Two giants took the unusual step of releasing Christmas albums this fall, and the surprise is who did it better. Was it the sentimental fool with a sweet pop croon who knows his way around traditional music, or the craggy voiced Jew whose music seems to eschew sentiment?

Surprise! In the battle of superstar Christmas albums, it's no contest: Bob Dylan bests Sting.

The intent of these two discs is different. Dylan surely hopes his disc will bring Christmas cheer, while Sting probably imagines his ideal listener in front of the hearth of a stone castle's main room sipping a glass of port. Each artist includes 15 songs, and one need look no further than the tracklistings to tell the difference. Dylan includes "Here Comes Santa Claus," "Winter Wonderland" and "Silver Bells," while Sting's tunes come from the likes of Praetorius, Schubert and Bach.

If Sting is good for anything these days, it's subverting expectations. Solo career tailing off? Cut an album of ancient lute music. Making inroads as a classical artist? Reunite the Police. Fans eager to hear the next thing from that still vital band? Go back to classical music and make the world's first completely joyless Christmas album.

Sting was sliding down a slippery slope toward irrelevance when he decided to reunite the Police. It was his most purely commercial and calculated move of the last two decades. After that triumphant return, he could have done just about anything. Fans would have loved to see the Police go into the studio, but there was little chance of that. A big rock album from Sting was a possibility, or at least a return to the airy pop he was making in the early 1990s. Instead, he returned to the contemplative, mannered music he was making before the reunion. The result, If On a Winter's Night..., is an impressive collection of music both new and old (mostly old), but as a Christmas album, it's a complete dud.

Even those of us who cringe at any bit of treacle in our music can at least tolerate a bit of goodwill and cheer (and sappiness) when it comes to Christmas music. Sting takes the opposite tack, however, offering the perfect soundtrack for the ascetic atheist winter carnival of one. It is at times beautiful, but it doesn't seem to have a place.

Bob Dylan's Christmas in the Heart, meanwhile, is the sign of an artist who gets it. No one expected this from Dylan, of course, particularly given the creative hot streak he has been on over the past decade-plus. But, like Sting, Dylan is one who seems to revel in subverting expectations.

Perhaps it is the charitable intent behind the disc (all proceeds go to charity) that steered Dylan in the right direction, or, more likely, it is simply his affection for classic songs. Whatever the cause, he offers spirited and silly takes on some of the best-known (and best-loved) carols. His jaunty performance fits well with the material. The swooning strings and jingle-ready backing singers are a bit much, but Dylan clearly had a vision here, and he executes it to the fullest.

Labels: Bob Dylan, Christmas, music, Sting

I have been remiss about getting this interview with Steve Wynn posted because I've been doing things like... traveling to see Steve Wynn. So, I'll wrap a review of Wynn's recent Baseball Project show in Chicago in with this short Q&A about his new self-released CD, Steve Sings Bob.

First up, the Baseball Project. The show was a triple bill, with the BP, the Steve Wynn IV and the Minus 5. However, it was all the same band, with Wynn on guitar and vox, Scott McCaughey also on guitar and vocals, Peter Buck on bass and Linda Pitmon (Wynn's wife and drummer in the Miracle 3) on drums. They decided to play one big show rather than separate band sets, and that was a wise choice. They opened with the Dream Syndicate's "That's What You Always Say," which set a nice tone: laid back but with blisteringly good guitars. From there it was a mix of tunes from Wynn's latest, disc, Crossing Dragon Bridge ("Manhattan Fault Line") Dream Syndicate (a scorching "Medicine Show" and "Days of Wine and Roses") and even Gutterball ("Trial Separation Blues.") The first hour-long set closed with "Amphetamine," which was so good I feared the second set couldn't top it. Yes, there was some fall off, but not much as, McCaughey dominated that set with a sprinkling of Minus 5 tunes new and old.

The Baseball Project songs were the highlight of the night. "Harvey Haddix" got an update to include Mark Buehrle's recent perfect game (with a nice, harmonious bridge to note his accomplishment), while "Past Time" smoked and "The Yankee Flipper" had a few heartier souls in the crowd saluting with their middle fingers raised high. A new Baseball Project song was debuted, "Tony," which tells of player Tony Conigliaro, who was hit by a pitch in the eye.

