The December 2010 MOJO magazine contains a nostalgic CD The Sound Of Greenwich Village.

Dylan's Scene MOJO bonus CD

Dylan’s Scene was compiled to coincide with MOJO Magazine’s 17-page coverage of Bob Dylan’s Bootleg # 9 The Witmark Demos.

What a treat – 15 tracks that bring back the essence of the 1960s New York folk scene.  If you remember those days, it’s worth purchasing the magazine for the 17 pages of Dylan stories and the CD.

It’s a wonderful collection of Dylan contemporaries from John Lee Hooker, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger all to way to the less than fave Allen Ginsberg. OK you have to at least acknowledge Ginsberg’s powerful influence over the boy from Hibbing Minnesota.

Once a year I splurge on magazines and save them for a rainy day. On Christmas eve some last minute gifts took me to the local Indigo where I loaded up on Mojo, Sound on Sound and Future Music.

Those magazines are an investment, to be saved and savored for years.

I found 2007 copies of Future Music and Recording in a box last month. They were purchased in another magazine binge  3 years ago and never read. Wow, they have lots of great articles along with DVDs of music samples. The magazines were read twice in December. The next thing to do is examine those DVDs. 

On Christmas day I discovered MOJO had a free CD which Indigo was supposed to give me at the cash.  It took me until Wednesday to retrieve it from the store.

Contents

John Lee Hooker played on the same Greenwich Village stage with Dylan. Hooker was part of Dylan’s love for black blues artists. Boom Boom is classic Hooker track and the 1961 recording is pristine. Growl “I like it like that.” Music so good the Blues Brothers used it in the Maxwell Street scene in the first movie.

Joan Baez was the angelic voice of folk and protest music when she met Dylan in the Village. Baez singing Phil Ochs’ “There But for Fortune” sends chills up my spine.  Man those songs are still true 45 years later.

What are we doing today to make this world a better place?

Close the Door Lightly When You Go sung by Eric Anderson is one of those “gently on my mind” songs we loved back then. Affairs with no commitment were all in vogue back then. Too many of those and your life becomes a series of empty experiences. We were younger then.

Pete Seeger singing We Shall Overcome – that’s the Village and our folk protest days. We did overcome some prejudices but there are lots to extinguish yet.

Pete Seeger

No one did more to foster folk music and protest than US Senator Joseph McCarthy who blacklisted Seeger in the 1950s. Seeger fed his family by busking on university campuses and playing student union concerts. His left wing ideals became the credo of the folk movement in the 1960s.

Can we take up the banner of freedom again?

Same Old Man features the raw mountain music with Karen Dalton, with a sparse banjo clear as a bell in the left speaker.

Tom Dooley sounds more authentic by the New Lost City Ramblers than the Kingston Trio. A real fiddle saws away while a dreadnought guitar is flat picked. Those city boys could sing hill music.

The Ramblers were Mike Seeger (Pete’s brother), John Cohen and Tom Paley. They did a credible job of introducing us to real Appalachian hill music, which Cohen called that High Lonesome Sound.  More primitive than bluegrass, it’s the music featured in the Coen Brothers’ hit movie Oh Brother Where Art Thou and the documentary Down From the Mountain.

Joan Baez’s sister Mimi and her husband Richard Farina dance up some fancy instrumentals in Celebration for a Grey Day.

Mark Spoelstra was another Dylan buddy who played folk and blues. Sugar Babe, It’s All Over Now is Mark’s blues side. Spoelstra was also known as a fervent anti-war pacifist.

The Mayor of MacDougall Street, Dave Van Ronk, struts his stuff on the jazzy blues Hesitation Blues. Listen to that song – it’s very catchy and demonstrates Van Ronk’s guitar skills and syncopated style.

Bob Dylan, Suze Rotolo and Dave Van Ronk in the Village

Van Ronk gave Dylan his arrangement of House of the Rising Sun that made Dylan’s first album. Von Ronk’s ironic bitterness over letting Dylan have the arrangement that later became a hit for The Animals stayed with him for decades.

The Village was full of sea shanties and English ballads. The Foc’sle Singers sing a hearty version of Rio Grande, almost makes you want to join the crew for the voyage. Heave away, haul away.

Greenwich Village was a home for beat poets and jazz musicians before the folk revival. The CD has Kenneth Patchen reciting his poem State of the Nation with a jazz background. The poets lost the scene to music and people like Dylan who could turn poetic imagery into something more powerful – a song.

Another song from Dylan’s first album was Bukka White’s Fixin To Die.  Listening to the real thing, it’s easy to see why Dylan was considered a light-weight in the blues world when he hacked through the song at break neck speed. Over the years, Dylan learned the blues: back then he was just a fresh faced kid.

Lightnin’ Hopkins was another great blues artist who hung out in the Village. Coffee House Blues is a country blues showcasing his awesome acoustic guitar skills, singing, wit and blues groove. I have a friend who has moved back from Dylan covers to Lightnin’ Hopkins this year. Interesting.

The Irish folk scene is covered with The Clancy Brothers muscular rendition of The Wild Colonial Boy. Dylan hung out in the same bar in the Village with the sweater clad purveyors of all things Irish. In the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Celebration Liam Clancy remembers chiding Dylan for writing “too many words” in his songs.

No CD about Dylan would be complete without something by poet Allen Ginsberg. The CD includes Auto Poesy to Nebraska. Ginsberg was both friend, confidant and poetic inspiration to Dylan. Ginsberg turned Dylan to poets as a source for his lyrics which resulted in those long tomes Dylan turned out like Chimes of Freedom and Desolation Row.

There it is – $13 rock magazine with a bonus CD that is worth many repeated listening.

I’m reading the magazine slowly. Perhaps I’ll report about it next year.