As a youngster, I was never afforded a great musical education; I was brought up on a diet of Dire Straits and The Eagles. So when I got really into music (It was joining 6th form for me) I tried my best to listen to everything everyone else was talking about a 'great' 'amazing' or 'rad' (actuallu, 'rad' was a bit before 6th form). Do youknow what I found? I didn;t like much of it. Some of it just seemed bad. out of tune. Nonsense. But if I happened to mention that I didn;t think they were very good i was fixed with a glare that was the crusty 6th form equivalent of the look my missus now gives me when i have just said something to embarass her in public.
As I have got older I now realise that I don't care if people don;t agree with me, but I wonder how widespread the phenomenon is - is there actually an artist/band out there that is held in such high esteem that we dare not dislike them, but in actually fact, no one likes them; their musicality just beinga rumour that spread really, really well.

Don't get me wrong, there's quite a few bands that have taken me a while to mature into; Happy Mondays and Portishead to name but two, but there are some that continue to disappoint - and actually, I find then all the more disappointing because other people think they are so great!

So, I shall name some of the bands/artists that I just don't 'get'. Here they come:

The Wedding Present
Bob Dylan
The Stone Roses
Snoop Dogg

And there are more, but I'd like to hear of yours....

I hadn't seen these before:
http://www.funtrivia.com/playquiz/quiz3413492713c60.html
http://www.funtrivia.com/playquiz/quiz30739623310e8.html

I only managed 105 points on each...no doubt some here could get them all...
Happy Bobmas! x

I'm the father mentioned in this - which is something my son Samuel Cardwell posted on his Facebook recently after a short discussion we'd just had. ~ DC Cardwell

This morning my father and I were talking about how rubbish it would have been if people had kept calling albums things like 'With the Beatles' and 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan,' and I got to wondering what it would have been like if Bob had kept using 'The +Adjective+ Bob Dylan' formula throughout his long career. I think it would have gone something like this:

The Hillbilly Bob Dylan (Bob Dylan)

The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan

The Political Bob Dylan (The Times They Are A Changin')

The Sarcastic Bob Dylan (Another Side of Bob Dylan)

The Dreamin’ Bob Dylan (Bringing It All Back Home)

The Growlin’ Bob Dylan (Highway 61 Revisited)

The Surreal Bob Dylan (Blonde on Blonde)

The Garagey Bob Dylan (The Basement Tapes)

The Countrified Bob Dylan (John Wesley Harding)

The Weird-Voiced Bob Dylan (Nashville Skyline)

The Desultory Bob Dylan (Self Portrait)

The Optimistic Bob Dylan (New Morning)

The Cinematic Bob Dylan (Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid)

The Desultory Bob Dylan Vol. 2 (Dylan)

The Married Bob Dylan (Planet Waves)

The Divorced Bob Dylan (Blood on the Tracks)

The Collaboratin’ Bob Dylan (Desire)

The Shrill Bob Dylan (Street Legal)

The Evangelical Bob Dylan (Slow Train Coming)

The Devotional Bob Dylan (Saved)

The Hymnal Bob Dylan (Shot of Love)

The Reggae Bob Dylan (Infidels)

The Downhill Bob Dylan (Empire Burlesque)

The Regrettable Bob Dylan (Knocked Out Loaded)

The Forgettable Bob Dylan (Down In The Groove)

The Revitalised Bob Dylan (Oh Mercy)

The Giddy Bob Dylan (Under the Red Sky)

The Musicological Bob Dylan (Good As I Been To You)

The Musicological Bob Dylan Vol. 2 (World Gone Wrong)

The Bleak Bob Dylan (Time Out Of Mind)

The Pre-War Bob Dylan ("Love and Theft")

The Languid Bob Dylan (Modern Times)

The Cajun Bob Dylan (Together Through Life)

The Joyeux Bob Dylan (Christmas in the Heart)

It's not the words.. And it's not the music either.. It's the hand gestures and the walking.

I read this earlier on a Bob Dylan fansite. I'm not reposting it here to have a go at the original writer (who clearly knows his stuff) at all but to highlight the lengths we'll go to justify less than great performances from our favourite artists.

