Note About Live Attendance and Recording: Grade Options And

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Note About Live Attendance and Recording: Grade Options And PRELIMINARY COURSE SYLLABUS Course Title: Bob Dylan at 80: A Deep Dive into Eight Classic Albums Course Code: MUS 47 Instructor: Timothy Hampton Note About Live Attendance and Recording: Live attendance is encouraged. The instructor will present the material, illustrating points with samples of sound and, where needed, images. Each class meeting will be accompanied by an outline of topics covered, prepared by the instructor. The syllabus will offer a general template, but we will feel free to roam about, as the discussion evolves. At the same time, classes will be recorded and made available for enrolled students to watch or re- watch what they have missed live. In addition, the instructor will hold office hours and group Zoom meetings for students who want to talk more about the material outside of class. Grade Options and Requirements: • No Grade Requested (NGR) o This is the default option. No work will be required; no credit shall be received; no proof of attendance can be provided. • Credit/No Credit (CR/NC) o Students must attend 6 out of 8 class sessions. *Please Note: If you require proof that you completed a Continuing Studies course for any reason (for example, employer reimbursement), you must choose either the Letter Grade or Credit/No Credit option. Courses taken for NGR will not appear on official transcripts or grade reports. Tentative Weekly Outline: Week 1: Introduction. "Who is this guy?" Dylan's very earliest work and his rise to celebrity. His self-invention as troubadour/poet. Deep listen: "Freewheelin' Bob Dylan." Week 2: The expansion of Dylan's consciousness--and ours. The mid-1960s "electric" work. What are "electric blues" anyway? Deep listen: "Highway 61 Revisited." Week 3: The art of retirement. Dylan's late 1960s "country" period and his collaborations with The Band. Deep listen: "John Wesley Harding." Week 4: "I had to do consciously what I had been doing unconsciously until then." Some thoughts about Dylan's manipulation of song forms. Deep listen: "Blood on the Tracks" (that's right, go and listen to the whole thing again). Please contact the Stanford Continuing Studies office with any questions 365 Lasuen St., Stanford, CA 94305 [email protected] 650-725-2650 PRELIMINARY COURSE SYLLABUS Week 5: "Sometimes I feel so low down and disgusted." The cultural politics of the "gospel" period. Deep listen: "Infidels." Week 6: Some thoughts about voice and performance style. Deep listen, "Time Out of Mind." Week 7: Dylan's geography. Where do these songs take place? Deep listen, "Modern Times" Week 8: History and spirit. Dylan teaches us how to make art: Deep listen, "Rough and Rowdy Ways" Please contact the Stanford Continuing Studies office with any questions 365 Lasuen St., Stanford, CA 94305 [email protected] 650-725-2650 .
Recommended publications
  • 1987 Determined to Stand LETTER.Pdf
    DETERMINED TO STAND BOB DYLAN 1987 by Olof Björner A SUMMARY OF RECORDING & CONCERT ACTIVITIES, RELEASES, TAPES & BOOKS. © 2004 by Olof Björner All Rights Reserved. This text may be reproduced, re-transmitted, redistributed and otherwise propagated at will, provided that this notice remains intact and in place. Determined To Stand – Bob Dylan 1987 CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................................. 3 2 1987 AT A GLANCE .......................................................................................................................................... 3 3 THE 1987 CALENDAR ..................................................................................................................................... 3 4 DOWN IN THE GROOVE ................................................................................................................................ 4 5 SUMMER TOUR WITH THE GRATEFUL DEAD ...................................................................................... 6 5.1 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................ 6 5.2 THE MUSICIANS ........................................................................................................................................... 6 5.3 THE SHOW ...................................................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Why Am I Doing This?
