One thing I've noticed is a lot of people who don't really know much about Bob Dylan and have only heard his most popular songs will often use him as a straw man to pit other artists against as a way of making the other artist sound cool but will make up arguments that don't really make any sense if you actually do know anything about Bob Dylan

What Are You Doing, Julie??

I made a decision that is vague and formless and without guarantee, and also requires attention, detail, self-awareness, and tirelessness.

I am not working for a month. No day job, no part-time. I am meditating, working through “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron, and writing music for a month. This may sound ideal to some, stupid or entitled or not a big deal to others. One of many motivations for this month was that I recently had a conversation with a friend who had decided to switch from being an actor to going back to school for social work and possibly an eventual law degree. When I asked her why the switch, she responded, “When I really sat down with myself, I just knew I didn’t actually want to spend my energy putting in the kind of work it would take to be an actor. But I’ll always be a performer at heart.”

And I thought, “Good lord, have I ever been that honest with myself about what I want to do?”

For me, this month is a small protest against my denial of past years as well as an experiment. For almost a decade, I have gone through a series of begrudging and slow admittances. At first, I pretended that I just couldn’t find the correct job or career path, I wasn’t sure of what I wanted to do. (This kept concerned adults off my back for a bit). And so I bought myself some time and meandered in a career-malaise for five years after college, working various and multiple jobs, none of them satisfying whatever I was craving. I had an ex tell me I was never going to find what I was looking for – which is laughable considering no one should ever say that to another person, and also considering that I was years away from saying out loud what I actually was looking for.

I wrote two songs in college. Stopped. Started again in 2016 and wrote most of the songs I have now, maybe 10 “finished” – (are they ever fucking finished?) – songs. Stopped. I didn’t write again for three years, but all the while was reading memoirs of artists and musicians, how-to-creativity books while deeply embarrassed that I needed a how-to at all. In 2019, I admitted that I at least wanted to move to New York City so I could be near music, so I could see live shows, so I could perform if I wanted to. I was inching myself closer to the edge, like a little kid who’s still in swimmies inching her way to dip her toes in the deep end. But I still wasn’t writing.

After having a conversation in April with a fellow musician about Charlie Parker locking himself in his apartment for two years to play music for 16 hours a day and do heroin, I said, “Fuck it. I’m tired of saying I want something and not doing anything to move toward it.” It’s easy to think that if you love something enough, you will magically just find a way to do it. This is not the case for me. It seems that I find every excuse I can not to write. When I told a friend a few years ago how writing for me was often like extracting an arrow lodged in my chest and that I ran away from it as much as possible, his response was, “Well, maybe you just shouldn’t write.” I’ve hated that response ever since he voiced it.

Annie Dillard was the one person who gave me permission to realize and admit that I was cripplingly afraid of writing, and rightly so. Her small masterpiece, The Writing Life, is a mortar and pestle to the ego if you’re stuck in the shadowlands of thinking you want to write when all you really want is attention (large neon blinking arrow to my head.) In representing the frustrating, often fruitless, painstaking process of writing, Annie uses the metaphor of an architect who has a sole worker who refuses to work on the architect’s building design, claiming it is faulty. She writes, “Acknowledge, first, that you cannot do nothing . . . Subject the next part, the part at which the worker balks, to harsh tests. It harbors an unexamined and wrong premise. Something completely necessary is false or fatal. Once you find it, and if you can accept the finding, of course it will mean starting again. This is why many experienced writers urge young men and women to learn a useful trade.” I’ve always hated when artistic types say, “If you can do without this [art], you should try.” It’s always seemed egotistical or pejorative to me. But now I get it. The thought of so much self-accountability, starting and failing and having to be one the one who declares you yourself have failed, terrifies me and seems so pointless.

But I really do have masochist in my bloodstream. Whatever terrifies me, I’m a bloodhound for. So, when I realized I kept saying I wanted to be a singer-songwriter while simultaneously sneaking out the backdoor of my brain and action to get away from just that, I figured I should test myself. At least I’ll know whether I’m a total fraud and attention-grabber, or whether this is what I need to do. Bob Dylan’s words that the world doesn’t need any more songs ring in my ears daily. But I guess that’s a good litmus test if I persist in writing songs while the greatest American songwriter repeats that mantra in my ear.

So, I am dedicating this month to meditation, working through “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron, and writing music. I will be giving updates, either written or video recorded, each day. Not for attention or because “this is so original” but because I read a book years ago called Show Your Work by Austin Kleon and one of his pieces of advice was to share your creative processes with others rather than wait to show a perfected result. That and I am so horribly cock-blocked when it comes to expressing what I truly think and feel that I’m forcing myself to put out processes/anything I’m working on where a roving eye could see it if it wanted. Seeing as how I’m pretty obsessed with people’s sketch books and rough drafts, watching people apply makeup on the subway, and existential crises in the midst of trying to get somewhere, I figured keeping some kind of public record was a good idea.

Good lord, here we fucking go.

