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Bob Dylan predicts Obama will have a “landslide” victory

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 16:54:00 +0000

MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- Bob Dylan says he thinks President Barack Obama is going to win a landslide.

Dylan made the prediction Monday night midway through the song "Blowin' in the Wind" during a concert in the battleground state of Wisconsin.

Dylan spoke to the Madison audience as he was wrapping up his concert that came just hours after Obama appeared at a morning rally in the same city with rocker Bruce Springsteen.

Dylan made his comments during his encore when he said, "We tried to play good tonight since the president was here today."

He went on to say he thinks Obama will prevail Tuesday.

Dylan says, "Don't believe the media. I think it's going to be a landslide."

After his comments, Dylan completed the song to the roar of the crowd.

Black Power: American as apple pie

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 16:28:00 +0000

“WHAT HAPPENS TO A DREAM deferred? Does it dry up, like a raisin in the sun?” Langston Hughes asked in 1951, “Or does it explode?” An answer came when the Black Power Movement burst upon the American political and cultural landscape of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Movement took on significant dimensions in many realms — politics, public policy, education — but nowhere was its impact more tangible than in the culture, especially music. Movement activists utilized more than speeches, proclamations and marches to motivate their followers: rhythmic, expressive, improvisational music also propelled the struggle. Unlike the gospel-fueled Civil Rights Movement, Black Power had fewer ties to the church than to the street. Its rhetorical models included the self-aggrandizing rhymes of Muhammad Ali and the militant sloganeering of Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown, while its urgent resilience found a danceable counterpart in the soul music of James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, and hundreds of others.

Johnny Depp starting book imprint

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 14:21:00 +0000

NEW YORK (AP) -- Johnny Depp is bringing a dash of cool to the book world.

Depp will help run a publishing imprint with the same name as his production company, Infinitum Nihil, meaning "Nothing is forever." Already on the list of books is "The Unraveled Tales of Bob Dylan," which aims to set the record straight on the songwriter's enigmatic life and career and will be based in part on interviews with Dylan by best-selling historian Douglas Brinkley.

The imprint will be part of HarperCollins Publishers, which announced Monday that Depp will seek "authentic, outspoken and visionary ideas and voices."

"I pledge, on behalf of Infinitum Nihil, that we will do our best to deliver publications worthy of peoples' time, of peoples' concern, publications that might ordinarily never have breached the parapet," Depp said in a statement released by HarperCollins. "For this dream realized, we would like to salute HarperCollins for their faith in us and look forward to a long and fruitful relationship together."

Brinkley, who recently wrote a cover story on Dylan for Rolling Stone, said he and Depp thought the Dylan book was "the ideal way" to inaugurate the Infinitum Nihil series.

In praise of Nobel obscurity

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 16:17:00 +0000

Like a lot of people, I greeted today's news that Chinese writer Mo Yan has won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature with the familiar feeling that the Swedish Academy had me on the back foot. I have never read a word the man has written. I comforted myself with the thin reassurance that at least I'd heard of him — and I'd even seen "Red Sorghum," a film based on one of his best-known novels!

Unlike a substantial percentage of the back-foot club, however, I've got no problem with the Academy's choice, or its history of selecting purportedly "obscure" recipients for the prize. From the handful of articles and reviews I've read in my frantic scramble to get caught up, Mo Yan seems to write the kind of novels I enjoy (and I really did love "Red Sorghum"). "Hallucinatory realism"? "A world of magic, sexual exploitation, ignorance and senseless violence"? Individual stories told against a backdrop of political and social turmoil? Sign me up.

Quote of the day

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 21:35:00 +0000

Long before Jonah Lehrer plagiarized text and fabricated Bob Dylan quotes for "Imagine," Bob Dylan himself stood in the middle of several copycat controversies (some baseless, others not so much). The singer-songwriter can get touchy about it, too: He was surprisingly dismissive when discussing Shakespeare in relation to his most recent album, "Tempest," which came out yesterday, telling Rolling Stone, "Shakespeare's last play was called 'The Tempest.' It wasn't called just plain 'Tempest.' The name of my record is just plain 'Tempest.' It's two different titles."

But if Dylan seemed overly defensive then, he goes far on the offense this month. In an interview in this Friday's issue of Rolling Stone, he calls critics who accuse him of borrowing lyrics "wussies and pussies." Below is an excerpt:

Bob Dylan’s “Tempest”: Best album ever by 71-year-old?

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 20:45:00 +0000

Bob Dylan just made me cry. Twice. I don’t know if I can listen to “Long and Wasted Years” again today. Nina Simone singing “Do What You Gotta Do” used to do it. Leonard Cohen did it with “Chelsea Hotel” at the Beacon Theater. OK, I’m a bit of a crier … but this is different. I’m sitting alone, smiling, with Kleenex, thanks to this old codger’s swagger, his audacity, his warmth. You read that right -- warmth.

Last night I heard you talking in your sleep,
Saying things you shouldn’t say,
Oh baby, you just might have to go to jail someday.

That he even dares to write this at 71 makes my day. That he pulls it off on his new album, "Tempest," well, it seems that it makes me so happy that I cry.