All in all it was a fantastic show that reaffirmed my fandom of everyone involved. Strangest was seeing multimillionaire Peter Buck quietly playing bass on stage in a small bar. He's surely the richest person to set foot on that stage, which is testament to how much he must love playing live.

The band pulled out one cover: Neil Young's "Revolution Blues," passing on the chance to cover Bob Dylan and give me a less clunky segue into my interview with Wynn. Oh well.

Wynn has performed several Dylan songs over the years, and recently decided to gather a bunch of them on CD. The result, Steve Sings Bob, is a limited-edition (of 300) collection of Dylan covers from 1982 to present. Most are live, some more polished than others, but all are good and fully fitting the spirit of the material. In the liner notes on his site, Wynn shares one interesting story about "Blind Willie McTell." It was recorded by the latter-day Dream Syndicate in 1988 on a radio show, and released on a Bucketful of Brains magazine flexi the next year, "marking the first time the song had officially seen the light of day, a few years before Dylan's version was released on the first of his bootleg series. We even had to get the permission of his publishing staff to put out our version before he did."

The tracklist:

1. Blind Willie McTell (The Dream Syndicate)
2. Positively 4th Street (Steve Wynn and Loose Change)
3. Watching The River Flow (Steve Wynn and Friends)
4. Honest With Me (Steve Wynn & the Miracle 3)
5. Knockin' On Heavens Door (Steve Wynn with the Alejandro Escovedo Band)
6. All Along The Watchtower (The Dream Syndicate)
7. Groom's Still Waiting At The Altar (Steve Wynn Quintet)
8. Outlaw Blues (The Dream Syndicate)
9. Gotta Serve Somebody (Hazel Motes)
10. Like A Rolling Stone (Steve Wynn and Jason Victor)

I asked Wynn a few questions about the project, and he graciously responded, "from the middle of a van rolling across northern Washington...."

TIRBD: You've done a few covers here and there, but nothing to compare with the number of Dylan songs you've done. What is the appeal of his music from an interpreter's standpoint?

SW: Well, the most obvious answer is that he's a great songwriter with an incredible catalog of amazing songs. But, beyond that, the songs are usually easy to learn and leave a lot of room for interpretation (witness his own wide varieties of takes on his own material over the years). It's also a common language for musicians -- almost everyone loves at least one period of Dylan or another so it's easy to name a song when you're looking for a quick cover and know that there HAS to be one Dylan song in common between the various memory banks of the guys on stage.

What challenges do you face when tackling Dylan's work?

That's easy: remembering the words. Every song has at least 5 or 6 verses. I was joking to the band before our Italian show (Steve Sings Bob in Ravenna last month) that they had the easy job. And it's true. You can learn the music on the spot but it's not easy to fake the lyrics. Fortunately, so many of his songs are firmly embedded in my DNA.

Were there songs you've done that you wanted to include where you couldn't find a decent recording?

Not really. In fact, my favorite song on the CD was the version of "Gotta Serve Somebody" that I recorded with my "punk gospel" band Hazel Motes. And that version is VERY lo-fi, just an audience recording.

Is there a favorite Dylan song that you don't feel you can pull off?

I really wanted to do "Highlands." All 18 minutes of it. And I will definitely do it one day. But I'll need a teleprompter or a music stand.

Labels: Bob Dylan, Minus 5, R.E.M., Steve Wynn

A fortuitous browse through the CD rack at the local library brought me to Bryan Ferry's fantastic album of Bob Dylan covers, 2007's Dylanesque, and had me thinking this weekend about the phenomenon of Dylan covers.

What I decided, and what I would be happy to be proven wrong about in the comments, is that Dylan has already written his last great song when measured solely by the stick of cover versions. That song, of course, is "Make You Feel My Love," from Time Out of Mind.Ferry covers it -- and 10 other songs drawn from all along the continuum of Dylan's career -- on Dylanesque, putting him in very good company. From Joan Osborne and Billy Joel to Trisha Yearwood and her husband, Garth Brooks, some very big names have cut the song.

