Dylan has a 17 handicap!

[MK]

Apparantly Bob Dylan is the 63rd best musician/golfer out there.

Golf Digest list of music's top golfers

I can't imagine Dylan on the links in the whole golf garb, but it is exciting to think about his short game, his club selection, him yelling "Fore!", him cleaning his ball, getting a birdie, driving a cart, smoking pot on the fairway, searching for his ball in the rough...I guess it's exciting to think of Dylan doing anything.

Tomorrow night in London, 4th row!!!

[Kanada Kev]

Cool! Did you notice that he got an asterisk? It says "if you've seen him play lately, call us"! Maybe you should call them after the London show .

I Shall Be Free

http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/befree10.html

I'm gonna grow my hair down to my feet so strange

So I look like a walking mountain range

And I'm gonna ride into Omaha on a horse

Out to the country club and the golf course.

Carry the New York Times, shoot a few holes, blow their minds.

Have a great time at the show. I'm counting the days until the Toronto show ... FRONT ROW baby

Later . . .

Kanada Kev =8)

Edited November 2, 2006 by Guest

[questcequecest?]

(from today's K-W Record)

[h1]Highway 401: revisited[/h1]

[h2]25 years on from Bob Dylan's only Kitchener show, times have definitely changed. But as the legendary folk singer gears up for gigs down the road, at least one thing remains the same: his dedication to bucking the trend[/h2]

JASON SCHNEIDER

Bob Dylan in concert at the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium on Nov. 1, 1981 -- knee-deep in his recovery from a series of baffling career moves, among them a slick, Vegas-style world tour. The Record's reviewer sparked pages of outraged letters after describing Dylan as "listless, apathetic, bored and lazy."

(Nov 3, 2006)

Bob Dylan recently released a new album called Modern Times. It's got some fine songs, perhaps not as consistent overall as its two predecessors, Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft, but at this point anything the 65-year-old does is treated as a bonus to his already immeasurable legacy.

That's because Dylan has stayed true to his ever-evolving muse, while somehow keeping his larger-than-life persona at bay. This balancing act has put him back on top, building as it has from a gruelling schedule -- the Never-Ending Tour winds its way to London's John Labatt Centre tonight and Toronto's Air Canada Centre on Tuesday -- and winning over both old and new critics with a determined resistance to all current trends and fashion, in favour of a reconnection with the arcane spirit of America that has always been the lifeblood of his best work.

Of course, it wasn't always this way. In 1981, Dylan's career was probably at its lowest ebb, but then again, a lot of things were. The death of John Lennon, combined with the dawn of the Reagan era the year before, had wiped away the last vestiges of '60s radicalism that Dylan represented as "spokesman for his generation.''

On top of that, Dylan was still recovering from a series of baffling career moves, among them a slick, Vegas-style world tour and subsequent conversion to Christianity, which turned him into a Bible-thumping preacher onstage. In '81, he released Shot of Love, the most "secular'' of his "born again'' albums, but by then, many outside of the most diehard supporters had had enough.

That certainly was the case when Dylan and his band found themselves in the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium on Halloween of that year, a gig that promised the return of the "classic'' Dylan style and sound. But according to The Record's reviewer, arts reporter John Kiely, the show was anything but inspiring. After describing Dylan as appearing "listless, apathetic, bored and lazy,'' Kiely remained focused on the lingering Christian material, writing, "The man whose words were once studied in university poetry classes has now reached a level where profundity is found at the level of tracts.'' He added as a parting shot, "His day is over, and the man won't even let us say goodbye.''

What followed was an unprecedented backlash from fans, forcing The Record to print two full pages of angry letters, and Kiely to write a follow-up column in his own defence. With all due respect to the late Mr. Kiely, most of these letters, like the one submitted by Eileen Myers of Guelph, show great insight in present-day context.

"As for the Bob Dylan I saw Saturday night,'' she wrote, "he could have just stepped off (the cover) of Blonde On Blonde. I recognized every note and appropriate lyric of his old songs regarding the state of the world today."

Of course, the benefit of hindsight makes it easy to pick apart Kiely's honest, immediate impressions -- I myself was too young to contradict them at the time. But if a high-quality bootleg from New Orleans a few weeks prior to the Kitchener show is any indication, Dylan and his band had something to prove at the Aud that night.

Surrounded by longtime collaborators Al Kooper, Jim Keltner, Tim Drummond and Fred Tackett, Dylan in '81 was indeed taking his first cautious steps toward reclaiming his past and reshaping it for a new era. Songs like Blowin' In The Wind and Forever Young had a powerful, gospel-tinged elegance, while newer bluesy material like Dead Man Dead Man stood strongly alongside protest anthems like Masters of War.

It was a creative transformation that didn't fully come to fruition until the mid-'90s, and every concert, both in the interim and after, has relentlessly thrived on the notion of perpetual change in accordance with the mood of the times.

It's easy now to imagine Dylan walking onstage like a pitcher taking the mound, and proceeding to throw a mix of curveballs, change-ups and meaty fastballs in hopes of a perfect game. As baseball fans know, that hardly ever happens, just as all Dylan fans have their own definitions of the perfect show. But as with all great pitchers, there are moments of pure brilliance each time that can take your breath away.

For that reason -- as it was the first time I saw him in 1988 in Hamilton, and as it will be tonight when I see him in London for the umpteenth time -- Dylan's concerts cannot be judged in black and white, good and bad terms, as so many things in society currently are. Martin Scorsese's documentary, No Direction Home, makes the point succinctly: Dylan accomplished what today seems the impossible; he made the world come to him on his own terms.

And it still does. We hang on to the few remaining artists in all forms, like Dylan, as confirmation that a more enlightened world did in fact exist at one time not so long ago. I realized this at the same time I realized the great songwriters of my generation will only end up as footnotes down the road, based on contemporary pop culture's lethal obsession with narcissism.

It is said that history is written by the victors. In the past 25 years, the only victors in the music business have been the marketers, and there's no sign that will change anytime soon. This is all you need to keep in mind when you see Bob Dylan nowadays. The fact remains that, as long as he is with us, having the opportunity to hear him play his songs will fill a need in our souls; whether it is a love for humanity, a love for a significant other, a love of rock and roll, or simply a love of language. Who cares if he mumbles the words? To paraphrase his protege, Robbie Robertson of The Band, with Dylan, the medium is never the message. The message is the message, and always will be.