"No Direction Home"

[patricia]

=RDK,Sep 28 2005, 12:11 PM]

I can't help buy think what the Ken Burns version of this might have looked like. 

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Wake me from that nightmare.

[paul secor]

I don't hear "accidents" in the harmonica playing, I just hear massive limitations. But it serves its purpose.

Mike

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Well, yeah, but I also hear total command of the limitations, so we're possibly getting into the realm of what's a limitation and what's not, which I really don't care to get into. But the thing that strikes me most is the impeccabilty, the purposefulness of his "microtiming" (if that really means anything) and his various attacks and dynamics. Not at all unlike Monk in end result, although, of course, in a totally different idiom using totally different raw materials. Different but alike. Or vice-versa.

So, whatever that means, there it is!

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I get "whatever that means" and agree. Dylan's harmonica playing worked (works)perfectly for his music, which is all it had to do. There's a difference between technique (which is what Dylan has) and facility.

[jazzbo]

So. . . for those who have the DVD already. . . .

What's in the DVD set that was not broadcast?

[Michael Fitzgerald]

Hopefully all of Joan's foul language!

Mike

[7/4]

Hopefully all of Joan's foul language!

Mike

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And what did she call Bob?

[Michael Fitzgerald]

It was more gratuitous adjectivial usage and generic object reference.

Mike

[7/4]

It was more gratuitous adjectivial usage and generic object reference.

Mike

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[AllenLowe]

one thing this documentary re-enforced, for me, was how much I hate Baez's singing - it's like fingernails on a blackboard - yeccchhh -

[jazzbo]

I was hoping to see footage of her late sister, Mimi. . . cuz I think she was cute!

[7/4]

There's always some clown trying to get into the photo. Who is that?

[jazzbo]

Dick Cheney. . . .

[jazzbo]

No really it's. . .

Wavy Gravy.

"Wavy Gravy (real name: Hugh Romney), of the Hog Farm commune in California, is remembered for his announcements from the Woodstock stage. He's still involved in numerous charitable causes, and has a Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor named after him."

[7/4]

No really it's. . .

Wavy Gravy.

"Wavy Gravy (real name: Hugh Romney), of the Hog Farm commune in California, is remembered for his announcements from the Woodstock stage. He's still involved in numerous charitable causes, and has a Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor named after him."

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He was always a clown.

[Robert J]

Hopefully all of Joan's foul language!

Mike

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NEW YORK (AP) — Another musician has tested the tolerance level for bad language on prime-time television but she's no raucous rock star.

Would you believe it's Joan Baez?

The 64-year-old folk singer was interviewed as part of Bob Dylan: No Direction Home, the two-part American Masters series directed by Martin Scorsese that aired this week on PBS. She talked about how frustrating Dylan could often be for fellow musicians, using the F-word.

PBS said both "clean" and unedited versions of the film were sent out to its 349 stations, leaving it up to the local station managers to decide their community's tolerance for language.

To the best of her knowledge, only New York City's WNET-TV — the country's largest TV market and Scorsese's hometown — aired the unedited version, PBS spokeswoman Lee Sloan said Wednesday.

WNET spokeswoman Debra Falk said the station decided to use it because the language was not gratuitous and fit into the context of the film. Both nights of the film began with the warning: "The following program contains strong language. Viewer discretion is advised."

[Free For All]

No really it's. . .

Wavy Gravy.

"Wavy Gravy (real name: Hugh Romney), of the Hog Farm commune in California, is remembered for his announcements from the Woodstock stage. He's still involved in numerous charitable causes, and has a Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor named after him."

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He's also the star of a tasty Ben and Jerry's flavor:

Wavy Gravy:Caramel and Cashew Brazil Nut ice cream with Chocolate Hazelnut Fudge Swirls & Roasted Almonds

Not allowed on my diet anymore unfortunately.

[Robert J]

He also subs in for Dame Edna when (s)he's sick.

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[medjuck]

I didn't realize that there was film footage of the 1966 "Judas!" exchange.  Did most of that '66 material come from Pennebaker (I'd still like to see an unedited Eat the Document some day). 

You nailed it re:  the reporters, Mike.  I think the way Scorsese strung together those press conferences gave a good sense of the weariness Dylan was beginning to feel by late '65/early '66 (whereas in Don't Look Back he still seems more playful as he's skewering his journalistic interrogators).

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I think Pennebaker shot the film but it was for Dylan-Howard Alk's Eat That Document. I have a memory of Penebaker once saying that he had buried the negatives in his b ackyard, but then read a later interview where he said that he'd given the negatives to Dylan/Alk and they'd cut it all up. Glad to see it still existed.

