My Dylan top five

I'm ready with my final list of Bob Dylan's top five songs. How can I resist? I've tried to rank them in some kind of order, but it's hard to do.

Mind you, I'm not saying these are his best or most important songs. I think most of us would agree that "Like a Rolling Stone," from "Highway 61 Revisited" (1965), is both, but it's been so overplayed that I usually change the station. (But I'll listen to the "Royal Albert Hall" version from 1966 anytime, with Zimmy's barely audible "Play fucking loud!" admonition at the beginning.) Rather, these are the Dylan songs I most like to listen to right now. That could change.

With that caveat, here we go.

1. "Tombstone Blues." (From "Highway 61.") Dylan at the absolute top of his form. From start to finish, "Highway 61" features the best singing of his career. You may not like his voice, but he's got a sense of timing that Miles Davis and Charlie Parker — not to mention Snoop Dogg — could appreciate. On "Tombstone Blues," Mike Bloomfield's howling guitar and Al Kooper's zonked-out organ compete for attention. Similar to "Rolling Stone," but more unhinged. "The sun's not yellow, it's chicken" anticipates Robert Duvall in "Apocalypse Now" by 14 years.

2. "Not Dark Yet." (From "Time Out of Mind," 1997.) Not a merely a sentimental pick. I've found Dylan's latter-years revival to be as enjoyable as any period of his career. Someone — I think it was in the New Yorker — once described "Not Dark Yet" as the first great rock song of old age, and he was right. The somewhat clichéd lyrics mask a depth and sadness that emerges only after repeated listens. And the instrumental passage, though it may be more Daniel Lanois' doings than Dylan's, is as moving as anything that's ever appeared on a Dylan album. Distant drums, signaling that the Reaper is at hand.

3. "Chimes of Freedom." (From "Another Side of Bob Dylan," 1964.) I somewhat reluctantly dropped "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" to make room for my only choice from Dylan's acoustic period. I don't like Dylan's early message songs, including "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are A-Changin'." (Sorry, Esther.) "Chimes" seems like a message song, but it's actually as poetically obscure as anything he's ever written — like "Mr. Tambourine Man," but more evocative. "Mad mystic hammering" and "the wild cathedral evening" indeed. Chills, thrills.

4. "Idiot Wind." (From "Blood on the Tracks," 1975.) Maybe not the most accomplished song on this, his best album (along with "Highway 61"). But "Tangled Up in Blue" has been overplayed, "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" is overly mannered and "You're a Big Girl Now," wonderful as it is, is just a bit too polite. "Idiot Wind" is a howl of anger and anguish. And the media critic in me can't help but fall for the opening line: "Someone's got it in for me, they're planting stories in the press."

5. "Thunder on the Mountain." (From "Modern Times," 2006.) Dylan the wordsmith is all the way back here, growling over a Chuck Berry beat about everything from Alicia Keys to "suck[ing] the milk out of a thousand cows." As biting as "Tombstone Blues," but with a sense of humanity and humor, too. Not exactly linear, but there are some amazing lines that stick with you. One could serve as an epitaph for his career: "Gonna sleep over there, that's where the music's coming from/ I don't need any guide, I already know the way."

What? Nothing from "Blonde on Blonde" (1966)? Sadly, no. A great album, but I'm going to have to give it a pass. ("Visions of Johanna" tempts me, though.) But let's face it — I could compile Dylan top fives for a month, and come up with something different every time.

Heck, I could do a top five just from songs he never put on proper albums: "Series of Dreams," "Blind Willie McTell," "Positively Fourth Street," "Up to Me" and "I Shall Be Released." How's that? For most people, those five outtakes would add up to a brilliant career.

Dylan's first-rate second-rate album

I've listened to Bob Dylan's latest CD, "Together Through Life," a number of times now, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it. The assessment that rings truest to me is this: at the age of 67, Dylan has, for the first time in his long career, succeeded in making a terrific second-rate album.

What I mean is that nearly every album Dylan's ever made has been a masterpiece or close to it; an attempted masterpiece that falls short in some important way; or an utter embarrassment. The stakes are always high, and usually too high. On "Together Through Life," by contrast, it sounds like he went into the studio to have fun and managed to convey that sense of fun to us listeners. Not that it's going to be everyone's idea of a good time — some of the lyrics are pretty dark. What matters is that nothing here is weighed down by any deep sense of portentous meaningfulness.

