At Home He's a Tourist

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So I was teaching in a school in the Bronx and I was on a break, so I went over the Walgreens on Boston Road. It's residential there with a few stores and restaurants. I like going to Walgreens because they have a good selection of mainstream magazines so I can chill out and read the reviews in Rolling Stone and Spin, and grab some chips and a soda. So it's Bob Dylan's 70th birthday this year so he's been on the cover of a lot of magazines so I've been buying the ones I see on the newstand. I know it's an antifolk cliche and there's a lot of rewritten stuff but there's always some new arcane Bobby D. info someone uncovers. It's a cool excuse to buy different magazines that normally I just skim the reviews of and read the whole issue. So I'm at Walgreens and I buy the Rolling Stone and it features the 70 greatest Dylan songs. It's kind of a corny idea, but I guess it's always cool to read what Roger McGuinn, David Crosby and Keith Richards think about Bob. The greatest Dylan song is surprisingly Like A Rolling Stone and the 70th greatest Dylan is To Ramona. Rolling Stone also put out a special collecters edition, The 100 Greatest Artists of all time. It's greatest "artists" so all of the illustrations are paintings. It's a cool idea, although I wish they wrote the painters names bigger, you seriously need a microscope to read them while the writers have their name in huge type. The Beatles are the greatest artist, Bobby D. is number 2 and The Talking Heads are number 100. It comes with some cool posters of RS covers, Prince, Bowie, Bobby D., Bruce, Bono, and Jay Z. RS also put out another special collectors edition 500 Greatest Songs of All Times. The greatest song of all time is surprisingly Like A Rolling Stone and the 500th is Shop Around. No posters. Mojo put out an issue Dylan's early Greenwich Village Days except the cover photo is more post Another Side pre Bringing it All Back Home. The articles are informative, it's always cool to learn new things about New York City, it makes me feel like a tourist again, they even have a map of Greenwich Village Dylan landmarks. I was thinking of photographing them until they interviewed some long time village residents and they said that a lot of people do that and it's ridiculous so I decided not to. It came with a CD of people on the village scene, it's really a good quick survey, John Lee Hooker, Allen Ginsberg, etc... they added some songs not from the early sixties, I'm like why not just put songs from the early sixties, but whatever, can you really complain about things like that? Mojo also put out Mojo's 60's The Ultimate Collectors edition. It features *Dylan* Revolution '66. That should be cool. I didn't open it yet, it's sealed in a slip cover, and I'm waiting to catch up on my reading before I open it. It comes with a Beach Boys 7 inch which is an exciting idea. I already wrote about the uncut Dylan cover issue with the 4 collector covers. I really like the Bobby D interview by Robert Shelton. Awesome. The Uncut Dylan cover came with a CD as well, did they have to put the glue right on on Bob's face, it makes him look like he had a chemical peel or something. Maybe it was on purpose so it would match the interview. The CD is all over the place with awesome tracks from Robin Hitchcock and the Venus 3, Muddy Waters, and of course Hank Williams. To finish here are a few interesting antifolk ideas written word for word from the Dylan Uncut issue.

Conor O'Brien - My favorite anti-folk record - The Last time I did Acid I went Insane, 2001, Jeffrey Lewis. A lot of stuff from the anti-folk scene is throwaway, but he manages to use the good parts of that - like the humour and self-depreciation - and inject them with intense emotion. His songs are quite confessional. I've actually cried at his shows and wondered what was happening to me; it's this eternal sadness in his songs, I think.

Pat Jordache - *** - Future Songs - Oddball lo-fi noise-pop from Canada - Jordache comes from a noisecore background - he was previously in shortlived Montreal band Sister Suviso it's no surprise that his first solo album should be so pleasingly odd - or best avoided if you have a heartfelt aversion to quirk. "Radio Generation" sets the disorientating tone, using shifts of speed to give the sense of a pop song that's got stuck in a bog. The found sounds and yelps of "Salt On the Fields" bizarrely evoke Joy Division. "Get It" sounds like Moldy Peaches covered by TV On The Radio while "Gold Bound" is hypnotising lo-fi folk.