Anyway this chap posits that the point of going to see Bob Dylan in 2011 isn't to hear the songs (those legendary 'reinterpretations' that have been knocking around for years), or the music or any of that old stuff but to see whether Bob is holding his fists to his chest or stretching his vowels just that little bit further.

http://bobdylanencyclopedia.blogspot.com/2011/11/how-dylan-concert-expec...

Lke I say, I'm not attacking the chap at all - I think we've (and I include myself in that) all had to be creative in our defence of Bob's performances over the years but the argument that people go to see Dylan to take in his walking and eye movements is a new one to me..

What next? "Oh Dylan was awesome last night - at one point he even blinked!"

Any thoughts?

The following quote is lifted from Wikipedia:

An early booster of Bob Dylan, Seeger, who was on the board of directors of the Newport Folk Festival, became upset over the extremely loud and distorted electric sound that Dylan, instigated by his manager Albert Grossman, also a Folk Festival board member, brought into the 1965 Festival during his performance of "Maggie's Farm". Tensions between Grossman and the other board members were running very high (at one point reportedly there was a scuffle and blows were briefly exchanged between Grossman and board member Alan Lomax). There are several versions of what happened during Dylan's performance and some claimed that Pete Seeger tried to disconnect the equipment. Seeger has been portrayed by Dylan's publicists as a folk "purist" who was one of the main opponents to Dylan's "going electric", but when asked in 2001 about how he recalled his "objections" to the electric style, he said:

I couldn't understand the words. I wanted to hear the words. It was a great song, "Maggie's Farm," and the sound was distorted. I ran over to the guy at the controls and shouted, "Fix the sound so you can hear the words." He hollered back, "This is the way they want it." I said "Damn it, if I had an axe, I'd cut the cable right now." But I was at fault. I was the MC, and I could have said to the part of the crowd that booed Bob, "you didn't boo Howlin' Wolf yesterday. He was electric!" Though I still prefer to hear Dylan acoustic, some of his electric songs are absolutely great. Electric music is the vernacular of the second half of the twentieth century, to use my father's old term.

And this, from an article about the Occupy Wall Street movement:

Folk singer Pete Seeger led a group of several hundred protesters on a march through the streets on October 22, singing several songs, including "This Land Is Your Land" and "We Shall Overcome."

Here's an article about it, and some videos, over at The Huffington Post

At the risk of harping on about a previous article about Bob Dylan's "motives", I just want to say that I was recently struck by the great gulf between these two musicians, and their agendas. Many are comparing what's happening in the Occupy protests with the 60s. Imagine Dylan being approached to give some support...come out and sing some songs...

I don't know - I guess I just wanted to open a discussion about integrity.

A pistol shot rang out in a room one night. Enter John Cordwell on the second balcony of the Manchester Free Trade Hall.

“Judas!”

The attempt on Dylan’s life happened on the 17th of May, 1966. The shot avoided hitting any vital organs, but the bullet lodged deep within the famed wordsmith’s psyche, and it remains there to this day.

“I don’t believe you. You’re a liar,” says Dylan, but he is speaking to no one but himself. The biggest fraud in the room that night was about to launch in to a blistering version of Like a Rolling Stone.

“How does it feel to be on your own, a complete unknown with no direction home?”

I don’t know, Bobby. You tell us.

Bob Dylan has betrayed millions, and continues to do so. The tragedy is that he knows it, and there is not a thing he can do to put it right. In some bizarre twist of biblical proportions it is the man who couldn’t even hang himself right that got hailed as the long-awaited Messiah. The cord broke, he fell, his body burst and his guts spilled out on rock. Satan wasn’t going to let this one go so easily. It must seem to Robert Zimmerman that he really did sell his soul to the Devil out on Highway 61.

Even if his cack-handed attempt to end it all two months later had been successful, the damage was already done. His three-and-a-half-year ministry was enough to seal his fate. All anybody ever really wants to talk about is the holy trinity of Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. Even his mid-seventies revival was just repeat performance using the same formula, only this time with a dose of bleeding heart. Blood on the Tracks was like the second coming. He surrounded himself with an entourage, a killer band, and some father-figure poets, and let rip with some of the most enduring music in the history of rock’n’roll.

