Route 66 ...3:58 pm
Happy birthday from everyone at the RWB offices to Bob Dylan, who turns 66 tomorrow (May 24th). He doesn’t look like he’s planning to slow down at all this year; quite the opposite, in fact. Just announced is a series of concerts in New Zealand and Australia during the month of August. Those concerts will follow a series of gigs in June and July that will see Bob and the band go from Atlantic City, NJ, to Kelseyville, CA. And fall dates — again in the U.S. — are already beginning to appear at Bill Pagel’s peerless tour guide page. (And of-course, he just finished a tour of Europe a couple of weeks ago.) We know that Dylan’s weekly XM satellite radio show will be restarting in September, too. There’s no official word on a “Chronicles, Volume Two,” or on another album to follow-up on last year’s number one smash-hit, Modern Times
Speaking of Australia and birthdays, there exists a YouTube clip of Dylan singing Happy Birthday to one of his then backing singers, Queen Esther Marrow, on stage in Sydney, Australia, in 1986. Click here to view it directly via YouTube or click below.
…
And in another kind of birthday tribute, the city of Duluth, Minnesota (Dylan’s birthplace) will inaugurate the 1.8 mile “Bob Dylan Way” tomorrow by installing the first street sign with that designation.
![[del.icio.us]](http://www.rightwingbob.com/weblog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://www.rightwingbob.com/weblog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Facebook]](http://www.rightwingbob.com/weblog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook.png)
![[Fark]](http://www.rightwingbob.com/weblog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/fark.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.rightwingbob.com/weblog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Email]](http://www.rightwingbob.com/weblog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)
Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:
Another important new book ...9:51 am
From the North Korean Central News Agency: Complete Collection of Kim Il Sung’s Works Vol.69 Comes Off Press.
Pyongyang, May 22 (KCNA) — The Publishing House of the Workers’ Party of Korea published the Complete Collection of Kim Il Sung’s Works Vol.69.
The collection contains 55 works of President Kim Il Sung including his historic speeches, conclusions and talks between January and August, Juche 68 (1979).
The works contain unique ideas, theories and policies he laid down for the victorious advance of the socialist cause on the basis of a profound insight into the requirements of the developing revolution.
Such works as “On Further Strengthening the Party Guidance to the Socialist Economic Construction” and “Let’s Bring About a Fresh Turn in the Party Guidance to the Administrative and Economic Work” expound the idea of further increasing the militant functions and roles of the party organizations to bring about a great change in the party guidance to socialist construction.
Such works as “On Developing Transport Rapidly in Keeping with the Requirements of a Higher Stage of Socialist Economic Construction” and “On Putting Enterprise Management on a Regular Basis and Improving Labour Administration” deal with the tasks to be implemented to steadily round off the inter-sector structure of the economy and strengthen the country’s economic independence so as to meet the lawful requirements of the socialist economic construction.
In his “On the Tasks Facing the Korean Scientists and Technicians in Japan for Developing Science and Technology in Our Country,” “It Is Necessary to Intensify the Study of Methods of Cultivating Crops to Suit the Conditions of Alpine Areas” and other works the President indicated the orientation and ways of rapidly developing all fields of the socialist cultural construction including science and education. And in his “We Should Reunify the Country by the Concerted Efforts of Our Nation” and “Talks with the UN Secretary General and His Party” and other works he enunciated the idea of preventing the permanent division of the nation and achieving the country’s reunification by the concerted efforts of the Koreans.
Note that those titles are a sampling of the material that Big Kim came up with just between January and August of 1979. I wonder if the current Dear Leader, Little Kim, is as prolific.
All pretty funny stuff, unless, of-course, you happen to be North Korean.
Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Reagan ...1:27 pm
From Ronald Reagan’s entry in his diary for Sunday, February 1st, 1987:
Colin Powell called. In Teheran the Iranians arrested an American press man (Wall Street Journal) took his passport, accused him of being a Zionist spy & threw him in jail. He’s a Roman Catholic. I’m ready to kidnap the Khomeini.
I came across that entry while browsing through the new book, "The Reagan Diaries,"
The book "Reagan In His Own Hand,"
In his diary, Reagan was arguing with no one, but was leaving a gift for posterity all the same. In a way, he was by-passing the middle-man once again — leaving a plain-spoken record of his presidency for history which will forever be a source of frustration to those revisionists looking to prove some perverse theory of their own.
…
Addendum: And thanks to Lisa Ann who e-mails to recommend "I Love You, Ronnie: The Letters of Ronald Reagan to Nancy Reagan"
Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Continuing ...1:01 pm
… to lazily lean on YouTube for content, click here or below to hear Johnny Cash and Emmylou Harris singing Where The Soul Of Man Never Dies (with a little Shine On Harvest Moon thrown in at the end).
I couldn’t tell you what year this performance is from, but it doesn’t matter, does it?
Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Just Like a Woman ...2:08 pm
When you browse YouTube for Bob Dylan-related items, you inevitably encounter a lot of acoustic-guitar-wielding individuals offering their own renditions of various songs. (And God bless them.) Recently, I came across something different: someone whose YouTube moniker is “YsabellaBrave,” and who does rather remarkable karaoke versions of a whole range of old-time standards and more recent hits, from In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning to Love Me Two Times, Baby. I think that she is what they call a “YouTube phenomenon.”
Click here, or below, for her version of Just Like A Woman. Her comment accompanying it is: “By request. Please forgive my crying during the song.” Indeed. (Her take on Moon River is pretty good too.)
Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:
Friday, May 18, 2007
How to get even ...5:13 pm
Wolfowitz is out at the World Bank, thanks to what — if you’ve had the patience to absorb the details — seems awfully like a carefully arranged set up. In any case, the Bush adminstration now plans to quickly name a successor. Having little doubt that the president regularly checks in to RWB, I offer him two words: John Bolton (checkout the audio of his recent collision with a BBC interviewer here). If those two words don’t fly, I’m sure Donald Rumsfeld wouldn’t mind a little job with which to entertain himself for awhile. And, failing those two candidates, what’s Richard Perle doing these days?
Alright, fun’s over.
…
Addendum: Hmm, although — it might be useful to get Karl Rove far away from all those hungry congressional committees too …
Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Ramona ...1:17 pm
Just a nice version of To Ramona, from Dublin, Ireland, in the year 2000 (click here to go direct to YouTube, or view below).
Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Absent ...10:35 am
I’ll be away from this space for a few days due to family matters. I leave you with (… continue reading …)
Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:
Friday, May 11, 2007
Old faves ...8:42 pm
I don’t think I’ve linked to Victor Davis Hanson in a while. His latest, in NRO, begins with a series of good questions:
Why would Albanian-speaking Muslim refugees from the Balkans try to murder American soldiers? After all, the United States — not bin Laden’s rag-tag jihadists — saved Bosnia and Kosovo? And we did that by bombing the capital of a Christian European nation.
But then, why did a mixed-up Albanian Muslim in Salt Lake City, one Sulejman Talovic, go on a shopping-mall shooting spree? Five innocents were killed in the attack before the murderer himself was shot and killed.
And why, after pouring billions of dollars into Afghanistan, did poor, mixed-up Omeed Aziz Popal, an Afghan Muslim, try to run over several innocents in San Francisco near a Jewish center in September 2006?
Or, for that matter, why did an angry Muslim Pakistani gun down Jews in Seattle?
Or, again, why earlier last year, did a 22-year-old Iranian-American Muslim drive his sport utility vehicle into a crowded pedestrian zone at the University of North Carolina?
The answer, my friend, is what Davis calls al-Qaedism.
Later he observes:
Most Americans will not remember Fort Dix in a week — just as they have forgotten Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Seattle, Lodi, Portland, and all the rest; just as they want out of Fallujah now and probably Kandahar tomorrow.
Yet, at some point, the jihadists will go too far. Many of us, erroneously as it turned out, thought that, after twenty years of serial provocations, radical Islam had done precisely that on 9/11.
Apparently not. But such forbearance, even at this late hour in the post-West, is still not limitless.
The more a Palestinian imam promises us our death, the more the Iranian president promises a world without America, the more these al Qaedists, like the most recent keystone clowns at Fort Dix, do their small part in trying to reify such mad rhetoric, and the more the sophisticated apologists assure us that we, not they, are the real threat, the more likely the sofa-sitting, channel-surfing American will some day very soon blow up, rather than be blown up.
…
Another old fave of mine, who often helps balance the perspective on Europe and other matters from his post in merry old England, is Clive Davis. He is blogging from a new perch at England’s The Spectator.
Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:
- Invitation to the Blues
- Tomatoes, cucumbers and other good news
- Obvious truths which needed stating today
Not in the stars ...10:37 am
This is a new one on me: an astrologer provides horoscopes for each sign of the zodiac, using quotes from Bob Dylan as the jumping off point for each. The justification is that we are currently in Gemini, which is Dylan’s sign. It’s gobbledygook, naturally, but indicative of something, I suppose; another example of how Dylan’s words have gotten under peoples’ skin. I’m disappointed that under Leo, which happens to be my sign, she uses this quote, without identifying the irony therein: “I’m speaking for all of us. I’m the spokesman for a generation.” Yes, Dylan actually did say something like that, but not in 1965 when he was being tattooed with that label, but in the summer of 2001, at a group interview in Rome in advance of the release of “Love and Theft”. There doesn’t seem to be a single authoritative transcription of this interview on the web at the moment (probably because extracts from it were originally published in a variety of outlets in various countries and different languages), and I don’t have one myself although I’ve heard the audio, but for the purpose of this post here is one transcription, and here’s the relevant part:
Q: Once you wrote ‘For me the future is a thing of the past.’
Dylan: I said it for everybody. Aren’t I the spokesman for a generation?
I speak for all of us.
