Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
Edward Curtin reviews the movie, “The Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story.”
Comments
I remember walking through a Camden Town bazaar a long time ago, and suddenly the inteo notes for Like a Rolling Stone live from Royal Albert Hall (64? 66?) started booming out of some hawker's ghetto blaster (can I still use that term?) a few aisles away, and it sounded so energetic and inviting I just had to buy the cassette, even w/o anything to play it on (oops, suddenly remember I did, my portable recorder to document my thoughts just got stolen early out in a Paris hostel). When I got home months later, I discovered shortly after the intro the tape switches to mono and stays there - still okay, but not magical.
This may or may not be the metaphor you're looking for. Dylan was already old even at that time. He hadn't quite lived up to the "voice of his generation" expectations a decade or more before, had failed folk music, had failed Judaism, was on his way to selling out as just another supergroup hack. Dylan has been mesmerizing and disappointing people in slightly unequal measures throughout his career. I'm sure his fascinating Chronicles disappointed others, but it was the (or 'a') tonic I needed at the time, even though I'd long stopped following him. Perhaps that he took his kids on a Caribbean sailboat tour would sound yuppie and pampered or excessive or plebean. Perhaps that he skipped his most famous works of the time(s).
I remember running across David Byrne's blogsite and being disappointed that he kinda sounded like everyone else, held obvious political views, etc. Dylan didn't disappoint me that way - he was still (and likely still is) looking somewhere different, watching the doughnuts, not the holes...
Someone asked Alejo Carpentier how he could write in Cuba under Castro without taking on the regime's atrocities. "I am writing about time, about Centuries - I can't be involved with these temporal changes".
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 06/26/2019 - 4:21am
he not busy being born is busy dying ~ It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
...Life is flux....The world order is continual change and resistance to this change is a kind of death in that the individual is refusing to participate in that which defines life... ~ Ancient History Encyclopedia on Heraclitus of Ephesus
The only constant is change ~ lotsa people @ Wikiquote
by artappraiser on Wed, 06/26/2019 - 8:21am
Yeah, things change, but one thing that hasn't is that Maggie still runs the farm.
We could throw out some stand alone Dylan lyric to cover any thought " but with truth so far off, what good would it do?".
The title: Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story By Martin Scorsese has many twists of known facts but the title gives a clue to what they were doing. The movie is "A" Bob Dylan story, not "The" Bob Dylan story. There are a million of them. They all have some truth.
by A Guy Called LULU on Wed, 06/26/2019 - 9:21am
No you don't have to work on Maggie's farm no more
by artappraiser on Wed, 06/26/2019 - 9:26am
What a ridiculous response. Maybe you mistakenly linked the wrong thing?
by A Guy Called LULU on Wed, 06/26/2019 - 9:38am
no that's when the "culture of protest" ended and people like Dylan moved on. Change.
by artappraiser on Wed, 06/26/2019 - 9:42am
Last & only time I saw Bob, he was singing "You gotta serve somebody". He's travelled a million miles since then, and assuredly not in a straight line. Trying to co-opt Scorcese's movie for some little regaling on the left, trying to fit Dylan into some gripe against the ages, is pretty laughable. Been wondering when I get to quote these, and perhaps this is the time:
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 06/26/2019 - 10:51am