Dylan of The Day - Brownsville Girl - Bob Dylan

 phantomengineer

One of Dylan’s ‘epics’, written with Sam Shepard.  Originally titled ‘New Danville Girl’ (as Woody Guthrie already had a 'Danville Girl’) and attempted during the Empire Burlesque sessions.

In the year of Bob Dylan’s 82nd Birthday . . . this from Sam Shephard

Dylan has invented himself. He’s made himself up from scratch. That is, from the things he had around him and inside him. Dylan is an invention of his own mind. 

The point isn’t to figure him out but to take him in. He gets into you anyway, so why not just take him in? 

 

He’s not the first one to have invented himself, but he’s the first one to have invented Bob Dylan...

 

[Sam Shepard]

AQUARIUM DRUNKARD BOOK CLUB - Chapter Ten

BOOK CLUB IS BACK

Aquarium Drunkard Book Club - Chapter Ten

Rolling Thunder Logbook, Sam Shepard: Though it can be a little tricky to come by, Rolling Thunder Logbook could’ve easily been included as part of the 1975 Live Recordings box set. It’s an essential and mysterious piece of Dylanology, part scrapbook, part fly-on the wall reportage, and perhaps the greatest chronicles of rock’n’roll road life ever put to paper. Documenting the Northeast leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue, Sam Shepard was brought on as a screenwriter for what became the on-tour fantasia Renaldo and Clara.  With his playwright’s eye, Shepard sketches a series of vignettes hopping from one city to another, capturing the pace and excitement of the Revue in all its shambolic glory, while never losing sight of who’s driving the whole caravan forward—Dylan. In Shepard’s hands, Dylan becomes more presence than character, a word on everyone’s lips, a collective ethos subscribed to for better or worse. But that’s what Rolling Thunder was all about, unpacking the great American myth to discover what realities (or lack thereof) it might contain.

Other authors books listings:

Mount Analogue, René Daumal

César Aira: The Divorce (foreword by Patti Smith)

Philip Frobos: Vague Enough To Satisfy 

Prince and the Parade & Sign O ‘The Times Studio Sessions 1985 and 1986, Duane Tudahl

The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000-2020, Rachel Kushner

No Mean Feet: Typewriter & Rubber Stamp Poems 1969-1987, Jim Johnson

Sam Shepard

Aquarium Drunkard

A great post this afternoon from Aquarium Drunkard about the Rolling Thunder Logbook by Sam Shepard 


Rolling Thunder Logbook: Sam Shepard

With news out that Martin Scorcese's ‘Rolling Thunder’ Bob Dylan doc will hit Netflix June 12th,  it's as good a time as any to revisit Sam Shepard's remarkable 1977 book, an "impressionistic Rolling Thunder Logbook of life on the road. Illuminated by forty candid photographs by official tour photographer Ken Regan, Shepard's mental-snap shots capture the camaraderie, isolation, head games, and pill-popping mayhem of the tour, providing a window into Dylan's singular talent, enigmatic charisma, and vision of America." 

Reviews

"A great read" ...Harp, November 2004 "A narrative collage of short stories, notes, poems, hypothetical film scenes, and fan's dreams...visually and intellectually vivid writing." ...Flaunt Magazine, March 2005 "Entertaining as well as a fascinating look at a particular cultural moment."  ...Creative Loafing-Charlotte, January 2005 "Everyone was pretty stoned at the time, so the book is a bit strange." ...Library Journal, September 2004 "Fascinating because it skips the minutiae and offers its own moodily entertaining narrative... Shepard captures Dylan and his motley circle."  ...New York Times Book Review, October 2004  "Shepard is equally wise to Dylan's fundamental mystery and his rock star bullshit. Shepard's vignettes are part awe, part irony." ...Relix February/March 2005 "[A] fascinating book filled with snippets of dialogue, lists, and random chunks of narrative."  ...St. Paul Pioneer Press, January 2005"Press notices for Bob Dylan & Friends' Rolling Thunder Revue went from rapturous to outright cynical in the space of a few months. Playwright Shepard traveled with the entourage of the pilgrim harlequins, warlocks, gypsies, and Sioux warriors in the first weeks of joyous camaraderie. He was part of a film crew that never quite managed to render the road show on celluloid. Ain't it always the way. No matter, the 'fractured' notes, set down as Rolling Thunder careened through Bicentennial New England, capture the frenzied energy of things well enough. The elusive centrepiece is always Dylan, who is an Alchemist and a one-man vanishing act perpetually in motion, able to stun even a lardy group of Mah-Jongg-playing matrons in off-season Falmouth, Mass. Allen Ginsberg, Joan Baez, and a flock of musicians join in, and Shepard is all prepared to plunge headlong into mythic realms, but the cheesy motels and donut stops intrude a more mundane note. Even so, there are special scenes - Dylan and Ginsberg at Jack Kerouac's grave, a late-night visitation to a Shaker house embalmed out of time. Ninety-plus photographs of the vagabond musicians working hard at being irrepressible are included for stragglers who missed the party the first time around."   ...Kirkus Review"The medicine show took off for New England, trailing a film crew plus Sam Shepard, hired to write the screenplay. 'None of this has to connect,' the singer told the playwright; 'in fact it's better if it doesn't connect'. As anyone who sat through the four-hour home movie that was 'Renaldo and Clara' knows, it didn't connect - but it did contain some great moments and magical music. All Shepard had to show for his part in the madness was The Rolling Thunder Logbook, originally published in 1977 and available in Britain only as a rare import. Impressionistic or merely chaotic, depending on your view, Shepard's book captures something of the spontaneity of the tour, though his weariness at the mayhem taints the fractured narrative.  ...Liz Thomson, The Independent Pre-Order Now This must-own box serves as a companion piece to the new film, Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese, premiering on Netflix on June 12. Every one of Dylan's performances in the movie can be found in the new box set. Bob Dylan - One More Cup of Coffee . . . .