Mark October 1 on your calendar. That’s when Bob Dylan will release a new box set of his “greatest songs.” Now, cut over to the website designed to market the album, and you’ll find a couple notable pieces of video. First up, you can watch the video that accompanies Mark Ronson’s remixing of “Most Likely You Will Go Your Way (& I’ll Go Mine).” (Watch it on the website here or on YouTube here.) It’s apparently the first time Dylan has allowed a remix of any of his songs, and the song has been getting some airplay this week.
And then there is this video concept. Back in 1967, D. A. Pennebaker released Don’t Look Back, a well-known documentary that covered Dylan’s first tour of England in 1965. The opening segment of the film has Dylan standing in an alley, flipping through cards inscribed with lyrics from Subterranean Homesick Blues. (Also the beat poet Allen Ginsberg looms in the background. We’ve included the original video below.) Now, I’m mentioning this because the aforementioned website lets you re-work this video segment. Click here and you can re-write the cards that Dylan flips through, and then watch your edited version. It’s another form of re-mixing, I guess.
Lastly, I want to direct your attention to the trove of videos that Google put together back when Google Video was a real living, breathing thing. Created to coincide with the release of Dylan’s last studio album, Modern Times (2006), this collection lets you watch 11 videos in total, ranging from unreleased footage from D. A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back, to Dylan’s appearance on The Johnny Cash Show, to his performance of “Dignity” on MTV’s Unplugged. Good stuff, to be sure.
Thanks for pointing the way to so much great material on Dylan! Jim http://nearlynothingbutnovels.blogspot.com/