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Ronnie Wood: Fearless: The Anthology 1965-2025
by Doug Collette
If the Ronnie Wood anthology Fearless proves anything, it is that the predominant virtues of the peripatetic British musician are largely intangible. Not that the guitarist, songwriter and singer is not talented in those various roles, but that his most salient attributes, at least as depicted here, as those of a convivial individual who invariably contributes to a nurturing atmosphere in a musical setting. Above all, the man known as 'Woody' serves the songs as well as his ...
Continue ReadingBob Dylan: A Complete Unknown
by Doug Collette
Bob Dylan A Complete Unknown Searchlight Pictures2024 As with so many artistic efforts related to Bob Dylan, James Mangold's biopic A Complete Unknown may work best simply as the means to an end (and not just as inspiration to revisit the Nobel Prize winner's music). The film certainly benefits from not being taken too seriously, especially as it hardly pretends to be definitive, even in the designated 1961-1965 timeline of the screenplay by the ...
Continue ReadingBob Dylan: The Bootleg Series Volume 21: To Be Likened Later, Spring 65: The Forgotten Gil Evans Sessions
by Mike Jurkovic
Veteran producer Tom Wilson was never a man known to shun aside inspiration. Prior to finding himself at the eye of the Bob Dylan hurricane, Wilson had not only founded Transition Records, but gave the world Sun Ra's unruly, post-bop big band debut Jazz by Sun Ra (Transition, 1957), Cecil Taylor's defiant and quixotic Jazz Advance (Transition, 1957) and Donald Byrd's initial live set By rd Jazz (Transition, 1955) So when Wilson, in a bar on a break ...
Continue ReadingBob Dylan: Mixing Up The Medicine - Treasures From the Bob Dylan Center
by Doug Collette
Bob Dylan: Mixing Up The Medicine Mark Davidson and Parker Fishel 608 pages ISBN: # 978-1734537796 Callaway Arts & Entertainment2023 There have been more than a few books written about Bob Dylan during the course of his sixty-plus years in the public spotlight, but perhaps none is so dense as Mark Davidson and Parker Fishel's Mixing Up the Medicine. Granted, the Nobel Laureate's own tome, The Philosophy of Modern Song (Simon & Shuster, ...
Continue ReadingBob Dylan: Fragments - Time Out of Mind Sessions (1996-1997): The Bootleg Series, Vol. 17
by Mike Jurkovic
Dylanologists of every stripe and level of Dylanalia had it partly right when Bob Dylan released Time Out Of Mind (Columbia) in mid-September 1997. “Great album!" They/we/us all screamed. “Great songs!" “Dylan's best since the totemic Blood On the Tracks!" (Columbia, 1975) “Mid-career masterwork!" “The Bard's New Relevance!" If you weren't there the first time it really was a Category 5 idiot wind of biblical proportion. In the chalk dust arena of popular punditry, the second enfant ...
Continue ReadingBob Dylan: The Philosophy of Modern Song
by Doug Collette
The Philosophy of Modern Song Bob Dylan 352 Pages ISBN: # 978-1451648706 Simon & Schuster 2022 Bob Dylan's The Philosophy of Modern Song is a labor of love by a music lover of unremitting passion. As such, it is hard to put it down once the reading commences, if for no other reason than proceeding through the sixty-some essays provides a rush similar to that of poring through Jack Kerouac's On The ...
Continue ReadingBob Dylan: Springtime in New York 1980-1985: The Bootleg Series, Volume 16 (5CD)
by Doug Collette
Generally speaking, revelations abound within the various installments of The Bootleg Series, Bob Dylan's ongoing archive initiative, and Volume 16 is no exception. But in listening to Springtime in New York, 1980- 1985, the epiphanies come in slow bursts, flashing over the course of the five CDs to generate a cumulative momentum that reaches a flash-point with the content taken from the much-maligned Empire Burlesque (Columbia, 1985). And that outcome in itself is a truly Dylanesque curve ball: pre-release anticipation ...
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