Category Archives: Uncategorized

by Jochen Markhorst In his days, the Italian baroque composer Giovanni Bononcini (1670-1747) is considered one of the Big Boys. After early years in Bologna, he experiences successes in Rome and Venice, becomes court composer for Leopold I in Vienna, … Continue reading →

By Paul Hobson and Tony Attwood This is the first in what we hope will be a series of articles looking at Bob Dylan’s live performances; performances which offer us quite different versions of the songs when compared with the … Continue reading →

by Larry Fyffe For the pleasure of the readers of ‘Untold Dylan’, take heed that ‘Tell Ol’ Bill’ is a Dylan song that’s loosely based on Shelley’s poem ‘The Revolt Of Islam’. The Renaissance humanist poet Francesco Petrarch looks back … Continue reading →

by Tony Attwood This is another of the songs from the “After the Empire” based on a chord sequence – in essence the two primary chords of the major scale with a passing chord tucked in between.  The sequence is … Continue reading →

by Jochen Markhorst In April 2014, BBC Radio 4 starts with the entertaining theme series “I Was …” and they are actually always fascinating shows. The broadcasts of half an hour focus on a completely unknown main guest with one … Continue reading →

By Larry Fyffe This article continues from “The Ace of Spades” Call it ‘black baroque’ or call it ‘gothic gnosticism’, the theme that haunts many of the songs by Bob Dylan is the certainity of death, often figuratively associated in … Continue reading →

By Tony Attwood I should begin by saying that if you are an aficionado of all that is refined in the world of entertainment you might like to sit down before listening to this. And I must admit that when … Continue reading →

  by Jochen Markhorst Lodi is a small town in San Joaquin County, located somewhere in the middle of California. On the official website, Lodi likes to present herself as a sunny, prosperous town that owes her fame to being … Continue reading →

by Larry Ffyfe In his short stories and poems, Edgar Allan Poe burlesques the idea of life after death: Thank heaven! the crisis The danger is past And the lingering illness Is over at last And the fever called ‘living’ Is … Continue reading →

By Tony Attwood When this article was written, there was on the internet a recording of Dylan performing it, but sadly that has now vanished, and there is no replacement at this moment (2020). Let me tell you, until another … Continue reading →

by Jochen Markhorst Woman with hat – artists can not resist it. Picasso paints dozens of portraits of his successive muses and mistresses with headwear. From his earliest, blue period (Femme au chapeau à plumes, 1901) via the tragic Marie-Thérèse … Continue reading →

by Larry Fyffe Considering the point of view taken by modern Existentialist writers that, given the vastness of the universe, the path chosen by an earth-bound individual human being to travel on doesn’t even amount to a hill of beans: … Continue reading →

It is not a topic we’ve looked at before but in 1995, Bob Dylan saw his iconic status transcend the stage to the world of video games when an interactive CD-ROM was unveiled by Graphix Zone and Sony Music Entertainment. … Continue reading →

By Tony Attwood The song 26 Storeys High appears at track seven (33:40 – 37:40) I noted in the review of  Dylan’s Nothing here worth dying for: that Bob was using a simple technique of playing the same chords over … Continue reading →

by Jochen Markhorst The Swedish computer scientist and researcher Olof Björner (1942) is a celebrated and respected man in Dylan circles. He has been following the career of the bard since 1963, and since 1989 (Words Fill My Head) he … Continue reading →

Bob Dylan And Emily Dickinson by Larry Fyffe Although surrounded by a culture steeped in the tenets of the Calvinist religion, poet Emily Dickinson distances herself from organized religion. She particularly detests the dogma of ‘original sin’ that church leaders … Continue reading →

By Tony Attwood This article explores an idea – I am not sure if I am going to be able to take this idea forward into a series of articles, and I want to see how this article feels first … Continue reading →

By Tony Attwood   Whether you get any deep pleasure out of the “After the Empire” tracks – the tracks in which Dylan explored various songs that were then abandoned –  there is one thing about them which cannot be … Continue reading →

One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later) (1966) by Jochen Markhorst “I always liked songs with parentheses in the title,” says host Dylan in episode 47 of his radio show Theme Time Radio Hour, at the announcement of Sonny … Continue reading →

By Tony Attwood Interview Magazine has a page online called “New Again Bob Dylan” which re-runs an interview they did with Bob in February 1986. The piece opens with a section called “A dozen influential records” and we’ve been plundering … Continue reading →