Wicked Messenger

Bob Dylan’s abrupt abandonment of overtly political songwriting in the mid-1960s caused an uproar among critics and fans. In Wicked Messenger, acclaimed cultural-political commentator Mike Marqusee advances the new thesis that Dylan did not drop politics from his songs but changed the manner of his critique to address the changing political and cultural climate and, more importantly, his own evolving aesthetic. Wicked Messenger is also a riveting political history of the United States in the 1960s. Tracing the development of the decade’s political and cultural dissent movements, Marqusee shows how their twists and turns were anticipated in the poetic aesthetic—anarchic, unaccountable, contradictory, punk— of Dylan's mid-sixties albums, as well as in his recent artistic ventures in Chronicles, Vol. I and Masked and Anonymous. Dylan’s anguished, self-obsessed, prickly artistic evolution, Marqusee asserts, was a deeply creative response to a deeply disturbing situation. "He can no longer tell the story straight," Marqusee concludes, "because any story told straight is a false one."

Those Practical Proverbs is a verse-by-verse commentary on the book of Proverbs from a pastor’s perspective. It begins with an exploration of the authorship of Proverbs—most of which was written by King Solomon, with brief sections by Agur, the son of Jakeh, and the words of King Lemuel (from an oracle which his mother taught him). It proceeds to an explanation of the structure of Hebrew poetry, a list of some of the topics addressed in the book, and an outline of the book. The opening chapters of Proverbs (1–9) consist of longer “wisdom poems” on a variety of significant subjects. Most of the chapters of Proverbs consist of single-verse observations concerning many of life’s practical concerns (with occasional multiverse entries). The book concludes with the entries of Agur and King Lemuel and, finally, the classic alphabetic acrostic poem regarding the excellent wife. Because the book focuses largely on the wisdom and understanding, which find their origin in the fear of the Lord, it is among the most life-enriching books ever written. It is extremely important for anyone who longs for practical guidance in the many issues of life.

Bob Dylan and his artistic accomplishments have been explored, examined, and dissected year in and year out for decades, and through almost every lens. Yet rarely has anyone delved extensively into Dylan's Jewish heritage and the influence of Judaism in his work. In Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet, Seth Rogovoy, an award-winning critic and expert on Jewish music, rectifies that oversight, presenting a fascinating new look at one of the most celebrated musicians of all time. Rogovoy unearths the various strands of Judaism that appear throughout Bob Dylan's songs, revealing the ways in which Dylan walks in the footsteps of the Jewish Prophets. Rogovoy explains the profound depth of Jewish content—drawn from the Bible, the Talmud, and the Kabbalah—at the heart of Dylan's music, and demonstrates how his songs can only be fully appreciated in light of Dylan's relationship to Judaism and the Jewish themes that inform them. From his childhood growing up the son of Abe and Beatty Zimmerman, who were at the center of the small Jewish community in his hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota, to his frequent visits to Israel and involvement with the Orthodox Jewish outreach movement Chabad, Judaism has permeated Dylan's everyday life and work. Early songs like "Blowin' in the Wind" derive central imagery from passages in the books of Ezekiel and Isaiah; mid-career numbers like "Forever Young" are infused with themes from the Bible, Jewish liturgy, and Kabbalah; while late-period efforts have revealed a mind shaped by Jewish concepts of Creation and redemption. In this context, even Dylan's so-called born-again period is seen as a logical, almost inevitable development in his growth as a man and artist wrestling with the burden and inheritance of the Jewish prophetic tradition. Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet is a fresh and illuminating look at one of America's most renowned—and one of its most enigmatic—talents.

This book itemizes Bob Dylan's copyright registrations and copyright-related documents from his first copyrighted work ("Talkin' John Birch Blues" in February 1962), to his first registration ("Song to Woody"), up to "Keep It With Mine" in the movie "I'm Not There." Also included are works he never registered (e.g. "Liverpool Gal" and "Church With No Upstairs") and his registered cover versions of other composers' songs. Annotated entries concern subjects such as recording dates, co-writers, and Dylan's companies. Its appearance is meant to mimic the printed Catalog of Copyright Entries.