The same can be said, to a certain extent, for other Time Out of Mind tracks. The White Stripes and Duke Robillard have performed and/or recorded "Love Sick," Alabama 3, Steve Forbert and Robyn Hitchcock have tackled "Trying to Get to Heaven," and Jimmy LaFave has recorded "Not Dark Yet."

After that, the significant covers are fewer and farther in between. Some of that can be attributed to time. Modern Times came out just three years ago, and the new Together Through Life obviously hasn't been out long enough to see much cover action. That brings up two points, however. The first is that Love and Theft has been out for eight years, and other artists have sown little interest in covering its songs. Sheryl Crow did "Mississippi," of course, before Dylan did it himself. Maria Muldaur has recorded "Moonlight," and Ryan Adams has attempted "Po' Boy" in concert. But that's pretty much it.

The other point is that in Dylan's prime, artists didn't wait for his versions to come out before cutting their own. His songs were shopped around prior to release, and covers would come out before, during and after the release of his own. Today, that doesn't seem to be happening.

Why? It's certainly not because the quality of Dylan's output has diminished; far from it. I believe it has to do with the kind of songs Dylan is turning out. "Make You Feel My Love," Dylan's endearingly creaky delivery on Time Out of Mind aside, is a classic love song, easily interpreted. "Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum," "Thunder on the Mountain" and "If You Ever Go to Houston" would be much more difficult to cover. The right artist could do them justice, but a pleasant voice and a crack studio band wouldn't turn them into hits the way they could earlier Dylan material.

While this has always somewhat been the case, it seems as if Dylan's best interpreter these days is again Dylan himself. Ferry's album seems to offer proof. While the restrained -- and unruffled -- menace of his cover of "Positively Fourth Street," for example, brings something new to the song, it can't compete with Dylan's seething, spitting rage.

Now, as Dylan seems content (or perhaps "energized" is a better term) to use his albums to recreate the sound he spent 100 shows exploring on his "Theme Time Radio Hour" show, other artists are looking elsehwere for cover material.

Labels: Bob Dylan, music

Just my luck to get into something just as it comes to a close. Those who have been paying attention fear that Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour program on Sirius satellite radio will end its run now that the third season is complete. Given the title of the final program -- "Goodbye" -- I'd say that's a safe assumption.

If he does bow out, he leaves behind an impressive 100 hours of radio programming unlike anything on the airwaves now or at any point in my lifetime. "Take a trip to the land of radio magic," reads the introductory text on the show's web site. "With music hand-selected from his personal collection, Bob Dylan takes you to places only he can. Listen as he weaves his own brand of radio with dreams, schemes and themes." That's as accurate a description as any.

I've long heard of but not actually heard Dylan's program. I don't have satellite radio and wasn't intrigued enough to seek out the torrents that pop up immediately after each program. But the deluxe version of Together Through Life includes a CD with one show ("Friends and Neighbors" from the first season in 2006), and I was immediately hooked. Yes, the music is great, but what captivated me was Dylan himself, sharing stories and opinions, all in a strangely arresting tone that teeters on the edge of self-parody.

The shows are available all over the place online; CROZ.fm seems to have the best archive (Croz, that's been me sucking your bandwidth the past few days). So it's easy to catch up with what is truly an invaluable archive of music history. Dylan not only unearths some gems, but offers contextualizing stories, quotes and anecdotes that bring the songs to life.

The last episode of season three, his 100th, aired in mid-April, and some speculate that either Sirius or Dylan plans to bring things to a close. If so, it's a shame, but at least we neophytes have 100 hours of great radio to wade through until something else comes along.

Labels: Bob Dylan, music, radio

In the fourth and fifth installments of Bill Flanagan's interview with Bob Dylan to promote the imminent release of Together Through Life, the singer talks about his favorite songwriters, peers like the Rolling Stones, and most interestingly, a key reason why he doesn't try to recreate his recordings in live performance.

The interview, whose first three parts ran on Dylan's web site, has been revelatory. It's a savvy marketing move for the singer, but more than that, like his memoir, Chronicles, it allows him to tell only the parts of his story that he wants to tell, in the way he wants to tell it.

