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Christopher Vanni is the author of two Substacks, one about Bob Dylan and one on Gene Clark, he's an advisor for the Bob Dylan Book Club—It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Reading—and he's the creator of a Bob Dylan Quiz that can be found on YouTube and in his feed on X. He is also passionate about golf, classic films, and history.
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The 1974 album Planet Waves marked a series of firsts for Bob Dylan. It was his first official album with The Band. It was his first record not on the Columbia label. And it was, believe it or not, his first No. 1 album.
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Todd Haynes' 2007 film, I’m Not There, is anything but your grandpa’s bio-pic. For one thing, absolutely no one in the film is named “Bob Dylan”—the feature’s ostensible subject. In fact, no one utters the words “Bob Dylan,” and many of the events depicted have, at most, a tangential relationship to the life and times of said Bob Dylan. On the other hand, Dylan’s music features prominently and wonderfully throughout/ and some settings, dialogue, and events are Dylan lyrics put to film.
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Last time we discussed just the covers that Bob Dylan and the members of what would become The Band recorded during the 1967 Basement Tapes sessions. Be sure to check out part 1 if you missed it.
Today we are back with part 2 to explore the Bob Dylan originals recorded during those sessions.
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The Basement Tapes occupy a unique place of honor in the pantheon of Dylan legends. Coming just after two other legendary events—the “going electric” performance and subsequent tour and Dylan’s motorcycle accident—the 1967 recordings were a collaboration between Bob Dylan and his previous backing group who would soon after become the members of The Band. The tracks they laid down—first in Dylan’s house in Woodstock, NY, and then literally in the basement of the house dubbed Big Pink that three members of the Band rented—were never meant for the public. They consist of covers of pop songs, folk numbers, and blues. In addition They recorded a large number of Dylan originals, some apparently intended as demos for other musicians to record.
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Scott Warmuth is a writer and musician from Albuquerque, New Mexico. His research and observations on the writing strategies of Bob Dylan are widely acknowledged and frequently referenced, notably in Bob Dylan’s Lyrics 1983-2000. In 2014, writer Jonah Raskin dubbed Warmuth the dean of Dylanologists.
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Back in September 2022, I posted a piece on The Dylantantes called My Fraught Visit to the Bob Dylan Center. It tells the tale of my friend and I traveling to the Center for the first time and our experience with activists in the Greenwood section of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Greenwood was the neighborhood famously known as Black Wall Street at the turn of the twentieth century, and it was also the site of the horrors of the Tulsa Race Massacre in May and June of 1921, almost exactly 103 years ago as of this writing.
My piece was an attempt to summarize the Race Massacre, which many still have never heard of, and to grapple with the placement of the Bob Dylan Center Archive in the neighboring Tulsa Arts District, itself a site of considerable racial tension.
I am revisiting the piece because of recent news that a decades-old attempt by survivors of the Massacre to obtain reparations has finally failed in the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
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Only one year after the triumphal release of “Oh Mercy,” Dylan came out with 1990’s “Under the Red Sky.” The album is known for its all-star musicians—George Harrison, Slash, David Crosby, Bruce Hornsby, Al Kooper, David Lindley, and others—and was produced by Don Was. It is filled with the language and structure of children’s songs and music—which is befitting an album dedicated to “Gabby Goo-Goo,” likely Dylan’s then-toddler daughter, Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan. There are counting songs, fairytales, and echoes of nursery rhymes. But the songs often sport an ominous feel that is hard to shake, which, if we are being fair, is not too different from traditional children’s folk literature.
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Phil Hale lives in NYC and first saw Dylan live in '81 in London. Since then he has seen Dylan more than 100 times. While having no regrets he's not completely sold on the idea that it's the best use of his time either. That dichotomy has led to some attempts to write about Dylan to make sense of what seems like a grand obsession. Phil lived in Woodstock for a while and likes to think it was a coincidence. As a graduate in philosophy he is at least attuned to the idea that some things can be pursued at length and the answer never found. He's married, and if his wife entered a "eye roll when Dylan is mentioned" competition she would place highly if not outright win it. Despite this he salutes her patience.
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Twenty-one years ago, the whole wide world was stunned by the release of a new Bob Dylan project unlike any before, a feature-length movie of his own creation aimed at a generalish audience.
Led by a future Nobel Laureate co-crafting the satirical script, populated with a brilliantly star-studded cast, and helmed by a maverick director out to compose what he described as “a great Bob Dylan song” in film, Masked and Anonymous was destined to be a masterpiece. It. Could. Not. Fail.
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You may know Dan Brown as the author of the bestseller The DaVinci Code, but you’ve got the wrong guy. This Dan Brown was born in Tarrytown N.Y, and after a stint in the United States Air Force he moved to New City, NY, entered into a career in the restaurant industry. For the last 15 years, he has been owner of the Wherehouse Restaurant in Newburgh, NY.
His lifelong passion for music has resulted in The Wherehouse being a hub for young local musicians to perform as well as network. The decor is also reflective of the passionate musical journey he has taken. And though he is a fan of many bands and performers, Bob Dylan stands above the crowd not only as a songwriter but most important as a storyteller. On more tidbit: the Wherehouse serves a drink called “Blood on the Tracks,” which features Bob Dylan’s Heaven’s Door whiskey.
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Bob Dylan’s 15th, 16th, and 17th studio albums, Planet Waves, Blood on the Tracks, and Desire, had been solid successes when he released Street-Legal in 1978. The album was not universally well received by critics although it was a commercial success.
