Originally I began this blog with a famous Dylan bootleg 'A Tree With Roots' and an associated email. During the blog life some of those posts have been officially released and were subsequently removed. I then included some additional posts to allow some leeway and ensure that the listing will be relevant for some time to come.
For this special post #3 we return to Dylan but with a difference, Dylan is the disc jockey, this promo item was compiled by me some years ago. A celebration of Bob Dylan's DJ career on Theme Time Radio. It selects some of the best stories, guest spots, email replies and of course music that Bob played on his first series of the show.
THEME
TIME RADIO WITH YOUR HOST BOB DYLAN
Best
of Volume 1
The
Theme Time Radio shows have all been made available on the Internet.
This
post is a promotional compilation of shows that I recorded from the BBC 6 music
digital channel using a Sony minidisk separates deck. That means like the other
circulating shows these are also lossy but at present this is the only
audio format these shows are available in.
It
gives you an idea of why these programmes were so well received and unlike the
official compilation releases that spectacularly seem to have missed the point
of the original shows; this compilation includes ALL of Bob’s comments and
links between songs, including the show’s introduction by Ellen Barkin.
If
you want to hear what is so special about these shows, download and listen to
the in-between song links for Frank Sinatra’s “Summer Wind” and the Clancy
Brothers & Tommy Makem’s “Whiskey You’re The Devil”
Best
Of Volume 1 is compiled from some of the early shows from series one:
#1
Weather
#2
Mother
#3
Drinking
#5
Coffee
VOLUME
ONE
1.
MUDDY WATERS - Blow Wind Blow
2.
JOE JONES - California Sun
3.
JIMI HENDRIX - The Wind Cries Mary
4.
IRMA THOMAS - It’s Raining
5.
SLIM HARPO - Rainin’ In My Heart
6.
FATS DOMINO - Let The Four Winds Blow
7.
STEVIE WONDER - A Place In The Sun
8.
FRANK SINATRA - Summer Wind
9.
JAN BRADLEY - Mama Didn’t Lie
10. MEMPHIS SLIM - Mother Earth
11. LL COOL J - Mama Said Knock You Out
12. ROLLING STONES - Have You Seen Your
Mother Baby, Standing In The
Shadows?
13. MARY GAUTHIER - I Drink
14. JIMMY ROGERS - Sloppy Drunk
15. JOHN LEE HOOKER - One Bourbon, One
Scotch, One Beer
16. CLANCY BROS. & TOMMY MAKEM - Whiskey
You’re The Devil
17. SQUEEZE - Black Coffee In Bed
18. OTIS REDDING - Cigarettes And Coffee
19. LIGHTNIN’ HOPKINS - Coffee Blues
20. BOBBY DARIN - Black Coffee
21. ELLA MAE MORSE - Forty Cups Of Coffee
The
first episode of Theme Time Radio hour was broadcast May 3, 2006 on of XM
Satellite Radio, a subscription-based satellite radio service. From 2006 to
2008 AOL Radio offered the show on broadband Internet connection.
Season
3 finished with the 100th show appropriately “Goodbye”, on April 15, 2009.
There were 101 shows, but 'Kiss' was an unbroadcast programme.
The
original versions circulating on the Internet are from these satellite or
streaming web broadcasts. Series
one of the programmes aired in the UK from Christmas 2006 on through 2007. The first three series are still available on the Pirate Bay.
The shows are streamed frequently on the net see:
http://www.themetimeradio.com/cat/themetime/season1/
or hear the first five episodes of series one here via a stream or download link:
https://archive.org/details/bdthemetime1
If you just want to get a taste of what all the fuss was about, try my promo compilation here:
LINK
Below is a review of the first programme:
DJ
Bob Dylan Plays Sinatra, Garland, Hendrix on XM Radio Show
By
Rick Warner May 4, 2006
May
4 -- Growing up in the remote Iron Range of northern Minnesota, Bob Dylan was
an avid radio listener. The songs, stories and news he heard from faraway
places gave him a vital connection to the outside world.
"I
was always fishing for something on the radio,'' he recalled in
"Chronicles: Volume One,'' a memoir published in 2004. "Just like
trains and bells, it was part of the soundtrack of my life.''
