Notes on the pulling of rank ...5:03 pm
Numerous readers have shared their dismay over the summary deletion of the peerless rankflv collection of Bob Dylan video clips on YouTube. I have no direct knowledge of what happened and why, but I think there’s good grounds for a guess. Most significantly, several days later, there’s no sign of other clips of Dylan live in concert being pulled (notably the collection at this link). That would seem to indicate that the complaints that sunk rankflv were not coming from Sony/Columbia, or anyone associated with Dylan. If it had been from them, why not go after the other conspicuous offenders? In fact, they would presumably be going after content, rather than particular users.
However, rankflv, in addition to the concert clips, had a large number of TV clips, including both interviews and performances.
Now, let’s just say I have a friend who once uploaded a clip he had of Dylan appearing on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” television show in 1979. My friend tells me that this clip got pulled ( “terms of service violation”) very soon after being posted. This demonstrated that NBC actually had watchdogs looking out for anyone posting any of their network’s stuff (or at least certain things). You can generally get away with one such violation of the terms of service, but if you do it multiple times, YouTube says they will suspend your account. If rankflv was nabbed for this, he likely would have had multiple violations right off the bat. And indeed his account was suspended.
So, if this is the scenario that in fact unfolded, it means that the individual behind the rankflv moniker could start a new account, and limit his uploads to the live concert clips, and avoid future trouble. Of-course, he might not have the patience to upload all of that stuff again. Or, he may seek an alternative and more permissive venue. But that’s my best guess as to what the situation is at this point.
Of-course, it is a shame in particular to lose easy access to those old television clips that rankflv had painstakingly collected and generously shared. Having it all on YouTube was like having access to a wing of the Museum of Broadcasting devoted to Bob Dylan. You wanted to see raw footage from Dylan’s 1984 interview on MTV? There it was (and click here for my original post about it). You wanted to see his remarkable 1986 appearance on the Chabad telethon? There it was (and click here for my original post on that). And there was much else besides, including a whole lot of things which had been largely unheralded and undocumented.
Well, here’s to rankflv for sharing it all in the first place, and here’s to hoping it sees the light of day again.
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Drawn blank, and drawing a crowd ...12:02 pm
An article in the U.K.’s Guardian by Kate Connolly provides a lot of interesting details on the exhibition of Bob Dylan’s paintings currently taking place at the Chemnitz Art Gallery in Germany.
Those who don’t ask, don’t get, Ingrid Mössinger was brought up to believe. So when she came across Drawn Blank, a book of Bob Dylan sketches in an antiquarian bookshop in Manhattan two years ago, her first thought was to ask him if she could mount an exhibition.
[...]
He replied within days. “I couldn’t believe it when I got a positive answer – I think he was just waiting to be asked, and quite simply until then, no one had,” she said. Mössinger’s ambitions remained modest – to display his snapshot-style drawings and sketches compiled while on tour in Europe, America and Asia between 1989 and 1992 in a small exhibition in the gallery that she has managed for 11 years. “But like a true artist, he wanted to make new works,” she says.
In a burst of creativity over eight months he created 320 works in watercolour and gouache, digitally enlarging them on deckle-edged paper. In a similar approach to his songs, Dylan produced three or four versions of a single motif by altering both the medium and the colours. “I was fascinated to learn of Ingrid’s interest in my work, and it gave me the impetus to realise the vision I had for these drawings many years ago,” the 66-year-old writes in the exhibition notes. “If not for this interest, I don’t know if I even would have revisited them.”
[...]
The show does not disappoint and the critical response has, so far, been positive. Some critics have even gone as far as to compare Dylan to Munch and Matisse, as well as to the German expressionists Max Beckmann and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, for his dark lines and bold colours. Edward Hopper has also been cited in the way in which it is the objects for the paintings that speak – the ships, bicycles, train tracks and bulbous TV screens – rather than the people, who are often portrayed as silent and anonymous, like the formless Guitar Player.
There are already plans for the exhibition to travel, to such places as South Korea, Stockholm and New York.
