Eleven Interesting Dylan-related Details

1. "That way lies madness," is a quote from Shakespeare's King Lear. It is from the same passage
 that the title of Dylan's most recent album was probably extracted.

2. Steve Jobs was asked in an interview, "If you were put on a desert island and had to choose between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones whose collection to have on your iPod, which would you choose." Jobs said that was an easy decision. He would choose the Fab Four. "But," he replied, "if you had asked me to choose between the Beatles and Dylan, that would not have been such an easy decision."

3.Blonde on Blonde is right up there as one of the all time great albums. The foundation throughout is the manner in which Dylan's lyric Bard-spirit has bee unleashed. Who but Dylan would write, "Jewels and binoculars hand from the head of the mule..."? Who but Dylan was writing lines like this: "The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face / Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place." Who, but Dylan?

4. Dylan recorded a cover of the song Blue Moon on his Self-Portrait album. The song must have meant something to him because he performed it live at least a dozen times, the first being in Wellington, New Zealand in 1986 and the last in 1999 at Charlotte, North Carolina.

5. Somewhere around 1990 I'd heard that Dylan was already the most re-recorded song writer of all time.

6. Bob Dylan's first album cost $402 to record. I just that today from an article titled 20 Things You Might Not Know About Bob Dylan's Debut Album that was posted on ExpectingRain.com.

7. When Like a Rolling Stone came out in 1965, it was the longest-playing 45 at our junior high school dances at Hillside School in Bridgewater. I always liked when the DJ played it because it was the longest slow song in the pile, so it gave me a chance to get close to Nancy Black who I never talked to in real life because I was too shy. But she said "Yes" when I asked her to dance with me. Go figure.

8. Tempest was released on 9/11, a nice birthday present (for me) to compensate for the 9/11 that rocked the world eleven years earlier.

9. The song Mississippi, which first appears on Dylan's album Love and Theft, is also recorded in a number of other versions, two of which appear on his Bootleg Album #8. Sheryl Crow later recorded the song in her Globe Sessions.

10. The album Desire, Dylan's 17th studio album, features virtuoso violin support from the talented Scarlet Rivera, who accompanied Dylan with a caravan carnival of musicians weaving in and out on his much-lauded Rolling Thunder Revue. Scarlet will be performing a benefit concert with Gene LaFond and the Wild Unknown here in Duluth in May.

11. Countless visual artists have found inspiration from Dylan and his music, I among them. 

Enjoy your weekend. And be sure to catch John Bushey tonight on KUMD's Highway 61 Revisited.