Side Effects
One of the unexpected delights of the current media interest in Bob Dylan (this Scorsese docu is an event sho'nuff), is the feeling of cosmic superiority one feels whenever a prominent (or less prominent) journo Gets Something Wrong.
A similar thing happens with Apple Computer, of course, wherein tech journalists take their lives in their hands when they pontificate upon Things Apple, knowing, surely, that they will receive 20 billion e-mails from aggrieved Apple fanatics.
I sheepishly admit that I contacted the Observer after reading Caroline Boucher's howler last weekend, in which she confuses Sara Lowndes with Suze Rotolo. Rotolo will appear in the docu, but you can smack me in the face with a sea bass if Lowndes is anywhere in evidence as a talking head.
Even more satisfyingly, in yesterday's Guardian, none other than TV heavyweight Mark Lawson commits the following error to paper:
Two things about this. Firstly, er, what was Bob Dylan doing with the Band at the Isle of Wight Festival in August 1969?
He meant to say "tour" instead of "perform," of course, but what journalist can resist a little embellishment and exaggeration? The other thing is that I thought we'd got past, long ago, the very idea that the so-called motorcycle accident was anything more than a convenient excuse to extricate himself from commitments and re-assess his career? Because The Basement Tapes were made the following year weren't they? No official release till 1975, but there they were, nevertheless, with Bob sounding pretty chipper and having a good time making wonderful music.
So any elision in Dylan's ability to "perform" or his rate of productivity is surely a figment of the imagination. In a way, the tendency to focus on the pre-'67 era is understandable, because the extraordinary achievements can be easily seen and described. But to even attempt to encompass all that his 1967 recordings encompass is beyond any mere mortal. The Basement Tapes are some weird shit - in the manner of performance, in the voices used, in the lyrical content, in the nature of the music. And it's even weirder when you try to understand how Music From Big Pink and John Wesley Harding fit in with it all.
And the fact is, I'm sure Scorsese would have added another couple of hours to the documentary if there had been any film of Dylan and the Band in the basement of Big Pink. But he really did hide himself away for those years, reappearing in the mid-1970s to make Renaldo and Clara with the Rolling Thunder Review. Shame the BBC couldn't dig that one out for next week's Dylan orgy on BBC4.
A similar thing happens with Apple Computer, of course, wherein tech journalists take their lives in their hands when they pontificate upon Things Apple, knowing, surely, that they will receive 20 billion e-mails from aggrieved Apple fanatics.
I sheepishly admit that I contacted the Observer after reading Caroline Boucher's howler last weekend, in which she confuses Sara Lowndes with Suze Rotolo. Rotolo will appear in the docu, but you can smack me in the face with a sea bass if Lowndes is anywhere in evidence as a talking head.
Even more satisfyingly, in yesterday's Guardian, none other than TV heavyweight Mark Lawson commits the following error to paper:
After going slowly through the childhood years and the young Robert Zimmerman listening to his folks' stereogram - "the sound of the record made me feel that I was someone else" - the pace accelerates towards 1966 when, at Manchester Free Trade Hall, a fan called Keith Butler shouted "Judas!" when the singer picked up an electric guitar. Later that year, Dylan had a motorcycle crash and didn't perform for eight years. Scorsese takes four hours to get from 1961 to the motorbike hiatus. Scorsese and Dylan seem to believe that this is the key creative period.
Two things about this. Firstly, er, what was Bob Dylan doing with the Band at the Isle of Wight Festival in August 1969?
He meant to say "tour" instead of "perform," of course, but what journalist can resist a little embellishment and exaggeration? The other thing is that I thought we'd got past, long ago, the very idea that the so-called motorcycle accident was anything more than a convenient excuse to extricate himself from commitments and re-assess his career? Because The Basement Tapes were made the following year weren't they? No official release till 1975, but there they were, nevertheless, with Bob sounding pretty chipper and having a good time making wonderful music.
So any elision in Dylan's ability to "perform" or his rate of productivity is surely a figment of the imagination. In a way, the tendency to focus on the pre-'67 era is understandable, because the extraordinary achievements can be easily seen and described. But to even attempt to encompass all that his 1967 recordings encompass is beyond any mere mortal. The Basement Tapes are some weird shit - in the manner of performance, in the voices used, in the lyrical content, in the nature of the music. And it's even weirder when you try to understand how Music From Big Pink and John Wesley Harding fit in with it all.
And the fact is, I'm sure Scorsese would have added another couple of hours to the documentary if there had been any film of Dylan and the Band in the basement of Big Pink. But he really did hide himself away for those years, reappearing in the mid-1970s to make Renaldo and Clara with the Rolling Thunder Review. Shame the BBC couldn't dig that one out for next week's Dylan orgy on BBC4.
posted by Anonymous at
Friday, September 23, 2005
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home