Daily Dose Of Dylan

(via Roger Waters joins My Morning Jacket for surprise performance at Newport Folk Festival)

All-acoustic set featured performances of Pink Floyd and solo songs along with a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young”.

"Black Crow Blues" by Bob Dylan

How about some Dylan blues for a snowy Tuesday?

"Desolation Row" by Bob Dylan

Now Ophelia, she's 'neath the window For her I feel so afraid On her twenty-second birthday She already is an old maid To her, death is quite romantic She wears an iron vest Her profession's her religion Her sin is her lifelessness And though her eyes are fixed upon Noah's great rainbow She spends her time peeking Into Desolation Row.

My students just finished Act 4 of Hamlet, and today we discussed Shakespeare's thoughts on madness. Up to this point, they had been tracking Hamlet's supposed madness, but Ophelia's appearance and death challenged many of their perspectives. It seemed as though her actions made Hamlet's supposed madness seem rather tame and staged by comparison, but then they started wondering whether madness manifested itself in outrageous behavior like Ophelia's. Since the overarching question was about Shakespeare's thoughts on madness, they concluded that it needed to be outrageous on stage, but not necessarily in real life. I thought this was a fairly sophisticated conclusion to come to.

"Foot of Pride" by Lou Reed (Dylan cover)

Live from The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration

While many have lumped Lou Reed in with glam acts like David Bowie, punk acts like Iggy Pop, and experimental improv bands like The Doors, I've always felt most comfortable looking at Lou Reed in the same category as Bob Dylan. Granted, each category has its claim on Reed, a tribute to the diversity of this legend, but more than anything else, when I think of him I think of a man, a guitar, and street poetry in the same way that I think of Dylan, just replace the street with the road. 

And when it came time for Lou Reed to pay homage to Dylan, of course he would play the longest song of the set and of course it would be a song that had yet to appear on a Dylan album. But not only play it, but make it his. It's this attitude, this ability to affect everything with his own identity that made Lou Reed a legend that so many genres of music can claim as their idol.