Bob Dylan News That Didn't Go Anywhere

Bob Dylan will release ‘Bob Dylan In Concert: Brandeis University 1963’ on April 12 through Columbia Records.

According to a post today on Dylan’s site, the May 10, 1963 recording of the then relatively unknown 21-year-old musician was only found recently in the archives of Rolling Stone co-founder Ralph J. Gleason where it sat on a shelf for over four decades. “It had been forgotten, until it was found last year in the clearing of the house after my mother died,” Gleason’s son Toby said of Dylan’s performance at the Brandeis First Annual Folk Festival. “It’s a seven inch reel-to-reel that sounds like it was taped from the mixing desk.”

The album – culled from two concerts that evening and performed just two weeks before The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan would be issued – was previously available but only on a limited basis. The seven tracks include an incomplete version of ‘Honey, Just Allow Me On More Chance,’ ‘Talkin John Birch Paranoid Blues,’ ‘Bob Dylan’s Dream,’ ‘Ballad Of Hollis Brown,’ ‘Masters Of War,’ ‘Talkin’ World War III Blues’ and ‘Talkin’ Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues.’

The album will also feature liner notes by noted Dylan expert and scholar Michael Gray who wrote The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia and Song & Dance Man: The Art Of Bob Dylan.

Dylan – who performed at the Grammy Awards last Sunday evening alongside the Avett Brothers and Mumford & Sons – will play in Singapore on April 15 prior to commencing an eight-date trek of Australia and New Zealand on April 17. The singer’s last proper studio album was Together Through Life in 2009.

Thoughts and Musings and Rants and Thoughts

The Arcade Fire wins album of the year at the Grammys yet nobody knows them. A funny thing (one of several funny things) was them introducing themselves to the press backstage after winning. However the funniest item had to be a site with pages and pages of Tweets from people who did not know them or hear of them, including Dog The Bounty Hunter and Rosie O'Donnell among others.

Justin Bieber was 0 fer at the show also, which resulted in several of his fans taking to the winner's site and posting less than kind remarks. How dare somebody who can sing, writing their own songs without relying and 211 co-writers and play an instrument deserve anything over Justin? I mean really.

Performances of the Grammys were less than memorable except for perhaps one or two, notably Mr. Jagger paying homage to Solomon Burke at the ripe age of 67. And still delivering the goods as he has all this time.

And now listening to the Cowboy Junkies new album entitled Demons, which can be accessed here for great aural pleasure. Culled from the work of the late Vic Chesnutt who decided to off himself a while back, Cowboy Junkies -- and especially the fine, no, stellar pipes of Margo Timmins -- nail this material effortlessly. Definitely a keeper.

Will post again soon, busy you know.....

Junos Who Knows

The Juno nominations came out this week and what we do know is that Nickelback (pictured here with lead singer Chad Kroeger's corset obviously on backwards) was not nominated for anything, so it can't be all bad. Neil Young is scheduled to appear, Justin Bieber is slated to appear, Drake will rap minus his cohorts back on Degrassi Street and both the Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene are slated to perform.

But like the Grammys, the organizers are still a little bit behind the times. For example the best new artist category has two nominees who have been around a while including Caribou who is currently working on his fourth studio album. Or basically three more albums that a best new artist should not have in their catalogue.

A few other snafus are apparent in terms of artists being nominated for artist or group of the year yet their album not up for album of the year, but regardless, the 40th anniversary should be fairly decent, even if it is held at the cavernous Air Canada Centre.

There is a bright side in that a number of artists playing the Grammys or appearing are homegrown talent. So the glass is half full, isn't it?

MONA.....oh Mona.....

These four guys are known collectively as MONA, they are from Nashville, they are been dubbed rather wrongly as Princes Of Leon. They are not. If Gaslight Anthem and Scottish band MONA had a baby band, this would be them. They have yet to release their full-length album but already they've been featured in NME, have got and caught the ear of BBC's Later With Jools Holland programme and are slowly but surely receiving a buzz.

Four songs on YouTube so far, including the glorious one-two punch of Listen To Your Love and the foot-stomping Teenager. And they are also making their way to Toronto as part of Dave Bookman's New Music Night on Tuesday, April 19. Long may the buzz continue, for it is quite warranted. The first great thing to come from Nashville since country music was actually country music, not 3:32 radio friendly sh-t which took 9 co-writers to come up with.

You've been told, and they follow a line of The National, Hourly Radio (alright, they are no more, but still), Marah, Kathleen Edwards, Kirsten Jones and Glasvegas as acts you should keep an eye and ear out for.

Long Live The Wedge

If you remember anything about MuchMusic in the earlier days, you recall that it was basically the exception to see anything non-musical or non-music video on the tube. But over time, that slowly changed to the point where if you were to try and find a music video or anything music related on MuchMusic, you would gather more information from a Telemundo Weather Forecast of Sable Island.

