Bob Dylan revisited, 27th of June, 2011.
It has been more than a year since Bob Dylan had a concert in Zagreb. I devoted >> a special post
to it. This is again a post about Dylan, motivated by the material about Dylan and from Dylan that I missed. Here I mostly have in
mind the Tell Tale Signs album that I listened to lately. The album is assembled from "unused material", from songs left somewhere
on the side and in the meantime, songs that have in the end found their place in this patched-up work. But, overall, the material is not
that bad, it is even quite good in places.
One of the songs I remembered is Dylan's version of "Cocaine blues". This is a variation of an almost traditional blues composition "Little Sadie" which
Dylan covered in an excellent way, with an instrumental backup of exceptional quality. This has inspired me to try to cover this
composition in my way, so I first went through several versions of the text and I assembled my own lyrical mixture. And then I sang it and played it. How it turned
out, you can judge from the Youtube video below (click the arrow to start the reproduction). I made the video so that every time the
word "cocaine" appears the deformed doors show up, which, in my interpretation of the addiction, represent some possible way out. They are difficult
or almost impossible to open because they are so deformed (the doors CAN be opened with a sufficient effort - I speak from my own experience
as a smoker and the last 27 months of abstinence).
I was also listening to a weird compilation album Masked and Anonymous (soundtrack from the movie of the same name) which consists mostly of the
covers of Dylan's songs, but there are also four great songs performed by Dylan (an excellent version of the southern hymn Dixie,
Down in the Flood, traditional Diamond Joe played on banjo by a phenomenal musician, and a memorable and strong
Cold Irons Bound that should be listened to with volume cranked up high).
The covers are all of sorts, both good and bad. A particularly interesting is the cover of Like a Rolling Stone which is in the version of
Italian band Articolo 31 called Come Una Pietra Scalciata. >> Listen to it on Youtube
and see for yourself whether you like it as much as I do. Sophie Zelmani covered Most of the Time. Her interpretation is some weird hybrid of
Lou Reed's Walk on The Wild Side and Dylan's Most of the Time. Perhaps Sophie's feminine and sensual cover can appeal to someone who hasn't heard
Dylan's raw variant of this song, played on a guitar and harmonica on Tell Tale Signs. To me, Dylan's version is far better, sorry Sophie.
Slovenian PhD student, my coauthor and a fan of Dylan's work, Anže, with whom I recently published >> a
paper in Phys. Rev. E journal regarding an electrostatic instability of spherical shells, revealed to me some older material on Bob Dylan, especially the
documentaries (The other side of the mirror). We spoke about it while sipping beer in Tkalčićeva street last September when Anže came in Zagreb
for two days - in that period we also assembled almost final version of >> our paper. I got the
inspiration for the illustrations that I present in this post from the documentaries on Bob Dylan.
The two illustrations above were made with the ink (without water), so that they have a particularly pronounced contrast. The illustrations were scanned, and
then the minor variations of the blackness in the painted area were destroyed by posterizing the scan to two levels only: black and white. Our brain that
is conditioned to recognizing faces has no problems whatsoever to recognize Dylan's face in this representation, especially in the illustration which
opened this post.
I added some color on the illustration shown above. I used colored pencils to this end. An interesting technique (combination of ink and colored pencils), I will
most probably try it again. Dylan is in the image above shown in his later years, with his characteristic mustaches.
And in the end, below I present the drawing of Bob Dylan (graphite pencils with several different hardnesses). I think that he is recognizable.
Summer is approaching, vacations, packing unfinished business in July, crowds, heat, and the Construction of Reality will mostly rest throughout July and August. If there will be some posts, I hope that they will be about the spectacular nature that I will have the opportunity and joy to witness. Gesundheit!
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Last updated on: 27th of June, 2011.