In the fourth installment, he discusses his favorite songwriters: First off the tongue? Jimmy Buffet. After that head scratcher, he lists some more expected artists: "Lightfoot. Warren Zevon. Randy (Newman). John Prine. Guy Clark. Those kinds of writers."

In the fifth installment, he talks about the Rolling Stones. In a widely quoted exchange, he seems to dismiss them:

BF: What do you think of the Stones?

BD: What do I think of them? They're pretty much finished, aren't they?

What has gone unremarked, because it messes with the "one has-been to another" storyline pursued by those who noted it, is that Dylan was simply being playful, and has this to say about the band: "The Rolling Stones are truly the greatest rock and roll band in the world and always will be. The last too"

Back to the fourth installment, Flanagan asks why Dylan, like other acts still touring after more than 30 years, doesn't try to replicate his recordings. He couldn't if he tried, he says, adding that his songs are different. The songs of the Who, the Beatles and the Beach Boys was pervasive, "music for the grand dinner party... They made perfect records, so they have to play them perfectly ... exactly the way people remember them." Dylan says his records were never perfect, so there isn't much point trying to duplicate them.

That's an arguable point, though I suppose the quibble is between perfect and pristine. How do you recreate "Highway 61," when history shows the band itself on the same day couldn't do it? Regardless, I for one am glad he feels this way, for while I'd love to have had the chance to hear the Band rip through a faithful version of one of his classics, the endless reinterpretations ultimately make his catalog that much stronger.

Lastly, he makes this simple yet profound statement: "Anyway, I'm no mainstream artist." There's a doctoral thesis in there somewhere (paging Christoper Ricks!), for you can clearly argue this either way. No one who has sold 100 million albums, as Flanagan points out here, can consider themselves to not be in the mainstream, and yet Dylan is exactly right; save for a brief period in the '60s when his singles charted, he has been well outside the mainstream. What a perfect conundrum for the poet laureate of rock who considers himself just a song and dance man.

Labels: Bob Dylan, music

Bob Dylan may be as old school as they come, but he (or rather, his organization) is pretty savvy when it comes to marketing. He has a new album, Together Through Life, coming April 28 this month, and anyone with a pulse would be hard pressed to say they didn't know it. Word is seemingly everywhere, and a lot of it came free of charge.

First, Dylan offered the track "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'" for free download, while this week he offers Newsweek the chance to host "Feel a Change Comin' On." In addition, an interview with Bill Flanagan, the first two parts of which were posted on Dylan's web site, now moves to Newsweek.com, where the third installment is now posted. Who could have predicted in 1993 when the Internet began to take off that newspapers would be cast aside in favor of reading on tiny TV screens and an artist busy recording covers of old tunes would be used to draw eyeballs to that new format?

But the marketing doesn't stop there. In a nod to past promotions that allowed you to put your own text on Dylan's cue cards in the video for "Subterranean Homesick Blues," a promotion for "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'" allows users to create a "lyrical portrait video" that includes their own text and colors that reflect their mood. Here's mine.

That's a lot of cutting-edge promo for a 67-year-old folksinger. Will it matter? Well, Dylan had his first No. 1 album in 30 years with Modern Times, so anything is possible. His target demographic is certainly of the CD-buying, rather than MP3-downloading type. And early reviews are positive.

Labels: Bob Dylan, marketing, music

I wondered why the cover of Bob Dylan's forthcoming album, Together Through Life, seemed familiar. Thanks to the Paper Cuts blog at the New York Times site, I now know: The photo that anchors the cover is the same used on the paperback version of Larry Brown's Big Bad Love story collection. Which means the photo has been sitting on my bookshelf for years.

In a bit of blog tag, Paper Cuts cites a piece on RollingStone.com that cites a piece in Baltimore magazine regarding the photo. According to the latter writeup by John Lewis, Dylan is a major fan of the late Brown's work: "My buddy Jim Dickinson(who played on Time Out of Mind) once told me that while visiting with Dylan some years ago, Dylan asked if he knew Brown. Dickinson, who was a friend of Brown's, asked why he wanted to know. 'I've read every word the man's ever written,' Dylan replied."

