We watched the Bob Dylan television programme, ‘No Direction Home’, directed by Martin Scorsese.

I was quite interested. The LTLP lay on the sofa, radiating ‘this is shit’ vibes. She is not an intellectual like me.

I don’t know much about Martin Scorsese but he also did the video for ‘Bad’ by Michael Jackson so he clearly knows a lot about film making. It was pretty good but I think he could have broken it up a bit more by including clips of people like Paul Ross, Kate Thornton etc. talking about the songs, his funny hat and haircut etc.

Scorsese showed him playing in Newcastle with his controversial new electric backing band. They were brilliant and it was an unexpectedly good recording quality as well. Unfortunately Bob Dylan seemed to be a bit pissed and just stood there looking at the ceiling and shouting the words. He was rubbish. I would have yelled at him as well. Just because he is a genius doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t make a bit of an effort to hit the notes.

Although one thing was noticeable – the hecklers were loud and cross-sounding, but by no means the obvious majority. They just shouted the loudest. Like angry commenters on a political web log they just wanted to spoil it for everybody else.

Tonight we will presumably see the famous heckle of ‘Judas!’ followed by Dylan’s equally famous put-down reply of ‘I don’t belieeeve you’. He must lie awake at nights still thinking “why oh why could I not think of a better comeback than that? Something like ‘oh yes, I remember my first pint’ or something.”

Was he a genius? Of course, and a visionary. Only recently people have been talking about how he anticipated the levees breaking in New Orleans, and the Mayor of that city must be kicking himself for not sorting out the pumps whose handles had been so irresponsibly removed by vandals. And there was quite a hard rain the other night, or certainly there was to the south over towards Swaffham.

But now with my Post Office stuff Bob has passed the baton, and it is one that I am happy to pick up and run with. Popular music no longer has the power it once had to change the world, and it is now up to us New Journalists. It is a big responsibility but I will try not to let him down.

I do not normally do TV reviews on here, as fans expect stories about Short Tony getting drunk.

This is my ‘gone electric’.

Links:
My favourite Bob Dylan album
Kate Thornton IMDB entry