Bob Dylan

Highly Appreciated

BOB DYLAN
 
 
Bob Dylan  (born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, artist and writer.  He has been influential in popular music and culture for more than five decades.  Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960’s when his songs chronicled social unrest, although Dylan repudiated suggestions from journalists that he was a spokesman for his generation.  Nevertheless, early songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’” became anthems for the American civil rights and anti-war movements.  Leaving his initial base in the American folk music revival, Dylan’s six-minute single “Like a Rolling Stone” altered the range of popular music in 1965.  His mid-1960’s recordings, backed by rock musicians, reached the top end of the United States music charts while also attracting denunciation and criticism from others in the folk movement.   (More from Wikipedia)
 
  
When I was still in high school, I joined a friend at one of his friend’s houses. I had just started listening to the local college radio station, and my own suggestions of songs (“Triad” by Jefferson Airplane was one) earned me only disdainful looks – well deserved, too, once I started hearing his record collection.  I was starting to gain some recognition as the first high-profile Bob Dylan fan in my age group, but this day showed me that I still had a lot to learn.
 
(December 2009)
 
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Minnesota is probably not often thought of as a hotbed of rock stardom, even though two of the brightest stars of the past half-century come from the Land of 10,000 Lakes:  Bob Dylan, from Hibbing, and Prince, from Minneapolis.
 
(September 2010)
 
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Reading between the lines, many of the songs on Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968 were apparently chosen by what had hit the Top 100 at some point during that time period; that would explain the presence of the strangest of the songs, the closing track “It’s-a-Happening” by the Magic Mushrooms, which remarkably made it to something like #94 for a week.  Even more intriguing to me were the songs that hadn’t hit the Top 100 at all.  One immediate fave was “A Public Execution” by a Texas band called Mouse and the Traps (the song was officially issued under the name Mouse), doing something that I didn’t think would ever happen:  someone else creating music along the lines of Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone and Highway 61 Revisited.
 
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I was introduced to Hacienda when Suzy Shaw, who manages Bomp! Records’ online Bomp! mailorder business (among other duties) included three recent releases in one of my usual orders of decades-old music.  Besides the second Hacienda album, she also included a delightful psychedelic stew of an album by Mondo Drag called New Rituals; and Brian Olive’s debut solo album, Brian Olive.  Olive (ex-Soledad Brothers) is one of those amazing men – like Bob DylanTom Petty and Nikki Sudden – to whom songwriting is as natural as breathing; he is working on a second album already.  Although I very much enjoyed the albums that I had ordered, I found myself playing these new artists again and again.  Anyway, it surely worked, for I have a nice stack of new CD’s and LP’s released by the Bomp! labels that I have since ordered.
 
(January 2011)
  
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The Wanderers sole album, Only Lovers Left Alive was recorded in November 1980 but didn’t come out until 1981.  The two singles released from the album were the potent “Ready to Snap” and a cover of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changing”.  As Allmusic put it:  “This album remains one of the most foreboding records ever released and plunges the listener into a world of Bolshevik plots, duplicate Popes, and a third World War that is so close you can smell it.”
 
(February 2011)
 
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More recently, I bought a 1979 solo album by Link Wray called Bullshot that features a wonderful cover of Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”.
 
(June 2011)
 
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There have been so many great guitarists that I have enjoyed hearing over the years, for many different reasons:  The old-fashioned blasts of Chuck Berry and Keith Richardsthe unexpected dexterity and ear of Bob Dylan and Glen Campbell, the pounding virtuosity of Jimi Hendrix and Duane Allman, the nearly unsung anonymity of Tommy Tedesco and Jerry Cole, the steady precision of George Harrison and Tom Petty, the sheer power of Jimmy Page and Tony Iommi, the blues-based thunder of Jack White and Eddie Van Halen, lesser known greats like Nikki Sudden and Chris Spedding, and so many more.
 
(August 2011)
 
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Back when Wikipedia was just a little over one-third its current size (as measured by the number of articles in the English-language version at least), I spotted a glaring hole in the rock band articles when I tried to look up something on Mouse and the Trapsa wonderful Texas garage rock band that I have long admired.  (At that time, there were articles on maybe half of the bands on Nuggets).  Their Nuggets entry “A Public Execution” sounds a lot like Bob Dylan, so you can imagine the appeal of that to me; as Lenny Kaye’s liner notes put it:  “There are some who say that Mouse does Dylan’s Highway 61  period better than The Master himself”.  On that band I found plenty on the Internet, including websites by at least one of the founding members of the group.  Someone in the Wikipedia community even awarded me a Barnstar award for that “long awaited” (as they put it) article, and that sure felt good. 
 
 (December 2011)
 
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When I first realized that I was a record collector – which happened while I was still in high school, maybe even junior high – I had many “dreams” of what I wanted to accomplish.  I was an instant Bob Dylan fan from the first time I heard “Like a Rolling Stone, so naturally, I wanted to get all of the Dylan albums, and I started ordering those albums from Columbia Record Club soon thereafter.  That sounded easy enough to do back in the 1960’s; but as it turned out, Dylan’s first album came out a full 50 years ago, and he has been releasing albums continuously over that period.  I am probably still missing several of them, because I started to get careless about keeping up sometime in the 1980’s; however, I have really been enjoying his recent releases, from Time out of Mind on. 
 
