zak
I think reading his book "Tarantula" will disprove that in less than 20 pages!

You made it 20 pages in? Seriously? That thing makes Ulysses read like Goodnight Moon.

And Jeff, no one's ever going to be able to convince you that Dylan's a genius. Just like how you'll never be able to convince me that John Garcia of Kyuss is anything but a completely atrocious frontman.

-Warren

That was excessively violent and completely unnecessary. I loved it.

bigtikidude
make me a believer.

Bob Dylan is a genius because he figured out how a near 70 year old dude could be in a Victoria's Secret ad.

There are lots of different kinds of genius. Even if you hate him and think him talentless, you would have to say he's a marketing genius for having fooled so many people for so long. Usually the fakes are revealed after their second album.

ferenc

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bigtikidude
make me a believer.

Bob Dylan is a genius because he figured out how a near 70 year old dude could be in a Victoria's Secret ad.

There are lots of different kinds of genius. Even if you hate him and think him talentless, you would have to say he's a marketing genius for having fooled so many people for so long. Usually the fakes are revealed after their second album.

ferenc

I definitely have to agree with you there.
good points
Jeff(bigtikidude)

Jeff(bigtikidude)

I've been a huge Bon Scott era ACzDC fan since 78' Check out Bon's other band The Fraternity. That's Bon singing and playing the flute or recorder or whatever it is.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Z3q-T2Rg2bc&feature=related

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Octomen/268386424192

http://www.myspace.com/theoctomen](http://www.myspace.com/theoctomen)

http://www.reverbnation.com/theoctomen

From today's Wall Street Journal:

Bob Dylan, the Artist: His Works Performed by Others

By JIM FUSILLI
November 29, 2007; Page D9

Ten years ago, Bob Dylan was hospitalized with pericarditis, an inflammation of the lining that surrounds the heart. Later in 1997, he released "Time Out of Mind," his first album of new material since 1990. Its themes of love, desolation and mortality, coupled with Mr. Dylan's sudden medical crisis, seemed to compel eulogistic reviews of his career, the latest of which is "I'm Not There," the Todd Haynes film in which the now 66-year-old Mr. Dylan is portrayed at various parts of his career by six actors, one of whom is Cate Blanchett, another a left-handed African-American boy. Inventive and occasionally tedious, it explains next to nothing about why Mr. Dylan is one of the great figures of American art.

But a two-CD album that accompanies the film, also titled "I'm Not There" (Sony), does exactly that with 34 tracks of Dylan compositions recorded by a variety of new and veteran musicians. (Three additional tracks are available at iTunes.) It contains only one performance by Mr. Dylan himself, a previously unreleased version of the title track recorded during the "Basement Tapes" sessions in 1967, but the album reminds us why he deserves our acclaim and esteem. His songs are so rich that they welcome reinvention and continue to reveal aspects of his writing: A familiar line takes on a new meaning; we find insight in what seemed merely a clever turn of a phrase; liberated from Mr. Dylan's arrangements, new relationships between his words and melodies are disclosed or we see how each song works well with different time signatures and tempos.

Mr. Dylan's less well-known recordings are a major lode of source material for the "I'm Not There" album and film, particularly those found on "The Bootleg Series, Volumes 1-3" (Sony), released in 1991. These include the touching alternate version of "Idiot Wind" and the brilliant "Blind Willie McTell" that support key scenes in the film, and Mr. Dylan's versions of "Mama, You Been on My Mind" and "Moonshiner" that are reinterpreted on the "I'm Not There" album by Jack Johnson and Bob Forrest, respectively. The "I'm Not There" discs also include takes on two songs by Mr. Dylan that he never released on an album, "Can't Leave Her Behind" and "What Kind of Friend Is This," both by Stephen Malkmus and Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo. (Mr. Dylan's versions appear in the documentary "Eat the Document." And you can find them on YouTube.)

Some of the best performances come from songs Mr. Dylan wrote in the mid-1970s and '80s, including "Dark Eyes," a collaboration between the excellent Tucson-based group Calexico and the singer Sam Beam, who records under the name Iron & Wine. Tom Verlaine and a band that includes guitarist Nels Cline and organist John Medeski strip the snap from "Cold Irons Bound," turning it into a dark Lou Reed-like dirge. Joe Doe's reading of "Pressing On" is an extraordinary marriage of rock and gospel.

