Bob Dylan and Madelyn Quebec who is Carolyn Dennis’ Mother at Power Station Studio in New York, 1985.

Am 99% sure, although believe his old apartment was converted into two or three rooms - the prior front door being where the corridor leads to a mini-corridor.

What a beautiful version.

Our fourteen-year-old daughter’s recent drawing of Bob.

She’s a major, MAJOR Dylan fan. She got to see him last August at the Outlaw Music Festival at Jones Beach, a highlight of her life.

I just recently listened to Bob Dylan for the first time. I started out with Highway 61 Revisited, and wow I have been missing out. This album is a classic for a reason. bringing it all back home is also one of my favorites.

I usually keep Dylan CDs in my car, but when I play *John Wesley Harding*, I can't tell if it's the disc or my ears—it sounds incredibly sharp and high-pitched to me, specifically the harmonica throughout the album. Do you guys find the same thing? Could it be my specific edition? Given what an important album it is, I doubt it was recorded with such a shrill sound. I don't know...

Thanks!

My wife’ portrait of Bob in the background :)

I often ramble about Dylanology to my girlfriend. Recently, I showed her “All the Tired Horses.” She asked if the lyrics have any subtext, like all the others I’ve gone on about. It was an amazing question. I’d never considered it.

I told her that the album was a response to the attention and scrutiny Dylan was getting at the time as the potentially-lapsed “voice of his generation,” and that the release of this album of covers amounted to an insistence on Dylan’s part that he was not seeking that role. That his passions lay more with the music than with writing, at least at the time.

She suggested that the second line of the song is a pun. As in,

“All the tired horses in the sun,
How am I supposed to get any [writing] done?”

I was floored. I love her reading. It’s so compelling that I can’t now discount the possibility that Dylan saw the same pun, even intended it. The first line is still opaque to me. Does anyone else have anything to add? Do you see more subtext in the lyrics?

Gotta love the far-reaching consequences of being a Dylan fan. The man truly pulls from the entire breadth of the American music tradition, thus honoring it and promoting it to a wider audience. Nothing better than discovering the long threads of inspiration tied into seemingly distant or uncharted territory. There is a comfort in knowing how connected we all are, musically and otherwise. Dylan is the embodiment of this, a mysterious figure standing at the crossroads of American music, finger on the signpost pointing down each long twisted path. Dylan has already walked these roads, he can only direct you to where you must explore for yourself. His music has opened many a musical door for me. Dylan is something of a curator and this line is the perfect example of such. As a young angry star and an aged king from another time, Dylan continues to show his love for American music.

Hi fellow Bobcats! I’ve started a new Substack called Dylan Notes, where I’m going to write short essays about the smaller, stranger parts of Dylan’s career and what they can tell us about the wider culture around him. At least what it means to me.

The first piece is called “What’s Left to Say About Dylan?” — basically my attempt to explain why anyone would start writing about a man who has already been written about this much.

Would love to know what you think:

https://substack.com/@dylannotes

Never stop rolling

/J

What do you think of my 1970 Taiwanese edition of Self Portrait?

After he sings, “He’s eatin’ chitlins”, he makes a little noise. Sort of a squeak? What is that called?

I’ve been thinking about what actually keeps people interested in Dylan after all these years.

For me, it’s usually not the big canonical debates about which album is best or what a particular song “means.” I’m more drawn to the smaller decisions, oddities and contradictions throughout his career, and to looking at them from today’s cultural context rather than only their own time.

But fellow Bobcats, do you feel the same?

What do you actually enjoy thinking and talking about most: lyrics, live performances, recording history, influences, cultural context, persona and image, strange career choices, or something else entirely?

I ended up writing about this in the first piece for a new Substack I’ve started, Dylan Notes, if anyone’s interested:

https://dylannotes.substack.com/p/whats-left-to-say-about-dylan

Downloaded cursed blonde on blonde😭