It got to the point in recent years where shows like The New Music -- one of the staples of music journalism for much of the '80s and '90s -- was tossed aside and other shows were put to the backburner, including The Wedge, the only hour of music which did not feature pre-packaged pop and radio-friendly rock but a bevy of new, foreign (often British) and alternative rock acts. The show was a weekend staple up until last year, when the great braintrust at MuchMusic pushed it back to the prime time hour of I believe 3 am or 4 am Eastern. In a word they wanted it dead.

Well, all that has changed, and for the better. Now The Wedge has had a great deal of life put back into it thanks to the lead singer of F--ked Up Damien. Although his initial claim to fame was smashing beer cans into his forehead, which resulted in cuts and an excessive amount of scar tissue, the host seems to know what he's talking about. And even better is the fact that the show is live. The episode this week featured him cruising around Toronto en route to a concert and an interview with the support act. At the same time videos were shown of indie and alternative acts a lot of eyes and ears never laid, er, eyes and ears on.

While his reporting skills and television tact leaves a bit to be desired, you can't deny the fact that this is a guy who likes music that is sadly getting harder and harder to find. But at least there is some hope for MuchMusic thanks to this change or wake up call. Long may it air.....

Glee Filled King Sized Hate

Ah, the stuff of legend....

A few weeks ago the creators of that silly musical show Glee -- the one everyone seems to enjoy because they do what I deem to be shite versions of what are generally considered pop staples -- asked Southern rock band Kings Of Leon if they could rework or revamp some of their material for a future episode.

The Brothers and Cousin Followill at the time declined, saying they would not allow that to happen as they had never seen the show. It was not a rude response and there was no sarcasm involved, for the Kings Of Leon don't spend every waking hour glued to a television screen Tivo-ing Glee between tour stops. However, this appears to have been an obvious affront and sin as the creator of Glee, Ryan Murphy, told Hollywood Reporter that the band were assholes and told the group to basically go perform an act of self-love on themselves.

Word of the reply got back to the band, who proceeded to reply via Twitter in what I thought was a humorous way, especially when somebody is calling you an asshole. The post, which has since been removed, basically told Murphy to go get a manicure, wear a bra and calm down.

Murphy -- obviously somebody who can dole out criticism but cannot be one to take it -- has since replied saying the band is homophobic and the band has apologized if anybody took offence by it.

I take offence at the fact that a popular television series which will be off the air in five years (or less) believes they rule the roost and can tell or bully an artist into doing what they want. If the artist wants to do it, then that is their choice. If they don't want to do it, then calling somebody out because of it probably goes to show that Murphy might just be more of said a-hole than the four members of Kings Of Leon can ever aspire to be.

Murphy also was quoted as saying Guns N Roses/Slash's Snakepit/Velvet Revolver guitarist Slash was stupid, as he too turned the television show down by saying Glee was basically a poor man's version of Grease, and to him Grease was not the greatest.

Hopefully these artists are the first of many.....

Pazz and Jop 2010 Results

The Village Voice released or added up the total number of votes for its annual Pazz and Jop (which is Jazz and Pop) poll for 2010. Voting concluded on Christmas even but the tabulations took weeks to do, which is usually the case when you have somewhere between 1500 and 1600 music critics deciding what makes one album in their eyes shine above others.

The voting is rather simple, that is if you have a degree in quick addition. Ten albums are selected, unless you think there were less than ten worthy of your list in which case you can have nine, eight or fewer I believe. A total of 100 points are doled out to use for the 10 albums, no album can have more than 30 points and no album can have fewer than five points. So trying to do the poll on one take and not come up with 112, 106 or 103 is genius.

Anyway this year Kanye West ended up with a whopping 3250 points, or nearly double the amount than the runner-up LCD Soundsystem received. Basically the album has been either widely praised or critics have decided they don't want to look like fools so they will follow all the other critic lists and put that one on top.

The National's High Violet, which I put down as the top album, ended up in eighth spot and Vampire Weekend's Contra, another top ten I had, was fifth.

Part of the fun of the process is not so much the ones on top but perhaps the boost that some could get from being on the list, regardless of whether one, two or three critics decided that an album was worth the repeated listens or annoying/aggravating friends and co-workers into demanding or pleading them to listen to "this" because "this" is good or the next best thing to come along.

This is quite evident when one scrolls down below the rankings around 160, with some albums being mentioned at best maybe by three critics and on average two. A horde of albums have one mention, which is great because it means the following: the hacks are still listening to albums that they are paid and not paid to listen to, they still believe there is quality out there and get some sense of satisfaction finding something brilliant after tossing one mound of mediocre pre-packaged fluff on the CD player or online stream source after another.

The list originally was placed from 1 to 1800 but in recent days has been changed so that they have ties for albums with the same amount of points. So albums that were ranked in the top 700 are now tied for say 155th, which is the way it should be.

Fortunately last year it was a case of paring down the list, unlike other sub-par years where building it up to 10 could be a chore. Hopefully 2011 is more of the former......