Then he stumbled back out to the wilderness to do penance. His immediate pilgrimage into Christian rock was a form of repentance, another act from a man full of regret. He couldn’t stop himself from drinking from the poisoned well, and then he spends the next few years racked with guilt and self-hatred. Perhaps his Judas could find forgiveness yet.

It all started out as a bit of a joke and it turned into a nightmare of unimaginable proportions. Little Bobby Zimmerman steps off the train and assumes the guise of a Guthrie-esque ramblin’ man. He ingratiates himself on to the folk scene. Listening to recordings from 1961 you can hear a witty and endearing entertainer. The boy is an obvious talent. But, he is a lyricist, a poet, not a musician - that’s why the majority of his work is made up of regurgitated blues riffs. His first act of stealing from the money box was to take the name of Dylan. But you don’t get recognised just by being a poet. You can’t win the approval of your earthly father unless you can really stand up and be seen. Go back and listen to his 1962 recording sessions with Cynthia Gooding and hear the number of times he asks, “Did you like that one?” The boy just wants his father’s approval, and in the absence of the real thing he’ll go to any lengths to manufacture it.

So, he knows an easy meal ticket when he sees one. He reckons on folk lovers being needy and gullible. By 1964, in his concert at Philharmonic Hall, you can hear him laughing at the audience. These people are ridiculous. By 1966 he despises them. He took a mere ten minutes to jot down the anthem for which he will be forever remembered. That fraudulent action alone constantly gnaws away at him. Time and again he has tried to downplay the dramatic impact of Blowin’ in the Wind, but they just will not listen. He never wanted to be a poster boy for the revolution. He was just taking the piss. He had to be dragged into the studio to record a handful of words to We Are the World, for God’s sake.

He tries to make them go away by plugging it in and playing it “fucking loud”, but it only makes them want it more. However many he lost in his crossover to electric he made up for a thousand-fold. Such a nice looking boy turns up with big hair, slim cut suits, and shades, and it instantly becomes an iconic look. If they want dense lyrical compositions they can have them. Joan Baez tells the story of Dylan pecking away at his typewriter, giggling at how what he is writing will drive them crazy. The lyrics mean nothing. And now there’s even a god-damn encyclopaedia dedicated to his works. He thought he’d made some headway when Greil Marcus famously dismissed Self Portrait with a one-word review, only to have Ryan Adams force a reassessment when he declared that “he'd be proud to make an album as good as Self Portrait.” Since the early-90s he has taken to singing his songs in a monotonous growl, systematically murdering his music night after night. It’s bloody carnage up there as he lacerates his melodies. It takes the merest shred of a lyric to dislodge some distant memory of what song he is singing, and yet his shows refuse to stop selling out. If they could only touch the fringes of his garments.

He tried to use Martin Scorsese’s aptly titled documentary as a platform for a last ditch attempt at a sort of apology, because deep in the heart of this grotesque monstrosity is the cherubic Robert Zimmerman wondering how the hell things managed to get so out of hand. He couldn’t admit to his betrayal even if he wanted to. They simply wouldn’t believe it. He couldn’t retreat into obscurity, either. They would seek him out and sit in permanent vigil outside his gates.

Not that he would dare to anyway. He has to keep up the never-ending performance. If he stops even for a moment, if he is left on his own, the enormity of what he has done would engulf him. He would be completely overwhelmed by his most frightening demons. He’d put a rope around his neck, and this time he’d make damn sure to get the job done right.

I saw Bob Dylan for the the first time last night. Clearly the diehards around me loved it, but while i enjoyed it I could not tell if it was a good performance or not - particularly in the vocal department. He sounded like a gruff Tom Waits charitature of his vocal style. Frequently almost just rough grunts.

Is this normal or just a bad night and a need for some Strepcils?

Those attending the Bob Dylan/Mark Knopfler gigs could be in for a treat - rumour has it Bob Dylan is learning to play the bagpipes

Oh dear. Bob's been caught nicking stuff again

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-29/bob-dylan-paintings-under-fire/303...

As usual with Le Grand Bob there are interesting questions here. Like, what is the difference between doing a painting of a photograph and a painting of say the Eiffel Tower? I mean you wouldn't be claiming to have designed the Eiffel Tower would you?

