Positively Bob Dylan

Visitors of this website have voted “Mr. Tambourine Man” Dylan’s greatest song ever. The classic 1965 album cut off Bringing It All Back Home reached the peak of the Top 100 Dylan Songs rating in April, closely followed by - and this might be a little surprise to some - Blood On The Tracks’ “Idiot Wind”. A few excerpts from user comments on the song: “the lyrics/imagery are unapproachable”, “first psychedelic vision of rock”, “last verse has been my personal touchstone for close on 42 years”, “Dylan is restless and aimless he is searching for something”, “The amazing thing about Dylan is that he can bathe himself into the sickness of a song, and then come out again.”
Feel free to vote for “Mr. Tambourine Man” as well, or post your own personal comment on the song or on any other officially released Bob Dylan tune.

For his “profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power” Bob Dylan received a Special Citation at the Pulitzer Prizes 2008 on Monday. It was the first time the Pulitzer Prize Board awarded an art form once dismissed as subversive. So the times they have changed again and Rock ’n Roll has finally broken through the Pulitzer wall to join the exclusive club of icons in literature, journalism, classic music, and jazz. Congratulations, you got a good deal!

Check out this interview with Zainab in addition to the posting below, Exclusive offer: Dylan’s original 1st Chronicles manuscript. When I asked for the permission to put it on YouTube, Zainab added that it was actually at the end of August when she and Hans Marius Stormoen received the second Chronicles manuscript from Simon and Schuster, and not in September as said in the video interview.

When Zainab McCoy, visual and performing artist from Philadelphia who is currently living in Oslo contacted me, I was immediately astonished by the unique item she had to offer: Her late husband Hans Marius Stormoen translated Dylan’s “Chronicles, Volume 1″ into Norwegian. After his work was finished, Zainab asked him what to do with the original manuscript. His simple reply was “Put it in the trash. Or just do whatever you want to do with it”, she tells me. But of course this is not what you would do with a true collector’s item.
To everyone’s surprise, just before Bob Dylan’s book was going to be released worldwide and Stormoen was nearly halfway finished translating it, the phone rang. It was the Chief Editor of the Norwegian publishing house, telling him to immediately stop his translation, “Dylan has sent us a new manuscript”! On the same day the new version of the manuscript arrived from New York, the one that would later end up as the official book release. Zainab’s job was to read both versions and mark the changes that Dylan had made so that her husband could easily find them and not have to completely run through what he had already translated. A complicated task, as she confirms.
Back to the first, completely unedited manuscript: As Zainab told me, in the first manuscript you can hear Dylan’s voice, his casual unedited way of speaking and writing. It even includes Bob’s personal note to the editor “type written on the PC”. None of the manuscripts contain any handwriting by Dylan. Still since there were so many changes made from the first to the second manuscript, the original unpublished version remains an important item for every serious rarities collector and Bob Dylan fan.

Please note that the authenticity of the original Chronicles manuscript copies can be verified by Morten Malmø, Chief Editor at DAMM/EGMONT in Oslo, Norway, who personally hand delivered the first manuscript to Hans Marius Stormoen, who also translated several other works such as Bob Dylan’s “Scrape Book”. He died on June 1, 2006, whilst in the middle of translating Sharon Osbourne’s autobiography “Extreme”.

Supported by positively-bobdylan.com Zainab McCoy now exclusively offers to sell the original first manuscript to the highest bidder - THIS IS A CALL TO SERIOUS COLLECTORS ONLY! McCoy will request a face-to-face meeting with the eventual buyer to see and purchase the complete manuscript. It will NOT be sent via e-mail! In case you are seriously interested, you may contact her at hmstormo@hotmail.com.