I'm very excited because I got tickets to see Bob at the Guggenheim, Bilbao in July. (I live near Bilbao). My wife was rather less excited when I told her, but anyway...

Truth is, I've rather lost touch with Bob's music. Any recommendations for his more recent stuff? Let's say from 2000 onwards.

Cheers

Mike

PS. By the way, I'm no professional concert-goer, so out of curiosity: is it usual to be charged 60€ for a "45€ ticket"? I bought my tickets through "ticketmaster.es".

Dylan in retirement by Drew Friedman.

About 5 years ago, on a now defunct music board frequented by mostly twee indie fans, someone posted this as a topic. The thread eventually petered out at top moment 157.

Anyway, here's 5 to get you going

1. Rick Danko's hat
2. The expressions on Robbie and Rick's faces as they realise just how out of it Neil Young is
3. Robbie's increasingly desparate introduction for Dr John ("You all know the doctor?...Dr John?...Mac Rebbenack?...")
4. Garth Hudson's hair flying around
5. Michael McClure reading the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (just for the sheer pointlessness of it)

Over to you!

(As a suggestion, YouTube links may not be a good idea since we'll probably end up posting the whole film, but in the wrong order)

I see that a load of Bob Dylan's back catalogue has arrived on Spotify. Some tracks on certain albums seem to be unavailable though e.g. Highway 61 Revisited on the album of the same name, It's All Over Now, Baby Blue off Bringing It All back Home. Most odd. Any explanations?

Well well well, Bob out front, no guitar, no cheesy organ, sounding more like Tom Waits than ever, seemingly ENJOYING himself at the Golden Globes.

Brilliant

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LOGv-DjitRU#

I was recently asked by a work colleague why I liked "weird" music. I couldn't explain at the time, but after much thought I came up with this..............

I was born in 1976. I was oblivious to Punk and its diluted successors and found myself a couple of years shy of truly experiencing rave, shoe-gazing and Madchester. Not that age would have made any difference as I resided with my parents in a quiet little Leicestershire village, where you had to wait for an hourly, meandering bus service to take you into the city or nearby market town.

My early years were a flat-line in comparison to the pulsating scenes and movements I appear to have missed. However, I’ve never felt cheated or forgotten by musical happenings and history.

The advent of Britpop provided my first chance to belong. I grabbed the opportunity with both hands and immersed myself in all aspects of the ‘scene’. Dressed in the regulation Ben Sherman shirt, 512 Levi jeans and Adidas Samba’s, I took in the sights and sounds of Oasis, Black Grape, Cast et al; but something wasn’t right.

There I was in my early 20’s, listening to the musical outpourings of my generation and enjoying the excesses of a responsibility–free existence; yet I didn’t really get emotionally involved in the music. Showing an allegiance to the bands and music was merely a means to an ends; the ends being girls.

I’d grown up as most kids do listening to a blend of chart music and my parent’s record collection. The Bangles and Beats International mixed with Dire Straits and Fleetwood Mac. Out of this heady cocktail, rose Springsteen. My dad owned most of his albums up to Born In The USA, which meant Bruce was always on heavy rotation on my midi-system.

Even during the height of Cool Britannia’s swagger and front, I’d spend Friday nights being ”mad for it”, only to wake up the following afternoon hung over and still fully clothed to listen to Highway Patrolman or The River’s quieter tracks.

I’ve always known Springsteen’s music. It has always been there in the background during my life. I love it dearly, but I never made a conscious decision to like and listen to it. It simply became part of me.

There has only ever been one instance when I’ve heard an artist and became instantly hooked. In actual fact, it was almost as if the music decided to surround me and infiltrate my senses for the rest of my life. I can vividly remember the occasion, sat on the settee at my Aunt and Uncle’s house……

My parents, brother and I often made a short journey north on a Sunday for ‘jumpers for goal posts’ football with my cousins and a roast dinner of epic proportions.

I’d slumped onto the settee, exhausted after nearly three hours of end-to-end, two-a-side football when my dad and uncle returned from supping pints of ale at the local pub.

They drunkenly browsed the CD rack and suddenly, Dylan sprang out the speakers…….”Come gather ‘round people wherever you roam/And admit that the waters around you have grown”. At a volume that only a partially pissed uncle would select in order to prove “this is proper music, lad”, I sat open-mouthed and fixated, whilst my mother and aunt harmonised an instruction to “Turn it down!”.

Instantly, I knew this was the music that I would listen to for the rest of my life. The raw, stripped bare delivery went straight to my core. To this day my appreciation of a song is linked back to that moment – words and meaning a priority with the music a secondary concern.

