BOB DYLAN AND THE BLUES 1961-66 …Big Bill Broonzy had a song called ‘Key to the Highway’. “I’ve got a key to the highway / I’m booked and I’m bound to go / Gonna leave here runnin’ because walking is most too slow.” I sang that a lot. If you sing that a lot, you...
Category: Music
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VIDEO PODCAST: STUCK INSIDE OF MOBILE: Going Through All These Things Twice
Rather than providing a linear narrative, Dylan freewheels through the nine verses in an apparently random order. Like Desolation Row and Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues the song creates a world with its own internal rationale, peopled by symbolic ‘cartoon characters’ who make brief entrances and exits. As in It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) (also addressed to an invisible ‘mother figure’) it presents a picture of modern life as stifling, oppressive and highly illogical. But the desperate tension of that song is now replaced by a gleeful comic detachment. Dream, fantasy and hallucination appear to dictate the picture Dylan builds up of a world in which conventional reason is upended or reversed.
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ALL I FEEL IS HEAT AND FLAME: BOB DYLAN’S POLITICAL AND POST-RELIGIOUS SONGS OF THE 1980S (from ‘Minstrel Boy’)
A version of this blog appears in the book MINSTREL BOY: THE METAMORPHOSES OF BOB DYLAN Minstrel Boy, Metamorphoses of Bob Dylan BOB DYLAN’S POLITICAL AND POST-RELIGIOUS SONGS OF THE 1980S …Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell; And in the lowest deep a lower deep, Still threat’ning to devour me, opens wide,...
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VIDEO PODCAST: Girl From the North Country/ Boots of Spanish Leather (from ‘Dig Yourself’)
GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY/ BOOTS OF SPANISH LEATHER: SHE WAS ONCE A TRUE LOVE OF MINE A version of this appears in Chris Gregory’s forthcoming DIG YOURSELF: THE RISE OF BOB DYLAN 1961-66, the third part of the PICASSO OF SONG trilogy GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY AND BOOTS OF SPANISH LEATHER Disseminated in...
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VIDEO PODCAST: BOB DYLAN’S RESTLESS FAREWELL: IT’S CLOSING TIME…
In 1964's RESTLESS FAREWELL, Bob Dylan begins to signal the elements that will bring about his oncoming change of style
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Bob Dylan’s MURDER MOST FOUL Part Three from ‘Determined to Stand’
The third and final part of Chris' deep exegis of Bob Dylan's masterful MURDER MOST FOUL...
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VIDEO PODCAST: Bob Dylan’s She’s Your Lover Now: With Your Picture Books of the Pyramids…
Chris goes deep deep into SHE'S YOUR LOVER NOW and I WANT TO BE YOUR LOVER, two unreleased songs from the early BLONDE ON BLONDE sessions
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BOB DYLAN’S MURDER MOST FOUL Part Two
Chris looks in detail at Dylan's MURDER MOST FOUL (Part 2)
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VIDEO PODCAST: BALLAD OF A THIN MAN: Something is Happening Here
VIDEO PODCAST: BALLAD OF A THIN MAN: Something is...
Chris dives very deeply into Bob Dylan's BALLAD OF A THIN MAN
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MURDER MOST FOUL: BOB DYLAN’S MAGNUM OPUS (Part One) (extract from ‘Determined to Stand’)
Chris does an extremely deep dive into Bob Dylan's amazing song from 2000, MURDER MOST FOUL, an epic song about the murder of JOHN F. KENNEDY