Two years ago, on Tuesday May 29, 2012, Bob Dylan was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Listen as President Obama talks about the award, and each who are receiving it including Bob Dylan.
Here President Obama, who said Dylan was one of his personal heroes, presents the award to Bob Dylan.
And while we’re at the White House, here’s Dylan performing “The Times They Are A-Changing” on February 9, 2010:
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Fifty-one years ago, on May 27, 1963, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, an album that Dylan had worked on, on and off, for over a year, was released.
The recording of the album began on April 24, 1962 and ended on April 24, 1963. There were sessions on eight different days at Columbia Studio A in New York. At least 36 songs were recorded.
Thirteen songs made it onto the album.
Here are some of the outtakes that I like along with some faves from the official release:
“Masters of War” (album version):
“Milk Cow Blues”:
“Hero Blues”:
“Girl From the North Country” (album version):
“Rocks and Gravel”:
“Corrina, Corrina” & “Whatcha Gonna Do” Plus from The Times They Are A-Changin’ sessions, “Eternal Circle” & “Restless Farewell”:
“(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle”:
“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” (album version):
“Baby Please Don’t Go”:
“Let Me Die In My Footsteps”:
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Last year, for Bob Dylan’s birthday, Slate posted a map of every place Dylan has mentioned in a song.
From Oxford Town to Tangier, Morroco, from Cripple Creek in the Rocky Mountains to Acapulco, Mexico, they’re all on the map.
And guess what? The map lives!
It’s alive an well over at The Slate site.
So if you haven’t spent time with the map before, or even you have, there’s no time like now.
And while you’re checking it out here, why not listen to Dylan and The Band sing one of my favorite Basement Tapes songs, ‘Goin’ To Acaplulco.”
Goin To Acapulco – Bob Dylan from Paul Gonz on Vimeo.
Plus an incredible version of “If You See Her Say Hello” from the Rolling Thunder Review:
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This is a great preview of an Elliott Smith documentary, “Heaven Adores You,” that I sure want to see.
Over half of the songs used in “Heaven Adores You” are unreleased recordings that NME reports were dug out of record label vaults just for the film.
“Heaven Adores You” was directed by Nickolas Rossi.
The film screened on May 5 at the San Francisco International Film Festival, and it will screen again June 20th & 21st as part of AFI Docs Documentary Film Festival in Washington, DC.
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In celebration of Robert Allen Zimmerman’s 73rd birthday, I thought it would be fun to take a look at some of Dylan’s live performances as captured on film or video, and a bunch of his music videos.
Enjoy!
“Pretty Saro”:
“Mr. Tambourine Man” (live at Newport Folk Festival 1964):
“Things Have Changed”:
“Cold Irons Bound”:
“Man of Constant Sorrow,” WBC-TV May 1963:
“Not Dark Yet”:
“Tangled Up In Blue”:
“Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)”:
“I Threw It All Away,” “The Johnny Cash Show,” 1969:
“Series Of Dreams”:
“Jokerman”:
“Blowin’ in the Wind,” WBC-TV May 1963:
“Like A Rolling Stone,” 1966:
Bob Dylan – Like a Rolling Stone (1966) by alexnesic66
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In two days – May 24, 2014 — Bob Dylan will turn 73.
Well no, actually, I don’t think so.
I think Robert Allen Zimmerman will turn 73, but Bob Dylan? No way.
How can Bob Dylan be 73, when I swear just yesterday I spent several hours listening to the 25-year-old Bob Dylan perform at the Royal Albert Hall in 1966.
And in the days prior to that I listened to the 25-year-old Bob Dylan perform live in Glasgow and Edinburg, and I heard him duet with Joan Baez on “Troubled and I Don’t Know Why” in the fall of 1963.
Just this week you might have watched the 24-year-old Bob Dylan tour the U.K. via the great documentary “Don’t Look Back,” or listened to recordings he made in 1961.
Or those great Rolling Thunder bootlegs from 1976.
You could spend some time with a much younger Bob Dylan, if you were to read Robert Sheldon’s bio, “No Direction Home.”
Or hand with him during time he was hanging out with Joan Baez if you read “Positively Fourth Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina.”
What I am suggesting here, and it’s not my original idea, certainly not, but Bob Dylan is a construct. A conceptual art piece created by a genius known as Robert Zimmerman.
And if Bob Dylan is a work of art – and certainly he is – than even as new versions of him show up on the Never Ending Tour, all of the older versions still exist, at least as long as someone made a video or a film or a recording or wrote a book.
Now I’m not saying that Bob Dylan is a role that Robert Zimmerman plays the way an actor plays a roll in a film.
In a way he does, but it’s so much deeper than that.
We know, however, that the middle class kid who grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota wasn’t an Okie. And he wasn’t a country-western singer. And he wasn’t the Beat/rock ‘n’ roll dude with wild hair, shades and leather jacket who showed up sometime in 1965.
Yet when the character known as Bob Dylan arrived up in New York in 1961 he spoke like the Woody Guthrie fan that he was, looked like he’d been hoboing around the country, and he told tall tales of a youth that he certainly never lived.
It has been said before, said more eloquently, that fiction is a means for getting to a deeper truth than non-fiction.
The Bob Dylan character that Robert Zimmerman created has shared many, many deep truths with us. He’s written hundreds of songs, and most of them are damn good. He’s enriched our lives in so many ways.
Somewhere in the world, Robert Allen Zimmerman is going to turn 73 on May 24, 2014. As for Bob Dylan, who knows.
So me, I’m wishing Robert Zimmmerman a very, very happy birthday, and I thank him for creating Bob Dylan.
[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.]
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Last night Veruca Salt made their comeback appearance on ‘Conan’ performing their indie hit of 1994, “Seether.”
Check it out.
Even better news than a great reprieve of “Seether” all these years later is one of their new songs, “The Museum Of Broken Relationships,” produced by Brad Wood.
If you haven’t seen the video, what are you waiting for?
[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.]
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Jimmy Page held a listening party today at Paris’ L’Olympia, where Led Zeppelin played on October 10th, 1969.
He let people hear previously unreleased Led Zep recordings that will appear on the first three albums, which are being re-released with additional material.
Not sure how long this will remain online so watch it 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.]
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If you need a distraction, down load the new app from Brian Eno and Karl Hyde, who have a new album out, Someday World.
If you have a vinyl copy of the album, after you download the app and launch it, you aim the camera lens of your iPhone or iPad at the spinning vinyl and on your screen many modern psychedelic images appear.
If you don’t have the vinyl, doesn’t matter. You can go here and aim your camera at virtual vinyl on your computer screen.
Get into here.
Meanwhile listen to The “Satellites” off Someday World.
[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.]
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I keep discovering more Bob Dylan songs that I somehow haven’t heard.
This one I came across today. Dylan and Joan Baez performed “Troubled and I Don’t Know Why” at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in New York on August 17, 1963. That was the only time Dylan sang the song live.
It’s a beautiful performance and their voices sound great together.
The song is available on three-CD Joan Baez box set, Rare, Live & Classic released in 1993.
Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, “Troubled and I Don’t Know Why”:
You can check out the lyrics here.
[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.]
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