Dylan accomplished that mainly by collaborating with Grateful Dead lyricist Rob Hunter on all but one song. There's nothing like offloading the lyrical load to remove the weight of critics' poring over Dylan's words to try to figure out what he's trying to say. (Not to mention tracking down his sources for evidence of what might be called over-enthusiastic borrowing.)

Everyone's been obsessing over the Bruce Davidson cover shot. I've chosen instead to include the back cover, by Josef Koudelka, because it looks exactly like "Together Through Life" sounds — like a rough Tex-Mex band whose lead instrument, incongruously enough, is an accordian. I don't think I've ever heard an old-fashioned blues with an accordian as prominent as it is on "My Wife's Home Town," a creepy, ancient-sounding song that — despite the Willie Dixon credit — could be a lost Howlin' Wolf track.

Straight-ahead, uptempo songs like "If You Ever Go to Houston," "Jolene" and "Shake Shake Mama" give Dylan some good new live material. The slow ones? Well, let's just say there's no "Nettie Moore" or "Red River Shore" here. The slow songs, especially the Hunter-less "This Dream of You," mainly serve as mood music.

And can we please stop obsessing over Dylan's voice? Yes, it's shot, and it has been for quite some time. But vocal qualities aside, the man is one of the great singers in the history of rock and roll, with unmatched phrasing and urgency. His singing is one of the main pleasures of listening to his new album.

I don't know how much I'll be listening to "Together Through Life" six months from now. The album doesn't rank with his comeback trilogy of the past decade ("Time Out of Mind," "Love and Theft" and "Modern Times"), but it's not intended to.

It's got a beat and you can dance to it. I'd give it three and a half stars out of five.

Dylan goes to the dogs

Thanks to a friend who helped me find it in an obscure corner of the Internet (shhh!), I've been able to download Bob Dylan's weekly XM Radio program, "Theme Time Radio Hour."

It's a hoot. More than anything, I think Dylan's comeback over the past decade is rooted in his rediscovering his sense of humor, and it's certainly on display here. Every week, Dylan does an hour of music on a particular theme, spinning everything from Jimmie Rodgers tracks recorded in the late 1920s to Chuck Berry, Van Morrison and beyond.

This week's theme was dogs. Here's how Dylan opened: "Welcome to 'Theme Time Radio Hour.' Today we're going to talk about a highly variable, carnivorous domesticated mammal -- man's best friend. And if you're thinking dog, you're right, buddy. So get off the couch, get yourself a bowl of water and heel."

Dylan's new album, "Modern Times," will be out by the end of the month. I heard a preview recently, and it sounds pretty much like his last album, "Love and Theft" -- or "'Love and Theft'" as the Times fussily puts it in this piece by Jon Pareles. (Dylan was quoting, you see.)

All in all, it's been a remarkable late-career return to form.

Dylan on fire

I just got home from the Bob Dylan show at the Agganis Arena. I wouldn't want to be a music reviewer, because the superlatives just get lame after a while. But Dylan was incredible, amazing, astounding, whatever you want to call it. He was absolutely on top of the moment, dancing and swaying at his keyboard, singing as well as his blown-out voice allows, even telling a joke near the end of his two-hour set. Media Nation Jr. and two of his friends came along, and they saw and heard something I hope they'll remember for a long time.

This was the third time I'd seen Dylan. The first was in 1986, when he was playing with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers at Great Woods. The second was in 1989 at the Opera House [Note: This is a correction, as I'd originally said the Orpheum], with a small band fronted by G.E. Smith. He wasn't bad on either of those occasions, and in '89 he at least had a decent new album ("Oh Mercy") to promote. But he seemed like a faded legend trying to push his career past the expiration date. Tonight he was a legend reborn.

