Dylan S Visions Of Sin

‘I consider myself a poet first and a musician second’ ‘It ain’t the melodies that’re important man, it’s the words’ Two quotes from Dylan himself that underline the importance of this book. Dylanology thrives. There is no shortage of books about him and many of them will be dusted off for his 70th birthday. This one, however, stands on its own both for its unusual approach and for the virtuosity of its execution. Ricks’s scheme, aptly, is to examine Dylan’s songs through the biblical concepts of the seven deadly Sins, the four Virtues, and the three Heavenly Graces. He carries it off with panache. Ricks may be the most eminent literary critic of his generation but nobody should feel his book is one of earnest, unapproachable exegesis, on the contrary it has a flamboyance, almost effervescence about it that is captivating. Ricks boldly and successfully judges Dylan as a poet not a lyricist and in his tour-de-force makes endless illuminating comparisons with canonical writers such as Eliot, Hardy, Hopkins and Larkin.

Time Out of Mind is one of the most ambitious, complex, and provocative albums of Bob Dylan’s distinguished artistic career. The present book interprets the songs recorded for Time Out of Mind as a series of dreams by a single singer/dreamer. These dreams overlap and intermingle, but three primary levels of meaning emerge. On one level, the singer/dreamer envisions himself as a killer awaiting execution for killing his lover. On another level, the song-cycle functions as religious allegory, dramatizing the protagonist’s relentless struggles with his lover as a battle between spirit and flesh, earth and heaven, salvation and damnation. On still another level, Time Out of Mind is a meditation on American slavery and racism, Dylan’s most personal encounter with the subject, but one tangled up in associations with the minstrelsy tradition and debates surrounding cultural appropriation. Time Out of Mind marks the culmination of several recurring themes that have preoccupied Dylan for decades, and it serves as a pivotal turning point toward his late renaissance in terms of both subject matter and intertextual approach.

Written against the academically dominant but simplistic romanticization of popular music as a positive force, this book focuses on the 'dark side' of the subject. It is a pioneering examination of the ways in which popular music has been deployed in association with violence, ranging from what appears to be an incidental relationship, to one in which music is explicitly applied as an instrument of violence. A preliminary overview of the physiological and cognitive foundations of sounding/hearing which are distinctive within the sensorium, discloses in particular their potential for organic and psychic violence. The study then elaborates working definitions of key terms (including the vexed idea of the 'popular') for the purposes of this investigation, and provides a historical survey of examples of the nexus between music and violence, from (pre)Biblical times to the late nineteenth century. The second half of the book concentrates on the modern era, marked in this case by the emergence of technologies by which music can be electronically augmented, generated, and disseminated, beginning with the advent of sound recording from the 1870s, and proceeding to audio-internet and other contemporary audio-technologies. Johnson and Cloonan argue that these technologies have transformed the potential of music to mediate cultural confrontations from the local to the global, particularly through violence. The authors present a taxonomy of case histories in the connection between popular music and violence, through increasingly intense forms of that relationship, culminating in the topical examples of music and torture, including those in Bosnia, Darfur, and by US forces in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay. This, however, is not simply a succession of data, but an argumentative synthesis. Thus, the final section debates the implications of this nexus both for popular music studies itself, and also in cultural policy and regulation, the ethics of citizenship, and arguments about human rights.

That Thin, Wild Mercury Sound is the definitive treatment of Bob Dylan's magnum opus, Blonde on Blonde, not only providing the most extensive account of the sessions that produced the trailblazing album, but also setting the record straight on much of the misinformation that has surrounded the story of how the masterpiece came to be made. Including many new details and eyewitness accounts never before published, as well as keen insight into the Nashville cats who helped Dylan reach rare artistic heights, it explores the lasting impact of rock's first double album. Based on exhaustive research and in-depth interviews, Daryl Sanders chronicles the road that took Dylan from New York to Nashville in search of "that thin, wild mercury sound."

