Positively Bob Dylan

It was a night of surprises one might say…and it’s not the 77th academy awards we’re talking of here. The web’s first international Dylan Top 30 song voting ended with a winning track that can very well be called a major surprise to all of us: “Visions Of Johanna”, the seven-and-a-half minutes long epic ballad off the album classic “Blonde On Blonde” (1966) made the race. 44.1% of the participants voted for the album track, which wasn’t even released on any single except for a german 7″ mono EP b-side (picture).
The Top 10 included two songs respectively of “Blood On The Tracks” (”Idiot Wind” and “Tangled Up In Blue”), “Highway 61 Revisited” (”Like A Rolling Stone” and “Desolation Row”) and “Bringing It All Back Home” (”Mr. Tambourine Man” and “It’s All Right Ma”). “Tangled” became second and even managed to beat “Rolling Stone” by two votes.
The oldest song in the Top 10 was “Don’t Think Twice” (from 1963’s “Freewheelin”) on 10, the newest was “Not Dark Yet” (from 1997’s “Time Out Of Mind”) on rank 6. “Blind Willie McTell” was the most popular rare track. The “Infidels”-outtake featuring Mark Knopfler on guitar, which was only released on 1991’s box set “Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3″, made it to the 7.

Thanks everybody for your participation. Due to the big success of the voting there will be a permanent song voting/discussion section on this site some time soon…

You can now participate in the web’s first all-time Top 30 song voting of your favorite songs written and performed by Bob Dylan. Just click the link below and make your selection out of more than 120 classic tracks! The song list contains singles, album cuts and classic rarities from over 40 years. And if your favorite song is missing, there’s a place to submit it too.

Five years after its initial publication this website was completely relaunched. The first thing you’ll notice is of course the new design, which makes it one of the web’s most attractive inofficial Bob Dylan websites.
New content and features include an extensive Dylan album and song database with detailed information on classics, rare tracks and Mike Hobo’s hot picks, singles and b-sides as well as tracks recorded for movie soundtracks and compilations. Both songs and albums can now be browsed through by category or item by item.
News and features have been extended and can now be found directly on the homepage.
The biography section was split into decades, the musicians page and the gallery have been updated. The forum is now moderated, keeping non-Dylan-related or nonsene postings from being published. Submitted sites for the links section will now be checked and categorized by the webmaster.
The very popular trivia and opinion poll as well as the unique “Bob era cam” are classics and couldn’t really be improved, well they actually do look a little better now and work a little smoother.
And last but not least there are two all new sections, “Producers” and “Essential Bootlegs”.

Mike Hobo would like to thank your for your visiting this site. It’s your support that makes it one of the web’s most popular Bob Dylan fansites.

Bob Dylan FanZite’s editor Mike Hobo was interviewed on Bob Dylan by ITV/Channel 4 for a Fan Speaks special on Teletext’s Total Entertainment section.
Read the full interview here:

ITV: Where does Dylan stand in the pantheon of rock performers, if you can call him a rock artist?

Mike: A lot (maybe even too much) has been written about this. In my opinion the fascination of Bob Dylan can be found in the combination of his huge archive of work (and countless classic recordings, of course) as well as in the myth behind his life (or behind the shades - as bd biographer Clinton Heylin calls it). Similar as the Rolling Stones Bob Dylan until today lived through more than 4 decades being an active recording and performing artist. In this respect two or even three generations of fans actually “grew up” listening to his music.

ITV: What will his legacy be?

Mike: His legacy will be a huge songbook of classic folk/rock recordings, rock music’s probably most unpredictable concerts and his unique and controversial personality.

ITV: How do you think his conversion to Christianity for the Slow Train Coming album affected his fans?

Mike: He may have lost older fans from the “classic period” of the 1960s, but long-term Bob Dylan fans and new ones soon recognized that one of this artist’s most important impacts on music history would be his ability to change - as he did several times during the past 4 decades. By the way, religious topics in performing arts were kind of a “zeitgeist” phenomenon during the late 1970s. And: As the contemporary new recordings and tributes of “Slow Train” have shown, apart from all the disussion some great pieces of music still can be found even in Dylan’s probably most controversial period.

ITV: What do you think of his acting roles in Pat Garrett, Hearts Of Fire and the new movie, Masked & Anonymous?

Mike: Hardcore fans might see it another way, but concerning movies/acting in general, his earlier performances should be referred to as being “guest star appearances”. In “Masked & Anonymous” however he had the chance to play more or less himself and that of course is rather credible, even if one must admit that Dylan seems more secure in singing or writing than he is in speaking his prepared lines.

ITV: Is it true he records most of his albums in one take and hates to linger in the studio?

Mike: That’s what some “insiders” talk about, yes. I couldn’t tell for I’ve never been to a Bob Dylan recording session. Having listened to some unreleased studio tapes however I can say that he certainly does several takes of his songs, sometimes in totally different versions. In general Bob Dylan himself once said that recordings have never really been that important to him - he just wanted them to be finished and then play the (new) songs LIVE.

ITV: Do you think he ever won back his former folk fans after alienating them with his conversion to electric music in the ’60s?

Mike: I think those might be lost forever - and Bob Dylan for sure doesn’t care…his true fans long for the new and the (renewed) old.

ITV: Does he still have anything to contribute to music today? Is he an evolving artist or one whose appeal is essentially a nostalgic quality?

Mike: This one is really hard to answer, for I personally still love what he does and always long for his next album to come. I do see however that today other things count in popular music. MTV and the images of music videos have changed a lot since the 1980s. Those who listen more carefully however will be surprised by the variety of styles and songs Dylan still records. And most of all by the real beauty of atmosphere he’s able to create. Most of his songs (past and today) will stand the test of time and remain as fashions will come and go.

ITV: Thanks very much.

ITV-Teletext website: http://www.teletext.co.uk