Newport Folk Festival: 7/26-7/28

Brandi Carlile and Dolly Parton sing “I Will Always Love You”

BY MICHAEL KINGSBAKER

Another Newport Folk Festival has come and gone, and yes, it still is the greatest music festival in the world, and it is still my favorite weekend of the year. This year, for the first time in its 60-year history, the festival had an all female-led Saturday night headliner, arguably had its two biggest appearances to date, covered an entire masterpiece album, premiered the biggest female country supergroup ever, and finally found the heir apparent to Pete Seeger on what would be his 100th birth year.

After Pete Seeger passed away in 2014, a gaping hole was left at the Newport Folk Festival. Seeger had been around the festival since its inception, and while festival producer Jay Sweet has captained the ship incredibly since taking over in 2008, the question has remained: Who would hold the seat that Seeger did for years? The musical ambassador of the people and of the music of the Newport Folk Festival? That question was answered loud and clear this year, as Brandi Carlile cemented her rightful seat. Last year was a precursor, when she performed from her Grammy Award-winning album By the Way, I Forgive You and guest performed with Mumford and Sons and during the Change is Gonna Come set. This year, she got handed the keys to the car and packed a Saturday night headlining slot full of talent from the past and present, culminating in a 5-song set from none other than Dolly Parton. Now, Jay Sweet has pulled some pretty big acts during his 12 years on the festival, but he didn’t pull Dolly--Brandi did! She also premiered her new country super group The Highwomen, an all-female answer to The Highwaymen. The former’s reworking of the latter’s namesake song absolutely took my breath away (and was just released), and then Carlile closed out her weekend singing Pete Seeger's classic song "If I Had a Hammer" with Alynda Segarra from Hurray For The Riff Raff.

Overall, this year’s festival was fiercely female, showcasing talents from multiple generations from Parton and Judy Collins, Sheryl Crow, and Linda Perry to Carlile, Rhiannon Giddens, Maggie Rogers, and Yola. The collaboration sets, which really gained steam with the Dylan 65' Revisited set 3 years ago, continued this year and actually tripled, with the Saturday night All-Female Collaboration, along with a last minute addition of a complete cover of Graham Nash's "Song for Beginners" led by Kyle Craft with an all-star cast of Newport favorites. Finally, on Sunday, Pete Seeger was celebrated with set entitled "If I Had a Song" where audiences were given song books with which to sing along. It opened with Jim James singing “The Rainbow Connection” with perhaps the second biggest star to ever appear at the Newport Folk Festival in Kermit the Frog. I was also pleased to see that Our Native Daughters were asked to participate in the Seeger Celebration, singing the Seeger tune "If You Miss Me at The Back of The Bus" and joining Mavis Staples and Hozier for "Keep Your Eyes on The Prize". Two years ago, for the SPEAK OUT set at Newport (intended to be a platform for artists to speak out about issues of our times), I was critical of the set’s lack of diversity. I noted that both Rhiannon Giddens and Alynda Segarra gave the most topical and stirring performances of that festival but were absent at that finale. Well, this year, they both hit the stage and had their voices heard with songs of protest to make up for lost time.

It's good to know this incredible festival is in good hands and has its ears open. I'm already looking forward to next July. Until then, here's a few photos to pass the time.

Newport is always a place to make discoveries. Saturday morning, the audience was woken up to the raucous duo of Illiterate Light.

Liz Cooper & The Stampede bent over backwards (literally) to electrify the audience at the Quad on Friday with their psychedelic soundscape.

Recent Tony Award winner Anais Mitchell and The Milk Carton Kids at The Harbor Stage, singing Graham Nash's "Simple Man" as part of the Songs for Beginners set.

After a last minute dropout from Noname due to illness, Festival producer Jay Sweet was left with a hole at the Harbor Stage on Saturday. After tweeting about the brilliance of Graham Nash's album Songs for Beginners and the responses it garnered, an idea sparked. A supergroup of Newport faithful led by Kyle Craft, including Hiss Golden Messenger, Lake Street Dive, Amy Ray, The Tallest Man on Earth, and more played the album from start to end. I think we may have just started a new Newport tradition--might I suggest Neil Young's Harvest next year?

Lukas Nelson and The Promise of The Real rocked the Quad Stage on Friday, closing the set with a rendition of Neil Young's "Rockin’ in the Free World" but slowed things down with reminders to Turn Off the News (Build a Garden), and song about an ex named Georgia that made performing with his father singing "Georgia On My Mind" every night a little tricky.

British singer-songwriter Yola was everywhere at the Newport Folk Festival, performing her own set at the Harbor stage as well as at the Quad with both The Highwomen and Dawes. Here, she takes the stage at the Fort during The Collaboration with the First Ladies of Bluegrass covering The Eurythmics’ "Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves".

After appearing last year as a guest to Mumford & Sons and others, this year, Maggie Rogers got the Fort stage all to herself to dance in and out of her sound equipment and share her debut album Heard It in a Past Life with Newport.

Every year, there's an act that brings Quad to its feet and doesn't let them sit back down. This year, Jupiter & Okwess invited everyone to fill in the fire lanes, and a 45-minute dance party ensued, capping off with a collaboration with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

Phosporescent returned to the Quad stage with hypnotic grooves and chill vibes, keeping all the heads bobbing inside the old fort.

