SAVE BOB BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE

savebobdylan @ 2007-06-10T22:10:00

2007-06-11T02:10:37Z

20 Bob Dylan icons

More here at honey_icons!

Everything Is an Afterthought

2007-04-23T17:12:26Z

I recently sold my first book. In conjunction, I've established another LiveJournal to report on the project's progress, occasionally provide links about, and writings by, its subject, Paul Nelson (long-time champion of Bob Dylan, and famous for his Rolling Stone cover story about Warren Zevon's battle with alcoholism), and share snippets of information or parts of interviews that may or may not be covered further in the final product.

The new journal shares the book's working title, Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson. Just follow the link.

Anybody interested in learning more about this brilliant critic, whose own life proved just as mysterious and fascinating as the artists' about whom he wrote, is welcome to join. As well, tracking the process of how a book goes from sale to publication should prove interesting. I'm rather curious about that part myself...

Paul Nelson

2006-07-13T03:20:43Z

Paul Nelson in No Direction Home

I make lists. Before I moved to New York at the end of last year, I crafted a personal and professional to-do list. One item appeared near the top of both lists: reach out to critic Paul Nelson and let him know how much his work had meant to me. His writings, mostly for Rolling Stone and mostly about music (though occasionally movies and books, about which he was equally qualified to write), helped form what still stand today as my tastes in music, literature, and film. He not only made me want to be a critic, which I did for ten years, he made me want to write about music in a bigger context than just something that plays in the background or fills up the space between commercials on radio.

Music mattered to Nelson and, if he thought an album worthy, he wanted it to matter to you, too.

Here was a man who was equally conversant writing about Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled detective fiction, the failed romanticism of F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby, the great heart that beat at the center of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, and the magnificence of the Sex Pistols -- sometimes all within the same piece. He was instrumental in championing the early works of Warren Zevon, Jackson Browne, Rod Stewart, Elliott Murphy, and David Johansen, to name just a few of the artists who benefited from his critical eye.

During his stint as an A&R man, he got the New York Dolls their record deal. He also went to college with Bob Dylan, and ardently and elegantly defended the singer/songwriter when he went electric. Forty years later, Martin Scorsese included Nelson in his Dylan documentary No Direction Home.

I wrote to Paul Nelson in February, in care of the Greenwich Village video store where he worked, but never received a response. Last month, when my best friend Ellis was in town, we happened into that video store one rainy Wednesday afternoon. I asked the kid behind the desk if Paul Nelson was around. "He hasn't worked here in about a year," he said. "But he stops in now and then." I left not knowing whether or not Nelson had ever received my letter.

Until yesterday afternoon, when I received a phone call from a gentleman who identified himself as Paul Nelson's friend. "I don't know if you know this or not, but Paul's body was found in his apartment last week." He told me that Nelson, who was 70 and whose obituary appeared in The New York Times on Monday, had indeed received my letter and that it had touched him.

Paul Nelson was a brilliant writer who did for music criticism what Pauline Kael did for film criticism: he blew it apart and demanded more not only from the works he critiqued but of the forum in which he critiqued them. While well more than a decade has passed since his writing last saw print, tonight I find myself missing him and his work more than ever.

To discover for yourself just how good a writer Nelson was, check out his reviews of the first Ramones album, Neil Young's Rust Never Sleeps, Jackson Browne's Running on Empty, and his masterpiece, the feature-length article "Warren Zevon: How He Saved Himself from a Coward's Death."

Photograph: Paramount Pictures

Essential Music #10

2006-05-19T22:12:14Z

Dad to Martha and Rufus, Loudon Wainwright III has always been at his best when writing and singing of stark relationships or paying psychotic attention to minutiae. His songs, at their best, are remindful of Raymond Carver's poems and short stories. Compare this 1992 album's "When I'm at Your House" with Carver's "Neighbors," or "So Many Songs" with "Intimacy"; in both cases, former wives provide not only grist for the mill but also serve as unwilling vessels for self-discovery. History, Wainwright's thirteenth and arguably best album, could be Carver's Where I'm Calling From set to bass, banjo, violin, and drums.

A case could be made that History was Wainwright's first truly adult album. He sings and plays with his usual folky economy, only this time around, like John Lennon on Plastic Ono Band, he dispenses with allegory altogether. He comes across as a man whose days are numbered, a sad truth made real, no doubt, by the then recent death of his father. An urgency permeates the album. The only throwaway on History (from a man, thanks to introducing "Dead Skunk" to our popular culture, famous for his throwaways) is the a cappella misstep "Between." And the hilarious "Talking New Bob Dylan," which debuted on NPR to commemorate Dylan's fiftieth birthday, at first seems utterly disposable -- but turns out to be a nifty piece of rock criticism/self-appraisal and perhaps the most personal song on the album.

"Hitting You," wherein Wainwright confesses to spanking young Martha, is complemented by History's quiet centerpiece, "A Father and Son." Singing to an adolescent Rufus, Wainwright recounts his own father and his father's father, his mom's mom and dad, his ex-wife's family, and his own growing up ("Boys grow up to be grown men/And then men change back into boys again"). "We're having us a teenage middle-age war," he sings, searching for anything he and his son might have in common. All he can come up with is, "I don't wanna die, and you wanna live," which isn't much different than Carver's words to his own son years before:

We all do better in the future.

Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind

2006-05-05T12:55:54Z

I thought you might be interested in a review of Time Out of Mind that I posted this morning over at my blog Mere Words. Enjoy.

savebobdylan @ 2005-06-28T11:04:00

2005-06-28T15:05:04Z

Bob is selling Bob Dylan: Live at the Gaslight 1962 through STARBUCKS.

i feel this community has failed miserably. shame on us all.

savebobdylan @ 2005-04-21T14:31:00

2005-04-21T18:30:10Z

ahhhhhhhhhh

beyonce knowls to play dylan in a movie?
sure, i dig the whole "black woman playing a white man" idea....but i am certain there are faaar better actresses, BLACK actresses out there whod qualify for the role.

after all, this is about acting, not shaking your "bootay"

blooooody hell!

savebobdylan @ 2004-10-19T14:31:00

2004-10-19T21:33:19Z

i joined, hi!

my dad gave me the bob dylan victorias secret cd, and its just aq compilation of bob dylan songs i dont care about. love. meh.

he should, like, revisit highway 61... again.

join goddam you!!!

savebobdylan @ 2004-10-19T17:21:00

2004-10-19T21:21:57Z

Hey dear members.

Wow. Bob wrote a book. Why? He needs money, obviously.

He was on Newsweek frontcover. Wow.

We need more members.

Please people! Don't let our icon of non-conformity and individuality become yet another Billy Joel/ROd Stewart/Paul McCartney sellout!

//Prudence

savebobdylan @ 2004-10-03T16:14:00

2004-10-03T23:15:15Z

This community rocks.

Ugh, how do you do this?

2004-07-17T05:29:57Z

This community is dedicated to Bob Dylan, and saving him from A)himself B)The Reality C)this century

My name is Prudence, and I rock.

Cheers