OK, enough. Here's the set list from tonight's show:

1. Maggie's Farm
2. She Belongs to Me
3. Lonesome Day Blues
4. Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
5. It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
6. Workingman's Blues #2
7. Tangled Up in Blue
8. Blind Willie McTell
9. Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine
10. The Ballad of Hollis Brown
11. Highway 61 Revisited
12. Spirit on the Water
13. Summer Days

The encores:

1. Thunder on the Mountain
2. Like a Rolling Stone
3. All Along the Watchtower

The obscure favorite, for me anyway, was "Blind Willie McTell." The most radical rearrangement was of "It's Alright Ma," redone as hard rock; I couldn't place it until Bob got to the line about the president standing naked, always a crowd-pleaser.

I also didn't understand why he included "Spirit on the Water," one of the wimpier efforts from his new album, "Modern Times," until he got to this: "You think I'm over the hill/ You think I'm past my prime." (Cries of "No! No!") "Let me see what you got/ We can have a whoppin' good time." (Cheers.)

Oh, yeah. His joke. After he introduced his band, which includes three guitarists, he leaned over his cheesy organ and said, "I'd like to play guitar, but then I'd have to find someone who can play one of these."

The Raconteurs opened. They were loud and good. The weird highlight: a Led Zeppelin-esque remake of Cher's "Bang Bang."

A whoppin' good time was had by all.

More: The Herald gets a review up on its Web site. Not bad, though reviewer Jed Gottlieb seems more surprised than he should be by Dylan's late-career eccentricities. Nothing in the Globe, not even here.

Still more: The Globe finally checks in, with this Sarah Rodman review.

Dylan goes Tex-Mex

I'm very excited about this. After Bob Dylan wrapped up his comeback trilogy in 2006 with "Modern Times," I figured that would be just about it. He's 67 now, and he's more than proved his point.

Except that Dylan apparently never thought of it as a trilogy. He's got a new album of original material, "Together Through Life," coming out next month, supposedly with a Tex-Mex flavor. (I'll assume he's not going to revisit the hilarious accent he unveiled on "Romance in Durango.") Zimmy says he's aiming for something different this time:

I think we milked it all we could on that last record and then some. We squeezed the cow dry. All the "Modern Times" songs were written and performed in the widest range possible so they had a little bit of everything. These new songs have more of a romantic edge.

Joel Brown pointed me to this Rolling Stone piece, which describes "Together Through Life" as having "the live-in-the-studio feel of Dylan's last two studio records, 2001's 'Love and Theft' and 2006's 'Modern Times,' but with a seductive border-cafe feel (courtesy of the accordion on every track) and an emphasis on struggling-love songs."

I can't wait.

Last night I was listening to "Tell Tale Signs," Dylan's recent collection of outtakes, mainly from the trilogy and 1989's "Oh Mercy." It strikes me that Dylan's so-called comeback is now 20 years old — that, contrary to the conventional wisdom that he staggered around for decades, he actually rediscovered his gift in his late 40s, and has been kicking ass pretty much ever since, with just one turkey ("Under the Red Sky," 1990) in all those years.

Yes, "Time Out of Mind" (1998), as good as anything he's ever done, signaled to the wider public that he was back. But if you look at his actual output, you'd have to say that he's been on top of his game for a long time.

I was thinkin' 'bout Alicia Keys

Friend of Media Nation Esther, who blogs at Gratuitous Violins, is playing the Washington Post's "five favorite Dylan songs" game. Poor Esther's hung up on the early '60s, but at least she's narrowed her list down to five. I'm not sure I could do that.

OK, here are five, listed chronologically rather than by preference. I'm not going to submit them to the Post just yet, as I may change my mind:

1. "Tombstone Blues" ("Highway 61 Revisited," 1965)
2. "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" ("Highway 61")
3. "Idiot Wind" ("Blood on the Tracks," 1975)
4. "Not Dark Yet" ("Time Out of Mind," 1997)
5. "Thunder on the Mountain" ("Modern Times," 2006)

So what am I leaving out? A lot, obviously. I've ignored Dylan's entire acoustic period. "Chimes of Freedom," from "Another Side of Bob Dylan" (1964), might be the best piece of poetry he's ever written. I agree with Esther that the Bruce Springsteen cover version rocks, but I've come to like Dylan's better.

"You're a Big Girl Now," also from "Blood," has been one of my favorites for years.

"Nettie Moore," from "Modern Times," knocks me out every time I hear it, but the wordplay on "Thunder" is vintage Dylan.