[Robert J]

I didn't realize that there was film footage of the 1966 "Judas!" exchange. 

Here's an interesting aside. Two of my friends from Toronto did a doc (sort of an anti-doc - Dylan is not actually in it) on Bob a couple of years ago. The whole Judas thing came up in the research. To their amazement the guy had been quietly living in a suburb of Toronto for several years! He died last year. Here's a news clip-

Griffin Ondaatje and Craig Proctor hope the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival will give their film Complete Unknown its Toronto premiere in April. The movie, a quirky 90-minute meditation on Bob Dylan (quirky because while Dylan isn't in it, his presence is felt everywhere if not seen), has already played the Atlantic Film Festival in Halifax and the Calgary International Film Festival.

Unfortunately, Keith Butler, one of the "stars" of Complete Unknown and the person to whom the film is dedicated, won't be around to see it when it screens in Toronto. Butler died, at 56, in Toronto last October — but thankfully not before this Ont.-based Bank of Montreal employee had secured (sort of) his position as one of the most famous footnotes in rock music history. It was Butler, you see, who claimed he bleated "Judas!" at Bob Dylan's epochal concert in May 1966 at the Manchester Free Trade Hall (aka "The Royal Albert Hall Concert"). Butler was 19 years old, a student at Keele University in the U.K. when he took such strong exception to Dylan's use of the electric guitar on previously all-acoustic songs like One Too Many Mornings and Baby, Let Me Follow You Down.

Today it's hard to imagine such consternation, but pop was serious business back then, and Dylan's decision "to go electric" was seen by not a few fans as at once a betrayal and an artistic mistake. ("Any bloody pop group could do this rubbish . . . He's a traitor," was how Butler put it to a documentary crew after the concert.) Butler, described by Griffin Ondaatje as a "very straightforward and courteous person," actually kept quiet about both his denunciation and his identity until late 1998 when he agreed to participate in a BBC symposium on the Dylan concert in Manchester. In the years thereafter, Butler got more comfortable about his claim to fame — he agreed to let Ondaatje and Proctor film him in his house in the summer of 2002 — but not by much.

When I tracked Butler down by telephone in early 1999, he begged me not to write about where he worked, or to try to get his photograph, or to visit him or even to call him again. Ever. As Griffin Ondaatje told me this week, "I think Keith was a bit taken by surprise at the whole legendary thing that later surrounded the shout. I think, of course, he regretted it on many levels. When we heard that Keith had died [he was severely asthmatic], it was shocking and sad. Very strange."

Edited September 29, 2005 by Robert J

[RDK]

Another article on Butler...

http://www.expectingrain.com/dok/who/b/butlerkeith.html

[1ngram]

I was hoping to see footage of her late sister, Mimi. . . cuz I think she was cute!

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But the Maria Muldaur of 40 odd years ago was even cuter! (In fact the up to date one has aged pretty well too)

[skeith]

Robert J

I notice that the name of the film your friends made is "Complete Unknown"

Isn't it obvious that Scorsese's "No Direction Home" is an obvious ripoff of that title??? I smell lawsuit. Marty, how could you stoop so low???

[ValerieB]

No really it's. . .

Wavy Gravy.

"Wavy Gravy (real name: Hugh Romney), of the Hog Farm commune in California, is remembered for his announcements from the Woodstock stage. He's still involved in numerous charitable causes, and has a Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor named after him."

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oh, my goodness, i forgot all about hugh romney from my 60s village days! good to hear that he's still kicking!

[Robert J]

Robert J

I notice that the name of the film your friends made is "Complete Unknown"

Isn't it obvious that Scorsese's "No Direction Home" is an obvious ripoff of that title???  I smell lawsuit.  Marty, how could you stoop so low???

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If only they could. We discussed something similar this past weekend at Griffin's 40th birthday party (if you note his last name, he is indeed the son of Michael Ondaatje - author of the English Patient). It never got a release because of the rights to use Dylan's music in the doc. They could only afford 1 year of rights - for 2003 when they peddled it off at the festivals. So its on the shelf, so to speak. Maybe Marty is reading this thread right now and will come through. They are looking into distributing a DVD version (another aside - I am in the DVD version but not the film. I am playing "Sara" on a harmonium in my driveway. I even have a speaking part (don't ask)).

[Quincy]

But the Maria Muldaur of 40 odd years ago was even cuter!  (In fact the up to date one has aged pretty well too)

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She has indeed! But I hope she's never in front of me in an airport security line. All of those bracelets!

[jazzbo]

Cute is a very personal thing I guess. . . . I think Mimi was cuter!