The Dylanologists pdf converter
Bob Dylan was the most influential songwriter of his time Half a century later he continues to be a touchstone a fascination and an enigma From the very beginning he attracted an intensely fanatical cult following and in The Dylanologists Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Kinney ventures deep into this eccentric subculture to answer the question What can Dylan s grip on his most enthusiastic listeners tell us about his towering place in American culture In exuberant prose Kinney introduces us to a vibrant underground diggers searching for unheard tapes and lost manuscripts researchers obsessing over the facts of Dylan s life and career writers working to decode the unyieldingly mysterious songs collectors snapping up prized artefacts for posterity travellers caravanning from concert to concert It s an affectionate mania but as far as Dylan is concerned a mania nonetheless Over the years he has been frightened annoyed and perplexed by fans who try to peel back his layers Intensely private and fiercely combative Dylan makes one thing plain He does not wish to be known Intelligent entertaining and insightful The Dylanologists is a richly detailed work of narrative journalism in the tradition of Confederates in the Attic and an absorbing story about the tension between zealous fans and their beloved idol The Dylanologists Adventures in the Land of BobThe Dylanologists Adventures in the Land of Bob authored by award winning music writer David Kinney was an unexpected intriguing read The topic of exuberant scholars professors fans followers totally obsessed with Bob Dylan that dedicate their lives to listening and analyzing his music collecting bootleg tapes scraps of paper anything Dylan stalking him going to all his concerts living their lives to meet him or have him notice speak to them is almost a bit much to comprehend Kinney writes historically of Dylan from the shrine of his hometown in Hibbing MN where fans congregate early music career and concerts beginning in the 1960 s to current times It was interesting to learn that the historic 1969 Woodstock Festival was planned around a hopeful appearance of Dylan who lived in Woodstock at the time Dylan s inspiration of Woody Guthrie s music was also noted Dylan has always remained elusive to fans insisting that he wasn t who people thought he was did not have anything important to say specifically to them beyond what was recorded in his music He routinely changed his life situations beliefs ideas projected to fans many theorized to head trip mess with fans and avoid being known Dylan a private person was overwhelmed by his millions of strange obsessed and needy fans who wanted so much from him The behind the scenes look at Dylan s fan base is both fascinating and disturbing. The Dylanologists booklet Many thanks to Simon and Schuster for this engaging read from the Goodread s Giveaways See my formal review on English A peculiar fast moving and queasily unpleasant gamut of emotions passed through me as I raced through this book about Dylan fans Gamut That s a word like petard You only use it in one context A gamut of emotions You don t say a gamut of vegetables was displayed on the market stall I encountered a gamut of children in the schoolroom Well we should liberate this word from its phrasal confinement But calling the grotesques foregathered in this book fans is like calling Eilert Pilarm a poor Elvis impersonatorhttp www. The Dylanologists booking com watch v zHoxK6 worn though the party in a counter yale or Wagner s Ring Cycle long This is the scary end of Dylan obsessiveness Gangs of these people for instance follow Dylan s never ending tour like they re commandos yomping through Helmand province For these hardest of cores sleep is for wimps If you must you sleep in the queue which you ve joined for the next day s gig having just come out of today s gig or if you re rich you can pay a homeless person to stand there for you all night and the following day or you leg it to the car to drive to the next impossible Midwestern town could be Tuscaloosa Carbondale DeKalb or Normal Ha Normal Do these people have jobs It s hard to tell My boss thinks I m still at the office she says rushing through her computer coding tasks on her laptop In the queue. The Dylanologists booking Everybody knows AJ Weberman was the world s first Dylanologist he who invented garbology founded the Dylan Liberation Front and coined its hilarious motto Free Bob Dylan From Himself AJ his posse was rifling D s rubbish bins one day in 1971 when Sara came screeching out of the house and they had a little contretemps Later on Elizabeth Street AJ was walking along when D cycled by and spotted him Let AJ take up the tale A couple of days later I m on Elizabeth Street and someone jumps me starts punching me I turn around and it s like Dylan I m thinking Can you believe this I m getting the crap beat out of me by Bob Dylan I said Hey man how you doin But he keeps knocking my head against the sidewalk He s little but he s strong He works out I wouldn t fight back you know because I knew I was wrong He gets up rips off my Free Bob Dylan button and walks away Never says a word The Bowery bums were coming over asking How much he get Like I got rolled AJ thought Dylan was singing in code you know like where rain heroin and dog heroin and so forth So the pattern was set And it s not hard to see where it comes from Dylan has always sung songs of condemnation from Masters of War And I hope that you dieAnd your death ll come soonto Positively 4th StreetYes I wish that for just one timeYou could stand inside my shoesYou d know what a drag it isTo see youto Idiot WindIdiot wind blowing every time you move your teethYou re an idiot babeIt s a wonder that you still know how to breatheTo the gospel stuffAdulterers in churches and pornography in the schoolsYou got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rulesWhen you gonna wake upAnd consequently people get the idea he s like one of those old testament prophets cursing the Israelites and their kine for their vile backsliding. The Dylanologists booking It s an abusive relationship Dylan hates and fears these crazies and they continue to make his life as uncomfortable as they