BOB DYLAN ALL THE TIME

I’ve been getting postings for a few months from a Web site daysofthecrazy-wild. This guy (Michael Goldberg) is obsessed with Bob Dylan, and turns up tapes and videos I feel privileged to see–early recording sessions, long-ago concerts, first TV appearances (on the first Johnny Cash show–worth seeing their duet). Sometimes he features 15 covers of an obscure Dylan song. Sometimes he shares an unrelated performance from last night–from all over, Williamsburg, San Francisco, everywhere.

Today he posted from the June 15, 1965, recording session of the master take (#4) of what he calls “the song that changed everything”–LIKE A ROLLING STONE.

Here’s the link to his blog and all his archives: http://www.daysofthecrazy-wild.com/

Listening to it today, I remembered (I had not really forgotten) that it was Buck Moffett who walked around the West Village with a Siamese cat on his shoulder. Our Siamese, Tycho Brahe, went everywhere with us. A very civilized cat, an observer of the counterculture. Kind of amazing that he has been immortalized in a Bob Dylan song.

THE LAST 45

In a lifetime of buying singles and playing them a hundred times in a row, I bought my last 45 on a day in the ’70s. Tower Records at 14th Street was crowded with kids. I walked over to the counter and in a clear, grown-up voice said: “Do you have ‘Please Go All the Way’ by the Raspberries?” In the silence that fell over the store, my words rang in my ear. One of the clerks, shocked into immobility, said, “Huh?”

I really wanted that song, with its crunchy guitars and luscious, athletic harmonies and suggestive lyrics. But now I was seeing myself in a movie: adult woman, dressed for the office; power rock in the air; young people stopping and staring. I couldn’t repeat the words. I turned and walked out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvkfMRAi2ns#t=0