Chris defends Bob Dylan's SELF PORTRAIT
Category: Articles
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NOTHIN’ HERE NOW TO HOLD THEM: THE TRAGEDY OF NORTH COUNTRY BLUES
A look at Dylan's brilliant social protest NORTH COUNTRY BLUES
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BEAUTY IS TRUTH: BOB DYLAN’S POEM TO JOANIE
The pursuit of and definition of beauty has been one of the major concerns of poets throughout the ages. In perhaps his best known poem, Sonnet 18, Shakespeare asks if it is wise to compare the object of his love to a summer’s day, which despite all its glories will inevitably fade away. But...
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PALE DEATH RETREATING: Symbolism, Metaphor and Metamorphosis in Dylan’s Changing of the Guards
Chris looks at Dylan's great CHANGING OF THE GUARDS
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BOB DYLAN: Most Of The Time
BOB DYLAN: MOST OF THE TIME The ‘Drawn Blank Series’, the exhibition of Bob Dylan’s paintings currently showing at Edinburgh’s City Art Centre, provides a valuable insight into Dylan’s creative and imaginative processes. The paintings are based on a series of drawings Dylan completed in the late 80s and early 90s. In what the exhibition...
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THE PRISONER: Patrick McGoohan 1928-2009
THE PRISONER: PATRICK McGOOHAN The recent death of the creator of The Prisoner Patrick McGoohan was given surprisingly little publicity. One of those items towards the end of the news where the newsreader adopts an appropriately nostalgic, slightly reverential tone. Some fairly muted obituaries in the newspapers, with the standard shots of McGoohan in his...
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EXPLORING TELEVISUALITY: The Tudors
What is ‘televisuality’? The word has been bandied around rather loosely by media academics for a decade or so. Broadly speaking we can say that the word refers to the attempts that have been made to examine the fundamental nature of television as a form of communication. But there is little consensus between those...
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RICHARD THOMPSON Sweet Warrior
Richard Thompson can transport you to places in his songs like no-one else. Drawing his inspiration from folk songs, oral tales, tattered history books, half remembered stories, bizarre websites and advertising catalogues, Thompson is a master of time and space. Many of his best songs place you in a specific historical context, then move...
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BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Magic: A Review
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: MAGIC REVIEW BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: MAGIC Bruce Springsteen’s Magic is a journey into the darkness of the ‘American night’; a portrait of a country mired in confusion, its value-systems broken down, its soul in torment. As a writer, Springsteen is often misunderstood. This is partly because he often casts his narratives in the...
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THE BEATLES: Extract from ‘Who Could Ask For More’ Two: Hey Jude
HEY JUDE This is the second extract from my forthcoming book Who Could Ask For More: Reclaiming The Beatles. This extract features what may well be their finest hour, and explores how it focuses on the relationship between Paul and John In 1968 The Beatles, along with the youth culture that they spoke for and...