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Expecting rain ...10:23 am
Yesterday the Governor of the state of Georgia here in the U.S. led hundreds of fellow Georgians in prayer in downtown Atlanta. An extremely long drought, of historic proportions (along with a failure to adequately develop new reservoirs), has left the water supply dangerously low and there is a real threat of the faucets running dry for millions of people in the region. The stories in the press on the prayer vigil were bemused if not just plain amused, and protesters duly appeared, more worried about the imminent threat of an establishment of religion than an absence of water in their taps.
Today (or rather tonight): rain is coming to the area.
405 AM EST WED NOV 14 2007
TODAY: PARTLY SUNNY. HIGHS IN THE MID 70S. SOUTHWEST WINDS UP
TO 10 MPH.
TONIGHT: SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS LIKELY IN THE EVENING…THEN
OCCASIONAL SHOWERS AFTER MIDNIGHT. LOWS IN THE LOWER 50S. WEST
WINDS 5 TO 15 MPH. CHANCE OF PRECIPITATION 80 PERCENT.
The weatherman on NBC’s “Today” show this morning said that a couple of inches could fall in the afflicted region.
That’s not a drought-ending quantity, by any means, but it’s a lot better than the nothing that Georgians have been living with. They may well pray that this is only a down-payment.
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Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Good news ...10:30 am
On a front more important than YouTube videos, the news continues to pile up from Iraq on the really remarkable successes earned through the relentless daily work and sacrifice of today’s veterans. Stories like that covered in USA Today this morning: Roadside bombs in Iraq fall sharply.
The number of roadside bombs found in Iraq declined dramatically in August and September from earlier this year, and U.S. officials say the discoveries of thousands of ammunition caches might explain the drop.
[...]
On Monday, the U.S. command in Baghdad also said rocket and mortar attacks have dropped to their lowest levels in 21 months. The tallies were issued a day after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said suicide attacks and other bombings in Baghdad also declined.
[...]
Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of U.S. forces south of the capital, said Sunday he believed the decrease in rocket and mortar attacks would hold because of what he called a “groundswell” of support from regular Iraqis. “If we didn’t have so many people coming forward to help, I’d think this is a flash in the pan. But that’s just not the case,” Lynch said.
With shops and restaurants in Baghdad coming back to life and citizens filling the streets again, even the BBC is finally forced to ask: Is Iraq Getting Better?
And then there’s the news that beleaguered al-Qaeda fighters, driven from their former safe havens in Anbar and Diyala, are now being pursued in the northern part of Iraq.
A week-long military operation against al-Qaeda in 4 provinces of northern Iraq has led to the capture of 200 suspected operatives.
Three high-value al-Qaeda operatives are also among those captured in the efforts.
They were arrested on Sunday in an operation dubbed ‘Operation Iron Hammer’. The operation, which started November 5, involves four Iraqi army divisions and three US brigade combat teams.
The sound of the Democratic candidates for president continuing to call for an effective surrender — in the face of all of this progress — is getting to be beyond absurd. But nothing about that is news, unfortunately, and Joe Lieberman covered it about as well as it can be covered in his speech last Thursday.
U.S. troops have already started to come home, and if the longer term plans stay on track, this will continue through next year and beyond. The question is whether this withdrawal will be perceived — here and around the world — as the well-earned fruit of victory or as the depressing result of defeat. Those U.S. political candidates who are so invested in framing the reduction of troops in the latter manner really ought to consider who they are benefiting by doing so. Their hope, of-course, is that they are benefiting themselves. And that hope of theirs is one that truly deserves to be frustrated.
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Monday, November 12, 2007
Bad news, bad news ...8:58 pm
A short time ago an e-mail arrived from John Jackson — who writes (and really writes) at this spot — exclaiming “Oh Lord! It looks like rankfly is out of business. All my dylan videos are ‘unavailable.’” Alas, it is all too true. The YouTube account of the user “rankflv”has been suspended. So many great clips, both live performances and interviews, are gone, poof, fini. It is indeed a sad and lonesome day. It’s too early to tell whether this is the beginning a more generalized crackdown on Dylan content. But the “rankflv” collection was the essential Dylan content on YouTube.
