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Did anyone else immerse themselves in the rockumentary joy of No Direction Home last night? And there's even more this evening. But I'm going out to a concert in Chester. But they'll show it on a loop on BBC4 I expect.
Anyway, that was such a lovely story.
Shall we have a Bob Dylan favourite lyrics thread? This'll be nice and short then, or will it?
I was going to quote it here, but it flows on and on so, lonk it is: Desolation Row. When he sings it there's this weird tension as he drifts off on each verse, always finally bringing it back to the relief of the last anchoring rhyme with "Desolation Row". When you listen to stuff like that you start to see why people can't help endlessly spewing out first class Pseud's Corner content about the man. And he was 20 when he done that. 20 years old. Bastard.
Dr. Filth, he keeps his world Inside of a leather cup But all his sexless patients They're trying to blow it up Now his nurse, some local loser She's in charge of the cyanide hole And she also keeps the cards that read "Have Mercy on His Soul" They all play on penny whistles You can hear them blow If you lean your head out far enough From Desolation Row
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How do Dylan fans (and I'm not anti-Dylan, or anything - I quite like him) square his early, exciting anti-establishment stance with his current practice of doing things like making a deal so that his new record is available exclusively through Starbucks? I mean - sell-out doesn't even begin to cover it.
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quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: his current practice of doing things like making a deal so that his new record is available exclusively through Starbucks?
I've absolutely no idea how he feels about it himself, but I've heard that these deals with Starbucks have proved extremely lucrative for the artists that have done it (including Alanis Morrisette amongst others). The funny thing is that HMV Canada (I think it's them anyway) threw a right huffy over both Dylan and Morrisette and took all their records off the shelves for the duration of the Starbucks deal.
That's just big corporations getting hissy with each other. I don't suppose the artists give a fuck either way. I'm pretty sure the biggest music retailer in this country now must be Tesco's, or close to it anyway. There's probably plenty of artists out there that are heroically resisting the whole corporate thing. It's unlikely any of us will have heard of them though.
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Well as is the focus of no direction home, those British fans who went to see the acoustic Dylan and got a more commercial sounding Electric Dylan with the band felt he'd sold out then.
I must admit his pre-electric days were the real Bob to me, but hearing that version of Ballad of a thin man last night with the man on piano, electric guitar's & swirling hammond send tingles down my spine.
As for the starbucks deal, it doesn't feel right at all - but is it any worse than selling through globalised uber capitalist pig-dog outfit's such as HMV or recording for Columbia records?
From Masters of War:-
You fasten all the triggers For the others to fire Then you set back and watch While the death count gets higher Then you hide in your mansion While the young people's blood Flows out of their bodies And is buried in the mud
You've thrown the worst fear That can ever be hurled Fear to bring children Into the world For threatening my baby Unborn and unnamed You ain't worth the blood That runs in your veins
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quote:Originally posted by Bill Oddie: As for the starbucks deal, it doesn't feel right at all - but is it any worse than selling through globalised uber capitalist pig-dog outfit's such as HMV or recording for Columbia records?
I guess so, because it's an exclusive deal. At least if you take to the usual channels you're giving everyone a fair chance at it, but if you make an exclusive deal with one retailer, then it means all the independent record shops get shafted, too. I can't see a comparison with the turning electric thing either. It's not like there's any artistic value in selling your record in StarBucks. Likening it to the outrage when he went electric sounds pretty desperate.
I mean, it's one thing to use the available sales channels to get your music out there, but to actually limit the distribution of your record to make more money for yourself and for Starbucks seems rather mercenary. I don't think for most muscicians people would think twice about them striking such a deal, except in this instance I suppose it's a bit depressing to see Bob Dylan being co-opted by corporate America - and willingly-so at that.
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I don't know whether there is honestly a way for a musician to bring their music to market without selling out on some level. Sure, Bob Dylan CDs at Starbucks or Bob Dylan appearing in disturbing television commercials may be somewhat offputting, but it's certainly better than artists who bend to the demands of retailers like Wal-Mart, where censorship of musicis no secret?
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I saw little bits of this during the breaks in CSI. He couldn't really sing, could he? What's the big deal?
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Bob Dylan wasn't really fit. His head looked a bit too big for his body, or it may have been the hair. CSI has a Fit Bloke quotient of at least 2.2 per episode.
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