One last Bob Dylan story, and then I’ll move on:  I was walking through a big record show (I think it was one in San Francisco that featured many non-record items also – one item that I remember is a wrapper for Beatles bumble gum that was all ripped up and priced at $20).  I saw a copy of Highway 61 Revisited – the album that has Like a Rolling Stone on it – and I could not for the life of me tell any difference between that album and the one that I own.  I then turned to the vendor and said, “Okay, I give up; why is this album worth $125?”  It turns out that some copies of the album have an alternate take of “From a Buick 6”; the only way to tell is to look for a “-1” at the end of the number that is printed on the vinyl disc itself.  
 
Another artist that I loved a lot is the Rolling Stones, and getting all of their albums was a little tougher than those of Bob Dylan, since I didn’t really start buying them in earnest until around the time of Let it Bleed.  
 
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One other song by Linda Pierre King on the CD also features the Outcasts, the final track “My Boot Heels are Travelin’” – this is an original song, though the title is clearly based on a lyric from Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.  She also covers Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind”. 
 
I have also been reading about another CD that came out more recently which featured a lot of the same music, called It’s a Happening! Texas Girls of the 60’s.  Because the CD features the Heart Beats and Linda Pierre King, I assumed that it was basically a reissue of the earlier CD that I had.  Actually, the 26-track album mostly features other bands; but more importantly from my standpoint, there are four songs by King that did not appear on the We Had the Beat CD:  the South Pacific chestnut “Bali Hai”, the traditional ballad “Jack-A-Roe” (“The Train” is another traditional song that is on the earlier CD), an original song called “Where Are We Going?”, and a second Bob Dylan song, “Don’t Think Twice (It’s Alright)”.  That’s a total of 12 songs and is enough for a full-blown album for Linda Pierre King herself.  I guess I’m going to need to track down that CD also! 
 
(April 2012)
 
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The simplest possible band name was taken by a group of fine musicians who played back-up for Bob Dylan for many years, most famously in 1967 with what became known as The Basement Tapes.  The story that I heard (there are several as to the origin of the name) was that Dylan typically referred to them in conversation as “the band”, and eventually they adopted the name The Band.  
 
(June 2012)
 
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Unlike most artists – Bob Dylan, for one – the Grateful Dead openly welcomed bootleg recordings of their concerts, and they would set aside a section of the stage for bootleggers to place their microphones to ensure good quality.   
 
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For Dead Hippie’s detractors on the Internet, it is Simon Smallwood’s singing that the various blogger types don’t like:  “histrionics” come up a lot, “gallingly awful” is one description, and still another complained that he was trying to copy The Crazy World of Arthur Brown (remember “Fire”?) – like that’s a bad thing.  I guess it is a personal preference; there are some who consider Sleater-Kinney lead singer Corin Tucker difficult to listen to (not to mention Bob Dylan), but I have never had that problem – far from it. 
 
 (July 2012)
 
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Plagiarizing music is not so straightforward to spot as, say, plagiarizing a term paper.  There were any number of bands aping the Beatles and the Byrds and the Zombies during the 1960’sBob Dylan for instance started out as a Woody Guthrie wannabe after all.  
  
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The practice of “bootlegging” music, however, is more of a gray area than piracy:  In this case, music is still being sold without paying royalties, but the product involves recordings that are not otherwise available for sale.  Are, say, Bob Dylan or Columbia Records really being harmed when Great White Wonder and the hundreds of other bootleg albums that have been released over the years are offering Dylan records for sale that have never been released?  I don’t know of any lawsuits in that regard (or at least none that have been successful), and many artists have a love-hate relationship with bootleggers
 
Bob Dylan hates bootleg albums, but he has consented to the official release of a series of albums called The Bootleg Series.  (Earlier releases that also included songs that were previously available only as bootlegs are the 1975 album The Basement Tapes, which included numerous recordings from the Great White Wonder album; and the 1985 five-LP or three-CD retrospective Biograph).  To date, nine volumes have been released in The Bootleg Series, the most recent (The Bootleg Series Vol. 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962–1964) in 2010
 
(August 2012)
 
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After leaving Code BlueMichael Ostendorf was in an all-star line-up called Toni and the Movers that was formed by singer-songwriter Toni Childs in 1979.  Toni Childs herself played and recorded with numerous musicians in the ensuing years and released two successful solo albums beginning in 1988; her first national tour was opening for Bob Dylan.  The title track “House of Hope” from her 1991 album House of Hope was featured in the film, Thelma and Louise
  
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Al Kooper moved to Greenwich Village in 1965 and became part of the backing band for Bob Dylan, along with ace guitarist Mike Bloomfield.  That’s Kooper playing the signature Hammond Organ riffs on Dylan’s monster hit “Like a Rolling Stone” (and other songs on Highway 61 Revisited); the story is that the people in the studio were trying to put his organ in the background, but that it was Dylan himself who brought it out to the front of the mix.  
 
(September 2012)
 
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I should point out that I mostly collect the music, whereas other collectors might specialize in everything that has ever been issued by bands like the Beatles or KISS, or try to get the most valuable covers or hidden disc differences.  I have done some specializing myself now and then:  I have purchased dozens of Bob Dylan bootleg albums plus nearly all of his regular releases; and several years ago, I was buying up every Linda Ronstadt compilation album I could find, even though I already had virtually all of the music.  
 
