EXTRACTS Mr. Tambourine Man is certainly one of Bob Dylan’s most famous creations; so much so that it has become a kind of ‘signature song’. If any one of the characters in Dylan’s lyrics can be said to represent the singer himself, it is this mysterious and enigmatic figure who inspires the song’s narrator with...
Category: Music
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PODCAST: Bob Dylan: A Headful of Ideas Season 3 15) Sara: Forgive Me My Unworthiness
Hi folks! Please click on ‘Watch on You Tube’. Please LIKE and SUBSCRIBE when you get there! EXTRACTS Sara is clearly an autobiographical song. It is a highly moving and desperate plea, which focuses on the happy earlier days of their relationship when their children were very small. There is no mention of...
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BOB DYLAN’S HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED: NEXT TIME YOU SEE ME COMING…
No place, not even a wild place, is a place until it has had that human attention that at its highest reach we call poetry. –Wallace Stegner, The Sense of Place (1989) Highway 61, the main thoroughfare of the country blues, begins about where I began. I always felt like I’d started on it, always had been on...
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PODCAST: BOB DYLAN: A HEADFUL OF IDEAS Season Three 14) Crossing the Rubicon (extract from ‘Determined to Stand’
Hi folks! Please click on ‘Watch on You Tube’. Please LIKE and SUBSCRIBE when you get there! THE TEXT Crossing the Rubicon is constructed in a very regular pattern, with nine verses of four lines each. Dylan’s vocal is especially nuanced, depicting the conflicting extremes of decisiveness and indecision between which the narrator is continually...
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TIME IS AN OCEAN: LOVE SONGS FROM BOB DYLAN’S DESIRE
————————- Hi there folks! Comments box at the bottom of the page. Comments welcome!!! ————————- …Fine, clear, dazzling morning, the sun an hour high, the air just tart enough. What a stamp in advance my whole day receives from the song of that meadow lark perch’d on a fence-stake twenty rods distant! Two or...
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PODCAST: BOB DYLAN: A HEADFUL OF IDEAS Season Three 13) Desolation Row: Between the Windows of the Sea
Hi folks…. welcome to DESOLATION ROW…. Please click on ‘Watch on You Tube’ (bottom left) PLEASE like and subscribe. Any comments at the bottom of this page or on you tube would be highly appreciated…. EXTRACTS (Full text here) The key to the success of the recording on Highway 61 Revisited was the addition...
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PODCAST: Bob Dylan; A Headful of Ideas Season Three 12) Dirge: Searching For A Gem
Hi folks here’s my take on DIRGE, the angst ridden track from PLANET WAVES…. PLEASE CLICK ‘WATCH ON YOU TUBE’ TO LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE!!! COMMENTS BOX BELOW…. EXTRACTS In many ways Dirge is presented like one of Dylan’s old protest songs. The six verses use a basic AABB rhyme scheme and a repeated regular rhythm....
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BOB DYLAN AND WOODY GUTHRIE: IN THE GRAND CANYON AT SUNDOWN
Chris Gregory looks at the influence of WOODY GUTHRIE on BOB DYLAN, discusses Dylan's Guthrie covers, his SONG FOR WOODY and his poem LAST THOUGHTS ON WOODY GUTHRIE
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PODCAST: BOB DYLAN: A HEADFUL OF IDEAS Season Three 11) A Price on My Soul: Three Songs From John Wesley Harding
Chris Gregory examines three songs from JOHN WESLEY HARDING
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PODCAST: Bob Dylan: A Headful of Ideas Season 3 10) Black Rider: Extract from ‘Determined to Stand’
EXTRACTS Black Rider, from Rough and Rowdy Ways, consists of a direct address to an ominous figure which Dylan performs against the sparse but highly atmospheric backing of a single, flamenco-flavoured acoustic guitar. The track is reminiscent of some of the more intimate cuts on his ‘Sinatra’ albums such as Melancholy Mood or Some Enchanted...