DYLAN IN CHINA

I realise I'm putting my spoke in rather belatedly here, but I'm travelling in Ireland without my aged, heavy laptop so I can only grab computer time fleetingly and seldom. But  -  I have rarely read so much nonsense in the daily press, and the broadsheets have been worse than the tabloids, if anything, than on the subject of Dylan in China "deliberately leaving out" his usual protest songs (ie 'Blowin' in the Wind' and 'The Times They Are A-Changin'), and "charging through his set without any banter with the crowd" and "only introducing his band after 90 minutes". Trashiest report of all, I thought, was from some idiot in the Independent On Sunday.


Have these people ever been to a Dylan concert? Do they have no idea how many songs he's written, or how many he necessarily leaves out of each concert?

Besides which, he sang 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall', including "And the executioner's face is always well hidden". Not exactly 'I Want To Hold Your Hand'. 

Further, here's a paragraph taken from John Baldwin's Desolation Row Newsletter of the other day:

Just to put a lie to the suggestion that “Blowin’ In The Wind” is a banned song in China, listen and watch this Chinese TV newscast about the arrival of Bob Dylan – it lasts about 10 minutes and is followed by a totally unintelligible discussion (unless you speak Chinese), but it’s well worth viewing to take in a different side. Dylan coming to China had very clearly touched the public imagination. See:

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150214009635540


Of course, I'm not saying, either, that Dylan doesn't know where he is when he's choosing songs. Hence for example his brave and most appropriately serious performance of 'Masters Of War' a few years ago in one of the Japanese cities atom-bombed in World War II.

It makes you wonder what level of attention his 70th birthday will receive from these papers next month.