    LISTEN TO ME, BABY BOB DYLAN 2008 by Olof Björner A SUMMARY OF RECORDING & CONCERT ACTIVITIES, NEW RELEASES, RECORDINGS & BOOKS. © 2011 by Olof Björner All Rights Reserved. This text may be reproduced, re-transmitted, redistributed and otherwise propagated at will, provided that this notice remains intact and in place. Listen To Me, Baby — Bob Dylan 2008 page 2 of 133 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................................................. 4 2 2008 AT A GLANCE ............................................................................................................................................................. 4 3 THE 2008 CALENDAR ......................................................................................................................................................... 5 4 NEW RELEASES AND RECORDINGS ............................................................................................................................. 7 4.1 BOB DYLAN TRANSMISSIONS ............................................................................................................................................... 7 4.2 BOB DYLAN RE-TRANSMISSIONS ......................................................................................................................................... 7 4.3 BOB DYLAN LIVE TRANSMISSIONS .....................................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Bob Dylan – the Original Mono Recordings
    Bob Dylan – The Original Mono Recordings by Roger Ford The eight albums in this box are of course the foundation of a sound that was still integrated but with added presence Bob Dylan’s career and legend, the records that made him and depth. famous. But more specifically, these are the records that made him famous – not the albums as they sound on the But technology marched on, and the mono versions of standard CDs today, not the earlier generation of CDs from Dylan’s LPs were discontinued in 1968 in the US, a year later the late ’80s, not even the stereo LPs that came out as each in the UK, and as far as I know had disappeared from all other record was made. It was the mono LPs (and the singles taken parts of the world by the mid -’70s. For the last quarter of the from them) that people heard on the radio, round at friends’ 20 th century they were completely unavailable, and once houses, in record shops. These were the sounds that were people realised what had been lost, good condition original engraved into the memory of anyone who listened to Dylan copies became increasingly sought after. in the sixties. The mono albums were eventually reissued by the US specialist reissue label Sundazed between 2001 and 2004, though only in vinyl format. They were remastered by Sundazed owner Bob Irwin, a well-respected audio engineer in his own right. Irwin put a lot of work into finding the right master tapes as well as into the remastering process itself, but nonetheless these editions evoked a somewhat mixed response, with some albums better received than others.
    [Show full text]
  • The Songs of Bob Dylan
    The Songwriting of Bob Dylan Contents Dylan Albums of the Sixties (1960s)............................................................................................ 9 The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963) ...................................................................................................... 9 1. Blowin' In The Wind ...................................................................................................................... 9 2. Girl From The North Country ....................................................................................................... 10 3. Masters of War ............................................................................................................................ 10 4. Down The Highway ...................................................................................................................... 12 5. Bob Dylan's Blues ........................................................................................................................ 13 6. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall .......................................................................................................... 13 7. Don't Think Twice, It's All Right ................................................................................................... 15 8. Bob Dylan's Dream ...................................................................................................................... 15 9. Oxford Town ...............................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • The Same Man
    THE SAME MAN BOB DYLAN 1980 by Olof Björner A SUMMARY OF RECORDING & CONCERT ACTIVITIES , RELEASES , TAPES & BOOKS . © 2004 by Olof Björner All Rights Reserved. This text may be reproduced, re-transmitted, redistributed and otherwise propagated at will, provided that this notice remains intact and in place. The Same Man – Bob Dylan 1980 CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................................. 3 2 1980 AT A GLANCE .......................................................................................................................................... 3 3 THE 1980 CALENDAR ..................................................................................................................................... 3 4 SAVED ................................................................................................................................................................ 5 5 THE GOSPEL TOURS 1980 ............................................................................................................................. 6 5.1 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................ 6 5.2 THE SHOW .................................................................................................................................................... 6 5.3 THE MUSICIANS ..........................................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Ain't Goin' Nowhere — Bob Dylan 1967 Page 1
