bob dylan chronicles...

i got chronicles for christmas. quite good. here is an honest passage...

"danny (daniel lanois) asked me who'd i'd been listening to recently, and i told him ice-t. he was surprised, but he shouldn't have been. a few years earlier, kurtis blow, a rapper from brooklyn who had a hit out called "the breaks," had asked me to be on one of his records and he familiarized me with that stuff, ice-t, public enemy, n.w.a., run-dmc. these guy definitely weren't standing around bullshitting. they were beating drums, tearing it up, hurling horses over cliffs. they were all poets and knew what was going on."

and...

"he asked me if i knew "blood on the saddle." i did know "blood on the saddle," a little bit of it, anyway but i knew "high noon" better. i thought about singing it and maybe if i was standing there with gary cooper, i would have. but wayne wasn't gary cooper. i don't know if he would have like that song. the duke was a massive figure. he looked like a heavy piece of hauled lumber, and it didn't seem like any man could stand shoulder to shoulder with him."

yeah. i was skeptical that bo would come off like a crazy loon, but damn if that man doesn't some up with a surprise here and there. a really great piece of reading if i do say so. i'd love to have coffee with him and listen to song robert johnson or jimmie rodgers or something sometime in some super cool world.

oh, and congrats to alan!!!!

jesse