One year ago, on July 31, 2013, Bob Dylan performed “All Along The Watchtower” and “Early Roman Kings” and other songs at Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre, Greenwood Village, CO.
Here are clips of both of the previously mentioned songs.
Dylan’s vocal performances are quite good, and his band is superb as usual.
Another view:
“Early Roman Kings”:
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis has a new album, Tied to a Star, out August 26, 2014.
One song on the album, the beautiful “Wide Awake,” finds Cat Power joining Mascis on vocals.
Check it out.
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
The great indie power-pop combo, Big Star, made two classic albums in the early ’70s: #1 Record and Radio City.
An incredible third album, Third/Sister Lovers was also recorded but that was basically an Alex Chilton solo record.
The first two albums have been major influential — R.E.M. were just one of numerous bands that fell under the sway of Big Star.
Now the first two albums have been remastered and after many years as a twofer, will be available as single CDs.
The new discs include liner notes by R.E.M.’s Mike Mills.
Says Mills says Big Star was “a band who had gotten it right, who made records that sounded like rock and roll bands should sound. A band who wrote all the songs, from flat-out rockers to achingly beautiful ballads that were still somehow rock songs.”
Mills told Rolling Stone: “Songwriting has always been, for me, the most vital gauge of a band’s quality, and these guys were clearly masters. Big Star gave you something satisfying to listen to, no matter how many times you heard them.”
The timing is right for the reissues. Holly George-Warren’s superb bio of Alex Chilton, A Man Called Destruction, was published earlier this year. A solid documentary on the band, “Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me,” was released in 2012. A four-CD box, Keep An Eye On The Skyline, was released in 2009, and a soundtrack to the documentary, Nothing Can Hurt Me, was released in 2013.
Here are some quotes from artists who were either in a later version of Big Star or knew Alex Chilton. These quotes were part of a press release sent out today.
Artists talk about the influence of Big Star:
“To me, the power and purity of #1 Record and Radio City are undeniable. From the first moment we heard these records we felt compelled to spread the word about them as far and wide as possible. The fact that we eventually became a part of keeping this music alive by performing with the reformed Big Star still fills me with a sense of pride, that this music is constantly being rediscovered and more known with every passing year. There’s a reason for that: it deserves it.” —Jon Auer of the Posies, who doubled as a member of Big Star with Chilton, performer on Big Star’sThird shows.
“For me, Big Star’s music is not only superb listening, it’s a litmus test for the human spirit. That this music’s appeal and notoriety has grown over the years is certainly related to its undeniably high level of quality; yet … it almost didn’t get heard. And here’s where it gets interesting. The fact you are listening to this now is due to the actions of a kind of underground railroad of listeners who just wouldn’t take the music industry’s incompetence as the final say on this music. It had to be shared, painstakingly copied to cassette, passed on with love. And by this hand-to-hand action, Big Star was elevated into the canon. Barely. Enjoy.” —Ken Stringfellow, The Posies and 17-year member of Big Star, performer on Big Star’s Third shows.
“Big Star’s records as instantly changing the landscape, redefining with every listen what it could mean to be a Southern rock musician. They were like beacons in the distance, beckoning, pulling us all in, one by one. . . . At a time when rock music was for the most part all bluster and lies, they shocked by trying to be straightforward, honest, and truthful.” — Chris Stamey of The dB’s, who produced some Chilton recordings in the ‘70s and has performed in the Third shows
“The one-two punch of #1 Record and Radio City knocked me out as an impressionable Southern teen musician in the 1970s, and it still does. Much as I love Big Star’s 3rd, it really was the first two albums’ sheen and shimmer that confirmed in me that there might be a melodic pop-rock world for me and my guitar-playing friends to inhabit in my future.” — Peter Holsapple of The dB’s
Listen to Radio City:
And if you haven’t heard it, check out the NOT-REMASTERED version of #1 Record:
Album Track Listings:
#1 Record
1. Feel 3:34
2. The Ballad of El Goodo 4:21
3. In the Street 2:55
4. Thirteen 2:34
5. Don’t Lie to Me 3:07
6. The India Song 2:20
7. When My Baby’s Beside Me 3:23
8. My Life Is Right 3:08
9. Give Me Another Chance 3:27
10. Try Again 3:31
11. Watch the Sunrise 3:45
12. ST100/6 0:57
Radio City
1. O My Soul 5:40
2. Life Is White 3:19
3. Way Out West 2:50
4. What’s Going Ahn 2:40
5. You Get What You Deserve 3:08
6. Mod Lang 2:45
7. Back of a Car 2:46
8. Daisy Glaze 3:49
9. She’s a Mover 3:12
10. September Gurls 2:49
11. Morpha Too 1:28
12. I’m in Love With a Girl 1:48
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
“Diamond Light Pt. 1”
“Flowering”
“Summer Noon”
“Honey Combed” (Feat. Lucius)
“Hazel”
“World Away”
“New Moon” (Feat. Lucius)
“High As Hello” (Feat. Lucius)
“Low Key” (Feat. Lucius)
“Fake Fur Coat”
“I Am Trying To Break Your Heart”
“New Madrid”
“Please Tell My Brother”
“Jesus, Etc.” (Feat. Lucius)
“Wrote A Song For Everyone” (Feat. Mavis Staples and Lucius)
“Only The Lord Knows” (Feat. Mavis Staples and Lucius)
“California Stars”
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
As you probably know, Beck’s Song Reader sheet music album has been turned into a audio album that’s released this week. Appearing on the apple are lots of great artists including: Jack Black, Jarvis Cocker of Pulp, Norah Jones, Fun., Tweedy, Laura Marling, Jason Isbell, and Eleanor Friedberger.
