from Inside A Prune

Hello and a warm welcome to our last issue of 2005. We are putting this issue together amidst a feast of Dylan material that is reaching staggering proportions. It is impossible to turn anywhere at the moment without running into the man so many of us have spent so much of our lives searching for recordings of and information about.
To be honest, it is all a bit overwhelming. Just think, recent official releases include:

Bob Dylan: Live at The Gaslight 1962
The Bootleg Series Vol. 7
No Direction Home broadcast and DVD
The Live at Carnegie Hall bonus disc
The Bob Dylan Scrapbook 1956-1966
Chronicles in paperback
The BBC unearthing a good quality ‘Ballad of the Gliding Swan’

That’s without mentioning the bootleg release of the Dont Look Back outtakes. Then there has been the saturation coverage in newspapers and magazines and still Dylan books continue to come out and there are/have been the photographic exhibitions in Birmingham and Camden.

Can you take any more? Much as I am enjoying it all, and without meaning to sound ungrateful, I do have some misgivings. The first I voiced last time around, the concentration on the pre-1967 story, but also – isn’t it all a bit easy? Finding rare Dylan is supposed to be hard! More seriously, on some days when faced with paper after paper full of Bob there is a harbinger of that dread day when he is no more. I am sorry to bring that up but it was a strong, creepy feeling I had some mornings, and I was wondering if I was alone in this or if any of you felt the same.

Still, let’s all enjoy it for what it is, overwhelming though the amount of material may be. (So much so that the Blonde on Blonde outtakes on Bootleg Series 7 were hardly mentioned recently when I was with three Bobcat friends – there was so much else to discuss.)

On top of everything, for me, is the unbelievably brilliant concert footage in No Direction Home; and not just the electric; oh the beauty of ‘Visions of Johanna’ and ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ filmed live in ’66 (would it be over the top to suggest the way Dylan enunciates the word ‘to’ in the latter is alone worth the entire output of many a lesser artist.

And then there is the ‘Judas’ moment and the ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ from Newcastle all through the film, and complete as one of the DVD special features; it’s almost enough to make you forget that the special features include the 1966 Liverpool ‘One Too Many Mornings’ too…all this and so much more.

And let us not forget that He, that is Him, Himself arrives on these shores soon. The never ending Bob on his Never Ending Tour.

Meanwhile here at Judas! central we had a magazine all planned to come out about ten days ago but then we thought we really had to acknowledge the Scorsese film and soundtrack. Many thanks to Nick Hawthorne for writing his review of the latter in incredibly short time, and to Stephen Scobie and Peter Stone Brown for breaking all records and sending in a review of the film the very day after its two-night TV stint ended (not that it will ever ‘end’ on our playbacks.)

Thanks to all our other contributors too, of course. To Jim LaClair for answering the 1975 memory request so perfectly; to Mark Richardson for his offbeat memories from over 40 years ago; to Padráig for producing an article that somehow manages to do justice to its subject (high praise indeed); to John Hume for the cover and to Robert Forryan for giving me a big ticking off for a small aside in my last article! I am delighted to have got you writing again and happily share your views on Mr. Seeger that will I guess be particularly useful to our, I am pleased to report, growing percentage of younger readers. (As Stephen Scobie once pondered, how do they absorb Dylan’s history now, far less that of all those associated with him?)

If I may be allowed a small defence, had I reported or Mr Gray said that ‘Seeger had previously had an axe at the event and wished that he had it in his hands to chop the microphone’ it would not have made a huge difference to the point of the side-story. Incidentally, as you will by now know he reiterates his wish to have cut the cable in No Direction Home, a film in which he comes across as intensely irritating (in his younger guise especially) by the way, at least to this writer. He has a similar kind of effect on me when I see or hear him as Bono does, notwithstanding all the admirable acts you detail and despite another fine story described in The Rose and The Briar. Maybe I just don’t like the people Dylan likes. I hope we are still friends though – after all we’re off to see Nuneaton Borough with John Stokes soon. (Now that will baffle our overseas readers, surely?)

Thanks also to Guido Bieri and John Gibbens for excellent articles which came unsolicited one day – an editor’s dream!

My own article was one of those that have been moved to a later issue as the need to cover some of the ongoing events seemed paramount. I include a short bridging piece to try and keep it in your minds. even with this expanded 96 page edition we have still had to hold the letter section over till the next time.
Looking to the future, I fully expect reviews and reactions to all the ongoing to be present in the next issue too, so at the moment it looks like our celebration of Desire’s 30- year ‘birthday’ will be in number 17, please contribute!

For now, enjoy the banquet, the shows and just keep believing.


Bye for now,


Andrew Muir