Well, the internet being what it is, when something is squashed in one area, it tends to just pop up somewhere else. Nevertheless, that “rankflv” individual put a lot of time into uploading all those clips, and it seems unlikely that all that great stuff will soon emerge elsewhere.
Somehow we’re going to have to struggle on.
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Sunday, November 11, 2007
Connecting them dry bones ...11:24 am
On his radio show this week (theme: HEAD TO TOE), Bob Dylan played the Delta Rhythm Boys singing Dry Bones. (… continue reading …)
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Saturday, November 10, 2007
HEAD TO TOE ...3:59 pm
This week’s episode of Bob Dylan’s show on XM Satellite Radio was a highly corporeal affair (… continue reading …)
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Friday, November 9, 2007
Hey Joe ...5:30 pm
Former Democrat, now “independent Democrat” Senator Joseph Lieberman (who by the way is also a big Bob Dylan fan, I believe) gave a very interesting address at (… continue reading …)
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What Putin saw ...9:58 am
Speaking of the end of the world, Amir Taheri’s column in the New York Post today is interesting, particularly if it’s true: Mad Mullahs Puzzled Putin.
“EDUCATIONAL”: That’s how President Vladimir Putin’s entourage described the Russian’s recent whirlwind trip to Tehran.
Islamic Republic President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hyped the 36-hour visit as a “historic event.” Some Western commentators even suggested that Putin and Ahmadinejad planned to create an axis to counter Western influence in the Middle East.
In fact, the visit seems to have persuaded Putin and his closest advisers that the Tehran leadership is culturally and temperamentally incapable of playing the classical Cold War-style power games that the Russians are interested in.
“This was the first time that Putin was talking to senior Islamic Republic leaders in a substantive and focused way,” says a senior Russian official familiar with what happened. “The president found his Iranian interlocutor weird, to say the least. The Iranians mouthed a lot of eschatological nonsense and came close to urging Putin to convert to Islam. It was clear they lived in a world of their own.”
You mean all this stuff about the Twelfth Imam isn’t just a gimmick to disguise the Iranian regime’s old-fashioned desire to just be a bigger player on the international scene?
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Thursday, November 8, 2007
Tell me it’s not the end of the world ...7:46 pm
Just a snapshot of the headlines on Foxnews.com a little earlier today: (… continue reading …)
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Our Father ...2:12 pm
I’ve linked before to YouTube phenom Ysabella Brave, and she’s since gone on to even greater successes, not to mention improved production values. But she hasn’t lost her charm, if her latest clip is any evidence. Click here or below for her musical performance of the Lord’s Prayer, in Latin ( Pater Noster ).
…
Note: As opposed to her previous (and quite formidable) karaoke performances, Ms. Brave wrote the music to this piece herself. Quite something.
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Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Rudy and Robertson ...12:42 pm
The big political news today is Pat Robertson’s endorsement of Rudy Giuliani for president.
Hmm. News? Robertson’s endorsement of Guiliani was reported in this spot almost exactly two and a half years ago. Admittedly, Robertson has had ample time to backtrack on that, and it can be called news that he has now formally endorsed Rudy.
It is interesting, not least because Rudy has not pursued the tack that I thought he might back then — in order to woo social conservatives — of explicitly criticizing the reasoning of Roe v. Wade, although he has said that he would nominate judges like Antonin Scalia to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Some pundits are questioning how much influence Pat Robertson has with today’s evangelicals. I think a better question is how much influence any particular preacher has with evangelicals; as much as the media types like to portray them as sheep, I think they will actually make up their own minds.
The larger news is that Rudy Giuliani’s tactic of telling voters, “I may disagree with you on some things, but at least I’m being honest with you,” is continuing to work, even as we’re beginning to get close to the real meat of the primary season. Still, I think that it all remains very much up for grabs.
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