    AIN 'T GOIN ' NOWHERE BOB DYLAN 1967 by Olof Björner A SUMMARY OF RECORDING & CONCERT ACTIVITIES , RELEASES , TAPES & BOOKS . © 2001 by Olof Björner All Rights Reserved. This text may be reproduced, re-transmitted, redistributed and otherwise propagated at will, provided that this notice remains intact and in place. Ain't Goin' Nowhere — Bob Dylan 1967 page 1 CONTENTS: 1 INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................................... 2 2 THE YEAR AT A GLANCE ................................................................................................... 2 3 CALENDAR .............................................................................................................................. 2 4 RECORDINGS ......................................................................................................................... 3 5 JOHN WESLEY HARDING ................................................................................................... 3 6 SONGS 1967 .............................................................................................................................. 5 7 SOURCES .................................................................................................................................. 6 8 SUGGESTED READINGS ...................................................................................................... 7 8.1 GENERAL BACKGROUND .....................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Broadside Songbook
    a d..sid..e BOB DYLAN: W"HAT HIS SONGS REALLY SAY ; DIANA DAVIES IN THIS ISSUE: Bob Dylan's songs interpreted by Alan Weberman, who finds in them the radical militant continuing to protest The Establishment. ALSO: Songs by ARLO GUTHRIE, BRUCE PHILLIPS, PABLO NERUDA, JAN DAVIDSON. FOREWORD Dear Readers of this Songbook: I got a check in the mail the other day. It Bill." They spelled out in detail the whole was for $3,050.06. It came, like similar list of a nation's crime against a people -­ ones before it over the last few years, by with a clear and precise schedule of cash pay­ airmail from a Berlin bank in Germany. As ments due. for each. All realistically worked usual, the explanation on the check said in out in negotiations with the Germans. A cash German, ENTSCHADIGUNGSZAHLUNG. I still can't value placed on all the categories of horrors! pronounce it, but I can translate it: RESTI­ So much for Loss of Life ... Loss of Liberty •.. TUTION PAYMENT. Restitution! To whom? For Loss of Health ... of Parents ... of Education .. c.what? Most important of all -- ~ whom? of Property ... bf Inheritance ... of Insurance .. stitution to the survivors and victims of of Business. It was an enormous task, cover­ ial persecution for the deaths and terrible ing 13 years, and the accounting involved ses they suffered under the Nazi government some six million people killed by the Nazis. Germany. Paid out -- not by the actually But the restitution payments have made it ty Hitler government, but by the suc- possible for the surviving vict~ms of 7ac~sm or government which accepted its responsi­ to start a decent life over aga1n.
    [Show full text]
  • Tangled Generation: Dylan, Kerouac, Petrarch, and the Poetics of Escape Author(S): Timothy Hampton Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol
    Tangled Generation: Dylan, Kerouac, Petrarch, and the Poetics of Escape Author(s): Timothy Hampton Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Summer 2013), pp. 703-731 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/671353 . Accessed: 20/09/2015 11:46 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Critical Inquiry. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 136.152.209.203 on Sun, 20 Sep 2015 11:46:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Tangled Generation: Dylan, Kerouac, Petrarch, and the Poetics of Escape Timothy Hampton And I alone escaped to tell you. —Job (1:15) 1. Tracks “Demonstrators found our house and paraded up and down in front of it chanting and shouting, demanding for me to come out and lead them somewhere—stop shirking my duties as the conscience of a generation. The neighbors hated us. To them it must have seemed like I was something out of a carnival show.”1 So writes Bob Dylan in his memoirs about his life in the late 1960s.
    [Show full text]
  • Blood on the Tracks: ‘Time Is an Enemy’
    Judas! Blood on the Tracks: ‘Time is an enemy’ by John Hinchey ‘Up to Me,’ an outtake eventually released on Biograph, is a rueful ballad of love wasted that picks up the action at the conclusion of ‘Idiot Wind,’immediately after the singer realizes that he and his beloved have fallen out of each other’s orbits. But its tone seems tempered by the realizations of those songs, discussed in the preceding chapter, in which the singer assimilates a devastating romantic loss and struggles to regain speaking terms both with his lost beloved and with himself. Now, in ‘Up to Me,’ the singer he returns to tell her – and himself – what he’s going to do about it. His plan of action is paradoxical: he’s heading out on the ‘Union Central’ in search of the same missing wife he’s leaving. The song I just described is over by the end of the third verse, yet ‘Up to Me’ is twelve verses long. The song gets away from Dylan, overflowing the bounds of the paradoxical farewell note. The lyric feels unfinished, and unlike, for instance, the original version of ‘Idiot Wind’ (later released on The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1-3), it also strikes me as unfinishable, except by starting over from scratch. Indeed, ‘Shelter from the Storm’ can be seen as a radical revision (and revisioning) of ‘Up to Me.’ The problem is that the momentum of feeling that sweeps the singer from one verse to the next seems to be largely unconscious, feelings he recognizes (if at all) only after the fact.