And, gee, what about "High Water (for Charley Patton)," from "Love and Theft" (2001)? There has never been a verse in popular music quite like this:

Well, George Lewis told the Englishman, the Italian and the Jew
"You can't open your mind, boys
To every conceivable point of view."
They got Charles Darwin trapped out there on Highway Five
Judge says to the High Sheriff,
"I want him dead or alive
Either one, I don't care."
High water everywhere

Not sure how original that is, as Dylan in recent years has leaned on his source material a bit too hard. Still, that is an astonishing passage.

What do you think?

Photo (cc) by Thomas Hawk and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

"'Love and Theft' II"?

It usually takes a few listens for a new Bob Dylan album to sink in, so a week from now I might be raving about "Modern Times." Right now, though, I'm a little disappointed.

A couple of days ago I, uh, obtained an MP3 version of the album, which doesn't come out until next week. I've listened to it all the way through just once, but my first reaction is that it sounds like leftovers from 2001's "'Love and Theft.'"

The song that's got me hopping right now is "Rollin' and Tumblin'." But it doesn't sound any different from the Muddy Waters original, except that Muddy could sing better. Dylan does add some new lines, like "Some young lazy slut has charmed away my brains," which all the critics, including the Boston Globe's Joan Anderman, are making sure to include in their reviews.

"Thunder on the Mountain," "Someday Baby," and the downbeat "Nettie Moore" and "Ain't Talkin'" are all promising, and Dylan's wreck of a voice at least sounds no worse than it did five years ago. But none of the songs stands out like "Tweedledum & Tweedledee" or "High Water," both from "'Love and Theft.'" And let's not even try comparing "Modern Times" to his transcendent 1997 comeback, "Time Out of Mind."

For an absolutely hilarious review of "Modern Times," check out Alex Petridis in the Guardian. He manages to give it four stars (out of five) while still getting in a few shots, at his fellow critics as much as at Zimmy. It's very British. For example:

Certainly, Dylan has enjoyed an artistic renaissance, in that he published a fantastic autobiography and stopped releasing records that made you want to rip your own head off with embarrassment -- but that alone isn't enough to explain the mania that greets his every action. Perhaps it is linked to his 1997 brush with pericarditis and intimations of mortality; praise him unequivocally now, while he can still read it.

Andy Gill's song-by-song breakdown in the Independent is worth reading, too.

The MP3 version I've got is pretty murky, so I'm looking forward to picking up the CD. It's may not be great Dylan, but on first blush it sounds like pretty good Dylan. And, yes, that's good enough for me.

A good bad movie

Last night Media Nation Jr. and I watched "Masked and Anonymous," a 2003 movie with an all-star cast that includes John Goodman, Jessica Lange and, improbably, Bob Dylan. I didn't expect it to be very good, and I wasn't disappointed. But it wasn't boring, either.

Much of the writing was so bad that it made some pretty good actors and actresses seem like community-theater wanna-bes. But Dylan himself was weirdly compelling. You wouldn't call him a great actor, but he projected an understated (very understated) emotional force that gave him real presence.

"Masked and Anonymous" is set in some dystopian near-future. It's hard to tell exactly what has happened, but there's been a revolution. The dictator is dying. And a has-been named Jack Fate — played by Dylan — is sprung from a hellish-looking prison in order to perform at a benefit concert.

Perhaps the best line is delivered in one of the DVD extra features, when Goodman laughs and admits that he has no idea what "Masked" is about. It's that kind of movie. But it looks great, and there's a lot of music by Dylan and his regular band.

In any event, it's a damn sight better than Renaldo and Clara, Dylan's four-and-a-half-hour 1978 disaster, to which I took Mrs. Media Nation back when I was dating her. It's a wonder she married me.

Plymouth rock

I've been meaning to post this for a few days. Last week the Patriot Ledger published a story about a "newly discovered bootleg recording" of two 1975 performances by Bob Dylan and Rolling Thunder Revue, in Plymouth of all places.

"The shows still stand as the most significant musical event in the town's history," writes the Ledger's Lane Lambert.

I nearly went to one of those shows. I grew up in nearby Middleborough, and a few of my older friends saw Dylan. I don't recall thinking it was any big deal at the time, but it certainly was.

