You’ll laugh out loud at the scene where Jude Quinn / Cate Blanchett plays the first electric gig at a Folk and Jazz festival. That, at least, I guarantee.

Go see it, and let me know what you thought.

The odd thing about the premise of the film (the character of ‘Bob Dylan’ being played by many people) is that, even though he appears to have no hand in the films making, it is completely in keeping with the ideas in the 2 films Dylan wrote &/or directed himself. In ‘Renaldo & Clara’[1978] Dylan & his real-life wife play the couple of the title, while someone else (Ronnie Hawkins, i think) plays ‘Bob Dylan’, & someone we all recognize as Joan Baez plays someone called ‘the Woman in White’. A guy who we will all agree looks just like Allen Ginsberg is in the cast list playing ‘The Father’. No one is who they say they are, but what do we actually ‘know’ about any of these people anyway? It’s a maddeningly infuriating film interspersed with some incredible music but it says a lot about Dylan’s ideas about art & identity. I wish they would finally release it properly so i could check it out in full.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078151/#comment

‘Masked & Anonymous’[2003] is his most recent, & is VERY True Stories. It even has John Goodman in it. A lot of it is hazy & confusing with (again) great music – like the soundtrack to I’m Not There, all Dylan songs recorded by other people – & a stoned, surreal, magic realist resonance to it. The language is heightened & poetic, & has some truly astonishing passages such as:

“Sometimes it’s not enough to know the meaning of things, sometimes we have to know what things don’t mean as well. Like what does it mean to not know what the person you love is capable of? Things fall apart, especially all the neat order of rules and laws. The way we look at the world is the way we really are. See it from a fair garden and everything looks cheerful. Climb to a higher plateau and you’ll see plunder and murder. Truth and beauty are in the eye of the beholder. I stopped trying to figure everything out a long time ago.”

You can sit & think about lines like that for a very long time.

It doesn’t always make what it’s reaching for, but it’s reaching for things no one else is reaching for, so it comes to have whatever value it has for us because of this.

http://www.nicksflickpicks.com/maskanon.html

On the book front, Michael Grey’s book ‘Song & Dance Man’ is very good, it gives the work of its subject the treatment it deserves, & Dylan’s own ‘Chronicles’ is a great read – again, a fine companion piece in idea & delivery to ‘I’m Not There’. As far as straight-up biographies go, though, Anthony Scaduto’s book is probably the simplest & most straight-forward, as it was the first. But only goes up to about 1971, which leaves out an awful lot, obviously. But it IS the least clouded by legend & hero-worship.

All this is making me want to go & watch ‘Masked & Anonymous’ again, so i’m gong to go & do that now.

(if for no other reason than that I may find myself in the same position at some point!)

Gyrus, I’ve just checked my online dvd rental place and they don’t actually stock No Direction Home. I’ll definitely keep an eye out for it though.

Merrick, I’ve noticed the differences in the versions of Tangled Up In Blue when I’ve heard them alright, but I’ve not done a back-to-back listen as yet. And I’ll check out those Dylan broadcasts. I hardly turn on the radio these days, but I can always download the shows and listen to them on my mp3 player on the bus.

It’s a murder-mystery. But not just any rock superstar is knocking on heaven’s door. The murdered rock legend is none other than Bob Dorian, an enigmatic, obtuse, inscrutable, well, you get the picture…

Suspects? Tons of them. The only problem is they’re all characters in Bob’s songs.

You can get a copy on Amazon.com or go “behind the tracks” at http://www.bloodonthetracksnovel.com to learn more about the book.

Also, have you heard his Theme Time Radio Hour shows? They’re incredible. He picks a theme – eg, this week’s one was the Devil, a couple of weeks back it was colours – and plays songs that reference the theme.

His taste is wildly eclectic, lots of great old blues, soul and early rock n roll, but he’ll happily play Beatles and whatever too. He always has some interesting biographical tale about the artists, and will often preamble a track by reciting a verse or two of the lyric. In doing it he pulls such meaning and significance from what could otherwise have passed you by. the spoken bits are every bit as good as the excellent music.

They’re on subscription stations in the USA but we get them on BBC Radio 2 and BBC 6Music in the UK (available on the Listen Again slot for a week after boradcast), and I believe Phantom 105.2 broadcast them in Eire. They’re also findable on Soulseek too. Go get em Jim, if you’re not too busy watching the Fantastic Four again.