I'm With Her returned, bringing their sweet blend of harmonies bridging old-time music to the present, including covers of The Vampire Weekend and Joni Mitchell.

This year was all about the women, and the fellas came to support. Jason Isbell, who generally headlines festivals like these, wasn't even given a microphone. Here, Amanda Shires (who happens to be his wife) allows him to share a few thoughts as they introduced a song they co-wrote, "If She Ever Leaves Me", dubbed the first gay country song, which was sung moments later by Brandi Carlile.

Each year, the festival producer comes out to the early birds waiting for the gates to open to welcome them back and remind them to BE PRESENT, BE KIND, BE OPEN, and BE TOGETHER. There isn't a place in the world that's easier to do those four things.

It's always fun to see what surprise guests will show up to the festival that aren't officially listed. This year’s guests included Jim James, Kermit The Frog, Dolly Parton, James Taylor...you know that this list might end up being bigger than the actual lineup. Here's surprise guest Tallest Man on Earth, who joined both the Songs for Beginners set as well as The Cooks in the Kitchen.

Hozier returned for his 3rd appearance, singing a duet with Mavis Staples for their song "Nina Cried Power". He also gave over the stage to Brandi Carlile during his set for her to sing her hit “The Joke”. Here, he joins with Lake Street Dive for a cover of Sly & The Family Stone’s "Everyday People".

Jade Bird had her own solo set at The Fort stage but joined in on The Collaboration, seen here singing "What's Up" with Linda Perry and Brandi Carlile.

Phil Cook has become a regular staple at the festival. His love and respect for the musicians and the music played at the festival has endeared himself to both fans and musicians alike. For his set, Cooks in the Kitchen, Phil, who always seems up for a collaboration, was joined by his brother Brad as well as Tallest Man on The Earth’s Kristian Matsson, Amy Ray of The Indigo Girls, and Anais Mitchell.

Molly Tuttle, who had her own set with guitarist Billy Strings, joined The First Ladies of Bluegrass, Courtney Marie Andrews, and others for a cover of “Big Yellow Taxi” at the Collaboration Set Saturday.

Just a man, his guitar, and a huge open stage. Jeff Tweedy charmed the audience at the Fort on Saturday claiming he wanted to "hug you with his sad shit."

Rhiannon Giddens returned to the Newport Folk Festival with the most powerful and gut-wrenching set of the festival, joined by Amythyst Kiah, Leyla McCalla, and Allison Russell to form the group Our Native Daughters, singing songs addressing American historical issues that have influenced the identity of black women. This marked only their 6th live performance, performing in Connecticut a week earlier for the first time. Emotions were overflowing both on stage and in the audience, as each artist (each of whom played multiple instruments) took turns singing songs of sorrow, hope, anger, and joy. It was an experience like no other at the festival.

Linda Perry leading a sing along of "What's Up" at The Collaboration, asking the audience to sing so high, "I wanna touch the fucking stars!" Later, she was on Facebook Live for the introduction of Dolly Parton.

There was a bit of a 90's renaissance at this year’s festival with appearances from Amy Ray, Linda Perry, and former Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss. Sheryl Crow, who had her own set at the Fort on Friday and later joined The Highwomen that day at the Quad, got in on the fun at The Collaboration on Saturday, performing "If It Makes You Happy" with Maren Morris and "Strong Enough" with Maggie Rogers and Yola.

Newport always does a great job of honoring those who led the way. This year, we saw Judy Collins hit many stages and share stories about a young Bob Dylan writing “Mr. Tambourine Man” on her porch, as well as recalling Stephen Stills singing her "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes", to which she replied "It's a good song, but it won't get me back." Here, she shares the story of a friend discovering Joni Mitchell and bringing her "Both Sides Now", which was sung moments later with Brandi Carlile.

Couples take in the If I Had A Song set at sunset on Sunday, which included a duet from Kermit the Frog and Jim James as well as a serenade to Judy Collins from Robin Pecknold (Fleet Foxes), Eric D. Johnson (Fruit Bats), and James Mercer (The Shins), singing “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”.

Newport Folk Festival marked the inaugural performance of The Highwomen. Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, Amanda Shires, and Natalie Hemby, here joined by Yola, opened their set to a powerful reworking of “The Highwaymen”, made famous by Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, and Johnny Cash. The Highwomen’s version, written by Carlile, Shires, and Jimmy Webb (the original songwriter) honors the stories of courageous female revolutionaries and includes an additional 5th verse:

  "We are The Highwomen / Singing stories still untold / We carry the sons, you can only hold / We are the daughters of the silent generations / You sent our hearts to die alone in foreign nations / It may return to us as tiny drops of rain / But we will still remain.”

A stage full of Newport Folk ladies, including Brandi Carlile, Rachael Price, Maggie Rogers, and Sheryl Crow, bow down to the one and only Dolly Parton. I've seen Roger Waters, Jack White, My Morning Jacket, Jackson Browne, Beck, Levon Helm, and Mumford & Sons headline the Festival. This was the biggest of all the Saturday night headliners.

