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It can be easy to be jaded about the Beat writers in San Francisco, but even the most indifferent literary snob would be hard-pressed to walk away from "Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg" at the Contemporary Jewish Museum without feeling fuzzy inside. Organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and running through September, "Beat Memories" is a collection of about 80 photos taken by Ginsberg and his friends in the 1950s, 1960s and 1980s. Nearly every image is notated with the wobbly handwriting of Ginsberg, who added paragraph-length captions to the images in the 1980s...

<p>Dylan talks about his new album, a bit about his apparent belief that the soul of a dead Hell's Angel named Bobby Zimmerman (Dylan's own birth name) took over his body in the 1960s (really, and I can't explain it either), Dylan's annoyance with people who attack him for using lines from other poets in his songs, and many other interesting things.</p>

Folk rock legend Bob Dylan has some strong words about America that many of his compatriots may not want to hear: He says the stigma of slavery ruined America and he doubts whether the country can get rid of the shame because it was “founded on the backs of slaves.” Dylan spoke to Rolling Stone for a cover story that coincides with the release of his 35th studio album, “Tempest.” Dylan has long been an outspoken critic of American culture and its inherent inequalities, particularly during the 1960s when his songs “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are...

Obama On Listening To Bob Dylan In College: My World Opened Up MAY 29, 2012 • BY DANIEL HALPER President Barack Obama awarded Presidential Medals of Freedom today at the White House to Bob Dylan John Glenn, John Paul Stevens, Madeleine Albright, Shimon Peres, Jan Karski, John Doar, William Foege, Dolores Huerta, Juliette Gordon Low, Pat Summitt, and Gordon Hirabayashi. The award is the highest honor a president can give to a civilian. When delivering his brief remarks about each honoree, President Obama thanked musician Bob Dylan for opening up his "world." "I remember in college listening to Bob Dylan...

I ask this because since I saw the documentary Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged I can't stop envisioning John Galt whistle Maggie's Farm as he leaves the Twentieth Century Motor Company. In the documentary the following passage is read aloud: Dr Ferris to Hank Rearden in Atlas Shrugged Chapter III White Blackmail "The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants...

"The Arab Times, They Are A-Changin' - Based On Bob Dylan's "The Times Are A-Changin' "

A 50-year-old Swedish man has been charged with harassment after he played a Bob Dylan song for his ex-girlfriend hoping to reignite an abandoned love. It was around 11pm one evening in June 2011 when the 50-year-old would be troubadour stood outside his ex-girlfriend's balcony, guitar in hand, the Metro newspaper reported. The love-sick man had also cobbled together a group of five other men to serve as vocal accompaniment for the late-night live performance, each of whom donned hoodies with their hoods up.

On summer nights in the mid-1960s, while black-and-white television crackled elsewhere in his Staten Island home with news of Southern violence and Vietnam, Bobby Lasnik would stretch out in his bedroom to let the righteous soundtrack of the civil rights movement waft into his impressionable teenage soul. Tuned in to WBAI-FM, coming across the water from Manhattan, he heard baleful laments about injustice that he would carry with him for a lifetime. FOR THE RECORD: Bob Dylan lyrics: In the May 9 Section A, an article about the use of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan's lyrics in legal opinions and briefs quoted...

The idiot wind is blowing again, and this time it is comprised of all the pundits going after Bob Dylan for singing in China, and agreeing to abide by an approved list of songs submitted to him by Chinese censors. First, here is a report about Dylan in China. As Keith Richburg writes, his set list was “devoid of any numbers that might carry even the whiff of anti-government overtones.” Richburg notes that it did not include “Desolation Row” or “Blowin’ in the Wind,” which he did sing in Taiwan. Nor, he comments, did Dylan sing “Chimes of Freedom.” Dylan’s...

Suze Rotolo, Bob Dylan's longtime girlfriend during his fledgling days as a Greenwich Village folk singer and the woman who appears alongside him on the famous cover of "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan," passed away this weekend at her home in Manhattan following a long illness, Rolling Stone reports. Rotolo was 67. In addition to forever being captured on the Don Hunstein-photographed "Freewheelin' " cover, Rotolo's three-year relationship with Dylan, from 1961 to 1964, also inspired him to write three of his early love songs, "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," "Tomorrow is a Long Time," and "Boots of Spanish Leather." (Dylan's...

