[I just published True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Neil Young, backed by Booker T and the MGs, does “All Along the Watchtower” at Finsbury Park, London, July 11, 1993.
Young is in great form on this one. Terrific soloing.
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Still from video for “When I Get My Hands On You.”
The third song to be released off the upcoming album, Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes, is called “When I Get My Hands On You” and features Marcus Mumford on lead vocal.
The album, produced by T Bone Burnett and also featuring Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens (Carolina Chocolate Drops), Taylor Goldsmith (Dawes) and Jim James (My Morning Jacket), is out November 11, 2014.
“When I Get My Hands On You”:
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
I believe these first three clips are from the Rolling Thunder Review show at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, May 23, 1976.
This is a moving and beautiful version of “Just Like A Woman” with Scarlet Rivera on violin.
“Just Like A Woman”:
“Isis”:
“Blowin’ In The Wind”:
“I Don’t Believe You,” War Memorial Auditorium, Plymouth, MA, USA, October 31, 1975:
Here are a bunch of songs recorded during the tour including “Maggie’s Farm,” “One Too Many Mornings,” “You’re A Big Girl Now” and plenty more.
And here’s 50+ minutes from the April 22, 1976 show at the Starlight Ballroom in Clearwater Florida:
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Dylan at the Bournemouth International Centre, 2002.
Two great clips from a show Bob Dylan did at the Bournemouth International Centre in Bournemouth, England on May 5, 2002.
“Desolation Row”:
“Absolutely Sweet Marie”:
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Jerry Garcia plays a great acoustic version of Bob Dylan’s “It Takes A Lot to Laugh, Takes a Train to Cry” at Oregon State Penitentiary, Salem, OR, May 5, 1982.
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Rod Stewart and his mates in The Faces including Ron Wood.
I know it’s hard to believe, but once upon a time, that time being the late ’60s and early ’70s, Rod Stewart could really sing, and he made some amazing rock ‘n’ roll records, and zome excellent folk-style recordings.
Here are two of Stewart’s covers of Bob Dylan songs that are quite good. Plus one by The Faces (Rod Stewart being the vocalist).
Plus versions of the songs by Mr. Dylan himself.
Enjoy.
Rod Stewart, “Tomorrow Is A Long Time,” 1971:
Bob Dylan, “Tomorrow Is A Long Time,” The Rundown Rehearsals, 1977-1978:
Rod Stewart, “Girl From The North Country,” 1974:
Bob Dylan, “Girl From The North Country,” 1964:
Plus this cool version of “Wicked Messenger” as recorded by The Faces in 1970:
Bob Dylan and the Grateful Deal, pre-tour rehearsals, June 1987:
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
The other day I did a post featuring the live Bob Dylan/ Joan Baez duet on Bob Dylan’s “Troubled And I Don’t Know Why,” a song that never appeared on an official Dylan album or single, but did make it onto a Joan Baez album.
My post prompted Dylan fan Ron Chester to post the following essay in the Facebook Dylan group, EDLIS Cafe.
I thought Chester wrote a wonderful essay and asked if I could repost here and he said that was cool.
So check it out, and give the song a listen.
“Troubled And I Don’t Know Why”:
“Troubled And I Don’t Know Why”
Bob Dylan with Joan Baez
Forest Hills, 17 August 1963
By Ron Chester
This three minute recording shows, better than most, I think, why the folkies loved Dylan so much from the very beginning.
A song title that points to a condition we have all experienced.
A simple tune that I’m still singin’ to myself an hour after I heard it.
Literate, expressive, succinct lyrics that go right to the heart of big subjects in our everyday experience, yet performed like he just thought of them, as he was rolling out of bed that morning. (And he may have!)
When was the last time you heard the word “squall” used in a sentence; as a VERB, not a noun?! Quickly followed by a brilliant visual image: “it roared and it boomed and it bounced around the room,” then concluding with his biting six word commentary: “it never said nothing at all.”
