Bob Dylan’s Best Songs: Blind Willie McTell (recorded May 5, 1983)

Blind-Willie-McTell & Bob Dylan

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]Kurt Loder: I heard an outtake from the Infidels sessions called Blind Willie McTell. Is that ever going to come out? It’s a great song.
Bob Dylan: I didn’t think I recorded it right. But I don’t know why that stuff gets out on me. I mean, it never seems to get out on other people.
~Kurt Loder interview 1984

[Blind Willie McTell] He was just a very smooth operating bluesman. His songs always reminded me of… As trains, but that ‘s just my hang up, you know, trains. And his vocal style, and his sound seems to fit right in with that lonesome sound. His kinda, you know, Ragtime… kinda thing on a 12 string guitar, so it made everything he did sound, you know, give it a little higher pitch. You know, you could probably call… You could probably call… you could probably say he was the Van Gogh of Blues. You could probably say he was the Van Gogh of the country Blues.
~Bob Dylan (Eliot Mintz Interview, March 1991)
[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Released version:

Unreleased “electric” version:

Continue reading “Bob Dylan’s Best Songs: Blind Willie McTell (recorded May 5, 1983)”

October 31: Bob Dylan – 5 beautiful versions of “Restless Farewell” and some cover versions

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]Oh, ev’ry girl that ever I’ve touched
I did not do it harmfully
And ev’ry girl that ever I’ve hurt
I did not do it knowin’ly
But to remain as friends
You need the time to make amends[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Restless Farewell” was recorded on October 31, 1963 in Columbia Recording Studios, New York City and released on his third studio album The Times They Are a-Changin’ in 1964. It is based on the Scottish folk song “The Parting Glass“.

Continue reading “October 31: Bob Dylan – 5 beautiful versions of “Restless Farewell” and some cover versions”

September 20: Dire Straits released Love over Gold in 1982

Love over Gold is the fourth studio album by Dire Straits, released on 20 September 1982 by Vertigo Records internationally and by Warner Bros. Records in the United States. The album featured two singles: “Private Investigations,” which reached No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart, and “Industrial Disease,” which reached No. 9 on Billboard’s Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart in the United States. The album reached number one on album charts in Australia, Austria, Italy, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom, and No. 19 in the United States. Love over Gold was later certified gold in the United States, platinum in France and Germany and double-platinum in Canada and the United Kingdom.

I would rate a few Dire Straits albums above this, but it is an album that has played a lot on my old turntable! I got it on vinyl the week it was released, like all other record-collecting Norwegians(…at least it felt that way.)

Telegraph Road (The Alchemy Tour, 1983):

Continue reading “September 20: Dire Straits released Love over Gold in 1982”

August 12: Happy 69th Birthday Mark Knopfler

Mark-Knopfler

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]…. Actually we are soul mates. As far as guitar playing goes he never steps all over with fancy licks. Yeah, Mark was incredible. He helped make this record in a thousand ways, not only musically, which in itself would have been enough. Brilliant guy, I can’t say enough about him.
~Bob Dylan (Talking about Knopfler part in the making of “Infidels” – July 1983 to Martin Killer)

The most celebrated British guitar hero to emerge in the 1970s and ’80s, Mark Knopfler rose to fame as the leader of Dire Straits, and his songwriting and incisive guitar work played a decisive role in making them an international success story. At a time when punk and new wave were making technique for its own sake seem irrelevant, and metal was taking the guitar solo in noisier and unpredictable directions, Knopfler’s clean but dexterous picking proved there was still room for traditionalism and chops in mainstream rock & roll.
~Mark Deming (allmusic.com)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Dire Straits – Sultans Of Swing (Alchemy Live – 1983):

Continue reading “August 12: Happy 69th Birthday Mark Knopfler”

Emmylou Harris and Mark Knopfler Real Live Roadrunning 2016 (full concert video)

Real Live Roadrunning is a collaborative live album by Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris, released on 14 November 2006. The album was recorded live on 28 June 2006 at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Los Angeles, at the end of their summer tour in support of their critically acclaimed album, All the Roadrunning. Real Live Roadrunning was released as a combined CD/DVD. This is the video version  of  the concert : Continue reading “Emmylou Harris and Mark Knopfler Real Live Roadrunning 2016 (full concert video)”