AMHERST, Mass., Nov. 25 (UPI) -- The manager of a Massachusetts pizzeria said the business is out $3,900 after a man who claimed to be from Bob Dylan's stage crew ordered 178 pizzas. Sean McElligott, manager of Antonio's in Amherst, said the store was "too trusting" when a man in his 40s wearing Bob Dylan backstage concert credentials came in and asked if they could produce 178 extra-large pizzas to feed the singer's concert crew, The (Springfield, Mass.) Republican reported Thursday. "We stayed there until 5 in the morning making the pizza," he said. "The request seemed legitimate." McElligott said...

Dear old Jann Wenner interviewed President Barack Obama for his magazine, Rolling Stone, and various parts of that interview are in the news today. Naturally Wenner asked the President about Bob Dylan’s visit to the White House, on February 9th last, as part of an event celebrating music from the Civil Rights era. [Jann] You had Bob Dylan here. How did that go? [Barack] Here’s what I love about Dylan: He was exactly as you’d expect he would be. He wouldn’t come to the rehearsal; usually, all these guys are practicing before the set in the evening. He didn’t want...

If you are an American who has worked hard and saved and believed in the system, you are about to lose everything. So now is the perfect time to join the revolution to save America now. As said by Bob Dylan: “When you got nothing, then you got nothing to lose.” And hard working Americans are about to lose everything. The liberal tyrants are about to take all of it. They stole our individual savings in Social Security for their political programs. They stole our personal savings with inflation by printing an excessive amount of money. They stole freedom of...

Folk music icon Bob Dylan will perform at this year's Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota. Buffalo Chip Campground owner Rod Woodruff says Dylan is scheduled to perform on Aug. 10.

What's plain is that the Gaza flotilla's nominal purpose, delivering "humanitarian" supplies to Gaza, was secondary to the aim of provoking a confrontation. The Gaza flotilla turned down an Israeli offer to unload the six boats and deliver the goods to Gaza by truck; it ignored repeated warnings that it would not be allowed to reach Gaza. Its spokesmen said they would insist on "breaking Israel's siege," as one of them put it. View the local newscoverage of BlueStar working to support Israel. Listen & Buy Bob Dylan's "Neighborhood Bully" MP3 Today! Lyrics below. Audio from the IDF soldiers who...

The legendary American musician, whose independent streak hasn't faded with age, turned 69 years old on Monday. MANHATTAN — Bob Dylan, a legendary figure in American folk and rock music, turned 69 years old on Monday. Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, has remained a potent force in rock music and American pop culture for nearly five decades. His early hits, 1963’s “Blowin’ In the Wind” and 1964’s “The Times They are A-Changin’,” became anthems for 1960s counterculture. His spirit of counterculture sometimes confounded his biggest fans, most famously when he was booed by his folk-loving followers...

Caterwauling Canuck “folk singer” Joni Mitchell got just about everybody riled up with that sweet morsel of self-serving insight, but the real shock is not that Mitchell is absolutely correct but that someone finally came out and said it. After decades of carefully manicured deification by Columbia Records, brain-dead rock critics and the slimy elite institution that elevated such barely able snake-oil salesmen as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger to celestial heights, it’s high time to flout indoctrination and examine Dylan’s track record as a Grade-A phony.

“Bob [Dylan] is not authentic at all. He’s a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I.” — Joni Mitchell, Los Angeles Times, April 22, 2010 Caterwauling Canuck “folk singer” Joni Mitchell got just about everybody riled up with that sweet morsel of self-serving insight, but the real shock is not that Mitchell is absolutely correct but that someone finally came out and said it. After decades of carefully manicured deification by Columbia Records, brain-dead rock critics and the slimy elite institution that elevated such barely...

"What is the big deal about Bob Dylan?" Julia Schrenkler wondered on Gather.com three years ago. Well, according to fellow folkie Joni Mitchell, he's a plagiarizing fraud. "Bob is not authentic at all," Mitchell tells the Los Angeles Times. "He's a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I." True, Dylan's name is a "fake" -- he was born Robert ... um, Zimmerman -- but he'd have to be some kind of crazy to invent a voice like his current subterranean croak. Let's assume she's...

Recently, a YouTube made the rounds of Bob Dylan raspily rapping his way through a solid chunk of LL Cool J’s classic “Mama Said Knock You Out.” The Internet had good time with “LOL” and “WTF” responses, but Dylan’s symbiotic relationship with hip-hop actually runs fairly deep. Hip-hop and Dylan were both gestated in New York, distrust the government, aren’t fond of using their birth names, and have a pretty evocative way with words. And although Dylan recently told Street Newspaper that he doesn’t really listen to rap all that much, he did admit, “I love rhyming for rhyming sake....

