You can't share everything

I admit I have listened to, and watched live, Bob Dylan since my youth.

Just today one of my younger friends said "Bob Dylan? Oh yeh, the 'Blowing in the Wind' guy".

I can't believe that the 'folk singer' thing still hangs around him. I know he gets no radio play, and if you don't own the albums you won't hear him, but did they miss Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde? Maybe they don't even know about Blood on the Tracks. He had his ups and downs creatively over the decades, but maybe young people just don't get Time Out of Mind...and as for Love and Theft with his most recent band, well, I can't even put it in a category of contemporary music, but it cheers me up just to hear it.

Can't convert the people who just don't like his voice. Even when I say, well, think of him as a poet and songwriter, and listen to other people interpret him...

My partner (younger than me) didn't even know that Hendrix's "All Along The Watchtower" came from Dylan's pen...or "Wheels on Fire" (music for Ab Fab). What can you do? (sigh)

So what a delight to hear KT Tunstall doing beautiful renditions of the first two tracks of Blood on the Tracks for the Talking Bob Dylan Blues tribute concert. Fantastic stuff! Tangled Up in Blue, and Simple Twist of Fate versions to die for. Actually, I felt quite touched by Robyn Hitckcock's take on Not Dark Yet, as well.

Apart from that I felt fairly disappointed. A bunch of old folkies, perpetuating the 'Blowing In the Wind' myth, as though he had never abandoned them 40 years ago. And, I guess, the readings from his autobiography Chronicles did put him back in the folk spectrum, when he talked of the power of those old, honed songs, and why he felt the urge to take them up and run with them...for the modern age.

Worth yet another sleepless night to catch the repeat on tv so late in the night...(I don't have a working video machine no more...) but, as ever, I preferred the young folks. And I really couldn't work out why Roy Harper chose "When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease" as his second song...except that he always was unpredictable, to say the least...and that seemed to have nothing to do with folk, protest, the USA or anything in particular for a Tribute Concert to Bob. Hey ho.