(November 2012)
 
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A couple of months ago, the Jensen turntable that I was bragging on a couple of posts back started running just a tiny bit slow.  I had an inkling that this had been going on for a while, but it was pretty subtle.  Well, one day, the Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band rose to the top of the rescued LP stack; and when I started playing it, there was no question at all that it didn’t sound right.  I took it to our local TV/audio repair store (Pass Road Tee Vee Service in Biloxi, for you locals – highly recommended; they really know their stuff, and their prices are very reasonable), and it seemed like they fixed it right up for me – Sgt. Pepper played just fine, and I went through several more LP’s. 
 
Well, several weeks later, I put on a Bob Dylan album – yes, I had a bunch of Beatles albums and Dylan albums come up for cleaning at about the same time, and that was pretty cool – and again, I had an inkling that it was running a tiny bit slow.  But it was an intermittent problem, and I just played another record instead that sounded okay; eventually I put the Dylan album back on, and it sounded fine that second time.  Finally, I put on the first Violent Femmes album – that was a record that I literally bought right off the turntable when it was playing at the time that I was shopping in a record store years ago – and it didn’t play right two times in a row, so I was resigned to having to get it fixed again.  I called the repairman up, and he said that the type of variable-speed motor that they use in turntables can sometimes need adjusting.  He told me just to bring it in anytime, and they would fix it up for me at no charge.  I hate having to do things twice, and I have been so busy at work as well, so I have been putting off taking it back to the shop. 
 
 (December 2012)
 
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When Link Wray died in 2005, both Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen played Rumble” live in tribute. 

 

(February 2013)

 

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If anything, Leon Redbone had an even more stylized appearance than Tiny Tim; and he became known for his performances of old songs like “Champagne Charlie”, “My Walking Stick” and “Shine On Harvest Moon” in a creaky voice while playing a guitar.  Though his was basically a novelty act also, Redbone got a lot more respect.  Bob Dylan for one was impressed when he performed at the Maricopa Folk Festival in the early 1970’s; and Rolling Stone magazine praised his singing as “so authentic you can hear the surface noise [of an old 78 rpm].”  Like Tiny TimLeon Redbone was also a frequent guest on the Tonight Show as well as Saturday Night Live

 

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Most of the songs on the Giles Brothers album, The Giles Brothers 1962-1967 are apparently originals – or at least I’ve never heard them before – with the exception of a fine cover by the Brain of Bob Dylan’s “Most Likely You Go Your Way (and I’ll Go Mine)”, featuring Mike Blakesley on trombone (!).  Blakesley also performed on the 1971 McDonald and Giles album. 

 

(March 2013)

 

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The Chambers Brothers, who are best known for their 1968 psychedelic hit song “Time Has Come Today”, had started out as a gospel quartet in the 1950’s and gradually edged into folk music during the early 1960’s.  They went electric at about the same time that Bob Dylan did – and at some of the same venues even, such as the Newport Folk Festival

 

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Meic Stevens is a national hero in Wales who began writing and recording songs in 1967 in the Welsh language in an attempt to create a body of pop music for the nation.  He is often referred to as “the Welsh Dylan.   

 

(April 2013)

 

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I was born a couple of years later than Greg Shaw, so I turned 14 in 1965.  By then, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were old news; and while I was still paying attention, what was really grabbing me at the time were American artists and bands.  First and foremost was Like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan; that song – plus the flip side “Gates of Eden” that was nearly as long and every bit as good – captivated me in a way that I just couldn’t keep quiet about.  Other great folk-rock sounds of that period included the release of the cover of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” by the Byrds and the revamped The Sounds of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel.  Bob Dylan himself preferred the Byrds cover to his own recording of “Mr. Tambourine Man; but in my usual contrarian way, I preferred Dylan’s original – it was a lot longer for one thing. 

 

These songs were followed closely by the glorious sounds of garage rock and psychedelic rock that were then in their infancy.  Songs like “Pushin’ Too Hard” by the Seeds, “We Ain’t Got Nothin’ Yet” by Blues Magoos, and “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night) by the Electric Prunes really made an impression on me.  It wasn’t until I picked up the Nuggets collection and then the numerous Pebbles albums that I plumbed the depths of this scene, but it was by no means brand new to me either. 

 
(May 2013)
  
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Still, in 1959, this kind of loss was a new experience (particularly for young people).  In his moving 1971 epic of the American landscape of the 1960’s, “American Pie”, Don McLean immortalized this event as “The Day the Music Died”.  Rich with imagery worthy of a Bob Dylan song, McLean has refused to discuss the meaning of the cryptic lyrics over the years, though the main theme is clearly the loss of innocence. 

 

But there is no shortage of interpretations of “American Pie from all quarters (I took a stab at it myself ages ago):  Bob Dylan is said to be the “jester”; the Beatles are evidently referenced in the line “sergeants played a marching tune”; and the Rolling Stones (Mick Jagger in particular) seem to have a more central role in the tale – the fifth verse includes the lyric “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick / Jack Flash sat on a candlestick” (an obvious reference to the Rolling Stones hit “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”), several mentions of Satan (“Sympathy for the Devil” is one of several times that the Stones toyed with Satanic imagery), and apparent veiled references to the horrific Altamont Speedway Free Concert  that occurred on the heels of Woodstock on December 6, 1969, where the Rolling Stones were the featured act, and the Hells Angels motorcycle club provided security. 

