Episode 33: Mondo Scripto

This week, we dive into Bob Dylan’s Mondo Scripto, the new exhibition of Dylan’s artworks currently on show at London’s Halcyon Gallery. In an exclusive interview, Laura speaks with Paul Green, the gallery’s president and founder, about the exhibition, the history of Green’s working relationship with Dylan, and the importance of Bob Dylan as a post-war American visual artist. Green also shares some interesting news about a huge Dylan career retrospective coming to China next year.

Mondo Scripto features Dylan’s handwritten lyrics to roughly 60 of his most popular songs, accompanied by graphite drawings that serve as illustrations to the words. Some pieces appear in Dylan’s own ironwork frames. Though Dylan has worked as a visual artist for much of his career, and we’ve seen his paintings appear on album covers such as Self Portrait, Planet Waves, and The Band’s Music From Big Pink, Mondo Scripto is the first exhibition in which the words of Dylan’s songs and his visual art appear in direct juxtaposition. However, as is often the case with Dylan, things are not what they seem, and mysteries abound.

The interaction of writing and visual art has long been a hallmark of Dylan’s work, from the vivid imagery of his 60s songs, to his deep associations with films and filmmaking throughout the decades. Dylan has also credited the painting lessons he took with Norman Raeben as the source for a new-found writing style which he was able to explore on his seminal 1975 album Blood On The Tracks.

The Mondo Scripto exhibition at the Halcyon Gallery runs through to the end of November and is free of charge. If you can’t make it to New Bond Street to see the exhibition yourself, it’s worth buying the exhibition catalogue, which includes reproductions of each piece. However, since the exhibition includes multiple versions of certain songs, there are some variations that aren’t found in the catalogue. That is the case with “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go”, which Laura talks about in the episode. If you’re interested in reading the lyrics to that version in full, you can look at them here (and here’s the drawing that goes along with it).

“Tangled Up In Blue” is another song that Dylan has revisited multiple times over the years. In the episode, Laura plays a version with re-written lyrics from the 1984 concert album Real Live, but if you’re interested in reading the version of the lyrics included in Mondo Scripto, you can see them here (1, 2, 3). For better quality images and more information, please see the exhibition catalogue, or go and see Mondo Scripto for yourself at the Halcyon Gallery in London.

Here’s the link to the article by Scott Warmuth on Dylan’s exhibition, The Beaten Path.

Playlist:

1. You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go

2. Shelter From The Storm (live at the Roseland Ballroom, NYC, 19 October 1994)

3. Tangled Up In Blue (Real Live)

Episode 32: Request Line

This week I put out a call on social media, asking the listeners of this show what songs they would like to hear in this week’s episode and why. You certainly did not disappoint, and I received so many great suggestions that it was pretty hard to narrow them down and fit them into just one hour.

What resulted is a varied and colourful hour of music, featuring songs from almost all decades of Dylan’s career, as well as some hard facts about cicadas!

If you’d like to find the show on social media and join the discussion over there, don’t forget to like the Facebook page and follow the show on Twitter and Instagram.

Leave me a comment to tell me which song you’d love me to play and talk about sometime!

Episode 31: Dylan Covers

Yesterday I asked you on Twitter what your favourite Dylan cover was, and I received a wide variety of answers, although Jimi Hendrix’ All Along The Watchtower seems to be a universal favourite.

Since I started this show, people have been asking me when I’d do an episode on my favourite Dylan covers. And, you might have guessed it, the answer is, this week! In this hour I want to play you some of my favourite covers of Bob Dylan songs, and spoiler: they don’t include Jimi Hendrix. Nor the Byrds! Some might consider that blasphemy, but in the episode, I explain why I decided to forego these giants among Dylan cover versions.

This week, I’m positing the thesis that a cover version is a form of translation. To explain what I mean, I’m getting some help from critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, who had some thoughts on the matter of translation that I think can also be applied to the cover of a song.