Robert “Bobby” Charles Guidry, the gifted, reclusive southwest Louisiana songwriter who crafted hits for Fats Domino, Frogman Henry and Bill Haley & the Comets, died early Thursday after collapsing at home in Abbeville, his manager said. He was 71.

Bob Dylan has at various times revolutionized folk, rock, country and gospel music. However, any Dylan fan who says he was not surprised that Bob has released an album of traditional Christmas songs is pulling your leg. Christmas In The Heart is another surprising move by an artist famous for surprises. Yet when you hear Dylan’s direct and obviously sincere readings of “O Come All Ye Faithful,” “Little Town Of Bethlehem,” and “The First Noel,” this unlikely exercise seems of a piece with the rest of Dylan’s work. From the very first, this was an artist who made us look...

Bob Dylan Must Be Santa (c) (c) 2009 Sony Music Entertainment Category: Music Tags: Bob Dylan Must Be Santa Holiday Music Video

Bob Dylan still had a few tricks up his sleeve for his Halloween show at the Aragon Entertainment Center in Chicago last night (October 31). Not only did Dylan perform “It’s All Good” (from “Together Through Life”) for the first time ever, but the band covered a verse of the Tom Waits song, “Jesus Gonna Be Here” (actually guitarist Stu Kimball sang, introduced as Waits). Tour debut for “To Ramona”. Here's the set list, courtesy Bob Links. 1. Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking (Bob on keyboard) 2. Lay, Lady, Lay (Bob on guitar) 3. Beyond Here Lies Nothin' (Bob...

Well, this was about the dozenth time for me seeing Bob Dylan live in concert. Starting with his tour in support of Slow Train Coming in 1980 at the Paramount Theater, I've generally made the effort to see the Bard from Hibbing as he passed through the NW. Best show: a triple bill with Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell in 1998 at the Columbia River Gorge Ampitheater. The worst: Dylan touring with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as his backup band in sometime in the 1980s. Unbearable, frankly. Fortunately, Dylan has since decided to tour with his own crack bands,...

Bob Dylan began a live concert tour in Seattle last night and the first song he Played was "Gonna Change My Way of Thinking" Gonna change my way of thinking, Make myself a different set of rules. Gonna change my way of thinking, Make myself a different set of rules. Gonna put my good foot forward, And stop being influenced by fools. So much oppression, Can't keep track of it no more. So much oppression, Can't keep track of it no more. Sons becoming husbands to their mothers, And old men turning young daughters into whores. Stripes on your shoulders,...

MORE THAN 4 MILLION MEALS TO BE PROVIDED DURING HOLIDAYS Bob Dylan will release a brand new album of holiday songs, Christmas In The Heart, on Tuesday, October 13, it was announced today by Columbia Records. All of the artist’s U.S. royalties from sales of these recordings will be donated to Feeding America, guaranteeing that more than four million meals will be provided to more than 1.4 million people in need in this country during this year’s holiday season. Bob Dylan is also donating all of his future U.S. royalties from this album to Feeding America in perpetuity. snip Christmas...

Bob Dylan has shape-shifted more times in his career than any other pop musician. His music has always reflected that need to seek out new forms of self-expression. What's less known is that his paintings function in the same way -- providing virtual chapter markings and sign posts in a lifetime filled with twists and turns. In a museum show that's scheduled to open in Europe in 2010, Dylan will exhibit nearly 100 of his works, including the world premiere of 30 large-format paintings from the artist's upcoming "Brazil" series. The show will also feature original paintings from Dylan's "The...

With the entire Beatles back catalogue now available in digitally remastered form, not to mention their appearance in the latest version of Rock Band, Tom Townshend takes an in-depth look at a crucial moment in their musical development - the day they met Bob Dylan… When future generations look back on the music of the twentieth century, two names will loom larger than all others. In the British corner, The Beatles will represent musical innovation, melodic sophistication and the phenomena of global pop fame. In the American corner, Bob Dylan will stand for lyrical mastery, stylistic reinvention and unprecedented artistic...

When Bob Dylan resumes his never-ending tour October 5th in Seattle an old friend will be back in the band. Arc Angels guitarist Charlie Sexton, who played with Dylan from 1999 to 2002, has rejoined his group. Earlier this month Sexton sat in with Dylan in Round Rock Texas, causing rumors that a reunion was imminent. “I love and respect Bob and am very happy to be reunited with my friend onstage,” Sexton tells Rolling Stone. “I’m starting up with him for the fall tour and will carry on with him from there.” He’s unwilling to say any more about...