Bob Dylan

Robert Allen Zimmerman, 24 May 1941, Duluth, Minnesota, USA. Bob Dylan is without doubt one of the most influential figures in the history of popular music. He is the writer of scores of classic songs and is generally regarded as the man who brought literacy to rock lyrics. The son of the middle-class proprietor of an electrical and furniture store, as a teenager, living in Hibbing, Minnesota, Robert Zimmerman was always intrigued by the romanticism of the outsider. He loved James Dean movies, liked riding motorcycles and wearing biker gear, and listened to R&B music on radio stations transmitting from the south. A keen fan of folk singer Odetta and country legend Hank Williams, he was also captivated by early rock ‘n’ roll. When he began playing music himself, with school friends in bands such as the Golden Chords and Elston Gunn And The Rock Boppers, it was as a clumsy but enthusiastic piano player, and it was at this time that he declared his ambition in a high school yearbook ‘to join Little Richard’. In 1959, he began visiting Minneapolis at weekends and on his graduation from high school, enrolled at the University of Minnesota there, although he spent most of his time hanging around with local musicians in the beatnik coffee-houses of the Dinkytown area. It was in Minneapolis that he first discovered blues music, and he began to incorporate occasional blues tunes into the primarily traditional material that made up his repertoire as an apprentice folk singer. His first album, called simply Bob Dylan, was released in March 1962. It presented a collection of folk and blues standards, often about death and sorrows and the trials of life, songs that had been included in Dylan’s repertoire over the past year or so, performed with gusto and an impressive degree of sensitivity for a 20-year-old. However, it was the inclusion of two of his own compositions, most notably the mature and affectionate tribute, ‘Song To Woody’, that pointed the way forward. Over the next few months, Dylan wrote dozens of songs, many of them ‘topical’ songs. Encouraged by his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, Dylan became interested in, and was subsequently adopted by, the Civil Rights movement. His song ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’, written in April 1962, was to be the most famous of his protest songs and was included on his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, released in May 1963. In the meantime, Dylan had written and recorded several other noteworthy early political songs, including ‘Masters Of War’ and ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’, and, during a nine-month separation from Suze, one of his greatest early love songs, ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’. At the end of 1962, he recorded a single, a rock ‘n’ roll song called ‘Mixed Up Confusion’, with backing musicians. The record was quickly deleted, apparently because Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman, saw that the way forward for his charge was not as a rocker, but as an earnest acoustic folky. Similarly, tracks that had been recorded for Dylan’s second album with backing musicians were scrapped, although the liner notes which commented on them and identified the players, remained carelessly unrevised. The Freewheelin’ record was so long in coming that four original song choices were substituted at the last moment by other, more newly composed songs. One of the tracks omitted was ‘Talking John Birch Society Blues’, which Dylan had been controversially banned from singing on the Ed Sullivan Show in May 1963. The attendant publicity did no harm whatsoever to Dylan’s stature as a radical new ‘anti-establishment’ voice. At the same time, Grossman’s shrewd decision to have a somewhat saccharine version of ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ recorded by Peter, Paul And Mary also paid off, the record becoming a huge hit in the USA, and bringing Dylan’s name to national, and indeed international, attention for the first time. Here, then, was Bob Dylan the poet, and here the arguments about the relative merits of high art and popular art began. The years 1964-66 were unquestionably Dylan’s greatest as a writer and as a performer; they were also his most influential years and many artists today still cite the three albums that followed, Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited from 1965 and 1966’s double album Blonde On Blonde as being seminal in their own musical development. Another Side Of Bob Dylan was to be Dylan’s last solo acoustic album for almost 30 years. Intrigued by what the Beatles were doing - he had visited London again to play one concert at the Royal Festival Hall in May 1964 - and particularly excited by the Animals’ ‘folk rock’ cover version of ‘House Of The Rising Sun’, a track Dylan himself had included on his debut album, he and producer Tom Wilson fleshed out some of the Bringing It All Back Home songs with rock ‘n’ roll backings - the proto-rap ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ and ‘Maggie’s Farm’, for instance. However, the song that was perhaps Dylan’s most important mid-60s composition, ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, was written immediately after the final series of acoustic concerts played in the UK in April and May 1965, and commemorated in D.A. Pennebaker’s famous documentary film, Don’t Look Back. Bob Dylan said that he began to write ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ having decided to ‘quit’ singing and playing. The lyrics to the song emerged from six pages of stream-of-consciousness ‘vomit’; the sound of the single emerged from the immortal combination of Chicago blues guitarist Michael Bloomfield, bass player Harvey Brooks and fledgling organ-player Al Kooper. ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ was producer Tom Wilson’s last, and greatest, Dylan track. At six minutes, it destroyed the formula of the sub-three-minute single forever. It was a huge hit and was played, alongside the Byrds’ equally momentous version of ‘Mr Tambourine Man’, all over the radio in the summer of 1965. Consequently, it should have come as no surprise to those who went to see Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival on July 25 that he was now a fully-fledged folk rocker; but, apparently, it did. Backed by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Dylan’s supposedly ‘new sound’ - although admittedly it was his first concert with supporting musicians - was met with a storm of bewilderment and hostility. Stories vary as to how much Dylan was booed that night, and why, but Dylan seemed to find the experience both exhilarating and liberating. If, after the UK tour, he had felt ready to quit, now he was ready to start again, to tour the world with a band and to take his music, and himself, to the farthest reaches of experience, just like Rimbaud. Bob Dylan’s discovery of the Hawks, a Canadian group who had been playing roadhouses and funky bars until introductions were made via John Hammond Jnr. and Albert Grossman’s secretary Mary Martin, was one of those pieces of alchemical magic that happen hermetically. The Hawks, later to become the Band, comprised Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson, Rick Danko and Levon Helm. Bob Dylan’s songs and the Hawks’ sound were made for each other. After a couple of stormy warm-up gigs, they took to the road in the autumn of 1965 and travelled through the USA, then, via Hawaii, to Australia, on to Scandinavia and finally to Britain, with a hop over to Paris for a birthday show, in May 1966. Bob Dylan was deranged and dynamic, the group wild and mercurial. Their set, the second half of a show that opened with Dylan playing acoustically to a reverentially silent house, was provocative and perplexing for many. It was certainly the loudest thing anyone had ever heard, and, almost inevitably, the electric set was greeted with anger and dismay. Drummer LevonHelm was so disheartened by the ferocity of the booing that he quit before the turn of the year - drummers Sandy Konikoff and Mickey Jones completed the tour. The most infamous date took place at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in England; known erroneously as the ‘Royal Albert Hall’ concert for many years, the recording was officially released in 1998. After an angry folk fan shouts out ‘Judas’ from the audience, Dylan responds ‘I don’t believe you! You’re a liar!’ and turns round to the band and instructs them to ‘play fuckin’ loud!’ as they begin playing the last song of the night, ‘Like A Rolling Stone’. Offstage, Dylan was spinning out of control, not sleeping, not eating, looking wasted and apparently heading rapidly for rock ‘n’ roll oblivion. Pennebaker again filmed the tour, this time in Dylan’s employ. The ‘official’ record of the tour was the rarely seen Eat The Document, a film originally commissioned by ABC-TV. The unofficial version compiled by Pennebaker himself was You Know Something Is Happening. ‘What was happening, ’ says Pennebaker, ‘was drugs...’. Bob Dylan was physically exhausted when he returned to America in June 1966, but had to complete the film and finish Tarantula, the book that was overdue for Macmillan. He owed Columbia two more albums before his contract expired, and was booked to play a series of concerts right up to the end of the year in increasingly bigger venues, including Shea Stadium. Then, on 29 July 1966, Dylan was injured in a motorcycle accident near his home in Bearsville, near Woodstock, upper New York State. Was there really a motorcycle accident? Dylan still claims there was. He hurt his neck and had treatment. More importantly, the accident allowed him to shrug off the responsibilities that had been lined up on his behalf by manager Grossman. By now, the relationship between Dylan and Grossman was less than cordial and litigation between the two of them was ongoing until Grossman’s death almost 20 years later. A US tour followed. Tickets were sold by post and attracted six million applications. Everybody who went to the shows agreed that Dylan and the Band were fantastic. The recorded evidence, Before The Flood, also released by Asylum, certainly oozes energy, but lacks subtlety: Dylan seemed to be trying too hard, pushing everything too fast. It is good, but not that good. What is that good, indisputably and incontestably, is Blood On The Tracks. Originally recorded (for Columbia, no hard feelings, etc.) in late 1974, Dylan substituted some of the songs with versions reworked in Minnesota over the Christmas period. They were his finest compositions since the Blonde On Blonde material. ‘Tangled Up In Blue’, ‘Idiot Wind’, ‘If You See Her, Say Hello’, ‘Shelter From The Storm’, ‘Simple Twist Of Fate’, ‘You’re A Big Girl Now’... one masterpiece followed another. It was not so much a divorce album as a separation album (Dylan’s divorce from Sara wasn’t completed until 1977), but it was certainly a diary of despair. ‘Pain sure brings out the best in people, doesn’t it?’ Dylan sang in 1966’s ‘She’s Your Lover Now’; Blood On The Tracks gave the lie to all those who had argued that Dylan was a spent force. After three turbulent years, it was hardly surprising that Dylan dropped from sight for most of 1982, but the following year he was back in the studio, again with Mark Knopfler, having, it was subsequently established, written a prolific amount of new material. The album that resulted, Infidels, released in October 1983, received a mixed reception. Some songs were strong - ‘I&I’ and ‘Jokerman’ among them - others relatively unimpressive. Bob Dylan entered the video age by making promos for ‘Sweetheart Like You’ and ‘Jokerman’, but did not seem too excited about it. Rumours persisted about his having abandoned Christianity and re-embraced the Jewish faith. His name began to be linked with the ultra-orthodox Lubavitcher sect: the inner sleeve of Infidels pictured him touching the soil of a hill above Jerusalem, while ‘Neighbourhood Bully’ was a fairly transparent defence of Israel’s policies towards its neighbours. Dylan, as ever, refused to confirm or deny his state of spiritual health. In 1984, he