In the episode, I talk about the way cover versions can help us discover new sides to a song. In episode 9 I talked a bit about how a song’s perspective can shift if it is sung by the other gender. But how does our perception of Dylan’s protest songs change when it is performed by a person of colour? What impact does it have whether the person singing is young or old, whether the cover is faithful to Dylan’s album version or radically different?

Of course I could fill this post with honorary mentions that I didn’t have time for, but I’d actually rather return to the subject some other time to do a Part 2.

But here are a few links that I talked about.

• The video of Heart of Mine that I talk about

• Frankie Teardrop - Suicide

• The full version of The Ballad of Hollis Brown

Sorry if I sound a bit raspy in this episode, I have a cold!

Episode 30: Dylan the Name Dropper

Many musicians have name checked Bob Dylan in their songs over the years - from David Bowie’s Song For Bob Dylan to the Counting Crows singing “I wanna be Bob Dylan” in Mr. Jones. But Dylan himself has used his songs sometimes to give a shout out to other artists.

This week, Laura talks us through some of the instances where Dylan has mentioned other musicians, some more surprising than others, and discusses what role these name checks play in the context of the song. This episode also features the live debut of the song Tombstone Blues!

A little correction: I initially say that the 1971 version of You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere was recorded for the Greatest Hits Vol. III, but it was the Vol. II. My mistake, it was actually the live version of Highlands at the end of the episode that was released alongside the Greatest Hits Vol. III.

Here is the Alicia Keys performance from the 2002 Grammy Awards.

If you want to listen to more of Link Wray’s excellent self-titled record, you can find it on Spotify here.

Here’s the solo version of Old Five and Dimers Like Me, recorded during the Hearts of Fire Sessions in 1986.

If I would have had time to play a Bo Diddley song, I probably would have played this one. More honourable mentions include Blind Willie McTell, Cisco Houston, Sonny Terry, and Leadbelly.

For more information on Bob Dylan’s relationship with Neil Young, this is an interesting link you might want to check out!

Playlist:

1. Thunder On The Mountain (snippet - full version here)

2. You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere - The Byrds (snippet - full version here)

3. You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere (1971 sessions)

4. Sign Language - Eric Clapton

5. Black River Swamp - Link Wray

6. I Feel A Change Comin’ On (snippet - full version here)

7. Old Five And Dimers Like Me - Billy Joe Shaver

8. Yonder Come The Blues - Ma Rainey (snippet - full version here)

9. Tombstone Blues (Live at the Contemporary Songs Workshop, Newport Folk Festival, Freebody Park, Newport, RI - 24 July, 1965) - live debut!

10. Highlands (Live, Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, Santa Cruz, CA, 16 March, 2000, released on the limited edition version of The Best of Bob Dylan Vol. 2)

Episode 29: Caribbean Wind

This week’s episode is dedicated to just one song - Caribbean Wind. Recorded for 1981’s Shot of Love and ultimately discarded, it has long been regarded by fans as one of Dylan’s great unfinished masterpieces. The episode features an excerpt from a conversation between Laura and The Freewheelin’ Rob Kelly, recorded for an episode of his podcast Pod Dylan. If you’d like to hear the long, unedited version of our chat, head over to the Pod Dylan website.

As promised, here is a file with all sets of known lyrics to the song (including the official ones on the Dylan website and in the Lyrics publications). The font is tiny because I wanted to make it easier to compare different versions, but you can zoom in if it’s hard to read.

You can listen to the bootleg studio recording that is Rob’s favourite here.
Also, for good measure, here is the live performance in the version I had before Trouble No More was released. The mix in the official version is very different (very little bass and drums and a lot of guitar), so I think it’s worth hearing this. I think it gives you more of an idea of what it actually sounded like in the room.

I cannot believe it, but while putting together this episode, I thought of more things that are worth mentioning about this song! Let me know if you’re interested, maybe I’ll try to write an article about it or something.

Playlist:

1. Caribbean Wind (Biograph version)

2. Caribbean Wind (live 12 November, 1980, Fox Warfield Theatre, San Fracisco, CA)