can only because they love him so much you see It gives them the right to complain when he s rubbish when he slurs words on stage when he releases stupid albums Down in the Groove Saved when he doesn t release the right stuff so they have to do it for him Oh those naughty bootleggers and their falsely pregnant girlfriends one way to smuggle taping equipment in Phone calls and hotel rooms and of course recording studios nowhere is immune Dylan is always recorded and the recordings are always bootlegged When Dylan decided finally to officially release the most famous 1966 Manchester Judas concert the bootleggers sniffed and released a 10 cd edition of 1966 concerts It s no wonder Dylan can come across as a little distrustful and resentful at times. The Dylanologists pdf converter A fog of sadness slides through this book Yes some of it is funny Some nutter once told Dylan his lyrics were like the Bible because you could find everything you needed to know in there somewhere Dylan paused a while and said Well that goes without saying One Dylan fanzine was called Homer the Slut Any fan would instantly spot where that came from But really these fans are after something Dylan was never in the business of providing and they won t take no for an answer And Dylan himself he s also obsessed He can t stop dragging round the world playing one terrible monotone gig after another pissing off another 2500 audience members night after night You can t tell me that s not an unhealthy obsession The last third of the book is the most interesting The subject is the Late Dylan period from Time Out of Mind onwards and the matter of plagiarism No hush my mouth I mean creative reworking You know this already where Dylan quotes lines from Confessions of a Yakuza Henry Timrod the Civil War poet Tennessee Williams The Great Gatsby John Donne the list goes on His book Chronicles Vol One is a weird patchwork quilt made up from an issue of a 1962 Time magazine a Mezz Mezrow autobiography a New Orleans guidebook There are blogs about all of this It calls into question the whole question of what art is what part originality plays what is legitimate borrowing what about TS Eliot and so forth I d love to talk it all over with you one day. The Dylanologists pdf converter You know I appreciate obsession I have a number of minor obsessions myself One for instance was to make the Goodreads all time top ten reviewer list But I had to recognise that s never gonna happen the tsunami of YA reviewers dashed my hopes and my steady diet of theology true crime and minor novels is just not sexy enough for the public Dashed That s another of those gamut words So also I ve been fairly obsessed with for instance John Fahey the Incredible String Band Brian Wilson Eric Rohmer Raymond Chandler James Joyce the Carter Family and Bob Dylan too if you must know I think I managed to have so many concurrent obsessions that no single one of them was able to take over My current one is American independent cinema I love those no budget movies like Humpday and Drinking Buddies and Shotgun Stories I bet Bob would too So Er what was the question again Oh yeah The Dylanologists by David Kinney is a pretty good book if you re interested in Dylan fans and you re prepared to accept how melancholy life can be and how art is really no help at all Okay a little bit of help Tiny bit English A look at some of Dylan s most obsessed fans this reads like a wild metafiction someone like Borges Calvino or Bolano might have invented The important and interesting things here aren t really tied to Dylan and this book is recommended to anyone trying to understand the hold pop culture icons have on us whether or not you even like Dylan English Do not mistake this book as either a Dylan biography or a critical assessment of his work While these elements are occasional components of the text Kinney s contribution to Dylan lore is unique and potentially rewarding By examining a variety of hard core obsessive Dylan fans Kinney opens a potential Pandora s box of crazy What elevates his project is his straightforward objective portrayal of the fans and their habits and even their justifications For the most part Kinney s subjects come across as neither rational nor completely irrational but situated between their devotion to Dylan and the expression of that devotion One need not be a fan of Dylan s work to enjoy aspects of this book Though Kinney doesn t make the connections himself it is a relatively easy task to think of obsessive fans of other performers or genres who are equally out of touch with reality But this is not a sociological study and Kinney s style is accessible and engaging By far the most useful contribution Kinney makes here is his chapter on Dylan s alleged plagiarism Kinney avails himself of the obsessive breadcrumb following tendencies of Dylan s fans to explore the artist s composition style and to rationalize why an internationally known songwriter would cop lines from Jack London and obscure 19th century poets among others It s a fascinating chapter and a coherent presentation of differing viewpoints Most Dylan fans will recognize aspects of their own behaviors in this book and those interested in fan culture will encounter profiles of a variety of fanatics Kinney also chronicles Dylan s occasional responses to these fans both from the stage and in personal encounters Dylan as a subject remains mercurial here so one may not necessarily return to Dylan s recordings with a new ear after reading this book but one may certainly reconsider the influence of a performer with so many devoted followers Just as some of Dylan s songs do for the initiated this book offers a different perspective making Kinney s book a refreshingly unique offering One is left to question whose behavior is difficult to understand the artist s or the fans English One of the best Dylan related titles ever written Interspersed with accounts of the Bob devotees is a concise Dylan chronology recounting key events in his career that serves to tie everything together Recommended for all Dylan fans though dedicated fans of any artist will recognize the types of people profiled here English
Well it s not like this is the story of my life or anything I see myself in most every page here.