In recent decades, reception history has become an increasingly important and controversial topic of discussion in biblical studies. Rather than attempting to recover the original meaning of biblical texts, reception history focuses on exploring the history of interpretation. In doing so it locates the dominant historical-critical scholarly paradigm within the history of interpretation, rather than over and above it. At the same time, the breadth of material and hermeneutical issues that reception history engages with questions any narrow understanding of the history of the Bible and its effects on faith communities. The challenge that reception history faces is to explore tradition without either reducing its meaning to what faith communities think is important, or merely offering anthologies of interesting historical interpretations. This major new handbook addresses these matters by presenting reception history as an enterprise (not a method) that questions and understands tradition afresh. The Oxford Handbook of the Reception History of the Bible consciously allows for the interplay of the traditional and the new through a two-part structure. Part I comprises a set of essays surveying the outline, form, and content of twelve key biblical books that have been influential in the history of interpretation. Part II offers a series of in-depth case studies of the interpretation of particular key biblical passages or books with due regard for the specificity of their social, cultural or aesthetic context. These case studies span two millennia of interpretation by readers with widely differing perspectives. Some are at the level of a group response (from Gnostic readings of Genesis, to Post-Holocaust Jewish interpretations of Job); others examine individual approaches to texts (such as Augustine and Pelagius on Romans, or Gandhi on the Sermon on the Mount). Several chapters examine historical moments, such as the 1860 debate over Genesis and evolution, while others look to wider themes such as non-violence or millenarianism. Further chapters study in detail the works of popular figures who have used the Bible to provide inspiration for their creativity, from Dante and Handel, to Bob Dylan and Dan Brown.

Bob Dylan’s abrupt abandonment of overtly political songwriting in the mid-1960s caused an uproar among critics and fans. In Wicked Messenger, acclaimed cultural-political commentator Mike Marqusee advances the new thesis that Dylan did not drop politics from his songs but changed the manner of his critique to address the changing political and cultural climate and, more importantly, his own evolving aesthetic. Wicked Messenger is also a riveting political history of the United States in the 1960s. Tracing the development of the decade’s political and cultural dissent movements, Marqusee shows how their twists and turns were anticipated in the poetic aesthetic—anarchic, unaccountable, contradictory, punk— of Dylan's mid-sixties albums, as well as in his recent artistic ventures in Chronicles, Vol. I and Masked and Anonymous. Dylan’s anguished, self-obsessed, prickly artistic evolution, Marqusee asserts, was a deeply creative response to a deeply disturbing situation. "He can no longer tell the story straight," Marqusee concludes, "because any story told straight is a false one."

A vivid, first-hand account of Nobel Prize-winning singer and songwriter Bob Dylan as an artist, friend, and celebrity, illustrated with never-before-seen photographs, and told by an engaging raconteur who cut his own swathe through the turbulent counterculture. August 2014 marks 50 years since Bob Dylan released his fourth album, Another Side of Bob Dylan. Recorded in one night, in the middle of a turbulent year in his life, the music marked a departure from Dylan's socially-conscious folk songs and began his evolution toward other directions. During the years they spent together, few people outside of Dylan's immediate family were closer than Victor Maymudes, who was Dylan's tour manager, personal friend, and travelling companion from the early days in 1960s Greenwich Village through the late 90's. Another Side of Bob Dylan recounts landmark events including Dylan's infamous motorcycle crash; meeting the Beatles on their first US tour; his marriage to Sara Lownds, his romances with Suze Rotolo, Joan Baez, and others; fellow travelers Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Wavy Gravy, Dennis Hopper, The Band, The Traveling Wilburys, and more; memorable concerts, and insights on Dylan's songwriting process. On January 26th, 2001, after recording more than 24 hours of taped memories in preparation for writing this book, Victor Maymudes suffered an aneurysm and died. His son Jacob has written the book, using the tapes to shape the story. A Los Angeles Times Best Seller.

This book, leading and shaping the field of cultural studies in Australia, fosters a conversation about the changing and competing discursive and material conditions, struggles and possibilities of the contemporary world, in all their complexities and diversities.