 

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Bob Dylan (who was 17 at the time) attended Buddy Holly’s show on January 31, 1959 – only three days before the airplane crash.  Dylan spoke of the concert during his 1998 Grammy acceptance speech for Album of the Year for Time out of Mind:  “And I just want to say that when I was sixteen or seventeen years old, I went to see Buddy Holly play at Duluth National Guard Armory, and I was three feet away from him . . . and he LOOKED at me.  And I just have some sort of feeling that he was – I don’t know how or why – but I know he was with us all the time we were making this record in some kind of way.” 

 

As an aside, fellow Bob Dylan fans who might have quit buying his albums back in the 1960’s and 1970’s would do well to start with Time out of Mind Dylan’s next album, Love and Theft is even better – to see how great his newer music still is. 

 

(June 2013/1)

 

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Meanwhile, during March 1964Tom Wilson was the producer for the first album by Simon and GarfunkelWednesday Morning, 3 A.M..  Like Bob Dylan’s first album, it was a fairly conventional folk album with numerous traditional folk songs and cover songs, including “The Times They Are A-Changin’”; there were only four songs that had been written by Paul Simon

 

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I didn’t know that Hamilton Camp was also a folksinger until I got to college and discovered that his 1964 album Paths of Victory was a favorite album of the College Republican crowd that I began running with.  For some reason, they considered it to be the perfect album to play if you were really depressed; for myself, I loved Paths of Victory because it included covers of seven – count them, seven – Bob Dylan songs, most of which were unfamiliar to me.   

 

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I am not really much of a lyrics guy; even on some of my very favorite albums, I probably couldn’t quote a single line.  Obviously that’s not true of my entire collection; the lyrics from Bob Dylan were a big attraction to me from the very beginning.  However, the most important thing to me about song lyrics is that they need to mean something to the singer, not that we as the audience necessarily need to know what is being said or even what it means.  Years ago, I once wrote about song lyrics, mentioning a Twisted Sister hit song from 1984:  “The point is, you can’t sing ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ angrily, but you can sing ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ with a bit of venom.” 

  

(June 2013/2)

 

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Like many of Bob Dylan’s protest songs, another song on It’s My Way!, “Universal Soldier” has a different target from what one might expect.  Rather than railing at politicians and tyrants, Buffy Sainte-Marie points out that ultimately, the common soldiers are the ones doing the fighting:  “He’s the Universal Soldier and he really is to blame”.  “Universal Soldier” was an early hit for Donovan.  

 

(August 2013)

 

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Mouse and the Traps was one of the first bands that I wrote about; they were featured on the original Nuggets album with their fabulous Bob Dylan soundalike song “A Public Execution” that was released under the name Mouse.  The band later backed a singer named Jimmy Rabbitt on a cover of Psychotic Reaction, a hit song recorded by Count Five.  The song was released under the name Positively 13 O’Clock; this is a Bob Dylan reference as well:  The band name was adapted from his hit song “Positively 4th Street”.  It was quite a thrill when we moved to New York in early 1990, and I found that our first apartment was within sight of the western end of the street mentioned in this Dylan hit, West Fourth Street in Greenwich Village.  Their version of “Psychotic Reaction” was included on the very first Pebbles album. 

 

(September 2013)

 

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Among the eulogies written about Lou Reed are some that compare his contributions to rock and roll to those of Bob Dylan and John Lennon, and I can’t really argue with that assessment.  

 

(December 2013)

 

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Joan Baez in Concert, Part 2 (1963) included the first Bob Dylan songs that she recorded, “Don’t Think Twice, it’s All Right” and “With God on Our Side” – she says that the latter song is the first Dylan song that she learned.  Joan Baez and Bob Dylan were starting to become closely associated with one another (and perhaps romantically) as the two leading folk artists of the day; a few months prior to the release of this album, the two had appeared at the 1963 March on Washington, and Bob and Joan were photographed together on the back cover of his album Bringing it All Back Home (1965). 

 

(February 2014)

 

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Michael Anthony Farren was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire in England on September 3, 1943.  Mick’s father, Eric Farren was an RAF bomber pilot who was killed during World War II.  In a 1972 obscenity trial involving an underground comic called Nasty Tales, Mick Farren defended himself and used this event in his life to illustrate why such publications should not be censored.  As related in his autobiography, Give The Anarchist a Cigarette (2001):  “My father and thousands of others had gone to war against Nazi Germany among other reasons to prevent the world from being run by a power structure that could send in the goon squad any time it wanted to close down a nonconformist publication.”  (The title of his autobiography comes from a comment by Bob Dylan in the groundbreaking 1967 documentary by D. A. Pennebaker called Dont Look Back – there is no apostrophe in the original title – that was later used as a lyric in one of Farren’s songs).

 

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Besides the Rolling StonesRolling Stone magazine is also named after Rollin’ Stone, as is Bob Dylan’s signature song, Like a Rolling Stone.  