RollingStone.com goes on to link to the web site of the photographer, Bruce Davidson. The photo is part of "The Brooklyn Gang" series. According to the Amazon.com writeup about the book, "In 1959 Davidson read about the teenage gangs of New York City. Connecting with a social worker to make initial contact with a gang called the Jokers, Davidson became a daily observer -- and photographer -- of this alienated youth culture."

So, is this an homage to Brown, or rather the latest appropriation of the past by Dylan? Given who we're talking about, I'd guess it's both.

Labels: Bob Dylan, Larry Brown

Bob Dylan has two poems in this week's issue of the New Yorker. The first, "17," is longer, with the closing line, "

I really have nothing
against
marlon brando.

The second, "21," is short, just 23 words over eight lines. Being here in the Midwest, we don't get our copy of the magazine until later in the week, so I'm left with the online version as a source. There is no supporting information I can find, but I assume these somewhat anachronistic verses are taken from Hollywood Foto-Rhetoric: The Lost Manuscript, the book coming in November that joins Hollywood photos of Barry Feinstein with 23 prose poems written by Dylan. Further evidence comes from the Brando reference, and the fact that "21" begins with the line "death silenced her pool," and the description of the book from Simon & Schuster mentions a photo of "Marilyn Monroe's swimming pool on the day she died."

Feinstein has taken several iconic photos of Dylan, having chronicled his 1966 and 1974 tours, but the subject of this book is other people, with Dylan providing the commentary rather than the object being studied.

These poems divorced as they are from the photos (online, anyway), lack the context that gives them their narrative pop, but they certainly feel of a piece with Dylan's mid-60s writings.

Labels: Bob Dylan, books, music, poetry

Having just gone through a move, I haven't had the chance to write here much or watch or listen to much. The result is that I have been stewing over things long since digested, drawing parallels and such. The most persistent of these is "I'm Not There," Todd Haynes' anti-biopic about Bob Dylan.

I wrote fairly recently about the film, lauding the way it captures the singer's protean nature. I've since gone back to watch Martin Scorsese's "No Direction Home," the three-hour-plus documentary assemblage that seeks to present Dylan roughly from his arrival in New York until his motorcycle crash just a few years later. Having not seen "No Direction Home" very recently when I saw "I'm Not There," I didn't realize how many of Haynes' scenes are direct recreations of documentary footage used in Scorsese's film. This isn't exactly deep, but it's clear that Haynes film can be seen, from the title on down, as a direct refutation of the earlier film.

Sure, he portrays Dylan with a handful of disparate actors to drive the point home that no one trope can capture the artist. But by recreating scenes from Dylan's earliest days, he points up the theatricality of Dylan's performances during seemingly spontaneous events, and, in speaking for Dylan, says, "you may think you have me inside your little box constructed of film, quotes, photos and narrative, but I'm Not There." Not only is Haynes' deliberate as he points out that Dylan is too shape-shifting to accurately portray, but he also seems to comment directly on Scorsese's film by saying that no matter the source material, at best you are only highlighting a facet of your subject.

That makes Scorsese's film no less entertaining -- though his decision to stop long before some of the most fascinating aspects of Dylan's life and career (the accident and subsequent sabbatical, the Basement Tapes, his conversion, etc.) -- or illuminating for what it is, but it does call into question the notion that a film can adequately express a person's essence.

Taken together, the two films do as much to obscure as they do to illuminate.

Labels: Bob Dylan, movies, music

The latest in Bob Dylan's Bootleg series is due Oct. 7, but I fear its release will be a bit underwhelming for the kind of fans who buy these (yours truly included). Where in the past the series unearthed long-sought unreleased tracks, classic concerts and valuable outtakes, the new one, Tell Tale Signs gathers several recent tracks, be they alternate versions, demos or unreleased tracks. One is tempted to give the benefit of the doubt given the quality of the five previous sets (1-3 came as one volume), but doubts are reasonable.

