Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Bob Dylan is alive and kicking, and he turned 70 years old on May 24, 2011. Google has more than 2.1 million recorded posts for Bob Dylan, that is, if you limit your search to posts from the last 24 hours; you get 45 million hits if you don't limit by date. In comparison, with no date limitation, search Lady Gaga and you get 378 million results. What does that tell us? What does that tell you?
Dylan has written at least 400 songs that we know of, released over 50 albums, played more than 3,000 concerts, performed in front of Martin Luther King the day King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, did a show with Pope John Paul II looking over his shoulder, sang one of his songs in tribute to Frank Sinatra, which made Frank cry, honored at the Kennedy Center, won a Grammy or two or three, a Golden Globe, a Pulitzer and an Oscar. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature. He has not, however, sung (as far as we know) "Friday," the song made famous by Rebecca Black. You can't believe everything you see and hear on YouTube.
If you go searching for Bob Dylan on the web, you won't find him--or don't be so sure you have. But you will find some things that might be about him.
Here's a couple of things I found:
Tell us what Bob Dylan you found on web. Post a link in the comments section. Maybe you'll win something. Maybe you won't. No matter. We're all bound to lose, bound to win. I think Bob Dylan said that.
Happy birthday to the man!
ReplyDeleteSome random trivia: Bob Dylan was Patti Smith's imaginary friend. She called him Bobby D. and managed to fool a lot of the 70s punk New York scene into thinking she knew him personally before she got famous and toured with him...
Here's some of my favorite Bobby interview links:
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2007/10/the_ten_most_incomprehensible.html
http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interw/66-sep22.htm
Also, TARANTULA is phenomenal read, if anybody can get their paws on it.
-Eva Derzic
English 1C
Hey Eva,
ReplyDeleteYou've read TARANTULA? I don't know anybody who has read it. I've seen it, but haven't read it.
Is there anyone out there who can do a Dylan impersonation? Somebody? Anybody?
--Christopher McCabe
Yes, I have! I even own a copy. It's done in a pretty stream-of-consciousness style, if you've picked it up. It's a pretty intense read and his language takes some getting used to...it's about 10x crazier than his response to a playboy interviewer's question about how he chose his career:
ReplyDeleteCarelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy — he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?
I know the book received some positively infernal reviews, but here's Mark Spitzer's vicious rebuttal to those:
http://www.bobdylan.com/news/new-take-tarantula
His language is pretty amusing. He does bring up some interesting stuff, though. Especially about the editor's note in the first edition. Food for thought. :-)
Eva,
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the links. Reading what you posted and the interviews I thought about this one Bob Dylan concert I went to over 20 years ago. He was playing with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. The highlight of the show (it took place in an old basketball arena): Bob Dylan is introducing the band and he gets to Tom Petty. He says: "I'd like to introduce Tom Petty." (Pause.) "Tom Petty is a poet, a poet in the French tradition." (Pause.) "Are there any French people in the audience tonight?"
--Christopher McCabe
As far as I can tell this is Bob Dylan's official Twitter Feed
ReplyDeletehttp://twitter.com/bobdylan
and an official website
http://www.bobdylan.com
I think.