Bob Dylan documentary on PBS tonight 9/26

[RichardP]

Martin Scorsese's documentary on the early career of Bob Dylan airs tonight on PBS, probably 9-10 EST ("check your local listings"). I am not the biggest Dylan fan myself, but I certainly acknowledge his influence on contemporary music, and Scorsese ought to produce a very good show. I think it is a two-parter, finishing up tomorrow night.

[dbflash]

Richard,

I also am not the biggest fan of Dylan, but the soundtrack from the show is pretty darn good. It has some alternative cuts from songs that were finally released on different albums.

I ususally don't watch TV that much, but I am going to catch this tonight.

Danny

[Gilbert]

Thank you Richard.

[garymd]

Did you hear Bob Dylan's getting back together?[]

[colterphoto1]

Thanks for the heads up. And I like Gary's comment.

Sure beats pro football. I hate that the Colts are getting new stadium. If you saw the game aired Sunday, they're in a perfectly good stadium already.

Michael- I'll be on PBS

[RichardP]

Thank you Richard.

Gilbert, check your PMs.

[Colin]

I am half way through Scorseses No Direction Home (which BTW, hardly needs a superb home movie and music reproduction system). Although it is rated as the third best documentary (http://www.imdb.com/chart/documentary), I am quite surprised.

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So far, Born into Brothels is much better, so is March of the Penguins. This is uneven, with Dylan singing horrible one minute and divine the next. Scorese edits the documentary like a movie, jumping back and forth in time, but at the same time. So while you are seeing Dylan learn the music trade in NYC, you are also seeing him give a horrible concert in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Germany six years later. Does make me want to rip Blood on the Tracks and Desire. I can see how successful performers eventually learn to polish the edges that keep them acoustic diamonds.

I saw Dylan with Paul Simon a few years back though and he has to be the most successful and still rough artist of all time. [8-)]

[Colin]

Ok, so I finished the second half.

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This is a long documentary from a vastly over rated director that only covers the initial discovery of a rising star. The pic is good in that it shows how Dylan evolves his music from a amateur Woody Guthrie imitation to polished professional, discovering in himself a talent for word play, a fixation with a certain rough edge sound and a desire to express his music only the way he likes.

But it covers only the first decade and a half of his long career, which for youngsters like me - for whom his lexigraphy is already firmly entrenched in legend - omits the musically better, albeit not most influential, portion of his career. It stops in 1966.

When I grew up, Dylans folk tunes were already the wisdom of the ages: Springsteen was hailed as the new poet for my generation. Yet this was the time Dylan was producing his complete work. It was the 70s when he produced epigrams of surrealistic poetry and emotional intrigue blended with a blues band. These are the gems that shine today as the best selling Dylan albums of all time.

There is not much on this pic about his family (did he have brothers? Did he involve them in his career? Did he buy Mom a Cadillac?). There is little about Joan Baez, her obviously awesome talent, or his other loves. There is little about how well the songs did on the pop charts, then or now.

Ray, De-Lovely, All That Jazz and Walk the Line are all full <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Hollywood musical bio-pics that impart not only the joy of the music, but also the character of the artist and the flavor of the times. Sadly, this one does not. [:|]

[oldbuckster]

I am not a Bob Dylan fan, but he does hold a high place in music history. A great song writer, but, I find I like his songs done by other people.The Byrds made a career off Dylan songs, Jimi Hendrix, the Band, the Dead, an endless list of timeless songs, done by a wide range of performers. Whatever one thinks of Dylan, when he stepped on that stage at Newport, and plugged in that electric guitar, the music world changed on that day.That took alot of courage to do that, and music has been better off since, Long Live the Electric Guitar. The times they are a changin' , for sure, Thanks Bob!