As a result, my musical adventures have tended to head back in time and off into obscurity rather than follow Pops latest musical fad. As the mainstream crafting of songs has moved towards the benign and superficial, I’ve followed the signposts of liner notes, name checks, biographies and old interviews in order to discover new sounds and artists.

Over the years, I’ve tried to broaden my horizons and vow give anything at least one listen. Occasionally, this has paid off and I’ve discovered a new artist with a back catalogue worthy of investigation or an unknown band on the ascent. I remember one instance leading up to a birthday, when my brother asked what albums I’d like as a gift.

It was a period when I felt like a needed to discover some new music, so that evening in the local pub I asked my best mate to name two albums. Without hesitation he chirped up with Public Enemy’s Fear Of A Black Planet and Obscured By Clouds by Pink Floyd.

I’d be lying if I told you that I regularly listen to those albums now, but they do have a place in my affections along with Heartattack & Vine (suggested by an old school friend, but not actually purchased until some years later), JJ Cale’s Naturally (my A Level Design teacher recorded this onto cassette for me) and Graceland (it was played in the car on family outings for what seemed like decades) and they are still present in my treasured collection of music.

These approaches to musical enlightenment are still my preference. Over the years both friends and work colleagues have supplied a wide variety of artists and albums for my perusal and prayed I won’t return their offering with a fifteen minute synopsis as to why I won’t be investing any further energy into such rubbish.

So as I head off in search of additions to my life’s soundtrack, deep down I know I will return to Dylan and Springsteen. Albums from places and eras I never knew, yet they’ve resonated with me in my teens, twenties and now my thirties. I guess I’ll occasionally take a detour back to Definitely Maybe and Second Coming for nostalgia’s sake. However, it will be to evoke the memories of the nights out, not necessarily to enjoy the soundtrack.

The tapes from the Dylan Manchester Free Trade Hall gig have been cleaned up and reanalysed. Seems the heckle wasn't "Judas!" at all.

"FENTON!!"

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)

When I heard that Bryan Ferry was to release Dylanesque in 2007, a whole album of Dylan covers, I felt quite queasy. It turned out to be not a bad album. I am sure there are plenty of others like it . . .

With all the furore about podcasts, it reminded me of the Beatlecast of a couple of months back.

During the course, Peter Doggett came up with some stuff about His Bobness not having written Chronicles, or chunks of it at least.

I may have missed any follow up on that here, but if not, does anybody have any info on that? If not, surely there's a Word investigation to be done into the claims?

For those who havent heard it, I recommend you collect the podcast from "The First Time" on 6Music featuring Robbie Robertson.

A very interesting interview covering his whole career - still available on the BBC website.

The Alice Cooper one's not bad either.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/firsttime

http://www.rollingstone.com/videos/new-and-hot/bob-dylan-and-mark-knopfl...

Reading Johan's entry about cycling has gotten me thinking about the whole celeb thing on radio and media.

Int'old days the Radio 1 roster had just DJ's on it that had worked their time on other stations and in clubs etc. To a greater degree this appears so as well. Radio 2 however is another thing. the drift from radio to TV has been reversed so that it appears the personality comes before the talent.

In sport this has become very relevant. Match of the Day (don't get me going about the banality of them) has replaced Des with Crisp Guy and to be an expert you have to have played the game.

The difference between sport and music is that sport moves on at a pace and the game played even by those of a few years ago is eclipsed by modern thinking and indeed technology.

In music often you are replaying old music to enjoy today a fact not lost on Ronnie Wood and indeed Bob Dylan. There are not many examples (err please fill in) of any DJ's then going on to be successful artistes - and i am not counting say Fatboy or indeed Mr Ronson as they were artistes and not "radio/TV Stars".

On the almost music free zone of the BBC we have only the excellent Jools where we once had dear Bob and Mark n Dave. Why for instance has Zane Lowe or indeed the thoughtful Ms Whiley never been given say a "new music" or even old music show? is it because of the prejudice in favour of celebrity?

So do we leave the airways to the likes of Messrs Mayo, Ellen, Hepworth and other noteworthy musicos or hire in Wood, Dylan and dear old Jools?

I just picked up tickets for Dylan at Finsbury Park a week on Saturday - only £40 which makes me wonder if they're not selling that quickly. But I reckon I can stand to be disappointed at that price (and it's only up the road from my house so I can walk there and back).

... enjoyable Bob Dylan in Dublin 1966 review from the jazz critic of The Irish Times:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2011/0506/1224296269591.html