So, that clearly comes across rather differently from the way it appears as quoted by the astrologer. She probably obtained the line, however, from one of those web-based famous-quote-aggregators, like the one at this link. How’s that for irony? Dylan spends his life running away from the label of “spokesman for a generation,” then uses it off-handedly and facetiously in a press conference, and now it’s out there for all time as if he actually seriously declared himself to be this thing. Amazing.
What’s that other famous quote, from “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”? “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:
Dark Eyes ...9:28 am
Thanks to Hans who writes from the Netherlands, having just read something I wrote some time ago about the song Dark Eyes:
My thoughts on Dark Eyes were Jesus hanging on the cross looking down on mankind or God looking down from heaven simultaneously. On the other hand your comments about the second verse, a cock is crowing FAR AWAY, gives me more the idea that he is also referring to the scene on the cross rather then the scene in front of the Sanhedrin and the line another soldier’s deep in prayer, for some reason always made me think about the soldier’s at the foot of the cross gambling for his linen cloth. Then Mother Mary losing her child a second time again for three days (very interesting observation by the way that I never saw as a correlation to his childhood disappearance into his Father’s temple, but is a very deep and beautiful to ponder in my eyes) also seems to focus on the crucial scene at the cross where all mankind has to find its redemption and where past, present and future, old testament and new testament all seems to collide, with Mary standing at the foot of her son unable to have a relationship with him, seeing him disappear forever as it seems, with her only having John as ‘his replacement’ to take care of her future needs. So what I am trying to say to you, is that to me it all just seemed to share the crucifixion scene rather then the whole period from the Garden to the Cross, but that was only how I interpreted it over the years. I’m not claiming to know anything or have the insight into what Bob really meant to tell us here. Just thought I’d share that. Your version and observations are just as interesting and plausible and will make me do some more thinking in the time to come and everytime I hear the very beautiful song.
One thing is sure: it’s an exceptionally rich and evocative song, and one of Dylan’s masterpieces, I think.
Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:
Thursday, May 10, 2007
First Things ...11:06 am
Welcome, readers of First Things, to this oddball location on the web! Feel free to browse, or just sit down and rest your considerable intellects for a while.
The occasion for this greeting is the publication on the First Things website of a piece I composed regarding the “Pope Benedict versus Bob Dylan” story — regular readers and Dylan fans would remember that it generated a flurry of news items during the month of March.
Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
More on Rolling Stone’s 40th ...9:52 pm
I’ve posted before about the 40th Anniverary edition of Rolling Stone magazine, and in particular about Jann Wenner’s interview with Bob Dylan, as for instance at this link. Thanks to Justin for forwarding a link to an enjoyable piece by Zev Chafets in the Jewish World Review, in which he capably takes on the whole concept behind this issue of Rolling Stone, and, for that matter, the magazine generally. It’s not too long, so by all means read it all.
Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:
Not enough guns (1993 MTV interview with Bob Dylan and Carlos Santana) ...9:31 pm
Somehow I had not seen this, and thanks to Sue for e-mailing and apprising me of it. It’s an interview, which is on YouTube, with Carlos Santana and Bob Dylan from August 21st, 1993, in Memorial Stadium, Seattle — done for MTV, apparently. (… continue reading …)
Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:
- More of Wenner versus Dylan
- YouTube interview — Bob Dylan in 1984
- What the hell are you? (1986 interview for Australian television)
Monday, May 7, 2007
Thank heaven ...7:37 pm
So, well done to the French on the election of Nicolas Sarkozy. The absence of a reflexive anti-American and anti-Israeli stance by France — especially in the U.N. — should make a significant difference in a variety of scenarios.
It’s also an opportunity to pause and remember circumstances in 2003. With all that has been written and said about the war in Iraq, it is often forgotten that the first preference of the Bush administration — and many others besides — was that the war should not take place. The credible threat of force should have been enough to convince Saddam Hussein to (a) cooperate to the fullest extent possible with the U.N. weapons inspectors or (b) skeddadle with his sons and the rest of his family to a long retirement in some sunny third country. It is arguable that the single most important factor in convincing Saddam that he should continue to hold out was the opposition expressed by two permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to the use of force; i.e., France and Russia. The French administration campaigned aggressively in opposition to the U.S., Britain and the other allies. It is quite possible that had Saddam Hussein faced a truly united front at the U.N., that this war would not have taken place, and it is possible that his regime would have been removed without any invasion. And if France had not supported him, would Russia have remained the lone hold-out?
We can’t ever know how it would have turned out, but we can hope that the Sarkozy administration will be operating according to a different calculus.
And, despite Mark Steyn’s and others’ relentlessly gloomy forecasts, we can take heart that the ordinary people of France apparently recognize the dangers that they face, and we can pray that, indeed, we will always have Paris.
Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:
BACK TO MAIN
Original text copyright ©
2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 by RightWingBob.com
Quotes from the works of others are linked to their
source or are as otherwise attributed, and are used
in accordance with Fair Use guidelines. Contact:
rightwingbob(at)gmail.com