 

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In 1969Mick Farren “liberated” the earliest large-scale rock concert in the U.K., the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival by encouraging the fences to be torn down.  This concert – which took place the month after Woodstock (and with many of the same acts) – featured the Whothe BandFreeJoe Cocker, and the Moody Blues.  But the real excitement was caused by the inclusion on the bill of Bob Dylan, who had been little seen since his near-fatal motorcycle accident in July 1966.  When Dylan took the stage, audience members included three of the Beatles, three of the Beatle wives, three of the Rolling StonesEric Clapton, Liz TaylorRichard BurtonJane FondaRoger VadimSyd Barrett, and Elton John  

 

One of the main reasons for the location of the original Woodstock was to lure Bob Dylan out of hiding – the idea was to throw a huge party practically on his doorstep that surely he couldn’t resist attending.  Woodstock is the name of the town where Dylan lived (and also members of the Band); the festival itself was in Bethel.  But resist he did; Bob Dylan instead signed up to appear at the Isle of Wight Festival and set sail for England on August 15, 1969, the day that Woodstock opened.

 
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In 1972Mick Farren published his first book, a comic-book style polemic that traces the development of the youth subculture from the 1950’s; the subtitle on the back cover is “How Elvis gave birth to the Angry Brigade”.  The co-writer with him is Edward Barkera cartoonist who designed the covers on the second and third albums by the Pink Fairies.  The title is Watch Out Kids and is probably adapted from the lyric “Look out kids” in “Subterranean Homesick Blues” by Bob Dylan

 

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Along with many other figures from the underground press, Mick Farren moved to the influential New Musical Express (NME) in 1974.  Quoting again from the Telegraph obituary:  “Allowed free rein to explore the outer reaches of popular culture by its editor, Nick Logan, Farren turned in a series of memorable pieces on people such as the motorbike stunt-rider Evel Knievel and the avant-garde film director Kenneth Anger.

 

“In the summer of 1976, by which time the Sex Pistols were introducing Britain to punk, Farren’s NME piece headlined ‘The Titanic Sails At Dawn’ [again using a Bob Dylan lyric, this time from one of my all-time favorites, Desolation Row] was judged to have caught the mood among the generation of teenagers disaffected by giant stadium acts like the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin.”

 

(March 2014/1)

 

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Michael Erlewine was active in the Michigan folk scene in the 1950’s and 1960’s; he hitchhiked with Bob Dylan in 1961 and made his way to Greenwich Village in New York and also to San Francisco 

 

(March 2014/2)

 

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Homer was fortunate enough to record their single at Robin Hood Studios in Tyler, Texas, which was managed by Robin “Hood” Brians.  ZZ Top recorded their debut album, ZZ Top’s First Album at this studio, and Mouse and the Traps laid down their early tracks there as well, including their Dylanesque classic A Public Execution.  

 

(April 2014)

 

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Manfred Mann was one of the original British Invasion bands; they had a major hit in America (it was #1 in the U.K.) with a bizarre Bob Dylan song, “Quinn the Eskimo (Mighty Quinn)”, along with an earlier hit song called “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”. 

 

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Manfred Mann’s Earth Band released their first album, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band in 1972 and has an impressive discography by any standard.  One of the endearing features of the band’s music is that they continue to unearth obscure Bob Dylan songs for their albums, with one of them, “Get Your Rocks Off” being used as the album name, Get Your Rocks Off (1973).  I have been collecting Earth Band albums for close to 40 years and keep finding new ones every few years.  Allmusic lists 21 albums by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band

 

(June 2014)

 

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Major and minor artists alike often have spiritually themed songs or overtly Christian songs on their albums.  The first cut on Simon and Garfunkel’s debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. is a gospel song called “You Can Tell the World that was written by Gibson & Camp (Bob Gibson and Bob Camp – later known as Hamilton Camp).  Peter, Paul and Mary had numerous gospel songs on their albums, including “This Train” on their first album, Peter, Paul and Mary.  Also on this album, under the name “If I Had My Way”, is a traditional song also called “Samson and Delilah” that is based on the Biblical account.  Many other rock musicians have recorded this song, notably the Grateful DeadBob DylanIke and Tina TurnerBruce Springsteen, and Garbage front woman Shirley Manson

 

(July 2014)

 

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The Search Party had its origins in the Rejects, a garage rock band that originally formed in about 1963.  Their repertoire included “Little Black Egg” that had been recorded by the Golliwogs (who later became Creedence Clearwater Revival) and “Mr. Tambourine Man”, the Bob Dylan song that was a hit for the Byrds. 
 
(September 2014)
 
*       *       *
 
So who is she? Linda Pierre King is a native of Houston and moved to New York in the mid-1960's.  She became active in the folksinging circuit and spent a lot of her time at a beatnik coffee house called Beanie Baby's Java Hut.  Apparently the recordings featured on the Heart Beats CD were made in New York but had never been officially released before this. 
 
Meanwhile, Norm Wooster was adrift in the Big Apple after seeing his musical career evaporate.  The self-styled "king of barbershop" had numerous hit songs in the 1950's and later became a talent scout for Play-Tone Records.  After a bitter dispute in 1962 with Play-Tone chairman Sol Siler, the #1 hit "Lovin' You Lots and Lots" was released in 1964 under the name Norm Wooster Singers, though Wooster did not perform on the record and had his songwriting credits excised.  This song was also the opening track on the soundtrack album for the 1996 Tom Hanks movie That Thing You Do! about a one-hit wonder rock band called (naturally) the Wonders
 
Norm Wooster then immersed himself in the folk music world in New York and saw Linda Pierre King perform at the Beanie Baby club.  He fell in love with her, and they were later married.  Through her, Wooster eased his way back into the music scene and performed in a variety of styles from psychedelic rock to disco to country. 
 