Dylan
is now contributing to that soundtrack with his own weekly show on XM Satellite
Radio. Called "Theme Time Radio Hour,'' it features an eclectic mix of
music from Dylan's personal collection that revolves around a theme like cars,
mothers or whiskey.
Yesterday's
promising premiere focused on songs about weather, from Muddy Water’s
"Blow Wind Blow'' and Jimi Hendrix's "The Wind Cries Mary'' to Judy
Garland's "Come Rain or Come Shine'' and Frank Sinatra's "Summer
Wind.'' The 18-song play list also included lesser-known performers like the
Consolers ("After the Clouds Roll Away''), Sister Rosetta Tharpe
("Didn't It Rain''), Lord Beginner ("Jamaica Hurricane'') and Slim
Harpo ("Rainin' in My Heart'').
Dylan
must be the only disc jockey in the universe to play Dean Martin, the
Prisonaires, Irma Thomas, Stevie Wonder (singing in Italian) and the Carter
Family on the same show. Cousin Brucie, he's not. The show reflects Dylan's
heterogeneous tastes; blues and jazz, country and gospel, folk and soul --
Dylan has assimilated almost every type of music and fused them into one of the
most distinct and influential sounds of the rock era.
I'm
sure lots of folks laughed when they heard Dylan was going to do a radio show.
But this is no David Lee Roth gimmick, no washed-up rocker desperately trying
to revive his career by becoming a DJ. (Roth was a flop as Howard Stern's
replacement on CBS Radio, lasting only three months before getting fired.)
Dylan's
passion for old-time radio, combined with his reverence toward American musical
traditions, make this just the kind of niche program that fee-based satellite
radio is made for. Sirius has Stern, Martha Stewart and Jimmy Buffett; XM's got
Dylan, Oprah (coming in September) and Tom Petty.
The
debut show opens with the sound of pouring rain, followed by a woman's
film-noirish narration: "It's nighttime in the big city. Rain is falling.
Fog rolls in from the waterfront. A night-shift nurse smokes the last cigarette
in her pack.''
Dylan,
in his gravelly, three-pack-a-day voice, describes the program as a
conglomeration of "dreams, schemes and themes'' before introducing the
first song by "the great Muddy Waters -- one of the ancients by now, whom
all moderns prize.''
Before
and after each song, Dylan offers tidbits and trivia that put the tunes in
historical perspective. We're told that "You Are My Sunshine'' was written
by former Louisiana Governor Jimmie Davis, that Elvis really wanted to be Dean
Martin, that Judy Garland was from Minnesota, that Hendrix was "trying to
write a Curtis Mayfield song'' when he composed "The Wind Cries Mary,''
and "Just Walkin' in the Rain'' was written by a Tennessee prisoner serving
a 99-year sentence for rape.
"But,
you know, for a black man in Tennessee in the '40s, rape could have meant just
looking at a wrong white woman in a wrong way,'' Dylan reminds us.
Adding
to the old-fashioned flavor are vintage radio jingles and sound effects. In
future shows, Dylan will answer e-mails from fans and get contributions from
guests like Elvis Costello, Charlie Sheen and Penn Jillette. I can't wait to
hear what Sheen thinks of "Subterranean Homesick Blues.''
While
the music alone is enough reason to listen, I'd like to hear more personal
anecdotes and commentary from Dylan. Though he's notoriously inarticulate in
interviews, Dylan can be a wonderful storyteller when he wants to be, as he
proved in his memoir and the recent Martin Scorsese documentary "No
Direction Home.''
How
many DJs, after all, can pull off an introduction like one Dylan gives to
Sinatra's "Summer Wind'' ? Backed by the sound of a whipping wind, Dylan
paints a graphic picture of those "hot, dry Santa Anas'' that fuel raging
wildfires in Southern California.
"It's
hard for people who've not lived on the West Coast to realize how radical the
Santa Ana figures in the local imagination,'' he growls. "West Coast
weather is the weather of catastrophe. The Santa Ana winds are like the winds
of the apocalypse. But the summer wind that Frank is singing about may be a
little lighter. Come on in, Frank.''
And welcome, Bob, to the magical world of radio.