You can download the album yourself by clicking here.

Meanwhile, Nathaniel Philbrick shares Plymouth memories of Dylan in today's New York Times.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Where's Soy Bomb?

I finally got around to watching the DVD that comes with the "limited edition" version of Bob Dylan's "Modern Times." And the notorious "Soy Bomb" moment that occurred as Dylan performed "Love Sick" at the 1997 Grammy Awards, in February 1998, has somehow been edited out.

What happened? Is it simply a different camera angle? Were more-drastic measures taken? A concert clip isn't journalism, but is this kind of rewrite ethical or not?

Here is the original, unedited clip, complete with Soy Bomb writhing away as Dylan tries to ignore him:

The editing makes for a smoother viewing experience, I suppose. But it's not what happened.

Probably too kind

Media Nation readers know my stand on Bob Dylan: I'm for him. Still, this brutal Washington Post review of a recent Dylan show strikes me as being right on the mark. (Thanks to M.T.S. for passing it on.)

I've seen Dylan live twice -- in 1986, with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and in 1989, with a small band anchored by G.E. Smith. He was pretty good the first time, so-so the second. I'd like to see him once more, if only because he obviously can't keep doing this forever.

But live performance is not his strength, and hasn't been since the mid-1970s. His blown-out voice, almost appealing on record, just doesn't work in front of an audience. And it doesn't help that he often seems indifferent to the whole thing.

The wonderfulness of "Astral Weeks"

I was excited about the new live version of Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks" until I saw this video of him mumbling through "Sweet Thing" at the Hollywood Bowl. The huge band he's assembled is terrific. Morrison, not so much. Nor does this New York Times review hold out much hope.

Though I'm not a big Morrison fan and have never seen him live, I love "Astral Weeks." As I suspect is the case with many people, I came to it well into adulthood — it was never on the radio, either then or now, and Morrison's numerous top-40 hits didn't appeal to me all that much. When I finally decided to find out why critics had been raving about it for all those years, I was mesmerized.

Last Friday I listened to it straight through while driving home, the first time I'd done that in a while. What a strange, wonderful piece of work. Morrison is at his peak, both in his singing and his writing. Is it possible that he was just 23 when he recorded it? I'd listen to it just for Richard Davis' otherworldly bass-playing. Pressed to name a favorite song (not that these are really songs), I'd probably say "Cypress Avenue." But that's subject to change.

Trouble is, Morrison has had a reputation for years — maybe decades? — of indifference when it comes to performing live. Don Imus scored a rare interview with Morrison last week, but didn't succeed in drawing him out of his shell. Far better is this NPR piece, broadcast on Saturday, on the significance of "Astral Weeks."

Bob Dylan is often lumped with Morrison in delivering uninspired, even belligerently awful live performances. But when Dylan's engaged, he is as compelling as he's ever been. If you don't believe me, check out this riveting video of Bob and the boys performing the Sam Cooke classic "A Change Is Gonna Come." (Steve Greenlee will have to take my word for it, I guess.)

Does Morrison ever rise to such heights anymore? I don't know the answer to that. What I do know is that if you don't have "Astral Weeks" in your collection, you should rectify that as quickly as possible. You will be entranced and amazed.

Merger musings

Satellite radio is transitional technology, which is why I'm not all that concerned about yesterday's announcement by XM and Sirius that they intend to merge.

In a few years, if federal regulators don't mess it up, the wireless, ubiquitous, high-speed Internet will be a reality, which means that we'll no longer be dependent on the likes of Mel Karmazin to bring us audio programming that's more daring than commercial broadcast radio. It will be like podcasting, except that you'll be able to get it when you want, where you want — in your car, on your cell phone, whatever.

Besides, news reports of the proposed merger, including this one in the New York Times, make it clear that FCC approval for the XM-Sirius merger is no sure thing.

Still, there's one aspect to this that bugs me. The reason that an XM-Sirius merger sounds at least mildly attractive is that the two services are technologically incompatible. If you want to listen to Howard Stern on Sirius and Bob Dylan on XM, you don't just have to pay two bills a month — you also need two separate radios. That's ridiculous, and I'm sure it explains why there are still only 14 million satellite radio subscribers. (Media Nation subscribes to neither service, choosing instead to scour the Internet for MP3s of Dylan's "Theme Time Radio Hour.")