True diehards already own a few of these tracks, as it gathers Dylan's contributions to the soundtracks of a few movies including "North Country," "Lucky You" (?) and "Gods and Generals." The presence of a handful of live tracks, rather than official release of the heavily bootlegged source shows, is puzzling as well. Especially missed are the "Supper Club" tapes. Dylan played four shows over two nights at The Supper Club in New York in November 1993. They were filmed but never released. One track, "Ring Them Bells," will appear on Tell Tale Signs, and USAToday.com has video of the song, which is the first official release of the material (though it has circulated in the fan community for years).

Disc One
1. Mississippi 6:04 (Unreleased, Time Out of Mind)
2. Most of the Time 3:46 (Alternate version, Oh Mercy)
3. Dignity 2:09 (Piano demo, Oh Mercy)
4. Someday Baby 5:56 (Alternate version, Modern Times)
5. Red River Shore 7:36 (Unreleased, Time Out of Mind)
6. Tell Ol' Bill 5:31 (Alternate version, North Country soundtrack)
7. Born in Time 4:10 (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)
8. Can't Wait 5:45 (Alternate version, Time Out of Mind)
9. Everything is Broken 3:27 (Alternate version, Oh Mercy)
10. Dreamin' of You 6:23 (Unreleased, Time Out Of Mind)
11. Huck's Tune 4:09 (From Lucky You soundtrack)
12. Marchin' to the City 6:36 (Unreleased, Time Out of Mind)
13. High Water (For Charley Patton) 6:40 (Live, August 23, 2003,Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada)

Disc Two
1. Mississippi 6:24 (Unreleased version #2, Time Out of Mind)
2. 32-20 Blues 4:22 (Unreleased, World Gone Wrong)
3. Series of Dreams 6:27 (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)
4. God Knows 3:12 (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)
5. Can't Escape from You 5:22 (Unreleased, December 2005)
6. Dignity 5:25 (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)
7. Ring Them Bells 4:59 (Live at The Supper Club, November 17, 1993,New York, NY
8. Cocaine Blues 5:30 (Live, August 24, 1997, Vienna, VA)
9. Ain't Talkin' 6:13 (Alternate version, Modern Times)
10. The Girl on the Greenbriar Shore 2:51 (Live, June 30, 1992,Dunkerque, France)
11. Lonesome Day Blues 7:37 (Live, February 1, 2002, Sunrise, FL)
12. Miss the Mississippi 3:20 (Unreleased, 1992)
13. The Lonesome River 3:04 (With Ralph Stanley, from the album Clinch Mountain Country)
14. 'Cross the Green Mountain 8:15 (From Gods and Generals Soundtrack)

Those with a spare hundred bucks can upgrade to a three-disc set that includes still more rarities (which I hope show up on file-sharing services). That $129 "Exclusive Deluxe Edition" includes:

Disc Three
1. Duncan and Brady (Unreleased, 1992)
2. Cold Irons Bound (Live, Bonnaroo, June 2004)
3. Mississippi (Unreleased version #3, Time Out of Mind)
4. Most of The Time (Alternate version #2, Oh Mercy)
5. Ring Them Bells (Alternate version, Oh Mercy)
6. Things Have Changed (Live, Portland, Oregon, 2000)
7. Red River Shore (Unreleased version #2, Time Out of Mind)
8. Born in Time (Unreleased version #2, Oh Mercy)
9. Tryin' To Get To Heaven (Live, London, England, 2000)
10. Marchin' to the City (Unreleased version #2, Time Out of Mind)
11. Can't Wait (Alternate version #2, Time Out of Mind)
12. Mary and the Soldier (Unreleased, World Gone Wrong)

Labels: Bob Dylan, music

I came to Bob Dylan late. It wasn't that I heard and dismissed him, but rather than I started paying attention to popular music at the worst possible time for Dylan. It was the late 1970s, and he didn't have much of a presence on the radio, which was my only real musical vessel. The first time I remember seeing any critical reaction to his work, it was when I was in high school, just starting to read Rolling Stone religiously. There, I read Anthony DeCurtis' review of Knocked Out Loaded. I remember it being more harsh than it really is, though with passages like this -- "Still, Knocked Out Loaded is ultimately a depressing affair, because its slipshod, patchwork nature suggests that Dylan released this LP, not because he had anything in particular to say, but to cash in on his 1986 tour" -- my 20-year-old recollection can be forgiven. Regardless, there was nothing compelling me to check him out.