If you’ve got Spotify, you can listen right now. If you don’t, I believe you can try it out for free.
Plus here’s a new video, “Heart Is A Drum,” off Morning Phase.
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
I think you’ll get a good laugh from this animated cartoon of what happened during that historic meeting of Bob Dylan and The Beatles.
Enjoy.
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
Yesterday I posted many video clips from Neil Young’s July 26 performance in Dresden, Germany.
However, the audio for the opener, a nearly 24 minute jam on “Down By The River” that features some of the most exquisite guitar from Neil young that I’ve ever heard (and I’ve been seeing and listening to Young since the late ’60s), was not good.
This fan clip is not perfect, but it’s much better:
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
July 29, 1966 was a life-changing day for Bob Dylan.
That was the day Dylan crashed his 500cc Triumph Tiger 100 motorcycle on a road near where he was living in Woodstock.
That accident signaled the end of The Bob Dylan World Tour 1966, and Dylan wouldn’t tour again for eight years.
But after that accident, while Dylan was living in Woodstock, he started the informal sessions with the future members of The Band that became the legendary “Basement Tapes.”
The more than 100 songs that Dylan and The Band recorded in upstate New York are an invaluable boy of work.
In his memoir Chronicles Dylan wrote about the accident:
“I had been in a motorcycle accident and I’d been hurt, but I recovered. Truth was that I wanted to get out of the rat race. Having children changed my life and segregated me from just about everybody and everything that was going on. Outside of my family, nothing held any real interest for me and I was seeing everything through different glasses.”
Here are some quotes from Dylan about the motorcycle accident, pulled together by Harold Lepidus for a post he did at his Bob Dylan Examiner site in 2011.
JANN WENNER (Rolling Stone magazine, 1969) : What change did the motorcycle accident make?
DYLAN: What change? Well, it… it limited me. It’s hard to speak about the change, you know? It’s not the type of change that one can put into words… besides the physical change. I had a busted vertebrae; neck vertebrae. And there’s really not much to talk about. I don’t want to talk about it. . . So eventually, I had my motorcycle accident and that just got me out of the whole thing, ‘cause I didn’t care anymore.
————-
PLAYBOY 1978: Did the motorcycle accident you had in 1966 have anything to do with cooling you off, getting you to relax?
DYLAN: Well, now you’re jumping way ahead to another period of time…. What was I doing? I don’t know. It came time. Was it when I had the motorcycle accident? Well, I was straining pretty hard and couldn’t have gone on living that way much longer. The fact that I made it through what I did is pretty miraculous. But, you know, sometimes you get too close to something and you got to get away from it to be able to see it. And something like that happened to me at the time.
—————
DYLAN, 1984: When I had that motorcycle accident … I woke up and caught my senses, I realized that I was just workin’ for all these leeches. And I didn’t want to do that. Plus, I had a family and I just wanted to see my kids.
—————
DYLAN, Spin magazine, December 1985: In 1966 I had a motorcycle accident and ended up with several broken vertebrae and a concussion. That put me down for a while. I couldn’t go on doing what I had been. I was pretty wound up before that accident happened. It set me down so I could see things in a better perspective. I wasn’t seeing anything in any kind of perspective. I probably would have died if I had kept on going the way I had been.
———–
Esquire interview with Sam Shepard: It was real early in the morning on top of a hill near Woodstock. I can’t even remember how it happened. I was blinded by the sun for a second. . . . I just happened to look up right smack into the sun with both eyes and, sure enough, I went blind for a second and I kind of panicked or something. I stomped down on the brake and the rear wheel locked up on me and I went flyin’.
Here are a few Basement Tapes songs I’ve been digging recently:
“Young But Daily Growing”:
“I Can’t Make It Alone”:
“Don’t You Try Me Now”:
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
Jeff Tweedy, as previously reported, has a new band, Tweedy, with his song Spencer.
Here is a live acoustic version of a song, “Wait For Love,” that will be on the debut Tweedy album.
Jeff Tweedy with Mavis Staples, “Only The Lord,” Newport Folk Festival 2014:
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