FCC officials can't know whether satellite competition would work because no one has ever tried it. If XM and Sirius had to go head to head using the same technology, rather than existing in their own separate universes, consumers might benefit even as the two services save costs. That ought to be the direction in which the FCC encourages them to move.

Springsteen in perspective

I know exactly when I attended my first Bruce Springsteen concert: Oct. 30, 1974, the night of the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman fight in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Springsteen was playing in the old Music Hall in Boston, later renovated and renamed the Wang Center, and I was up somewhere in the balcony. Dr. John opened. And at 9 p.m., Springsteen and an early version of the E Street Band took the stage.

Bruce began with "Incident on 57th Street," accompanied only by a young woman playing an electric violin - a spine-tingling performance that presaged the piano-and-glock version of "Thunder Road." I was already hooked on the strength of his 1973 album, "The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle," which still might be his best. (Certainly it's the greatest summer album ever.) The band did three and a half hours without much material, stretching "Kitty's Back," for instance, to a half-hour workout. At 12:30 a.m., after a series of encores, he finally left the stage for good. The last thing I remember was the promoter walking out to announce that Ali, against all odds, had defeated the mighty Foreman. Pandemonium.

What calls this to mind is a snide piece in today's Boston Globe by James Parker on the matter of Springsteen-worshippers in academe. Parker has fun lampooning these earnest Bruce fans; and though he acknowledges Springsteen's undeniable talent, he also disdains him as the most mainstream and conventional of musicians.

To which I say: neither Parker nor the academics get it. The problem stems from the misunderstood arc of Springsteen's career. His image is that of a rock-and-roller who never really lost whatever it was he had, and who has managed to age gracefully with ever-more-mature songs and performances. The reality is that he was King of the Universe from 1973 to '82, but has been pretty much sucking wind ever since.

Before there was punk rock, Springsteen was sometimes called a punk. It was a label he deserved: his music was a raucous, street-wise antidote to the bloated, pretentious synth-garbage being put out in the '70s by the likes of Yes and Emerson Lake & Palmer. "Born to Run" (1975) and "Darkness on the Edge of Town" (1978) established him as the coolest guy in rock, "The River" (1980) as its most literate and ambitious, the acoustic howl of "Nebraska" (1982) as its most daring and original.

Now here he is, 23 years later, still recording, still rocking. But the truth is that those early albums were just ... about ... it. "Born in the U.S.A." (1984) instantly became the huge hit he had earned, but it was also an artistic comedown. Since then, he's produced one good album ("Tunnel of Love," 1987), one very good album ("The Ghost of Tom Joad," 1995) and some real dreck. His 9/11 album, "The Rising" (2002), is such an embarrassment that it makes my skin crawl when I listen to it. (The one decent song, "My City of Ruins," was written before 9/11.) His new album, "Devils & Dust," is notable mainly for the title song, which is about the Iraq war, and the sweet "Jesus Was an Only Son." (But what happened to James? Jesus' brother, that is, not Parker.)

It's hardly surprising that a man who was a celebrated rock star in his 20s and 30s would see the quality of his output diminish considerably in his 40s and 50s. Certainly "Devils & Dust" is a damn sight better than anything a whole raft of '60s and '70s stars have managed to produce since their golden days. Thus it's not so much Springsteen I'm objecting to as it is the notion advanced by his most ardent fans that he hasn't lost a thing, and that he's as vital as he ever was. Well, yes he has, and no he isn't.

As for Parker, he correctly observes that Springsteen doesn't matter nearly as much as these folks believe, but he makes the mistake of extrapolating backwards to assert that he never did. Sorry, James. Bruce Springsteen saved rock and roll. For a decade, he mattered like few pop stars have ever mattered, just a few steps behind Bob Dylan, John Lennon and a tiny handful of others.

That Dylan himself has turned out to be more interesting in his 60s than Springsteen is in his 50s is just one of those unfortunate facts of life. But don't try to take away from what Bruce did when he was damn close to being the only musician who mattered.