The band was mostly drawn from the large ensemble performing during Dylan’s Japanese and Australian tours and notably included a chorus consisting of Dylan’s future wife Carolyn Dennis, veteran singer Jo Ann Harris, and Helena Sprigs, who was all of 17 at the time.
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Bob Dylan’s 31st studio album, “Love and Theft,” was released on September 11, 2001. The album’s lyrics are among the first to be heavily researched for references to and lifts from other works, and there are many—perhaps most notably some lines from Japanese true crime writer Junichi Saga’s Confessions of a Yakuza. The songs are rich with characters—men and women, real and fanciful—and events— as devastating as a flood and as benign as the sound of fornication in the room next door. And there is humor, including some hardcore dad jokes.
Sonically the album is as eclectic as any Dylan has released, spanning such genres as rockabilly, old-timey torch ballads, and some of the most hard-driving blues Dylan has ever produced.
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Last year a New York Times article opened with
"Henry Bernstein has seen Bob Dylan 27 times in concert and owns three items autographed by him: a copy of “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’ album, a photograph of the singer and a “John Wesley Harding” songbook. His favorite song is “Tangled Up in Blue.”
Henry says this is a double crowning achievement in life. When he's not obsessing over Bob Dylan Henry works in Operations and Logistics for a local Jewish Day School in Chicago. His other great loves besides his family and Bob Dylan are Superman, Star Trek and the Chicago White Sox. In 2018 Henry along with his friend Rabbi Brandon Bernstein (no relation) took their love of Judaism and Comic Books and started a podcast called "Funny They Don't Look Jewish." Henry describes the podcast as a deep dive into explicit Jewish content within super-hero comic books. This can be a character identifying as Jewish, practicing Judaism, speaking Hebrew, learning Torah and everything in-between. Henry also co-hosts a podcast with Dr. Sam Brody called Superman & Lois & Pals, an episode by episode review of the popular CW tv show. Henry can be heard talking about Bob Dylan often on Pod Dylan. Henry credits his dear friend Rob Kelly with introducing him to the Bob Dylan Twitter community and giving him a platform to be a voice in that group.
Henry lives on the Northside of Chicago with his wife—a guitar playing rockstar rabbi—and his two young children, all of whom enjoy Bob Dylan and tolerate his obsession.
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Last year a New York Times article opened with
"Henry Bernstein has seen Bob Dylan 27 times in concert and owns three items autographed by him: a copy of “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’ album, a photograph of the singer and a “John Wesley Harding” songbook. His favorite song is “Tangled Up in Blue.”
Henry says this is a double crowning achievement in life. When he's not obsessing over Bob Dylan Henry works in Operations and Logistics for a local Jewish Day School in Chicago. His other great loves besides his family and Bob Dylan are Superman, Star Trek and the Chicago White Sox. In 2018 Henry along with his friend Rabbi Brandon Bernstein (no relation) took their love of Judaism and Comic Books and started a podcast called "Funny They Don't Look Jewish." Henry describes the podcast as a deep dive into explicit Jewish content within super-hero comic books. This can be a character identifying as Jewish, practicing Judaism, speaking Hebrew, learning Torah and everything in-between. Henry also co-hosts a podcast with Dr. Sam Brody called Superman & Lois & Pals, an episode by episode review of the popular CW tv show. Henry can be heard talking about Bob Dylan often on Pod Dylan. Henry credits his dear friend Rob Kelly with introducing him to the Bob Dylan Twitter community and giving him a platform to be a voice in that group.
Henry lives on the Northside of Chicago with his wife—a guitar playing rockstar rabbi—and his two young children, all of whom enjoy Bob Dylan and tolerate his obsession.
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As much as we love Bob Dylan’s many versions of his own music, we at Million $ Bash would be remiss if we did not discuss some of the gazillions of covers of Dylan’s work. Given the buzz emanating from Cat Power’s reconstruction of Dylan’s set from his 1966 British tour, it makes sense to discuss specifically covers of Dylan by women.
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Bella Napolitano is a nineteen-year old from Baltimore, and is currently a Psychology major at Bard College in Upstate New York. Bella is an aspiring child psychologist, loves creating visual art, enjoys going on long walks, and is a live-music enthusiast. She has had lifelong exposure to Dylan’s music through her father and has developed a taste for it. She saw Dylan live for the first time in Baltimore on November 24th, 2023.
At about the 20:30 mark, Bella references her artwork. You can see the piece in the screenshot below.
For a video version of the Zoom interview, click below.
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Michael Johnson is a Dylan adventurer. He was born in 1956 and grew up at the Jersey Shore. His first concerts were at Convention Hall in Asbury Park, NJ, starting with Black Sabbath in 1971. The next 3 plus years saw a huge shift largely as the result of him not filling out the selection cards from the Columbia Records Album Club and having to accept the album of the month, which transformed his musical horizons. He has had many jobs and started a career in teaching at age 42 in 2000. He has since transitioned from 8th-grade English teacher to school librarian, which was a survival move. Two major events in his life were sobriety in 1995 and marriage in 2015 at age 58.
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In this latest episode of the Million $ Bash roundtable, the gang goes at the surprise 2009 release of Christmas in the Heart, Bob Dylan’s first and perhaps only album of Christmas music, at least until there is a Bootleg Series box set of the session outtakes. The album is, unsurprisingly, contentious, and the M$B roundtable participants, despite their academic restraint, are not immune from that controversy. Enjoy this special holiday edition of the Million $ Bash!
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n this latest episode of the Million $ Bash roundtable, the gang talks about their contributions to the new collection, The Politics and Power of Bob Dylan’s Live Performances: Play a Song for Me, edited by our very own Erin Callahan and Court Carney and published by Routledge.
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