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Nov 25: In case you haven't noticed: Dylan has done Link Wray's Rumble as a 50-second opener at the last few shows. A nice tribute to Wray, who recently died. Rumble was mentioned in Chronicles as one of the songs that used the "mathematical" playing style that Dylan learned from Lonnie Johnson in the 60s, dug up again in the late 80s, and has been talking about quite a lot recently, without ever making it quite clear what he actually means. I have written a series of posts in the blog giving my interpretation of this, including a transcription of Rumble.

Oct 25: Since my previous post, I made some small changes here and there, and I went to see Dylan in Gothenburg. Was I satisfied? Well...

Sept 29: Another Shakespeare drama Dylan has read, in his preparation for Bye and Bye, is As You Like It (found by Nick Dorman).

Sept 19: Look to the left! Notice something new? That's right: please welcome: lennonchords.com. The former John Lennon Guitar Chords Archive (JLGCA), maintained by Casper Dekker, was without a home for some time, but as I said (Sept 6), I've always been a John-man, so when he approached me with a full archive of chord files, it was an offer I couldn't refuse.

Sept 14: There's a new album out, The Bootleg Series vol 7: No Direction Home – some new songs too: not least among them the sweet and tender When I Got Troubles from 1959 – the first recorded song that Dylan himself has written, apparently. Can't say I'm dead certain about the lyrics, but at least I tried. Drop me a note if you have suggestions.

Sept 7: Added the intro to Simple Twist of Fate from the Radio City show, Oct 19, 1988.

Sept 6: Mike Conley has read Measure for Measure, and so has Dylan, apparently.

It's actually been on the site for some time now, but I've forgotten to add it to the front page: #2 in the series of great songs by great song-writers. Skylark had to come first, but what other song could possibly be #2 than Memphis in June, the song that hot-blooded singers croon on the bandstand.

I've always been a John-man and not a Paul-man (just look at his eyes when he explains to the cameras about why the Beatles abandoned their rock'n'roll gear and went for the suits back in 1962, that nooo! this was not at all something they did to be palatable, it was just how they liked to dress, and say if you'd ever, ever trust that man), but Here Today, his song about John's death, is not only one of his finest tunes, it is also the best "remembering John"-song out there.

I've given the blog a face-lift. It looked quite stiff and formal before. It still does, but in the way I want it to look stiff and formal. A bonus is that I made the RSS feed work again. I think... You have to open it in a separate frame for the RSS to work properly.

Aug 22: Hoagy Carmichael has written some of the loveliest melodies in the history of popular song. Strangely, Georgia on my mind is the only one which is widely available, so here's my contribution to fill this gap. First out, in what will hopefully be a series of Hoagy tabs, is a song which I had on a tape in some atmospheric arrangement with Sky (remember them? John Williams, the classical guitar dude, going electric) back when I was a kid (I loved it of course — kids do). I had no idea what it was, until I stumbled across it again the other day. Skylark it was.

July 7: Another line-o'theft in Floater, this time from a not-so-PC source

June 10: Song of the day: Wedding Song :-) It may be a silly song, hastily written, badly rehearsed, and with some of the least successful poetic images Dylan has ever written ("I love you more than blood" – yuck!), but still... there's a lot of truth in that song, so sing it once today, not just for me...

June 5: The intro to Trying to Get to heaven used to go "G C". Admittedly, that's a bit imprecise. It's become a little more accurate now.
Then there was the solo in Bye & Bye.

June 4: Legionnaire's Disease is one of the few Dylan songs for which no version exists by Dylan himself. Luckily, Billy Cross has recorded it. (Luckily, too, he lives here in Copenhagen, so I can go and see him once in a while. He's still just as charming as he was in '78.)

May 26: I promised, seven years ago, that I was going to take a closer look at One Too Many Mornings. Better late than never...

May 19: I have made a little update in the "Roadmaps for the Soul" section (aka the help file), some of it of a more theoretical, fundamental sort ("what is a seventh? and a minor seventh?"), some more practically oriented ("how do I finger 243115?"). The modest ambition is that it should be able to take you from "don't know a thing about music theory" to finding out how to play F#mmaj9-5.

May 18: In The Evening (Minnesota Hotel Tape, Dec 1961)

 

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