October 27: Bob Dylan released Infidels in 1983

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]….I wanted to call my next album, whenever I made it, Surviving In A Ruthless World. I wanted to call it that. Before we even went into the studio, “The next album I do I’m gonna call Surviving in a Ruthless World”. But something was holding me back from it, because for some reason… somebody pointed out to me that the last bunch of albums that I made all started with the letter S. And I’d say, “Is that right?” There must be a story or something. I didn’t want to do another one beginning with S just f for superstitious reasons. I didn’t want to get bogged down in the letter S whatever the letter S stands for. And this Infidels came out, just came into my head one day, I guess. This was after we had that album done that it just came in my head that this is the right title for this album. I mean, I don’t know any more about it than anybody else really. I did it. I did the album, and I call it that, but what it means is for other people to interpret, you know, if it means something to them. Infidels is a word that’s in the dictionary and whoever it applies to… to everybody on the album, every character. Maybe it’s all about infidels.
~Bob Dylan (to Kurt Loder in March 1984)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Bob Dylan – Jokerman (official video):

 

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Nina Simone – Ballad of Hollis Brown – The Best Dylan Covers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The rats have got your flour
Bad blood it got your mare
If there’s anyone that knows
Is there anyone that cares?
– Bob Dylan (Ballad of Hollis Brown)

The Best Dylan Covers: Nina Simone – Ballad of Hollis Brown

Ballad of Hollis Brown is a song written by Bob Dylan, released in 1964 on his third album The Times They Are A-Changin’. The song tells the story of a South Dakota farmer, who overwhelmed by the desperation of poverty, kills his wife, children and then himself.

Lyrically, this song consists of 11 verses which bring the listener to a bleak and destitute South Dakota farm, where a poor farmer (Hollis Brown), his wife and five children, already living in abject poverty, are subjected to even more hardships. In despair, the man kills his wife and children and himself with a shotgun. A murder ballad if there ever was one, I would love to hear Nick Cave tackle this song.

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October 24: Laura Cantrell released her debut album Not The Tremblin’ Kind in 2000

I’ve loved and played this album for…2o years now! Time flies…

This is an album that is mentioned far too seldom in the press and is too unknown by way too many. Laura Cantrell reclaims the essence of americana songwriting, she does story-songs about drinking, relationships gone south and long days and nights being on the road. She is the real deal.

Not the Tremblin’ Kind is the debut studio album by American singer-songwriter Laura Cantrell. It was originally released in 2000 on Diesel Only Records. The album bears a dedication to “the original Beverly Hillbilly”, Zeke Manners.

Laura Cantrell (born 1967) is a country singer-songwriter and DJ from Nashville, Tennessee. She used to present a weekly country and old-time music radio show on WFMU called The Radio Thrift Shop. Since October 2005 she has only made occasional appearances on the station (but is hosting a show on SiriusXM about George Harrison and his music no less!) . She is one of the relatively few contemporary artists mentioned and played on Bob Dylan’s radio show Theme Time Radio Hour.

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Dwight Yoakam Top 10 Music Videos – Happy birthday!

Iv’ve liked Dwight Yoakam since the late eighties. There was a music magazine here in Norway, Beat, that really championed those new country (country/rock) artists and I was smitten. His first two records really got worn out at my student home in Bergen.

Today I am going to list his 10 best videos (you know he came up at the same time as MTV and he’s always had great music videos). This is my own list and it is not discussed with Egil (the other half of BTL) before putting it out here.

1. Guitars, Cadillacs:

2. Streets of Bakersfield (with Buck Owens):

Dwight Yoakam to the magazine Country Guitar in 1994:

‘Bakersfield’ really is not exclusively limited to the town itself but encompasses the larger California country sound of the Forties, Fifties and on into the Sixties, and even the Seventies, with the music of Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, the Burrito Brothers and the Eagles — they are all an extension of the ‘Bakersfield Sound’ and a byproduct of it. I’ve got a poster of Buck Owens performing at the Fillmore West in 1968 in Haight Asbury! What went on there led to there being a musical incarnation called country rock. I don’t know if there would have been a John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival had there not been the California country music that’s come to be known as the ‘Bakersfield Sound’.

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Bob Dylan film and tv appearances through the years

This is a fun post, a post with some of those moments that makes a “Bob Dylan film” worth watching. There’s no order here, just a listing of the clips I really like.

I have included films that had cinema distribution, not including straight documentaries (yet).

Some of the clips are great concert clips, some are cinematic milestones, some are just funny and some are Bob Dylan in theme and spirit, at least that’s what I think.

And I have included one TV clip, it was just so damn funny, I couldn’t leave it out!

By the way, James Mangold is making a new Bob Dylan film set during the period when he was poised to become folk music’s most important figure. Bob Dylan instead chose rock ‘n’ roll and traded his acoustic guitar for an amp and an electric guitar, it created a huge outcry. Jeff Rosen, Dylan’s longtime manager, is working on Dylan’s behalf with Mangold on the film, which they say has no title yet but has been referred to as Going Electric. We will have to update this post when the film is ready.

Ok, lets start

Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story

I was thinking a bit about this one, “maybe I should have included Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder film, but isn’t it a documentary no matter how “dramatised” it is?” As you can see I decided it should be included, it is a documentary, kind of, and it is a made up story, kind of, with worldwide release on Netflix. And Netflix is the new cinema, right?

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Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy aka Will Oldham – Brownsville Girl – The Best Dylan Covers

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy aka Will Oldham – Brownsville Girl – The Best Dylan Covers

Brownsville Girl” is a song from Bob Dylan’s 1986 album, Knocked Out Loaded, recorded in May of that year. It is notable for its length, over 11 minutes, and for being co-written by playwright Sam Shepard. The song is an overdubbed version of a December 1984 outtake from the Empire Burlesque sessions entitled “New Danville Girl”.

bob dylan knocked out

While as an album Knocked Out Loaded was poorly received upon release, “Brownsville Girl” is considered one of Dylan’s best pieces by some critics. Music critic Robert Christgau praised “Brownsville Girl” as “one of the greatest and most ridiculous of Dylan’s great ridiculous epics. Doesn’t matter who came up with such lines as ‘She said even the swap meets around here are getting pretty corrupt’ and ‘I didn’t know whether to duck or to run, so I ran’ — they’re classic Dylan.”

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