appeared live on the David Letterman television show, giving one of his most extraordinary and thrilling performances, backed by a ragged and raw Los Angeles trio, the Cruzados. However, when, a few weeks later, he played his first concert tour for three years, visiting Europe on a package with Santana put together by impresario Bill Graham, Dylan’s band was disappointingly longer in the tooth (with Mick Taylor on guitar and Ian McLagan on organ). An unimpressive souvenir album, Real Live, released in December, was most notable for its inclusion of a substantially rewritten version of ‘Tangled Up In Blue’. The following year opened with Bob Dylan contributing to the ‘We Are The World’ USA For Africa single, and in the summer, after the release of Empire Burlesque, a patchy record somewhat over-produced by remix specialist Arthur Baker but boasting the beautiful acoustic closer ‘Dark Eyes’, he was the top-of-the-bill act at Live Aid. Initially, Dylan had been supposed to play with a band, but then was asked to perform solo, to aid the logistics of the grande finale. In the event, he recruited Ron Wood and Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones to help him out. The results were disastrous. Hopelessly under-rehearsed and hampered both by the lack of monitors and the racket of the stage being set up behind the curtain in front of which they were performing, the trio were a shambles. Dylan, it was muttered later, must have been the only artist to appear in front of a billion television viewers worldwide and end up with fewer fans than he had when he started. Matters were redeemed a little, however, at the Farm Aid concert in September, an event set up as a result of Dylan’s somewhat gauche onstage ‘charity begins at home’ appeal at Live Aid. Backed by Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers, it was immediately apparent that Bob Dylan had found his most sympathetic and adaptable backing band since the Hawks. The year ended positively, too, with the release of the five album (3-CD) retrospective feast, Biograph, featuring many previously unreleased tracks. The collaboration with Tom Petty having gone so well, it was decided that the partnership should continue, and a tour was announced to begin in New Zealand, Australia and Japan with more shows to follow in the USA. It was the summer’s hottest ticket and the Petty/Dylan partnership thrived for a further year with a European tour, the first shows of which saw Dylan appearing in Israel for the very first time. Unfortunately, the opening show in Tel Aviv was not well received either by the audience or by the press, whose reviews were vitriolic. The second show in Jerusalem was altogether more enjoyable, until the explosion of the PA system brought the concert to an abrupt end. Between the two tours, Dylan appeared in his second feature, the Richard Marquand-directed Hearts Of Fire, made in England and Canada and co-starring Rupert Everett and Fiona Flanagan. Dylan played Billy Parker, a washed-up one-time superstar who in all but one respect (the washed-up bit) bore an uncanny resemblance to Dylan himself. Despite Dylan’s best efforts - and he was probably the best thing in the movie - the film was a clunker. Hoots of derision marred the premiere in October 1987 and its theatrical release was limited to one week in the UK. The poor movie was preceded by a poor album, Knocked Out Loaded, which only had the epic song ‘Brownsville Girl’, co-written with playwright Sam Shepard, to recommend it. Increasingly, it appeared that Dylan’s best attentions were being devoted to his concerts. The shows with Tom Petty had been triumphant. Dylan also shared the bill with the Grateful Dead at several stadium venues, and learned from the experience. He envied their ability to keep on playing shows year in, year out, commanding a following wherever and whenever they played. He liked their two drummers and also admired the way they varied their set each night, playing different songs as and when they felt like it. These peculiarly Deadian aspects of live performance were soon incorporated into Dylan’s own concert philosophy. Down In The Groove, an album of mostly cover versions of old songs, was released in the same month, June 1988, as Dylan played the first shows of what was to become known as the Never-Ending Tour. Backed by a three-piece band led by G.E. Smith, Dylan had stripped down his sound and his songs and was, once again, seemingly re-energized. His appetite for work had never been greater, and this same year he found himself in the unlikely company of George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty and Roy Orbison as one of the Traveling Wilburys, a jokey rock band assembled on a whim in the spring. Their album, Volume 1, on which Dylan’s voice was as prominent as anyone’s, was, unexpectedly, a huge commercial success. With his Traveling Wilbury star in the ascendancy, and fresh from his induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, Dylan’s next album emerged as his best of the 80s. Oh Mercy, recorded informally in New Orleans and idiosyncratically produced by Daniel Lanois, sounded fresh and good, and the songs were as strong a bunch as Dylan had come up with in a long time. However, for reasons best known only to himself, it transpired from bootleg tapes that Dylan had been excluding many excellent songs from the albums he had been releasing in the 80s, most notably the masterpiece ‘Blind Willie McTell’, which was recorded for, but not included on, Infidels. Indeed, despite the evident quality of the songs on Oh Mercy - ‘Shooting Star’ and ‘Most Of The Time’ were, for once, both songs of experience, evidence of a maturity that many fans had long been wishing for in Dylan’s songwriting - it turned out that Dylan was still holding back. The crashing, turbulent ‘Series Of Dreams’ and the powerful ‘Dignity’ were products of the Lanois sessions, but were not used on Oh Mercy. Instead, both later appeared on compilation albums. Not without its merits (the title track and ‘God Knows’ are still live staples, while ‘Born In Time’ is a