five songs softened me - yes, even Honest With Me, yes, even Spirit on the Water from that album I dislike - then Forgetful Heart undid me and I was there with him, engaged, uncritical, open. So that by the time we got to Forever Young I was trembling with emotion and as Mark Knopfler sang the line "May your song always be sung" and gestured towards Bob, tears sprang and I was overcome with love and gratitude.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Perhaps I was in the grip of some kind of semi-religious delusion. I honestly can't explain it. And maybe someone else would have thought it was a shit show and I wouldn't be able to argue with them. All I can say is that I have reported accurately what, inexplicably, happened to me. He's done it to me before, of course, in whole shows in 78 and 90, in some songs on other tours, and so many times on disc - lifted me to somewhere that is not ordinary, into a kind of ecstatic state. Where involuntary moans or sighs or little bubbles of joy are jolted out of you because he has touched you with his genius, a touch of genius which has, you suspect but can’t be sure, given you a glimpse of something beyond. Truth and Beauty. Something ineffable. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">But who would have thought he could do it to me now? Not me.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">So, him or me? Perhaps it was both of us. For,compared to those other times in the past, I've not known before such a feeling of fragility and kinship with him. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Like two old men, I guess.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-4757288202930773782011-11-24T12:02:00.000+01:002011-11-24T12:02:53.480+01:00MUCH BETTER VIDEO OF THAT TOUR-END FOREVER YOUNG<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;">Here's a better video version of the final song of the final night of Dylan's European tour, thanks to YouTube user <i>Knopflermania</i>:</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ghSd9kzxfgk?feature=player_embedded" width="480"></iframe>,</div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And I'm about to post a superlative piece about Two Nights At Hammersmith by the wonderful Nigel Hinton.</span></div>Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-79812131474658853572011-11-22T18:03:00.000+01:002011-11-22T18:03:35.440+01:00<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/8du76uTjQsI?feature=player_embedded" width="480"></iframe></div>Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23419289.post-76221538145257709132011-11-22T12:56:00.001+01:002011-11-23T18:16:15.303+01:00BOB DYLAN, MICK GOLD, PAOLO BRILLO AT HAMMERSMITH<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Mick Gold has sent me (and others, it must be said) his review of / thoughts on Bob at Hammersmith last night. And I'm pleased to say that Paolo Brillo has sent me more of his truly exceptional photos from the same venue. Here they are:</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">Bob-cats pushed relentlessly forward against the bar at the front of the former Hammersmith Odeon, hats on their heads. Mark Knopfler was caressing liquid guitar solos from his Stratocaster. On Brothers In Arms, the notes flowed down his fretboard like drops of sonic quicksilver.</div><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">A random cross-section of the audience (i.e. two men standing next to me) told me their main motive for coming to see Bob was “He may not be back again”. One of them said, “Once we came to listen to him. Now we come to be in his presence.” There was plenty of presence tonight.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy3Aw2d-xgu43txf1am8PVCfZZB2RadCK7rrqhi-G04wK0ebu5sonR3kpwF4-Wxni5zGEj-0g9DbVxehXszZO72UJjG2wjqpGDa4x_KNw4TVCtHKAmVdaHCnK4hh9rft-K_pbe6g/s1600/DSC_1644.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy3Aw2d-xgu43txf1am8PVCfZZB2RadCK7rrqhi-G04wK0ebu5sonR3kpwF4-Wxni5zGEj-0g9DbVxehXszZO72UJjG2wjqpGDa4x_KNw4TVCtHKAmVdaHCnK4hh9rft-K_pbe6g/s400/DSC_1644.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">Bob and the band kicked of with Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat, with Mark Knopfler and Charlie crouching and strutting in gun-slinger guitar poses. It’s All Over Now Baby Blue had a staccato vocal rhythm, with fluid guitar breaks from Knopfler holding things together. On Things Have Changed, Bob delivered high, keening harp solos, his notes cutting across Knopfler’s guitar. George Recile played a racket at the end, banging the sides of the drums, churning up the rhythm.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Forgetful Heart was one of the highlights of the evening, a lovely, simple tune bouncing off Donnie’s fiddle. Those haunting last words, “The door has closed forever more, If indeed there ever was a door” were delivered with a dying fall. One of my favourites, Man In The Long Black Coat, was enlivened by a slick, faster rhythm which suited the song. As Bob sang, “When she stopped him to ask if he wanted to dance, He had a face like a mask”, a self-deprecating grin flitted across his face. All evening there were a series of grins and frowns and little laughs, like micro-emotions scurrying over that face.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiehcngnAC_QHxvCk6_U6LpLt-sEvQVYKLsNyLe76Q4GJYccfY5FD2lqLM58g-iHHuatM3BuZ4CP-zQHBj1sHvHcrLQsulIyWBEJ9XR5D8dgoCBNg4G_2vgrVcodt_ry6Y5Lr9Iw/s1600/DSC_2308.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiehcngnAC_QHxvCk6_U6LpLt-sEvQVYKLsNyLe76Q4GJYccfY5FD2lqLM58g-iHHuatM3BuZ4CP-zQHBj1sHvHcrLQsulIyWBEJ9XR5D8dgoCBNg4G_2vgrVcodt_ry6Y5Lr9Iw/s400/DSC_2308.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">Another highlight was Desolation Row, delivered in waltz time, with practically every verse present and correct. Ballad of a Thin Man was done with great panache, electronic echoes giving extra bite to words like “lepers and crooks”, Bob’s voice positively caressing the lines “you’re very well read, it’s well known”. There were only a few songs when his voice sounded like a hoarse bark; Honest With Me was one, and Thunder On The Mountain was another. All Along The Watchtower managed to sound both staccato and lyrical. Like A Rolling Stone was slow, stately and sorrowful, with no hint of derision in the vocal delivery.</div><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span>Then there was a flurry on the stage and suddenly Mark Knopfler was back in the spotlight centre stage, beaming and waving to the audience, as they launched into Forever Young. Knopfler took over the vocal on the second verse, “May you grow up to be righteous…” with Knopfler and Charlie both injecting elegant guitar lines between the words, conjuring up memories of Robbie Robertson at The Last Waltz. On the third verse, Bob began singing "May your hands always be busy..." and then Knopfler’s voice rose up to take over the lead, and as he sang, “May your heart always be joyful, May your song always be sung”, he lifted his arm and gestured towards Bob, and the audience roared with approval and devotion. It was a memorable ending. </span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNBBQCzQtGCwv1p6tNutiImmFhTHYyzErJP7lSbU5f01d1kjqHd-Ngmf6piSbkSItwhf12hic0RI5nAL5rh3lAObgn20j0X26EquL9V1gjWVDw4hMaBv6XOoUg7z4DV1zEr2csQg/s1600/DSC_2349_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNBBQCzQtGCwv1p6tNutiImmFhTHYyzErJP7lSbU5f01d1kjqHd-Ngmf6piSbkSItwhf12hic0RI5nAL5rh3lAObgn20j0X26EquL9V1gjWVDw4hMaBv6XOoUg7z4DV1zEr2csQg/s400/DSC_2349_01.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">main text </span><span style="font-size: small;">© Mick Gold, all photos <span lang="EN-GB">© Paolo Brillo</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;"></div>Michael Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717701464512635145noreply@blogger.com4