Bob on Bob

If you haven't seen it yet, here's the trailer for Martin Scorsese's Dylan biopic, "No Direction Home." The bad news: it's all about the '60s (again!), and the quotes you hear floating over the video sound like the usual clichés. ("There is an American collective unconscious, and Bobby somehow tapped into it." Ugh.) The good news: Dylan seems fully awake in the interview snippets, and the concert footage of "Like a Rolling Stone" is a killer.

Don't try watching this without broadband.

Hattie Carroll's killer finally dies

William Zantzinger, the subject of Bob Dylan's song "The Lonely Death of Hattie Carroll," has died at the age of 69. A truly miserable human being, Zantzinger was caught — many years after caning Ms. Carroll to death — collecting rent from black families who lived in shanties he didn't even own.

John Donne was wrong.

Pulitzer notes

A few observations on this year's Pulitzer Prizes.

1. Mark Feeney's victory in criticism is one of those developments that's surprising but deserved. Feeney stands for low-key substance, and it's nice to see that the Pulitzer judges recognized that. It's also encouraging that the Globe has kept its Pulitzer string alive while it goes through another wave of downsizing. Editor Marty Baron is groping toward how to define excellence in a very different era. Greats arts coverage is one answer to that challenge.

The Globe's Beth Daley, who was a finalist, also deserves credit for explaining the effects of global warming in human terms.

2. It's too bad that Concord Monitor photographer Preston Gannaway won the Pulitzer for feature photography just as she's leaving for the Rocky Mountain News. Nevertheless, the prize helps enhance the Monitor's reputation as among the best papers of its size in the country.

Gannaway documented the death of a young mother with cancer, presented in a multimedia production here.

3. Congratulations to my Northeastern colleage Bill Kirtz and his wife, Carol. Their son, Jake Hooker, won the Pulitzer for investigative reporting along with his New York Times colleague Walter Bogdanich for their exposés of the Chinese pharmaceutical industry. Kirtz and I go way, way back — he was my instructor in the 1970s. I wish as much had rubbed off on me as it did on Jake.

4. It's hard to think of anyone more deserving of a Pulitzer than Bob Dylan, one of the great artists of the past half-century. But I always worry when I hear an announcement like that. Is he sick? Do the Pulitzer judges know something we don't? Nah. He's just looking for Alicia Keys.

Pre culpa

If you tune in "Greater Boston" on Channel 2 this evening, you'll hear me say that James Gordon Bennett, whose New York Herald, founded in 1835, was the first recognizably modern newspaper, should have been named to the Atlantic Monthly's list of the top 100 influential Americans. In fact, he was, at No. 69. I don't know how I missed that.

I'm sticking by my argument that Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan should have been on the list, too.

Welcome, Bob Dylan fans

I've got to post on Zimmy more often. Before today, I think the most visitors Media Nation ever got in one day was 1,200. Today, as of just before 1:30 p.m., we're already up to 2,200. Amazing.

Bruce shall overcome

In reviewing Bruce Springsteen's new album, "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions," the Boston Globe's Joan Anderman refers to Pete Seeger as "this century's foremost activist folk singer." This century, eh? Sadly, Anderman may be right, although not in the way she intended.

Worse, Anderman likes Springsteen's last two albums, "Devils & Dust" and (ugh) "The Rising," which, she claims, was marked by "a fierce, redemptive grace."

Which is why I prefer this review of "We Shall Overcome," by Slate's Jody Rosen, who writes:

His two most recent albums have been particularly painful. The Rising (2002), Springsteen's vaunted "response to Sept. 11," made an almighty rock 'n' roll noise, but the lyrics found him straining for significance amid an explosion of abstract nouns: "faith," "hope," "blood," "fire," etc. Then came last year's Devils & Dust, a folk-flecked album whose songs suggested that the Boss had taken the praise of the tweedy set too much to heart.

Indeed.

Rosen likes "We Shall Overcome" a lot, and I'm looking forward to hearing the whole thing. Perhaps it will be the spark that helps Springsteen rediscover his writing gift, much as Bob Dylan's two early-'90s albums of folk songs, "Good as I Been to You" and "World Gone Wrong," led to his two best collections of orginals since his heyday, "Time Out of Mind" and "Love & Theft."