Don't think twice it's alright I suppose

Caveat: I’m really drunk. If you've read even this far, thanks for indulging me. It gets less maudlin as it goes on by the way.

******************************

At the intersection of Battersea Bridge and Cheyne Walk, in a square mile steeped in history from Gabriel Rossetti to Vivienne Westwood, there’s a tiny garden, barely enclosed by hedgerows, containing a life-sized statue of local boy James Whistler, gazing out across his beloved Chelsea Reach for all eternity. Were you walking past that garden tonight around 11pm, you might have spotted an extremely drunk person with earphones on, dancing round and round the statue like a tipsy elf. At one point, said inebriate may have even kissed Whistler’s feet.

My life graph, at the moment, resembles a jagged mountain range. I came back from compering a festival in Cornwall two weeks ago, only to be dumped by my live-in girlfriend of 6 years the minute I walked through the door. At a time when America is falling into the sea, London is burning and the world has collapsed like a punctured tent, I’ve been given my marching orders, essentially, for an inability to find a decent bill-paying job since being made redundant 18 months ago.

Right now I'm schlepping round London, sofa-bed-surfing, as I can't bear to go home to our tiny flat. Figure the only way I’m going to sleep in a proper bed anytime soon is if I have a one-night-stand.

ANYWAY.

Last Wednesday, the summeriest day of the year, I was cycling down the South Bank, bound for another ‘Getting Over It’ drink with mates, when I gradually became aware that the music in my ears wasn’t matching the view in front of my eyes. At all. Dylan’s A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall – one of the saddest, most harrowing songs ever written – was on the iPod, but all around people were seriously enjoying themselves, soaking up some all-too rare rays.

Because I was in a filthy mood, I tried to make what I saw in front of me fit what I was hearing (i.e. ‘These so-called happy people are just fools – deluded fools!! Ten thousand talkers whose tongues are all broken.’ Etc.) But hard as I tried, I just couldn’t. The problem was mine. Life was neither brilliant, nor crap. It just, sort of, *was*.

At the risk of sounding like a New Age ponce, in that moment I realised something really useful: change your soundtrack, and you change your life. Alternatively: change the soundtrack, literally or metaphorically, and you change your attitude. Which, in turn, changes your life. This may be basic psychology to many of you, but believe me, it took direct experience to literalise a conceit most of us, if at all, only pay lip-service to.

This morning I received an unexpected email from one of the biggest children’s publishing outfits in the UK, inviting me for a coffee and a chat to discuss some book ideas, writing and illustrating. It may come to something. It may come to naught. But it’s something. I can work with Something.

Whistler’s toes taste comfortingly coppery, by the way. And this was the song I was raving to tonight in that little garden beside Battersea Bridge. Lyrically, rather depressing. But in all other respects, absolutely fucking glorious.

There was a time when it seemed rather strange to be marking the 40th birthdays of rock stars. As Bob Dylan's celebrates his 70th today it seems only decent to dedicate a podcast to him, his enduring fascination and his work. In this we're joined by Andy Gill, our resident Dylan scholar, author of Bob Dylan: Stories Behind The Songs and other learned works.

The panel (right) discusses: the location of the tape machine during the sessions for Blonde On Blonde, their favourite New Bob Dylans, when and where they first heard Bob Dylan, Dylan as a fashion leader, teaching aid and heart throb, the Bob Dylan record most likely to persuade a sceptic, the likelihood of your seeing a decent live Dylan show and just what he should do next that he hasn't done already.

You can follow this link to get the podcast every week or stream this new episode below.

Or does he?

Bob Dylan has apparently written this note on his website addressing the recent China controversy. Sadly he doesn't mention The Word but another monthly music mag gets a withering nod.

Who knows if it's real or not but the last paragraph raised a chuckle. Time to start our Bob books!

http://www.bobdylan.com/news/my-fans-and-followers

Can anyone tell me if the song George Jackson, which Dylan originally released as a non-album track single, features on any of the dozens of Dylan compilations?

http://www.bobdylanrevealed.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Bob-Dylan-America-Sean-Wilentz/dp/0385529880/ref=s...

Like most Dylan tragics I've got a few rows of Dylan books in my bookshelf so I'm interested in feedback from the massive before I invest in another one.