Category: Dylanish

This is one of the weirdest bootlegs I own. Dylan fans are guilty of grabbing hold of anything that his name can be linked with and I’m as big a sap as the next collector. No music on this. Just AJ Weberman talking about an interview he did with Bob Dylan in January 1971, followed by 2 telephone conversations between them following the interview.

Weberman is, to quote West of Scotland vernacular, a bit of a roaster. Amongst other things, he was convinced Dylan was a heroin addict, so he tracked down where he lived in New York and started raking through his rubbish to find clues/evidence that could substantiate his claims!  The sleevenotes on the bootleg tell you more:

AJ Weberman, self styled Dylanologist, mega egotist, founder member of the art of Garbology, (the practice of sifting through someone’s garbage to interpret their character) had become notorious by circulating his revelations on Dylan’s persona on the underground press. Probably in an attempt to curb some of Weberman’s wild theorising and to protect his young family from intrusive attentions, Dylan began to actively cultivate Weberman’s interest in him, and around December 1970 and early January 1971 arranged to meet with Weberman at his recording studio in Greenwich Village that he’d recently had converted from a shop. Whatever the understanding between them may have been, Weberman’s motivation for attending these meetings was to consruct an article on Dylan that he could circulate in the underground press. When Dylan became aware of this, two telephone conversations ensued, the first from Dylan to Weberman requesting to see a draft of the article, the second a return call from Weberman to discuss amendments.

There’s books on this! And folk like me read them! Dylan is revealed to be obtuse, awkward and contradictory once he realises Weberman has taped him in conversation. Hardly revelatory stuff then, but you need to hear it. And he swears quite a lot too. It’s in 3 parts:

part 1                    part 2                    part 3

* part 3 will download from megaupload, as it was too big a file for my usual file host

For your pleasure and amusement…..

coming soon….the Weberman tapes

Bob Dylan, Glasgow SECC 11th April 2007. Live Review.

I was at the dentist this morning and I can’t make up my mind which was more painful – being told I need a filling or being forced to listen to the guitarist in Bob Dylan’s band mangle out another elastic band guitar solo.

Dylan last night was on top form. His voice sounded fantastic, his hat/suit combo was inspired and his choice of songs was just about as expected, with the odd curve-ball thrown in. No-one would’ve had their money on hearing ‘John Brown’, and in all my times at Dylan concerts, I think last night was the first time I’d heard him play ‘Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues’. He started great. The first 4 songs he played guitar and I was thinking ‘This is brilliant’. Then the first of many fumbled guitar breaks came in, and it all went a bit pear shaped. Honestly, Denny Freeman is no better a guitarist than me. And that’s not good enough for Bob Dylan. Bob must know this. Perhaps he’s told the rest of them (with the exception of cooler-than-cool Tony Garnier) that they’re all sacked after this tour, cos most of his band plodded through the night with no fire or passion and little musical inventiveness. The ‘Modern Times’ stuff sounded OK. In fact ‘Aint Talkin” was pretty amazing, but when let loose on the 60’s stuff, this band is way out of its depth. No Bob set has room for both ‘Stuck Inside of Mobile…’ and ‘Most Likely You Go Your Way..’, especially with a band as inept as this one. Christ, they even managed to mess up the start of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’. Instead of the pistol crack drum intro, it sort of limped along to the first line. Tony didn’t even have his bass strapped on until Bob began singing. At one point Donald beside me said ‘This band sound like Peter Kay’s in Phoenix Nights’. And he was right.

I also spent most of the night looking at Bob’s arse. I thought I was being smart in advance by ordering tickets that would give me a good view of stage left, where his keyboard has been sat for the past 3 years. But guess what? The wee contrary bastard decided to move the keyboard to centre stage! This at least gave us the chance to see what Bob did when he was really into what was being played. He bopped, he jerked and he looked like he was humping his instrument. Not so much Jerry Lee Lewis as Geriatric Lee Lewis. It was highly amusing. Of course, when he wasn’t into it he still looked like a Thunderbirds puppet going out as a cowboy for Halloween. No review of Bob’s current tour would be complete without a comment or two on Bob’s keyboard sound. A cross between a 60s garage band Farfisa (good) and the ice hockey organ (bad) it was really noticeable for all the wrong reasons during many songs. But hey. It was Bob Dylan. Live. In front of me. For the umpteenth time. In some ways much better than previous times I’ve seen him – the voice, mainly and in other ways much worse than before – his band, mainly. But it was still Bob Dylan and he’s still better than the rest. Just think what he could do with a good band again.

Bob, if you’re reading this (hahahahaha) bring back Larry and Charlie.

Oh, and I’d appreciate a copy of the show if anyone has one. So far it’s not on dimeadozen. Bit disappointing that. Until anything better turns up, there’s some shaky hand-held video from someone’s mobile phone here.