BBC Four Bob Dylan Season (2005) Vol. I

Perhaps like you, there is a certain limit to how much interest I am able to generate in a DVD which showcases others showcasing Dylan material - I'd just as soon get it from the horses mouth. That being said, this DVD is fun to watch. The section featuring others singing Bob's tunes is notable for clear, crisp, professional sound and footage. Pop Staples' version of 'Serve Somebody' absolutely smokes. It's fun to watch Crosby and McGuinn just starting to let their hair down on 'All I really want to do'. Beware of watching Lulu sing Mr. Tanbourine Man - you may need an antiemetic when you realize that Bob inadvertantly helped usher in the era of disco. Joan Baez is beautiful. 'Blowing in the wind' by Peter, Paul, and Mary, recorded in January, 1966, is notable as a contrast between the table scraps that that others were still serving up based on Dylan's older material even as Dylan was cooking up his own fresh, hot, American gumbo with his band on their now legendary world tour.

Watching the short bio of Woody Guthrie is of equal parts interest for the poignant portrait it paints of Woody as for the backdrop to the stage that a young Bob Dylan walked out onto all those years ago...The section on Hurricane Carter, while no less compelling, is just slightly more tangential to the trajectory of Dylan's star. It was a revelation to me that, while Dylan was traveling to Britian in the 60's to help shape pop culture, Lenny Bruce was banned from that fair island for the brutal honesty with which he skewered the underpinnings atop which sit popular culture.

Interesting viewing. Thanks to Jim.

D611 BBC BOB DYLAN SEASON VOLUME I

In late September 2005 the BBC ran a Bob Dylan Week. Centrepiece, of course, was the two-part premiere of Scorsese's thoroughly enjoyable No Direction Home - but there was much more besides. Things kicked off with an overdue re-showing of The Last Waltz (Scorsese again), then, after NDH, came Don't Look Back and Dylan In The Madhouse (about our young man's participation in the 1963 play Madhouse On Castle Street and including unique audio, long thought irretrievably lost, of The Ballad Of The Gliding Swan - see D613). Thursday saw a re-screening of the 1987 Omnibus documentary Highway 61 Revisited (D010) and on Friday came a two-hour tribute concert (Martin Carthy, Liam Clancy et al) called Talking BD's Blues (D612.rev). The season closed on a downbeat note with the sheep in wolf's clothing Masked & Anonymous (in which Jack Fate's I'll Remember You comprises a more blatant case of on-screen murder than the toll-booth demise of Sonny Corleone). Even radio got in on the act, with a repeat of Andy Kershaw's 1999 Ghosts of Electricity, which recounts Kershaw's successful quest to track down the 1966 Judas! heckler (one John Cordwell, who passed away in 2001). It should be noted that, although NDH and M&A were on BBC2, the other programmes were shown only on digital channel BBC Four, which meant that the majority of the population were denied the opportunity of seeing them.

The two other programmes of the season are presented on this DVD, with sound and picture quality both pristine. First up is ... Sings Dylan, a compilation from the BBC archives of Dylan songs covered by other artists.

Though you'll need to make your own minds up about what you think of these performances, I can't imagine many people wanting to sit through Lulu's more than once. Even once is kinda wasting your precious time. Have your finger on the fast-forward button ready. Baez turns in a reverential performance, Julie Felix (clad in a distinctly dodgy pea-green trouser-suit!) a respectful one, Clapton and Staples are both bland as blancmange, XTC absolute shite. Though the collection finishes on a high with a lovely clip of Mary Travers reliving her own particular finest hour, the over-riding impression I was left with was that, in each and every case, ol' Bob could have done it better and, interesting as this stuff might be, it's finally a poor substitute for the real McCoy.

Bob Dylan's Legends presents a frustratingly superficial look at three men who have either directly influenced Dylan's career (Woody Guthrie) or been the subject of one of his songs (Rubin Carter, Lenny Bruce). Each chapter of the programme runs just 16 minutes - too short a time to do justice to potentially interesting material, in the case of Guthrie especially. The skim across Carter and Bruce's lives portrayed both men as unsavoury and unsympathetic characters, but made no attempt to suggest how or why they became the subject of Dylan's interest. As with the previous programme, this is another likely to be watched once but then returned to seldom if ever.


Guthrie..............................Carter.............................Bruce

Bonus chapter Sounds of the Sixties comprises two songs - an abridged God On Our Side as sung by Bob on the 1965 Tonight show, followed by Leonard Cohen singing his own Stranger Song.

All in all, a disc of tangential interest - worth a look but no great shakes. Thanks all the same to the generosity of Nelson for providing it. The degree of generosity on this site - of which his is but one example - is quite remarkable. Way to go, folks.

STARS Three