Linda Pierre King might also have helped moderate Norm Wooster's right-wing political beliefs; he had been friends with members of the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), whereas King was a follower of philosopher and author Ayn Rand.  The HUAC connection had exacerbated the falling-out with Sol Siler, since HUAC was investigating actress Suzanne Pleshette, whom Siler was dating at the time.  (See below)
 
 (April 2012)

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Well, apparently I got fooled by some of the back story that was created for the 1996 Tom Hanks movie called That Thing You Do!, about a one-hit wonder rock band called the Wonders; I have never actually seen the film.  There is no such person as Norm Wooster or Sol Siler, and Play-Tone Records was the fictitious record company that released the single by the Wonders.  The supposed hit song by the Norm Wooster Singers, “Lovin’ You Lots and Lots” was actually written by Tom Hanks.  Linda Pierre King evidently remained in the Houston area and never moved to New York City
 
I ran across the biography in more than one location that appeared to be reliable, such as the post on last.fm that gave a biography called “Norm Wooster: The Myth and the Legend” (and several Amazon.com and YouTube items, though one YouTube video disclaimed the New York City connection).  Birth dates, parents’ names, recordings, and name dropping peppered the entry; besides Linda Pierre King and Suzanne Pleshette (who was apparently not ever investigated by HUAC), the biography also mentions white soul singer Timi YuroJerry Murad and the HarmonicatsBob Dylan, and Kurt Cobain.  Turns out that last.fm is a wiki like Wikipedia; the real story can be found in several entries on Wikipedia.  It sure seemed legit to me at the time; I figured, how many people named Linda Pierre King could there be in the world who were folksingers?  
 
Anyway, sorry about that, and I apologize for my part in propagating this nonsense.  But that doesn’t make Linda Pierre Kings music any less wonderful.   
 
(October 2014)
 

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Joan Osborne’s major-label debut album Relish was an instant favorite of mine when it was released in 1995, and the album has an amazing array of moods.  Despite curve balls like “Let’s Just Get Naked” that celebrate a playful sexuality, most songs have a spiritual bent, from the haunting, infectious “St. Teresa”, to a fairly obscure Bob Dylan song, “Man in the Long Black Coat”.  

 

(November 2014)

 

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In 1967Kim Fowley produced the sole album by the Belfast Gypsies and also co-wrote some of their songs.  The band included some members of Van Morrison’s first band Them before he left to become a solo artist.  The album was misleadingly named Them Belfast Gypsies (particularly as the title is laid out on the cover).  Allmusic gives the album 4 stars, and Richie Unterberger notes in the write-up for the album:  “Their tense version of ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’ is one of the greatest obscure Dylan covers, and the magnificent harmonica on ‘Midnight Train’ is a highlight.” 

 

(January 2015/1)

 

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The entry on the Carter Family in Allmusic (by David Vinopal) includes:  “Comprised of a gaunt, shy gospel quartet member named Alvin P. Carter and two reserved country girls – his wife, Sara [Dougherty Carter], and their sister-in-law, Maybelle [Addington Carter] – the Carter Family sang a pure, simple harmony that influenced not only the numerous other family groups of the ’30s and the ’40s, but folk, bluegrass, and rock musicians like Woody GuthrieBill Monroethe Kingston TrioDoc WatsonBob Dylan, and Emmylou Harris, to mention just a few.  It’s unlikely that bluegrass music would have existed without the Carter Family.” 

 

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On the first LP by Peter, Paul and Mary, Peter, Paul and Mary (1962), Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey are said to have written “Sorrow” (better known by its full name “Man of Constant Sorrow” or “Maid of Constant Sorrow” and dating from 1913, both Bob Dylan and Judy Collins recorded it in the same time period, and “Man of Constant Sorrow” was also prominently featured in the 2000 film O Brother Where Art Thou). 
 
*       *       *
 

Their first album, Broken Boy Soldiers was released in May 2006; it was named Album of the Year by the British magazine Mojo.  The Raconteurs spent much of that year touring, including eight dates as the opening act for Bob Dylan in November 2006.  

 

(February 2015)

 

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After a remarkably quick guitar tuning, Richie Havens improvised a song called “Freedom that was based on the Negro spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”.  It was this performance that made it into the Woodstock movie.  Bob Dylan has incorporated Motherless Child into his songs; Wikipedia lists dozens of others who have also recorded the song in one form or another. 

 

*       *       *

 

Since I only have Cry of the City thus far, I have Phil Gammage’s playlist on from his website, www.philgammage.com.  Just one great song after another; they are mostly original songs, but one is a cover of “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down”, a traditional folk song that Bob Dylan included on his first album that I discussed earlier, Bob Dylan; another standout is an instrumental guitar-driven track called “Royal Flush”.  (Two of Phil Gammage’s solo albums have been all instrumentals). 

 

(March 2015)

 

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In my last post, I was mostly talking about solo songwriters like Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, but writing songs is primarily a collaborative profession.  In many cases, the music and the lyrics would be written separately.  Richard Rodgers was a towering figure in writing music for Broadway shows and other productions; he primarily worked with two different lyricists over the years, Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II

 

*       *       *

 

As I wrote about Bob Dylan in my last post, his first album, Bob Dylan sold modestly; and Dylan became known as “Hammond’s Folly” around Columbia Records – John H. Hammond had decided to sign Dylan on the spot after hearing him perform on September 14, 1961 at the apartment of Carolyn Hester and Richard Fariña (two folksingers that I also wrote about last month), though he evidently made a formal audition first (no recorded evidence of that audition survives, unfortunately).  

