Dylan Trivia: Everything You Know Is Wrong

One of the features of Duluth Dylan Fest each year is the Dylan Trivia event at Carmody's Irish Pub. For 51 Sunday nights throughout the year Carmody's hosts a trivia contest featuring miscellaneous trivial themes. Then there's Dylan Fest in which the questions deal with all things Dylan.

As the author of a few of these Dylan Trivia contests I tend to notice news items with Dylan ties as they cross the ticker. For example, last week I saw a news story that the doors to the historic Chelsea Hotel were auctioned off. Several trivia questions came to mind. Here are two.

1. How many of the following famous people did NOT ever call the Chelsea Hotel "home" at one time or another?
Mark Twain, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Dylan Thomas, Jim Morrison, Leonard Cohen, Arthur C. Clark, Allen Ginsberg, Stanley Kubrick, Dennis Hopper, Robert Crumb, Claes Oldenburg, Cher, Tom Waits, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, Jane Fonda.

Answer: None. At one time or another all these folks stayed in the Chelsea Hotel.

2. The door to Dylan's room in the Chelsea Hotel went up for auction this past week and sold for how much?
a. $20,000
b. $50,000
c: $100,000
d. $400,000

Answer: You can find the answer here. (If the Vice link fails, try Google.)

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"Dylan Discovers a New Way of Seeing" 

Originally I planned to have this post yesterday as a FLASHBACK FRIDAY in which I re-posted one of the Dylan trivia blog posts from the past. Thursday's explosion at a refinery in Superior rocked the city and upended my plans here.

In 2016 I shared DO YOU LIKE DYLAN TRIVIA? The aim, of course, was to remind blog readers that Trivia Night is one of the events we have each year at Dylan Fest.

Last year, after DDF was over I received a link to another Dylan Trivia questionnaire titled TANGLED UP IN THE BIBLE: A BOB DYLAN QUIZ. It was fun, and perhaps a prescient preview of Dylan's Bootleg #13: Trouble No More which would be released late last year. You can find David Buckna's original quiz here on Facebook.

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DON'T OVERTHINK IT
The main point of Malcolm Gladwell's Blink is that we should learn to trust our instincts and not overthink things. We "think without thinking" he says. Granted, this is an oversimplification, but when it comes to trivia contests with nothing at stake, unless you are super-competitive, then have fun and don't overthink it.

On the other hand, I guess there's always the contrarian view, which Weird Al is happy to provide in this video.

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Related Links

Dylan Fest Schedule can be found here at BobDylanWay.com
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