The Dylanologists booking It s a well done and readable story of Dylan and focuses on some of his er serious fans and their stories over the last 40 years It tells some of Dylan s story very well and not just the well known parts and how many people reacted to that story In the 70s and 80s it s the story of bootleg recordings and concerts and disconnected fans reaching out to one another and then with the advent of the near constant touring in the late 80s the story of many who recorded the concerts and followed Dylan around from city to city In the 2000s it s the story of many fan s disenchantment with both the concerts and the songwriting especially the revelations of how much work of others Dylan borrows in his songs and books I fall in with the camp that became disenchanted with the music after Love and Theft and much less pleasure in the concerts I have met and in a case or two became friendly with several of the people mentioned in the book and there are some cases where I was present at some events In all Kinney tells this story well from the point of view I think of one who has been infected with the same virus as some of those he discusses in the book English My review for this book was first published in 2014 by The New York Journal of Books I reproduce it here Stick with me baby stick with me anyhowThings should start to get interesting right about now Mississippi During this year s otherwise unmemorable Super Bowl viewers hanging on for the commercials were unwittingly treated to something extraordinary a gravelly voice belonging to the improbable figure of Bob Dylan shilling for Chrysler Let Asia assemble your phone he warbled We will build your car Were this ad narrated by anyone else it would be just another piece of slick salesmanship reliably playing on our nationalist pride But this was Bob Dylan countercultural spokesman par excellence asking with no trace of irony Is there anything American than America Surely this must be some kind of next level humor A postmodern meta commentary A practical joke That one even goes through these mental gymnastics to justify what was likely a straightforward example of a celebrity getting paid is yet one reminder of what Dylan fandom entails It is a phenomenon that requires participants to place every action Bob Dylan takes into an elaborate context of deeper meaning and myth making.
The Dylanologists booking There have been plenty of rock bands with their share of obsessive fans but none of them not the Beatles or Stones not Springsteen or Hendrix not even the Grateful Dead can hold a candle to Bob Dylan s legion of disciples who have been hunting down and interpreting their chosen one s every recorded utterance for than 50 years.
The Dylanologists bookworm For most of us it is enough simply to admire the songs a substantial amount of which remains essential to any music lover s library We can listen to It s Alright Ma or Tangled Up in Blue awestruck by the singer s obvious genius without having to adopt them or him as a personal life philosophy.
The Dylanologists kindle It is the other people the full fledged converts who get their due in The Dylanologists David Kinney s affectionately engaging valentine to the true believers and a cautionary tale for everyone else.
The Dylanologists kindle A nascent Dylanologist himself Kinney writes with a certain authority about these pilgrims who wander happily down the rabbit hole in search of well what exactly Unreleased recordings The meaning of life What Visions of Johanna is about To be sure most of the diehards are benign enough such as the couple in Dylan s hometown of Hibbing Minn.
The Dylanologists pdf converter who have opened up a Dylan themed restaurant where you can order the simple twist of sirloin Or the folks yes they re out there whose lives were genuinely saved by the largely forgotten music of Dylan s born again phase of the late 1970s.
The Dylanologists booking You even have to admire the hardcores who immediately following a Dylan show park themselves on the street to be first in line for the next night s show a practice that rankles Dylan so much that he occasionally orders his staff to bring casual fans up to the front so he can finally see some new faces staring back at him.
The Dylanologists pdffiller What separates Dylan fanatics from others is the depth of the obsession as in the case of Bill Pagel a collector who graduated over time from acquiring flyers and set lists to Dylan s high school yearbooks Then after he moved to Hibbing he scored a real find Dylan s infant high chair And as Kinney astutely observes once you own Bob Dylan s high chair it becomes easy to rationalize any other purchase it makes its own strange sense that when Dylan s birth home in Duluth went up for auction Bill was right there to place a bid.