With their folk- and blues-based musical directness and lyrics open to broad interpretation, even Mr. Dylan's best-known songs have an elasticity that allows repeated reinvention. "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" is offered by Antony Hegarty as a surrender to death, thus denying the narrator the defiance of Mr. Dylan's version. Breathy and bright, Charlotte Gainsbourg's "Just Like a Woman" isn't unlike the French pop her mother Jane Birkin sang in the '70s. "All Along the Watchtower" by Eddie Vedder may be more a tribute to Jimi Hendrix than to Mr. Dylan, but it works too.

Early Dylan provides the bulk of the material. For dramatic purposes in the film, three songs from his third album, 1964's "The Times They Are A-Changin'," are almost re-creations -- two by Mason Jennings, who provided the voice for Christian Bale's "Dylan," and "When the Ship Comes In," by the talented 11-year-old youngster Marcus Carl Franklin, who plays an African-American vagabond with a sweet, not-yet-formed voice who's named "Woody Guthrie." But a fourth, "One Too Many Mornings," gets pushed to a deeper blue by Joe Henry. "Highway 61 Revisited," issued in 1965, is represented by four songs; Ramblin' Jack Elliott's reading of that album's "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" is so uncluttered that it shows that the words work without the sluggish, disorienting backing of Mr. Dylan's original version.

But the cozy, homespun songs for the albums "John Wesley Harding" and "The Basement Tapes" that Mr. Dylan wrote in 1967, after he shucked the pursuit of celebrity following an exhausting European tour and a motorcycle accident, yield the most interesting reinterpretations. Singer Jim James, minus his group My Morning Jacket, joins Calexico for a "Goin' to Acapulco" that manages to be both dour and sunny, and the Black Keys, a drums-and-guitar duo, blast through "The Wicked Messenger," brushing off Mr. Dylan's restraint on "Harding," while retaining his threat of biblical retribution.

The performances on "I'm Not There" suggests the singers and musicians gave not a second's thought to trying to decode Mr. Dylan's lyrics or wondering if they are consistent with which of "the many lives of Bob Dylan," as Mr. Haynes puts it, is responsible for the song. When Willie Nelson takes on "Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)," he gives it a melodramatic reading that the lyrics and structure require; the idea that Mr. Nelson would say, "Mmm, which Mr. Dylan wrote this" or "how do I honor his celebrity" is dopey. Mr. Elliott and Richie Havens, who sings "Tombstone Blues," knew Mr. Dylan before he became a legend; how can they be cowed by it?

It's a disservice to our understanding of Mr. Dylan's great achievement to suggest, as Mr. Haynes's film does, that he lacks an overarching persona or that there isn't some logical flow to his career. But we have the songs themselves, and as they are performed on the "I'm Not There" album, they continue to be the best insight into Mr. Dylan and his gift.

Mr. Fusilli is the Journal's rock and pop music critic.

Ivan
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PolloGuitar
Ivan, When I saw that you had posted something I was hoping that it would be a treatise (of similar length to the Dylan article above) on the great works of AC/DC.

No, I only wax poetic on surf music. With metal, I just bang my head and throw devil horns.

AC/DC ARE absolutely amazing, simply stunning, incredibly powerful, one of the greatest rock bands of all time.

Ivan

PS Dylan does pretty much nothing for me. Yawn. But then, folk music ain't exactly my forte.

Ivan
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Last edited: Nov 29, 2007 10:39:32

IvanP
Angus doesn't lack any technique. And my God, he DEFINITELY does not lack speed!!

The guy's phrasing is absolutely sick! Pure high octane chicago-based blues. Oh, and lets not forget Malcolm!

Ryan
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Wannes, sorry for the piling on, "Whole Lotta Rosie" and "Riff Raff" (among many others) kinda prove you wrong. Like really, really wrong.

-Warren

That was excessively violent and completely unnecessary. I loved it.

WR
All I meant was that in comparison to - to name a few, Jimmy Page, Alvin Lee, Ritchie Blackmore - his playing is simplistic and crude. and not as fast. either.

Wannes, I would say that Angus has much greater soloing technique and as much or more speed than Page or Lee. Blackmore is in another category, he was a technical monster. But yeah, soloing-technique-wise, I have no doubt that Angus could mop the floor with Page and Lee. No question about it. Page was a very sloppy soloist, anyway...

to each his own!

Amen.

Ivan

Ivan
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Ruhar
Well in a very specific style (straight up blues-based) I think you may be right Ivan. Angus was spot on. But Page was on a different level IMHO as far as songwriting, sound layering, acoutstic work,

No question about it, Ryan! Absolutely. Which is why I specifically said: "soloing-technique-wise, I have no doubt that Angus could mop the floor with Page and Lee."

Ivan

Ivan
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