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Bob Dylan (2021)

Happy 81st Birthday, Bobby!

In celebration of Bob Dylan’s birthday, born on this day in 1941, I present to you Shadow Kingdom, a 2021 concert film featuring American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Directed by Israeli-American filmmaker Alma Har’el, it was shot on a soundstage in Santa Monica, California over seven days in early 2021 while Dylan was sidelined from his Never Ending Tour due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The film features Dylan and a group of masked musicians performing 13 songs from the first half of Dylan’s career in an intimate club-like setting.

Shadow Kingdom showcases Bob Dylan in an intimate setting as he performs songs from his extensive body of work, created especially for this event. It marked his first concert performance since December 2019, and first performance since his universally acclaimed album Rough and Rowdy Ways. The earliest composition in the set list was “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” from the 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home and the most recent composition was “What Was It You Wanted” from 1989’s Oh Mercy. In addition to Dylan, who plays guitar and harmonica and sings, most of the song arrangements consist of two additional guitars, a bass and an accordion. The performance of “Forever Young” also features a dolceola.

TRACKS:

When I Paint My Masterpiece

Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine

Queen Jane Approximately

I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight

Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues

Tombstone Blues

To Be Alone with You

What Was it You Wanted

Forever Young

Pledging My Time

The Wicked Messenger

Watching the River Flow

It’s All Over Now Baby Blue

MUSICIANS:

Alex Burke

Buck Meek

Shahzad Ismaily

Janie Cowan

Joshua Crumbly

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Emma Swift (2020)

From Emma’s “Blonde on the Tracks” album, released August 2020 by Tiny Ghost Records.

In honor of Bob Dylan’s 1966 song One of Us Must Know, released 56 years ago today, I present to you Emma Swift’s beautiful rendition of the song. Enjoy.

Art direction, concept, graphic design: Yvonne Moxham

Animation: Alex Dar

“Her high, clear voice highlights each syllable, letting you hear the words form, one seemingly following inevitably from the other, until they feel handed down, fragments of old songs now speaking to each other.”

Greil Marcus, LA Review of Books

One of Us Must Know is an emotional confession of mis-connects and apologies from Bob Dylan to a young woman he regrets having mistreated.

Emma Swift is an Australian singer-songwriter. Before becoming a musician, she was a radio broadcaster, hosting Americana music show In the Pines on FBi Radio and Revelator on Double J at Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney, Australia.

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Happy Bob Dylan Day, 2021!

“I‘m never going to become rich and famous” – Bob Dylan in 1962.

Today we celebrate Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday. Thank you for the meaningful and relatable music and for the inspiration when I needed it most.

Dylan was just 20 years old when he appeared on the Folksingers Choice radio program on WBAI FM in New York City. He’d arrived in Manhattan just a few years earlier and was playing in the coffee houses of Greenwich Village, at one in particular he was paid “a dollar plus a cheeseburger.”

During this hour-long interview with Cynthia Gooding, Dylan played some of his own songs (“The Death of Emmett Till”, “Standing on the Highway”) and covers of classics by Howlin’ Wolf, Hank Williams, and Woody Guthrie. We scored this Blank on Blank with Dylan tuning up his guitar and playing his harmonica.

It’s a wonderful snapshot in time, with a young Dylan before he was famous and before he even released his debut album. He’s nervous and funny. He’s just a guy with a guitar with a little mischief underneath.

Listen to the full interview and hear some rarely heard songs on our website: http://blankonblank.org/bob-dylan/

Animated by Patrick Smith

The Night WE CALLED IT a Day from Bob Dylan’s album Shadows In The Night, directed by Nash Edgerton.

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Ralph Bakshi ft. Jefferson Airplane (1981)

The song Somebody to Love by Jefferson Airplane was featured on the movie American Pop by Ralph Bakshi in 1981.

Following the production struggles of The Lord of the Rings, Ralph Bakshi decided that it was time to work on something more personal. He pitched American Pop to Columbia Pictures president Dan Melnick. Bakshi wanted to produce a film with an extensive soundtrack of songs which would be given an entirely new context in juxtaposition to the visuals in a film. While the film does not reflect Bakshi’s own experiences, its themes were strongly influenced by individuals he had encountered in Brownsville. The film’s crew included character layout and design artist Louise Zingarelli, Vita, Barry E. Jackson, and Marcia Adams, each of whom brought their own personal touch to the film. Bakshi once again used rotoscoping, in an attempt to capture the range of emotions and movement required for the film’s story. According to Bakshi, “Rotoscoping is terrible for subtleties, so it was tough to get facial performances to match the stage ones.”

The score for American Pop was composed by Lee Holdridge. As the result of his reputation as an innovator of adult animation, Bakshi was able to acquire the rights to an extensive soundtrack, including songs by Bob Dylan, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, The Doors, George Gershwin, The Mamas & the Papas, Herbie Hancock, Lou Reed, and Louis Prima, for under $1 million in permissions fees. Due to music clearance issues, the film was not released on home video until 1998.

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Ralph Bakshi (1981)

Created and animated by Ralph Bakshi in 1981, American Pop is an animated story of a very talented and troubled family starting with 19th-century Russia and moving through several generations of musicians. The film covers American popular music from the pre-jazz age through rhythm and blues, 1950s rock ‘n’ roll, drug-laden psychedelia, and punk rock, finally ending with the onset of New Wave in the early 1980s.

American Pop is a 1981 American adult animated musical drama film starring Ron Thompson and produced and directed by Ralph Bakshi. It was the fourth animated feature film to be presented in Dolby sound. The film tells the story of four generations of a Russian Jewish immigrant family of musicians whose careers parallel the history of American popular music in the 20th century.

The majority of the film’s animation was completed through rotoscoping, a process in which live actors are filmed and the subsequent footage is used for animators to draw over. However, the film also uses a variety of other mixed media including water colors, computer graphics, live-action shots, and archival footage.

Following the production struggles of The Lord of the Rings, Ralph Bakshi decided that it was time to work on something more personal. He pitched American Pop to Columbia Pictures president Dan Melnick. Bakshi wanted to produce a film with an extensive soundtrack of songs which would be given an entirely new context in juxtaposition to the visuals in a film. While the film does not reflect Bakshi’s own experiences, its themes were strongly influenced by individuals he had encountered in Brownsville. The film’s crew included character layout and design artist Louise Zingarelli, Vita, Barry E. Jackson, and Marcia Adams, each of whom brought their own personal touch to the film. Bakshi once again used rotoscoping, in an attempt to capture the range of emotions and movement required for the film’s story.

“Rotoscoping is terrible for subtleties, so it was tough to get facial performances to match the stage ones.”

Ralph Bakshi

The rock band Fear appeared in the film, Fear lead singer Lee Ving acted under the name Lee James Jude. And actor Elya Baskin performed in the film in an early role as a tuba player.

The score for American Pop was composed by Lee Holdridge. As the result of his reputation as an innovator of adult animation, Bakshi was able to acquire the rights to an extensive soundtrack, including songs by Bob Dylan, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, The Doors, George Gershwin, The Mamas & the Papas, Herbie Hancock, Lou Reed, and Louis Prima.

If you enjoyed American Pop, please check out this other wonderful creation by Ralph Bakshi entitled THIS Ain’t BeBop by clicking on the link below:

https://hobomooncartoons.com/2020/04/15/this-aint-bebop/