 

As can be seen from his example and that of Diana Ross and the Supremeswho were referred to at Motown Records early in their career as the “No Hit Supremes”, record companies give up on musicians pretty quickly; and any number of the Under Appreciated Rock Bands and Under Appreciated Rock Artists that I have written about over the years could potentially have had high-profile careers.  This doesn’t seem to be true so much for, say, Hollywood actors, as many of them are able to hang around for years or even decades before making it big. 

 

*       *       *

 

Black Russian had some assistance with the lyrics, perhaps because English is not their native language; they hardly spoke the language at all at the time that they defected.  Lyricists who lent a hand include Allee Willis, who co-wrote the lyrics for their beautiful first single Leave Me Now.  Willis has had a long career as a writer, songwriter, set designer, and artist.  From Wikipedia:  “[Allee Willis] songs have sold over 50,000,000 records, including ‘September’ and ‘Boogie Wonderland’ by Earth, Wind and Fire, ‘Neutron Dance’ by the Pointer Sisters, ‘What Have I Done to Deserve This?’ by Pet Shop Boys with Dusty Springfield, and ‘Lead Me On’ by Maxine Nightingale.  Willis has collaborated with hundreds of leading artists and composers from all fields of music, including Bob DylanPatti LaBelleJames Brown, Herbie HancockDeniece Williams, and Motown legend Lamont Dozier.” 

 

(April 2015/1)

 

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Someone put together a backstory for the characters in the Tom Hanks film That Thing You Do!.  Some of the people were entirely made-up; presumably those are the ones who are actually in the film.  Others are famous to one degree or another:  Bob DylanSuzanne PleshetteKurt Cobain of NirvanaJerry Murad’s HarmonicatsTimi Yuro.  

 

And then they threw Linda Pierre King into the mix – and that just isn’t playing fair.  Neither one of the CD’s that I have provides any information to speak of about her.  The liner notes in one of them describe her as a quintessential hippie folksinger, and the small picture that is included bears that out.  Now anyone trying to ferret out information about Linda Pierre King has to get past all of the made-up story line about her hanging out in a Greenwich Village club called Beanie’s something-or-other, and then meeting and marrying the so-called King of Barber Shop

 

(April 2015/2)

 

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The name of Hollis Brown is taken from a Bob Dylan song Ballad of Hollis Brown.  (Did I mention that I have a cover version of “Ballad of Hollis Brown” by Iggy and the Stooges?  Quite good also).  
 
(December 2015)
 
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For some reason, over the years the 1970’s have gotten a reputation as a poor decade for music. (So do the 1950’s, for that matter, even though that is where rock and roll came from). It certainly cannot be because everything sounded the same. Most of the British Invasion bands were still active. The top American acts were still going strong as well – Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Carole King, Simon and Garfunkel, Linda Ronstadt, the Beach Boysthe Band, Johnny Cash, Frank Sinatraetc. – and major stars who arrived in the 1970’s include Elton John, Michael Jackson, Queen, ABBA, Billy Joel, Aerosmith, Bruce Springsteen, AC/DC, PrinceJames Taylor, and Tom Petty. Anyone who says they are a music fan has to be able to find someone, and probably several someones on that list that they like a lot.
(December 2016)
* * *
AARP The Magazine has gotten to be a great musical resource in recent years; when Bob Dylan released his first album of standards a few years back, Shadows in the Night (2015), the only interview he granted was with this magazine. The reporter had previously worked at Rolling Stone magazine. From Wikipedia: “The album has received universal acclaim from critics for its unexpected and strong song selection and for the strength of Dylan and his band’s performance and arrangements. The album debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, making Dylan the oldest male solo artist to chart at number one in the UK.” 
(June 2017)
* * *
In 1989the Tell-Tale Hearts reformed with another line-up for a one-off single “Circus Mind” b/w “Flying” on Nevermore Records (in a limited release of 800 copies), with personnel Bill Calhoun (lead vocals, harp), Mike Stax (bass), Ron Swart (organ), Jon McKinney (rhythm guitar), Carl Rusk (lead guitar on Circus Mind), Paul Carsola (drums on Circus Mind), and Craig Packham (drums on Flying).  A tribute by Phil May of the Pretty Things that I found online says of Circus Mind:  “The Tell-Tale Hearts’ recording of ‘Circus Mind’ picks up on echoes of early electric Dylan (as in Bob), which I’ve always thought ran through our version. . . .  They’ve turned what was just a vignette in the Pretties’ version into a whole song that drives the distance.” 
 
(September 2017)
 
*       *       *
 
Wild Love is a great CD.  If this was the only album by the Stooges that I owned – or even if it was the only Stooges album that existed – they would still be one of my favorite bands.  People talk about “deep album cuts”, but those songs are sitting on albums for anyone to pick up and play.  These are “deep archive cuts”, buried on rehearsal tapes that in the normal course of events for any musicians would never have seen the light of day, on an album that runs for well over 60 minutes.  The thrill that I felt when I found an unknown 1960’s Bob Dylan song on a new bootleg album purchase is only matched by what I felt the first several times that I played this album.
 
