Busy Being Born

Happy 70th, Bob.

Here's a video of Dylan's first national television appearance, 

for posterity's sake.  

For all the Dylan birthday banter you can handle, visit www.expectingrain.com.

Goodbye's Too Good a Word Babe . . .

Suze Rotolo: 1943-2011

by Josh Marshall | March 2, 2011, 10:38AM  

 

Unless you're a really hardcore Bob Dylan fan you likely don't know her name. But you've probably seen her face. Suze Rotolo (pronounced "Susie") is the one walking with Bob Dylan on the album cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Dylan's break-out second studio album. (His first barely sold any copies at all.)

But it wasn't just a picture. And she wasn't just some random person. Dylan and Rotolo were a couple from 1961 (about four months after he arrived in New York City) to 1964. In other words, for almost all of Dylan's formative folk period. As such, she's believed to be the inspiration of many of these key songs.

Dylan himself writes about the relationship in his 2004 memoirs Chronicles, Volume One, here describing meeting her for the first time ...

Throwin’ Sand on the Floor

The Never Ending Tour is on its way to Purgatory.  Tomorrow night, I’ll be spending the evening with Bob Dylan at the Leon County Civic Center in what I’m sure is the first decent show booked in that would-be monster truck milieu since I moved to Tallahassee.  I was beginning to think there was nothing civil about the Civic Center or its patrons. (see what I did there... ).  Alas, after two years of reading the gaudy marquee with disdain and cursing the venue’s promoters for booking events likes: Monday Night Raw, the country-pop “sensation" of the season, lame/commercial off-Broadway productions (that means you "Legally Blonde: The Musical") and various other red-necky gigs, my restraint in not whole-heartedly praying for an air strike on the building paid off.  In a not uncharacteristic bout of spontaneity, the self proclaimed “song and dance man” scheduled five stops in Florida, one of them in my backyard.  Read more about the show after the jump.