Songwriting and Production
Here are 3 very very rich people. One is happy to participate in juicing the public for more based on a story he walked into. The other two aren’t so sure.
All three surviving members of Led Zeppelin were supposed to promote the upcoming feature-length documentary film “Becoming Led Zeppelin” at the Venice film festival in 2021, LedZepNews…
Dusting ‘Em Off is a rotating, free-form feature that revisits a classic album, film, or moment in pop-culture history. This week, Editorial Director Matt Melis disobediently revisits D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary Dont Look Back 50 years later.
“You seem to be relating to a handful of cronies behind the scenes now – rather than the rest of us out front. Now that’s all okay – if that’s the way you want it. But then you’re a different Bob Dylan from the one we knew. The old one never wasted our precious time…” –Irwin Silber, Sing Out! Nov. 1964.
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These scathing words from Sing Out! editor Irwin Silber came on the heels of Bob Dylan’s second 1964 release, Another Side of Bob Dylan. In January of that year, Dylan’s The Times They Are a-Changin’ had earned him praise in folk circles and strengthened the fervor, among some, to anoint the songwriter the voice of his generation. But Another Side, recorded and released in the summer of ’64, revealed an artist who refused to be pinned down so neatly. Gone were the gritty protest anthems that depicted the plight of the poor, minorities, and other marginalized peoples, replaced instead by songs that turned inward to matters of the heart, adopted humor, and viewed the world through a more surrealist bent.
more @ Source: Don’t Look Back: Seeing the Real Bob Dylan at Last? | Consequence of Sound
What strikes you when you watch True Stories now?
[Laughs]. I can’t look at it with an objective eye. I see the mistakes, where I feel like, “Oh, that’s a little forced,” or, “That lyric could have been better.” I’m looking at it with a critical eye.
At the same time, I feel like it pretty much holds up. It’s funny how everything the movie talks about — the way the computer industry and landscapes of cities and towns are all changing — are still happening and have been going on since the movie was made. So it’s nice to see that it doesn’t seem that dated.
One thing that has changed though is that you can no longer say, “Shopping malls are the new town squares,” as you do in the movie.
I don’t know if that was my original idea. But yes, it seemed like the shopping malls were hollowing out the local town square and main streets. People were going to the malls and Walmarts and big-box stores instead of the main streets, and now the malls are being repurposed as homeless shelters, incubators and who knows what else.
Your big inspiration for the movie was reading headlines in tabloids. Were you mostly reading Weekly World News at the time?
Yeah, they were all from Weekly World News. They weren’t really in the [National] Enquirer. They seemed to be the kind of thing that Buzzfeed might do now, where they take a legitimate human-interest news story and give it a more interesting title and they would catch your eye. I just kept those.
more @ Source: David Byrne Reflects on His Cult Movie ‘True Stories’ – Rolling Stone