Rock icon Bob Dylan will sing the old yuletide standards "Winter Wonderland" and "Little Drummer Boy" on his first ever Christmas album, with royalties going to charity, his record label said on Wednesday. Dylan's "Christmas in the Heart" album is due out on October 13, nearly six months after the release of his last studio album, "Together Through Life," which topped the charts. Speculation about the Christmas album began surfacing a few months ago, but were initially met with disbelief by some Dylan aficionados, as the singer was not known to record Christmas songs, and his latest albums have featured...

Dylan's career has taken some strange directions. Perhaps that's why he's been asked to voice two satnav systems The question of precisely how many roads a man must walk down before you can call him a man has baffled music fans for decades.... Bob Dylan, the man who posed the question in Blowin' in the Wind in 1963, has clearly grown tired of pondering this dilemma, and is now after the answers to more precise travelling questions such as, "How many roads, and in which directions, must a man drive down to get as directly as possible from Stoke Newington...

Previous Next Latest Bob Dylan’s Holiday LP “Christmas in the Heart” Due October 13th 8/25/09, 4:55 pm EST Photo: Miller/FilmMagic Bob Dylan has made his latest unpredictable career move: Rolling Stone has learned that Bob Dylan will release a Christmas album October 13th. Entitled Christmas in the Heart, the collection will feature holiday standards including “Must Be Santa,” “Little Drummer Boy,” “Winter Wonderland” and “Here Comes Santa Claus.” All U.S. royalties from the collection will benefit the charity Feeding America, the nation’s leading domestic hunger-relief charity. Other proceeds from the disc will benefit hunger relief organizations around the world. Although...

On a rainy day last week in Long Branch, NJ, Bob Dylan, wearing a hood, was peering into a for-sale home when a neighbor called the police fearing he might be a burglar. Two young officers arrived on the scene and neither of them knew who Bob Dylan was. They asked for I.D. - he had none but explained he was a musician on tour with John Mellencamp and they were set to play at a nearby stadium in Lakewood. Without fuss or anger, Mr. Dylan was escorted back to his tour bus where he produced I.D.

Rock legend Bob Dylan was treated like a complete unknown by police in a New Jersey shore community when a resident called to report someone wandering around the neighborhood. The officers asked Dylan for identification. The singer of such classics as "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Blowin' in the Wind" said that he didn't have any ID with him, that he was just walking around looking at houses to pass some time before that night's show. The officers asked Dylan, 68, to accompany them back to the Ocean Place Resort and Spa, where the performers were staying. Once there, tour...

"In Jersey everything's legal, as long as you don't get caught," Bob Dylan sang in one of his Traveling Wilburys tunes. In an ironic switcheroo, Dylan was apprehended in New Jersey last month even though he was not breaking the law. The rock icon was only guilty of not being recognized by the young cops who answered a complaint that there was a weirdo lurking around the Long Branch, N.J., neighborhood who was "wearing black sweatpants tucked into black rain boots, and two raincoats with the hood pulled down over his head." According to reports, the soggy songwriter told the...

Rock legend Bob Dylan was treated like a complete unknown by police in a New Jersey shore community when a resident called to report someone wandering around the neighborhood. Dylan was in Long Branch, about a two-hour drive south of New York City, on July 23 as part of a tour with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp that was to play at a baseball stadium in nearby Lakewood. A 24-year-old police officer apparently was unaware of who Dylan is and asked him for identification, Long Branch business administrator Howard Woolley said Friday. "I don't think she was familiar with his...

Exactly one week after the highly-publicized arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates stirred a national discussion on race relations, legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan was detained by police officers in a "low-income, predominantly minority neighborhood" in Long Branch, New Jersey. Makes one wonder why it took so long for this to get reported, and if news outlets that were convinced Gates's arrest was racially motivated will see the delicious irony in a white rock star being questioned by police just because he was "wandering around the neighborhood." The Associated Press sure didn't (h/t Clarence Page): Rock legend Bob Dylan was...

I just think it's a powerful and beautiful song. Can't BELIEVE this video was from 33 years ago................

Great Interview. This McCotter keeps getting more interesting with every read. His thoughtful and inciteful responses show that he truly understands Dylan's American-grown maverick life. Worth a read.

BOB Dylan made his dramatic conversion from Judaism to Christianity after wallowing in drugs and bed-hopping with female fans -- a switcheroo that apparently jolted one of his biggest fans, Jimmy Carter, a new book about the former president claims.