The Dylanologists pdffiller The most fascinating part of the book covers the fierce debate raging in Dylan circles about the singer s late career forays into plagiarism Ardent Dylanologists aided by the instant treasure map that is the Internet discovered that much of what Dylan has written over the last 15 years has been appropriated from existing texts jumbled up and spit back out into Dylan ese forming a modernist collage On one side of the spectrum is Dylan fan and poet Roy Kelly who views his hero s cut and paste technique as nothing less than a personal betrayal What did we praise him for then the apostate fan asks now.
The Dylanologists booker But on the other are folks like novelist Jonathan Lethem and super fan Scott Warmuth whose new life s purpose quickly became excavating every line of Dylan s acclaimed memoir Chronicles for its rich and varied references ranging from Elizabethan poetry to New Orleans travel guides declaring it the Da Vinci Code of rock n roll As easy it would be to mock these people for devoting their entire lives to a rock singer Mr Kinney portrays them with great sympathy and the reader may well feel a begrudging respect for their dedication In their eyes they are custodians ensuring and preserving the legacy of possibly our country s greatest cultural export.
The Dylanologists ebookers He began as something of a proto Dylanologist following Woody Guthrie around with similar zeal in the early 60s adopting his folk hero s Oklahoman twang even sitting in Guthrie s hospital room singing him songs But Dylan soon figured out that such idol worship was a dead end at which point he began the next of his many transformations Kinney identifies 14 distinct phases of Dylan s career.
The Dylanologists booking But since then he has paid in full the cost of the relentless scrutiny and identity shifting a 72 year old multimillionaire who has not been off the road for 25 straight years Dylan has had phone conversations secretly recorded and bootlegged has had his trash rooted through for unidentified Holy Grails and has come home to find post coital fans sleeping in his bed.
The Dylanologists booking Such behavior invites questions about what these fans if that s even the word for them are searching for what they would do if they found it and raises deeper questions into the nature of fandom itself Why do we so willingly give ourselves over to other people who project the right image What does it mean for the recipient of this idolatry And what happens when the idol inevitably disappoints These are difficult questions perhaps unanswerable and as thoroughly reported as his book is Kinney does not really address them It s not clear that he can The author seems to acknowledge this quoting playwright Sam Shepard on tour with Dylan in 1975 Fans are dangerous than a man with a weapon because they re after something invisible Some imagined something At least with a gun you know what you re facing English A book about wildly obsessive Dylan geeks for Dylan geeks A little fun a tad bit frightening to see the lengths some fanatics go It certainly makes one feel at ease with their own fandom level well I didn t become a self anointed garbologist so I m good English On a page near the end of his book the author reminds us that In the summer of 2012 the Dylan myth making operation sprang to life again A new record was coming out Tempest Funny you would think from the disenchanted tone of this that Kinney had not treated with narrative sympathy for two hundred pages those who live to pursue the myth The journalist travels to meet them and unquestioningly record their lore reports on their methods follows their leads responds to their nonce exegetical assignments acts at all costs the dutiful exegete He does not bother to ask those projected in the future of an illusion how they afford their bourgeoise spiritual life He wants only to join the pilgrimage David Kinney is no Sarah Vowell you ll find no droll religious satire here Reader be prepared to suffer lots of windy cultural analysis Though Dylan could say c 1964 he was no spokesman he could not unsing his songs Now they belonged to the dissidents people under thirty full of vigor bursting with fresh ideas about how the world should and should not be 46 What were the ideas It strikes me that you either explain that Dylan did something to earn his cultural centrality so evident by Woodstock or you give up that ghost to pursue the ghost in the machine of his popularity Kinney claims to do the latter but must wear the garb of his journalistic profession myth making operations natch What the book lacks disastrously is criticism and indeed Kinney entirely avoids the crucial because historically unavoidable generic medium for his subject rock criticism The publisher Simon Schuster has no misgivings casting out this anti intellectual bait Some little fishes will dive for warmer climes English Whether you re a Dylan fanatic or just someone who is interested enough in Bob to read an occasional book or article about him check out this book out in paperback now Kinney has tracked down well over a dozen people whose lives are defined by Bob Dylan some follow him around the world attending nearly every concert some collect and catalog recordings of every concert some make pilgrimages to sites where he grew up some search to find hidden meanings in his songs Cleverly structured the book touches each major point in the arc s of his long career and finds a relevant Dylanologist to discuss at each one Highly recommended especially Chapter 6 which discusses the recent controversy about Dylan s use of phrases from other sources in his work is it plagiarism isn t that what the folk music tradition is based upon is he leaving clues playing games with the people looking for them I loved it English
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The Dylanologists ebookers Indeed the saddest figure in The Dylanologists turns out to be Dylan himself.youtube
