Another Self-Portrait

Oh, and here's an interesting article from The Guardian about the newest installment of The Bootleg Series.  The most notorious so-called 'bad' Dylan album is getting deluxe treatment.

Photo from the Deluxe Edition - photographer unknown (to me)

Whatever you think of the original Self Portrait (and you can be forgiven and will never walk alone if you, umm, don't much care for it), you'll probably want to give this collection a chance.  I just listened to a stream of part of it - definitely some worthwhile stuff there: simpler arrangements of material from the Self Portrait/New Morning era, some demos, some live Isle of Wight tracks.  Worth shelling out the bucks for the full 4-disc version?  Reckon that depends on your level of interest.  But I'm happy for even still yet another look behind the scenes at the ideas and processes going on in that (or pretty much any) era of this particular song and dance man.

Still sort of wish his show at Pier A Park last month had been better...

More from Above Oak Bluffs

For the Ultimate Get Out of Town weekend, we're staying in town.  Well, two towns I suppose, as we'll split our time between NYC and the 'boken.

We ran up to this long weekend long celebration of Labor with a trip to Martha's Vineyard.  Land of presidential retreats and old-school Yankees; beaches and bluffs and whaling wealth still evident in the gorgeous houses of the captains and ship-owners; wasps of the sun-dressed and stinging varieties fill the air.


Also kites.

Above Oak Bluffs

Do Not Mourn

Maxwell's
CBGB
The Bottom Line
Mudd Club
The (original) Knitting Factory
The (original) Kitchen
The (original) Cutting Room
Brownie's
The (real) Birdland
The Five Spot
Nada con Todo
The (real) Fillmore East
The Bouwerie Lane Theater
The (original/real/jury's still out) Bowery Poetry Club
Gerde's Folk City
Max's Kansas City
Franklin Furnace
Tramps
The Limelight

Thinking of the last days of Maxwell's and night falling on Hoboken, I made up a quick, off-the-cuff, extremely incomplete list of some of the performance spaces in the area that are no more.
And so it goes...

Maxwell's Closing Night Block Party

I didn't get to all those places; some were gone before I ever made it here.  But I went to some of them quite a bit, and performed in a few.  And of course, New York/New Jersey is not alone in seeing this kind of transition: in my one-time-home-and-still-close-to-my-heart city of Boston, I can think of 2 or 3 places just in Kenmore Square.

This is what happens.  And it breaks your heart.  But then you have to put your heart back together, get up and find/build new spaces and make new work.

I think that's pretty much it.