As a hardcore Dylan fan, naturally I am delighted to have the remarkable cover by the Stooges of “Ballad of Hollis Brown”.  Not surprisingly, it is much different from Dylan’s own acoustical rendition of “Ballad of Hollis Brown; the hard rock performance backing Iggy Pop’s passionate vocals has a metronomic feel to it that suits the grim subject matter well.
 
*       *       *
 
If I had to pick out my favorite song on Wild Love, it would be “Pin Point Eyes”; the couplet “She looked into my pin point eyes / and she cried” is hard to top in the Stooges oeuvre.  It sure would have been nice to hear this one on Open Up and Bleed!, but maybe it was just too unfinished.  Greg Shaw speaks of this song in the liner notes:  “Never before released in the U.S., Pin Point Eyes might well have evolved out of a jam on ‘St. James Infirmary’, until Iggy grafted his own graphic addiction story over it.  Some great crazed piano on this one from Bob Sheff.  Gotta love the lazy mood in which Iggy starts off urging them all to join in, then to take their solo parts.  It’s almost the kind of party that Dylan threw on ‘Rainy Day Women’, set in perhaps-ironic contrast to the really harrowing story he’s telling.  (Did he really say he traded his girl for a bag of snow?).” 
 
(December 2017)
 
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We have been bombarded with important anniversaries this year.  In music, they all seem to go back to 1962:  The first albums by Bob Dylan (Bob Dylan) and by the Beach Boys (Surfin’ Safari) were released in the USthe Beatles first single, Love Me Do” b/w “P.S. I Love You was released in the UK (Sir Paul McCartney also turned 70 this year); the Rolling Stones had their first concert; and Andy Williams first began singing his signature song, “Moon River”.  All of this historical context might have gotten rock musicians in a writing mood:  Books by Keith RichardsPete TownshendRod Stewart, and Neil Young all came out this year. 
 
(Year 3 Review)
 
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Mostly I had long series in the past 12 months:  3 of my 5 pieces in the Women in Rock series and all 5 in my Rock and Religion series.  I will no doubt have much more to say on both topics, but not right away.  In the latter, I examined Bob Dylan’s Christian period; and the religiously oriented events in the life of the Beatles, before and after the break-up, beginning with John Lennon’s notorious pronouncement that the Beatles are more popular than Jesus.  
(Year 5 Review)
 
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But I likely will keep putting out what I call the “Story of the Month” (I have my web pages broken down into short “Items” and longer “Stories” on whomever or whatever I am talking about) that I uncover as I load up the web site. These Stories are on well known (well, better known anyway) songs and albums and rock bands and other topics that are not of the Under Appreciated variety. I started those last year and meant to list the ones in my year-end post last time but forgot, so here is that list from the past two years:
 
December 2013The Standells 
 
January 2014 – (skipped)
 
February 2014Hasil Adkins 
 
March 2014Bobby Darin 
 
April 2014Nuggets 
 
May 2014The Nerves 
 
June 2014The Outsiders (American band)
 
 
 
September 2014The Piltdown Man and Brontosaurus 
 
October 2014Walter/Wendy Carlos 
 
November 2014The Trashmen 
 
December 2014John Birch Society Blues 
 
January 2015John Mellencamp 
 
February 2015Child Is Father to the Man 
 
March 2015Dion DiMucci 
 
April 2015Scotch and Soda 
 
May 2015Stiv Bators/Greg Shaw 
 
June 2015Walk on the Wild Side 
 
July 2015Lola
 
August 2015Bob Dylan the Protest Singer
(Year 6 Review)
* * *
 
Since I am down to a quarterly schedule rather than a monthly schedule, my annual list is a lot shorter, so I will try listing all of the people that I have discussed in some depth rather than just the Under Appreciated Rock Band and the Story of the Month. They are all punk rock bands of one kind or another this year (2015-2016), and the most recent post includes my overview of the early rap/hip hop scene that an old friend, George Konstantinow challenged me to write – probably so long ago that he might have forgotten.
 
(Year 7 Review)
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Anyway, here is what and who I talked about last year:
(Year 8 Review)
* * *
In order to make sure I catch them all, I figured that the best way was to go through all of the webpages alphabetically.  So far I have gotten into the F’s; I have only been doing this since mid-August, so that’s not bad for well under six months.  This includes all of the extensive writing on Allmusicthe Beatles and Bob Dylan.  I am trying to get through it as fast as I can (having retired as of the first of the year will definitely help), not only because I have an as yet unspecified deadline before Classic Google Sites goes away, but also because I doubt that I will ever find a text editor that works as well and has as many features as this one.  I doubt that I will get much new writing about music done, but I have other priorities now. 
 
(Year 9 Review)
 
* * *
 
I might yet write some more posts, but not until I secure my website in a safe place. No other bands or topics come immediately to mind though. I have already written 13 “stories” about various aspects of Bob Dylan’s musical life, and I don’t know what else I have left to add. As it turned out, a lot of my posts have revolved around artists on Bomp! Records and their affiliated labels, like Alive Records. When I was preparing the last of my posts, on The Iguana Chronicles (a long series of albums of unreleased material by the Stooges that was put together by Greg Shaw of Bomp! Records) – which was named after the least likely UARB of them all, the Iguanas – I went through all of the Bomp! Records artists that I could locate before I finally found one without a Wikipedia article that wasn’t already a UARB: SS-20, whose first album came out in 1986 – 12 years after Bomp! Records was founded.
 
(Year 10 Review)
Last edited: April 7, 2021