particularly emotional love song), the nursery-rhyme-style Under The Red Sky, released in September 1990, was for most a relative, probably inevitable, disappointment, as was the Roy-Orbison-bereft Traveling Wilburys follow-up, Volume 3. However, the touring continued, with Dylan’s performances becoming increasingly erratic - sometimes splendid, often shambolic. It was one thing being spontaneous and improvisatory, but it was quite another being slapdash and incompetent. Dylan could be either, and was sometimes both. His audiences began to dwindle, his reputation started to suffer. The three-volume collection of out-takes and rarities, The Bootleg Series, Volumes 1-3 (Rare And Unreleased) 1961-1991, redeemed him somewhat, as did the 30th Anniversary Celebration concert in Madison Square Garden in 1992, in which some of rock music’s greats and not-so-greats paid tribute to Dylan’s past achievements as a songwriter. The previous year he received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammies. There was, however, precious little present songwriting to celebrate. Both Good As I Been To You (1992) and World Gone Wrong (1993), although admirable, were collections of old folk and blues material, performed, for the first time since 1964, solo and acoustically. Greatest Hits Volume 3 (1994) threw together a clump of old non-hits and Unplugged (1995) saw Dylan revisiting a set of predominantly 60s songs in desultory fashion. Even the most ambitious CD-ROM so far, Highway 61 Interactive, while seemingly pointing to a Dylan-full future, wallowed nostalgically in, and was marketed on the strength of, past glories. Although Dylan’s live performances became more coherent and controlled, his choice of material grew less imaginative through 1994, while many shows in 1995, which saw continued improvement in form, comprised almost entirely of songs written some 30 years earlier. In 1997 it was rumoured that Dylan was knocking on heaven’s door. Although he had suffered a serious inflammation of the heart muscles (pericarditis brought on by histoplasmosis) he was discharged from hospital after a short time, eliciting his priceless quote to the press: ‘I really thought I’d be seeing Elvis soon’. It was time, perhaps, for doubters to begin to consign Dylan to the pages of history. However, as time has often proved, you can never write off Bob Dylan. He is a devil for hopping out of the hearse on the way to the cemetery. The Lanois-produced Time Out Of Mind was a dark and sombre recording, with Dylan reflecting over lost love and hints of death. It was his best work for many years, and although his voice had continued to decline, the strength of melody and lyric were remarkable. One outstanding example of Dylan’s continuing ability to write a tender love song was ‘To Make You Feel My Love’. Both Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood recorded excellent versions for the movie soundtrack Hope Floats in 1998 (Brooks took it to number 1 on the US country chart). That same year, the official release of the legendary bootleg, recorded at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1966, received a staggering amount of praise from the press. This was completely justified because the concert of familiar songs reminded and confirmed his towering importance as a songwriter. Dylan’s first recording of the new millennium was ‘Things Have Changed’, the Grammy-award winning main and end-title theme for Curtis Hanson’s movie Wonder Boys. His new studio album Love And Theft received generous praise, far in excess of its overall quality. Only ‘Mississippi’ could be classed as a great Dylan song. The quality of the material was thrown into sharp relief by two further superb releases in the Bootleg Series, a compilation of live recordings of the Rolling Thunder Revue from 1975, and a 1964 concert from the Philharmonic Hall in New York. Dylan, meanwhile, was concentrating on completing the script for his next venture into the world of film. The star-studded Masked And Anonymous was greeted with resounding indifference when it was first shown in 2003, with reviewers either puzzled or openly repulsed by the cryptic screenplay. Dylan fans took another view; it was weird but brilliant. A various artists soundtrack album, featuring several radical reworkings of classic Dylan material, was released at the same time. The following October Dylan published the first volume of his memoirs, Chronicles: Volume One. While retaining hints of his trademark opacity, Dylan’s prose evinced a clarity and generosity absent from his previous written output. In September 2005, the Martin Scorsese television film No Direction Home: Bob Dylan was broadcast on public television channels in the USA and UK. This remarkable film focused on Dylan’s life and music from 1961-66. Dylan embarked on a series of radio broadcasts in 2006 when he presented Theme Time Radio Hour, another astonishing addition to his talent portfolio. Few would have thought that he could have carried it off with such warmth and devilish humour, but the shows, together with some exceptional music, became an unmissable weekly event for Dylan fans. The musical world welcomed Dylan’s 2006 release Modern Times with open arms. The reviews were remarkable and fully justified in their praise for what was his greatest work since Oh Mercy. This was no gratuitous coincidence as the album hit the US chart at number 1, making Dylan the oldest person ever to do so. After almost 50 years of writing lyrics he still has something to say; now with a weathered tone and dry humour, but interesting and profound nonetheless. His standing was confirmed the following year when he was awarded an honorary Pulitzer Prize, the first rock ‘n’ roll artist to achieve such status. Whatever the quality of his musical output will be in the future (and at present the future looks good), Bob Dylan is unquestionably the greatest musical poet of the twentieth century and certainly one of the most important figures in the entire history of popular music. Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze. Read the full article