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. Many critics have interpreted Bob Dylan's lyrics, especially those composed during the middle to late 1960s, in the contexts of their relation to American folk, blues, and rock'n'roll precedents; their discographical details and concert performances; their social, political and cultural relevance; and/or their status for discussion as “poems.” Dylan's Autobiography of a Vocation instead focuses on how all of Dylan's 1965-1967 songs manifest traces of his ongoing, internal “autobiography” in which he continually declares and questions his relation to a self-determined existential summons.

From Washington Square Park and the Gaslight Café to WNYC Radio and Folkways Records, New York City's cultural, artistic, and commercial assets helped to shape a distinctively urban breeding ground for the folk music revival of the 1950s and 60s. Folk City explores New York's central role in fueling the nationwide craze for folk music in postwar America. It involves the efforts of record company producers and executives, club owners, concert promoters, festival organizers, musicologists, agents and managers, editors and writers - and, of course, musicians and audiences. In Folk City, authors Stephen Petrus and Ron Cohen capture the exuberance of the times and introduce readers to a host of characters who brought a new style to the biggest audience in the history of popular music. Among the savvy New York entrepreneurs committed to promoting folk music were Izzy Young of the Folklore Center, Mike Porco of Gerde's Folk City, and John Hammond of Columbia Records. While these and other businessmen developed commercial networks for musicians, the performance venues provided the artists space to test their mettle. The authors portray Village coffee houses not simply as lively venues but as incubators of a burgeoning counterculture, where artists from diverse backgrounds honed their performance techniques and challenged social conventions. Accessible and engaging, fresh and provocative, rich in anecdotes and primary sources, Folk City is lavishly illustrated with images collected for the accompanying major exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York in 2015.

An updated edition of the most comprehensive account of Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize-winning work yet published, with the full story of every recording session, every album, and every single released during his nearly 60-year career. Bob Dylan: All the Songs focuses on Dylan's creative process and his organic, unencumbered style of recording. It is the only book to tell the stories, many unfamiliar even to his most fervent fans, behind the more than 500 songs he has released over the span of his career. Organized chronologically by album, Margotin and Guesdon detail the origins of his melodies and lyrics, his process in the recording studio, the instruments he used, and the contribution of a myriad of musicians and producers to his canon.

A Generation X transgender woman, Sherilyn Connelly came out of the closet in 1999. Her own identity still emerging, she had stumbled into a difficult, stifling relationship. Also, her employment at a tech company ceased when the dot-com bubble burst. It was a goth boy from Bolinas that first took her shopping for make-up, and the San Francisco goth scene became her respite. This wickedly eye-opening memoir reveals how Connelly dealt with a toxic partner and found her voice as a woman. A longtime cinephile, it tells how she became a writer, rekindled a love for cult films and horror conventions, and learned "the secret to becoming a star." Her remembrances are also a tale of a bygone era of sex, music and San Francisco and its darkened underworld of goth strays--her literate vampires and beautiful ghosts.

This study of Bob Dylan’s art employs a performance studies lens, exploring the distinctive ways he brings words and music to life on recordings, onstage, and onscreen. Chapters focus on the relationship of Dylan’s recorded performances to the historical bardic role, to the American popular song tradition, and to rock music culture. His uses of both stage and studio to shape his performances are explored, as are his forays into cinema. Special consideration is given to his vocal performances and to his use of particular personae as a performer. The full scope of Dylan’s body of work to date is situated in terms of the influences that have shaped his performances and the ways these performances have shaped contemporary popular music.

We live in a foolish world with women making bad choices and suffering from the collateral damage of other's wrong choices. The One Year Wisdom for Women Devotional, based on the audio program of the same name, was birthed out of the great need for women to hear how God addresses every single facet of their lives through the powerful and practical book of Proverbs. For many, the Proverbs are hard to study because the topics jump around from verse to verse. The One Year Wisdom for Women Devotional is a practical tool that will help women in their daily walk with the Lord. It is a great companion to the One Year Bible because it directly follows that book's daily Proverbs reading. Each day not only follows the script of the Wisdom for Women audio program, it also references the One Year Bible reading schedule and ends with a powerful call to action.