It was 44 years ago today (June 15th, 1965) that Bob Dylan recorded "Like A Rolling Stone." The song not only revolutionized the way lyrics were written and sung, but ultimately pushed the boundaries of how long a hit single could actually be. "Like A Rolling Stone," which clocked in at 6:06, would end up being printed as 5:59 on the 45's label in an effort to fool Top 40 disc jockeys into playing the single. The session for the song began at 1:20 p.m. at Columbia Records studios in New York City, with Dylan performing the song on the...

Just weeks after Bob Dylan announced he wanted to collaborate with fellow legend Sir Paul McCartney, moves are afoot to bring the two superstars together. Industry insiders say Macca is set to team up with Dylan in California over the summer, where the pair are expected to work on new songs as a duo. The news comes after Dylan declared this month that he found the idea of working with the former Beatle “exciting”. McCartney’s spokesman then declared their man would be “very interested” in a collaboration. “Paul has a home in California not too far from Bob’s so the...

A poem supposedly written by Bob Dylan as a teenager is an old country song, it emerged yesterday. The bombshell came just 24 hours after the original handwritten version of Little Buddy was put up for auction by Christie's. It had been touted as an example of Dylan's "brilliance even as a 16-yearold". But, as a country fan pointed out, most of the words were from a song by Canadian Hank Snow. It was recorded in 1948 - 11 years before Dylan submitted his poem to a Jewish summer camp newspaper in Wisconsin. Christie's is pressing on with the auction...

Today is the birthday of Minnesota native son Bob Dylan; he turns 68. He is a remarkable artist, self-invented, deep in the American grain. Tribute must be paid. A few years back I visited Dylan's old house at 2425 7th Avenue East in Hibbing. The house is a small two-story residence with a one-car attached garage on the side. The house is exactly two blocks from Hibbing High School, Dylan's alma mater. A Dylan fan must own the house. The garage door has the cover of Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks" album painted on it. Howard Sounes's Dylan biography Down...

A "poem" purportedly written by a teenage Bob Dylan and up for auction at Christie's is actually a song written by the late Canadian country singer Hank Snow, the auction house said on Wednesday. Christie's announced on Tuesday the sale of the hand-written poem believed to have been written in 1957 when Dylan was 16 and away at Jewish camp. But Christie's failed to detect that the words, with a few minor variations, matched those of a song previously recorded by Snow, who died in 1999 at age 85.

There has been some growling about Bob Dylan because he speaketh not during concerts! The man finished his European tour in Dublin last week with two concerts in the O2, one of which was the 43rd anniversary of his debut in Dublin in 1966! His new album, ‘Together Through Life,’ entered the British and American charts at No 1, and in Austria and Denmark, with Top 5 entries in Ireland, Germany, Australia, Holland, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden and New Zealand, and Top 10 rankings in Italy, France and Belgium. That’s not bad for an elderman kissing the circumference of 68 years...

The new disc also becomes Dylan`s first album to spend more than a week at the peak since 1969`s `Nashville Skyline.` Bob Dylan started a second week atop the U.K. album chart with "Together Through Life," his first No. 1 release since his 1970 outing "New Morning." The new disc also becomes Dylan's first album to spend more than a week at the peak since 1969's "Nashville Skyline." Additionally, it is the current chart champ in the U.S. Ciara debuted at No. 9 with "Fantasy Ride," while the former Cat Stevens, Yusuf Islam, arrived at No. 10 with "Roadsinger." Depeche...

The new Bob Dylan CD Together Through Life comes in a bright, plastic jewel case, but it may as well be cuneiform scratched on a baked clay tablet. Sure enough, though the shrink-wrap crackles and snaps at the unwrapping, the dust of a century and half of American music blows up into your face: “Beyond Here Lies Nothing” shambles to life like a dusty corpse shuffling to a slow and sloppy rumba. Dylan oversees the proceedings: part funeral director, part carnival barker, commanding ancient instruments and sentiments with a wink and a throaty growl. On the opposite end of the...

Thanks to Micah for sending the link to an interview with photographer Ken Regan, conducted by John Balfe on Entertainment.ie. Ken Regan has been taking photos of and for Dylan since the days of Desire. He has an exhibition of his work in Dublin, Ireland at the moment, focused on pictures from Dylan’s Rolling Thunder tour. That’s where the interview took place. Regan has plenty of interesting stuff to say, including on how he originally got involved with Bob and gained his respect. The anecdote we can’t possibly ignore here at RWB, however, is the one about how Bob Dylan...