The recording captures the laughter of the audience, just like with the recording of his first performance of Desolation Row. And by the second line of the last verse, Dylan is cracking himself up too!
History captured in 3:10 with this invaluable recording. Apparently the only known performance of the song?
The Dylan website lists the song, but without the lyrics. Did it fail to get properly copyrighted? As it does not appear in either the 1973 or 1985 lyrics books. My guess is that Christopher Ricks won’t miss it. And in fact the 1986 knaff production, “Some Other Kinds of Songs . . . ” didn’t miss it. [An amazing gift presented to me on 22 Apr 1997 by an old friend from rec.music.dylan, Ben Taylor. Some of you may remember him. He he]
It bears repeating:
History captured in 3:10 with this invaluable recording, plus 20 seconds of thunderous applause at the end.
Do we have any history captured in this way from the life work of Mozart or Bach? Of course not. Pause and give silent thanks to the dedicated work of all our tapers over more than fifty years. Did they know they were doing Important Work? Yes, I think mostly, they did. It is too bad that aggressive enforcement at some venues, such as the Santa Barbara Bowl, caused some brilliant performances to not be so available. Well perhaps even those are properly preserved in Jeff Rosen’s vaults.
And thanks to the Michael Goldberg blog for reminding us of this gem.
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Joan Baez sings the Bob Dylan classic, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” at TakeRoot De Oosterpoort, Groningen, Netherlands on September 13, 2014.
Her voice is still as beautiful as ever.
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
“True Love Scars” rises to #18 on the Amazon Bestselling Literary Satire chart.
Fantastic review by Simon Warner, author of “Text and Drugs and Rock’n’Roll: The Beats and Rock Culture.”
TRUE LOVE SCARS
Michael Goldberg (Neumu Press)
Review by Simon Warner
The great rock novel? The pursuit of that ultimate piece of fiction that distils the primal energy, the ecstatic power, the neurotic craziness, of popular music has been something of a holy grail in recent decades and, in True Love Scars – a deeply ironic nod to Buddy Holly’s ‘True Love Ways’ – one-time Rolling Stone journalist Michael Goldberg is the latest contender for this Lonsdale Belt of rock‘n’roll writing.
His protagonist Michael Stein is a Californian teenager in the later 1960s, tangled to distraction in the sound and image of his hero Bob Dylan, a paradoxical blend of cocksure kid and deluded hipster, bruising his fragile ego in the choppy shallows of high school romance, then sabotaging his increasingly complicated love tangles in a haze of drug indulgence and casual disloyalty, and all to a backbeat of Highway 61 Revisited, the Stones and the Doors.
It’s the story of a disaffected geek and self-imagined king of cool who turns out to be much more naïve nerd, as his promising upward trajectory hurtles into reverse. But True Love Scars, the first part of Goldberg’s ‘Freak Scene Dream Trilogy’, is as much about style – the way he tells the tale – as it is about content. Penned in a staccato amphetamine grammar, its narrative is fractured and deranged, often unsettling but frequently compelling, an unsparing portrait of the teen condition: assured then despairing, would-be sex god then impotent has-been, from erection to dejection, an only child battling the wills of his domineering father and interfering mom in the anonymous, suburban fringes of Marin County.
Goldberg’s work recalls a number of those post-war stylists who have tried to capture the uncertainties of adolescence into adulthood, the lure of escape and the quest for forbidden fruit. It has elements of Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, a flavour of Richard Fariña and his smart college satire Been Down So Long It Seems Like Up to Me, and more than a dash of that frenetic gonzo gabble that Hunter S. Thompson utilised to frame the madness of the modern world as the American dream unravelled, around the very time that Stein is doing his incompetent best to grow up. The great rock novel? Perhaps we still await it but, for sure, this writer has made a creditworthy tilt at this literary crown, and produced a very good one.
Simon Warner is the author of Text and Drugs and Rock’n’Roll: The Beats and Rock Culture. He’s a lecturer, Popular Music Studies, School of Music, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