    [Show full text]
  • Pentecost +10 Patterns of Love Bob Dylan's Album Blood on the Tracks, Tells the Story of Painful, Broken Relationships And
    Pentecost +10 Patterns of Love Bob Dylan’s album Blood on the Tracks, tells the story of painful, broken relationships and human loss. His son Jakob has suggested that when he hears the album, he hears the brokenness in his parent’s relationship. Bob denies that the album is personal and instead suggests it is a reflection on Anton Chekov’s short stories. Either way, the listener feels the desolation of broken relations. In his song, “Idiot Wind,” the singer belittles a former love in such an exaggerated manner that it is both humorous and tragic. “Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth Blowing down the backroads headin’ south Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth You’re an idiot, babe It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe”1 These words diminish both the singer and the lost friend. I am also struck by how this same exaggerated language can be used to describe past members of a community after things have gone sour. Sometimes we feel a need demonize those who broken relations and seemed to turn against us. Violence is even possible. In my youth, I remember hearing a pastor say that at a former church, things had gotten so bad that he took to carrying a gun to church.“Idiot Wind” captures the kind of pain that would drive a person to say and even do harmful things toward people they once cared about. The song continues, “I woke up on the roadside, daydreamin’ ’bout the way things sometimes are Visions of your chestnut mare shoot through my head and are makin’ me see stars You hurt the ones that I love best and cover up the truth with lies One day you’ll be in the ditch, flies buzzin’ around your eyes Blood on your saddle” This image of a violent death gives voice to the shattered pieces of a once shared relationship.
    [Show full text]
  • Bob Dylan's Hoboism in John Wesley Harding
    ENGLISH DEPARTMENT, FU JEN CATHOLIC DEPARTMENT GRADUATION PROJECT 2016 Bob Dylan’s Hoboism in John Wesley Harding Research Paper, English Composition III Ying Chen Chen 1 Ying Chen 401110066 Composition and Conversation III 2 July 2015 Bob Dylan’s Hoboism in John Wesley Harding I. Introduction A. Introduction B. Thesis Statement: To answer these questions, this paper chooses to focus on Bob Dylan’s album John Wesley Harding and analyze how self-reliant hoboism and nonconformity are at the core of the album through a sequence of ideas stemming from the establishment of self-reliance, implied pity for the hobos, restoration of justice, to, finally, a simple assurance of human relation and restatement of self-reliance. II. Dylan’s musical career A. Introduction to the 4 stages of Dylan’s career (Bio. ; Williams) 1. 1962 – 1965: Folk Singing 2. 1965 – 1974: Reinventing His Image 3. 1974 – 1989: Touring and Religion 4. Post 90s: Rock Star Status B. The significance of John Wesley Harding (1967) 1. The motorcycle accident and retreat from public sight 2. Dylan’s changed songwriting technique a. Most prominent use of the hobo persona (Gibbens 257) b. Rural myths fused with biblical references 1. Dylan’s self-reliant choice in writing the album a. Going country-folk despite the raging rock n’ roll trend (Hughes 177) b. Self-reliance in reestablishing identity, reemerging into public sight (James 55) III. Hobo characters as motifs in Dylan’s works A. The origin of hobos and two types of hoboism 1. The origin of hobos: transient workers (Liberman) 2. Nonelective transience: homelessness (wanders due to perils in life) (Elkholy) 3.
    [Show full text]
  • The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan Edited by Kevin J
    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88694-9 - The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan Edited by Kevin J. H. Dettmar Frontmatter More information the cambridge companion to bob dylan A towering figure in American culture and a global twentieth-century icon, Bob Dylan has been at the center of American life for over forty years. The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan brings fresh insights into the imposing range of Dylan’s creative output. The first Part approaches Dylan’s output thematically, tracing the evolution of Dylan’s writing and his engagement with American popular music, religion, politics, fame, and his work as a songwriter and performer. Chapters in Part II analyze his landmark albums to examine the consummate artistry of Dylan’s most accomplished studio releases. As a writer Dylan has courageously chronicled and interpreted many of the cultural upheavals in America since World War II. This book will be invaluable both as a guide for students of Dylan and twentieth-century culture, and for his fans, providing a set of new perspectives on a much-loved writer and composer. kevin j. h. dettmar is W. M. Keck Professor and Chair of the Department of English, Pomona College, California. © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88694-9 - The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan Edited by Kevin J. H. Dettmar Frontmatter More information CAMBRIDGE COMPANIONS TO AMERICAN STUDIES This series of Companions to key figures in American history and culture is aimed at students of American studies, history and literature. Each volume features newly commissioned essays by experts in the field, with a chronology and guide to further reading.
    [Show full text]