throwback thursday: bob dylan

So bob Dylan has a new record out and is touring around and whatnot. And more importantly I have become obsessed with buying used Dylan records on discogs.com…

If you aren’t familiar with discogs then you are missing out! You can buy and sell records and whatnot. It’s a great place to get used vinyl. I buy tons of used books via amazon.com and used records via discogs.com.

I should get a kick back for that free advertising…

Anyway, Dylan. So if you are a faithful follower of throwback thursdays then you know that I listened to some punk type stuff on tapes when I was young – especially the Dead Kennedys. It wasn’t until after getting way into the punk stuff did I think go back to stuff like Dylan.

My dad is a super cool guy. I remember one time on a weekend with him (yes I am a child of divorce!!) he took me to the record store where I bought In God We Trust on tape and he let me play it in the car on the way home. DK was not his type of music but he let me play because it was what I liked. I thought (and still think) that was pretty fucking cool. It is also something I try to do with my daughter (though she plays her music off her mp3 player and not from tapes and, at any rate, I don’t have a tape deck in my car).

What does all this have to do with Bob Dylan?

I’m getting there.

So when my dad was not listening to my DK tapes, he was listening to oldies radio. I am not sure if they still have oldies stations but they were good though sort of weird. They were not classic rock stations though they did play some Pink Floyd and they were not easy listening stations though they did sometimes play the Carpenters. They played stuff like early Beatles and the Turtles and Herman’s Hermits.

And Bob Dylan.

I don’t remember paying too much attention to what was playing in my dad’s car – I enjoyed the easy sounds of yesteryear generally though – until I heard “Like A Rolling Stone” by Dylan.

It just struck me one day. I am sure the station played it over and over all the time but there was one time when I was perhaps in 9th or 10th grade when it really just hit me how great that song is and I was immediately in love with Dylan.

I had a good friend at the time (hi Scott!) who was into Dylan and Floyd and all things of that nature so I went right to him and asked him to dupe me some tapes. I mainly told him I wanted whatever had “Like A Rolling Stone” on it. The next day he brought me a copy of New Gold Disc (which is some weird Saudi Arabian greatest hits bootleg type thing) and Hard Rain (which is a pretty solid live record) on tape.

He also had handwritten all the lyrics to “Like A Rolling Stone” for me so I could sing along with the tape. i thought that was super cool.

Later on in high school my girl friend at the time bought me his book of lyrics and I used to jokingly call it the bible. It was only partially a joke because I would read that thing all the time. He’s such a great lyricist.

Since then I have always love Dylan and have gone from sometimes not listening to him for a few weeks to listening to him every single day.

But as I implied with my comment about my recent discogs purchases I am currently obsessed with Dylan. Mainly I have been listening to Biograph which I finally got on vinyl and the Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975.

Both of those are great and in my opinion the shows from the 70’s with the Rolling Thunder Revue are the best shows Dylan ever performed. So amazing.

Anyway I could go on and on but I’ll leave you with the song I loved the most at the very beginning – Like A Rolling Stone.

 
See now wasn’t that a fun song?

If then if you want to jam some more, go get the bootleg series vol 5. It’s so fuckin good. Especially “Hurricane.”

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Dan Sharber wrote this and even though he is a child of divorce he had a pretty great childhood!