26 September 2005

Don't speak too soon for the wheel's still in spin.

Tonight is the premiere of the Martin Scorsese Bob Dylan pic No Direction Home on PBS. It shows tonight and tomorrow night. It's about the early years: 1961-1966. I've always been a Bob Dylan fan although my collection of his recordings only goes up to 1975's Blood on the Tracks. You can't beat the raw emotional energy of his early work, when it's just him and a guitar, like on "Masters of War," from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.

A lot of people, if they know Dylan at all, know him mainly as a protest song folksinger, which of course makes him very dour indeed, but like most good folksingers he also sings straight-up love songs and he has a good deal of humor in his work, even in the political work. A song like the "Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues" is a classic political critique that can't be sung with a straight face. And "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" is a brilliantly hilarious take on casual encounters.

I'm looking forward to seeing how Mr. Scorsese puts together the birth of a cultural icon...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I've been reading a lot about this film, all the critics are raving over it, so we'll see.