Somewhere along the way I began to explore. I picked up some LPs discarded by the local used record shop deemed too worn for resale by just right for me, scoring Bringing it All Back Home, Blonde on Blonde and Highway 61 Revisited. The Biograph box came next, even though I wasn't really ready for it's odd mix of rarities and album tracks. Eventually, I assembled what came to be a pretty respectable Dylan collection. Because I found myself suddenly smitten and wanting to fully immerse myself, I acquired everything at once. From the early protest singer to the wizened blues croaker, the wild mercury stage stalker to the whiteface put-on. I traded for bootlegs and downloaded more, thus I often heard outtakes before the released versions. It was an odd way to go, but it fed a desire to experience it all now.

I reminisce because I finally got around to watching Todd Haynes excellent film, "I'm Not There." The format is well known by now: Six actors portray six facets of Dylan, though none answer to that name and only a few are made to resemble the singer. Still, it's a bracing film that has made me think more analytically about Dylan than anything else I've encountered in my relatively short time as a fan. In a DVD extra mini-doc about the making of the film, Haynes said he wanted the actors to not offer an outward portrayal, but rather to capture something within. The collage created by these performances isn't any closer to being Dylan than anything else that isn't the man himself, but it does put one in a frame of mind that makes his contemplation more powerful and more meaningful. Even more than relatively contemporaneous options -- Martin Scorsese's "No Direction Home," Dylan's own flawed "Masked and Anonymous" or the reissued "Don't Look Back" -- it gives you an empathetic shot at understanding what it is like to be Dylan. Perhaps only the singer's own words in the memoir Chronicles compares.

The most striking thing about the film is how it portrays Dylan's protean nature, his seeming need to change. Most performers can and do make an entire career out of a particular sound or stance or look, but Dylan made his by constantly evolving. Some of these iterations, in hindsight, did him no favors, but they all became part of the tapestry of his career. Now he adds to the visual arts aspect of his work. His new paintings, gathered in the "Drawn Blank Series," offer yet another facet of his talent. I'm no visual arts critic, simply knowing what I like, but the work is appealing. Some veers toward the amateurish, but most of it feels assured and does nothing to tarnish his reputation. As British critic Mark Hudson writes, "[S]urely the fiercely cantankerous intelligence that produced 'Like a Rolling Stone' wouldn't allow anything into the public gaze that would compromise his carefully developed mystique."

I've been making my way through the exhibition catalog, and it's a fascinating look at another side of Dylan's talent. If I had $7,500 lying around, I probably would buy a print. Instead I'll content myself with the library's copy of the catalog and keep watching, listening and reading, content knowing I'll never fully understand or comprehend everything Dylan is, but that I'll do just enough of both to remain endlessly entertained as I keep trying.

Labels: Bob Dylan

What did we do before we had the Internet to waste all of our time? Over at the site created to plug the latest Bob Dylan greatest hits album, they have an inventive little toy: You can enter your own message that will appear on Dylan's cue cards in the "Subterranean Homesick Blues" video. Here's mine.

The set -- which comes in a one-disc standard issue and a three-CD "deluxe" edition -- is due Oct. 2, and includes a remix of "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)" from producer du jour Mark Ronson. It's fine, with a lot of horns replacing the guitars in the original (and I think, superior) mix. Of course, I'm not the target audience. I'm already hooked, so they're now trolling for young kids. Good luck.

The more interesting news that I hadn't heard yet is about "The Other Side of the Mirror," a DVD featuring 80 minutes of live Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival from 1963-1965. These performances are legendary, as they show the rapid evolution of Dylan's sound as he moved from warbling acoustic folkie to leather-clad electric rocker. Bootlegs of these shows are compelling, so I would imagine that being able to see these performances for the first time will be revelatory.

Labels: Bob Dylan, music