All Dylan, All The Time
With the premier of Martin Scorcese’s documentary on Bob Dylan this week on PBS, the press is all aflurry with articles about the ol’ six-slinger. WaPo reviews the film as does The SF Gate here; The Independent tracks down the man who called him Judas; here’s The Telegraph on why he sucks; and that is not even the tip of the iceberg. Check out Google News — the coverage is outrageous.
Of course, not missing an opportunity to gloat on how he’s one of ours, Jewsrock ascertains The Biblical Bob, and Jeff Klepper, a redonkulous Jewish folk artist who does a slew of Dylan parodies (which he crafted initially for a Purim spiel) sends us this MP3 of “Cantillation Row.”
Anyone get a chance to see the doc? Wha’d ya think? (And if you got a torrent link, hook it up!)
I’m enjoying it actually.
I thought it was very well done. Dylan seemed much more relaxed and at ease in the new interview clips than I’ve seen him during an interview in years. The archival footage, large amounts of which had never been seen before, was just incredible.
Saw both parts. Well made, interesting, fun to see clips of Ginsburg, Ferlinghetti, Baez, Seeger, Levanthal and others sharing their personal interactions. Illuminating on the height of his career, leading up to and just following his plugging in. Spent a lot of time putting his rise to fame into context against the beatnik, folkie and early hippie movements while giving a fair amount of insight into his personal life. Better title might have been Reluctant Prophet, since it revolved so much around his coyness about owning up to the impact of his own words and music.
It glosses over his youth, and the his early Jewish spiritual upbringing in Hibbing. We’re curious about that, of course, wanting him to be one of us, wanting to know who the man is now, and more importantly, how his verse often took on a prophetic quality (maybe just in our minds) and the level of biblical imagary used. It wasn’t from Guthrie or Seeger… We all want to know about what happened sinc the motercycle crash, and the film ends too early in his career to cover that.
I wrote a short piece about it on Jewlicious.
A fine documentary film adaptation of Dylan’s autobiography, “Chronicles, Vol. 1.”
By the way, Dylan still tours. Almost constantly. And (keyna-hora!) he’s putting together some of the strongest sets of his life. Highly recommended.