HOZIER FT. MAVIS STAPLES - NINA CRIED POWER

[4.70]

Hozier pays homage...

Ian Mathers: I guess I'm guilty of having paid more attention to the memes around "Take Me to Church" than to the song and Hozier himself, hence my genuine shock at him and an always-incredible Mavis Staples producing one of the best protest songs in recent years -- certainly the best one that's most about protest songs and the act of protesting (in art or not). It's a good song even separate from that context (it's got two good-to-great singers and a powerful backing) but while political stuff in art can lead to a ton of mileage being varied, I at least could use something this stirring right now. [8]

Joshua Copperman: On first glance, it feels like deracination incarnate, the reduction of a half-century and much more of protest songs into, "Hey, Joni Mitchell and Curtis Mayfield are people that exist!" It risks becoming an Owl City-style gimmick for a subject that really should not have one. But Hozier seems aware of that, so it's not attempting to be a protest song, but, as he says, a "thank you note" to those who actually fought. Unlike Arcade Fire, Hozier invites Mavis Staples for more than just clout, with Staples taking over around 40 per cent of the song. In the linked Billboard interview, he admits that his genre of music does not exist without "the work and the achievements and the legacy of black artistry." So instead of the Owl City song, "Nina Cried Power" is actually closer to "Tribute," only Hozier doesn't claim to write the greatest song in the world. And anyway, there are far worse picks for "greatest song" than "Sinnerman." [7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: If you examine "Nina Cried Power" too closely, it starts to fall apart -- it's a song about protest songs that also serves as a free-standing protest song about nothing in particular, which leads to some muddling of what's actually being talked about, and so on. But in the moment, and especially as Mavis Staples tears up the bridge, that structural quibble fades away. "Nina Cried Power" is so effective of a delivery device for the raw feelings of righteous anger that it seeks to transmit that it feels silly to critique it once it gets going, all beatific invocation and booming choirs. I don't even really like most protest songs, but "Nina Cried Power" convinces me that I do every time I listen to it. [8]

Taylor Alatorre: "Where have all the protest songs gone," the question so often asked by socially conscious Baby Boomers and teenage Bob Dylan fans alike, finally has an anthem of its own. To his credit, Hozier recognizes the limits of his range when he sings "power has been cried by those stronger than me," but in the face of so much simulated grandiosity, it comes across as a hastily appended editor's note. A more sincere recognition would've involved shortening the list of names and bringing Mavis's voice to the forefront; it'd still be a cop-out, but show-and-tell is always more exciting than a book report. [3]

Juan F. Carruyo: Tasteful, soulful, restrained. Also too damn respectable for my liking and a bit of a bore, as it assumes that mentioning the names of iconic people makes his meaningless slogan of a song title become true. It will make for a fine bathroom break when he takes to the stage to perform this at the next Grammys. [5]

Julian Axelrod: Bold move of the Grammys to drop their vaguely political protest performance five months before the ceremony. [6]

Alfred Soto: Why the hell does Hozier sound like Tom Jones raging against a long buffet line? Why invite Mavis Staples? [0]

Nortey Dowuona: Pumping, authoritative drums kick the door down as slow, soft piano chords rise, as lumbering bass guitar and heavenly coos rise, and Hozier yells about... power, I guess? Then Mavis Staples walks across the water rising in the room to pull out Hozier and place him on the shelf, where he continues to yell, while Mavis slowly pulls the song from the water, revealing a a humble, carefully sanded wooden carving of a carpenter's table. [7]

Maxwell Cavaseno: There is a great weird thing called "Soul-Boyism," and the thing is, you don't have to be a boy to do this, but whenever you have a nice, well-meaning, pale-faced lad like Hozier coming out to tell people about the greatness that is soul, well, uh... the jokes write themselves. There's nothing wrong with recognizing that Nina, Billie, Mavis, or any brilliant vocalist were captivating forces. There's certainly nothing wrong with even enlisting them to help you wax poetic on their brilliance. Perhaps there's a bit of an error in legitimately writing a song that's about the process of desperately grabbing on to that as you proceed to use such to bolster and prop oneself up with pseudo-messianic bombast. "Nina Cried Power" is, like every time rock artists inevitably use gospel to give themselves depth, an instantaneous failure marred with racism, buffoonery and preposterous histrionics. If he really wanted to be a nice lad who meant well, he'd stop invoking people better than the music he's made thus far and make something that someone could maybe hold in similar regard. Good luck on that when you're so ready to sell your fans on everyone else instead. [3]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: There are more than a dozen artists mentioned here and absolutely none of them made a single protest song that was as self-serving and cowardly as this. Hozier "champions" a slew of musicians by reducing them to bullet points on a namedrop fest. Worst of all is how he doesn't even have the decency to leave it at that. Instead, he makes brief mention of Trump's wall to ensure that there's a semblance of something political going on. The result is the laziest, most dangerous form of protest, and "Nina Cried Power" perpetuates a similar contentedness in behavior and ideology in its fans. One of the greatest things about music is how listeners can easily get swept up in the emotional grandeur of it all. Hozier understands how manipulative it can be, and makes a non-protest song that instills a deep urgency to... listen to the music of better songwriters? Let's agree that he succeeded. [0]

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