-
Tchaikovsky Symphony No.6 – Best Recorded Version
I’m a great fan of Karajan’s mid-70s recordings of the last three Tchaikovsky symphonies on Deutsche Grammaphon. To my ears they express the sweep and passion of these great works, without being overwrought. The 2005 edition of the Gramophone Good CD Guide nominates them as the finest of Karajan’s many recordings of the works, and […]
-
Bill Bailey Reunited With The Famous Five
Bill Bailey, the well known actor, comedian, musician and polymath, was reunited with myself and other members of the pop band The Famous Five on BBC2’s Comedy Map Of Britain. I’ve captured the relevant footage below. As for me (Tim), I’m on the far right at the table in the Moles club scene. But can […]
-
50 Reasons To Love Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks
‘I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail, poisoned in the bushes, blown out on the trail, hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn’ (Shelter From The Storm) – Dylan’s use of symbolic language here is perfect, reflecting back to the ‘creature void of form’ who comes in from the wilderness. It […]
-
The Culture Club: Theme For February-March 2007
The BBC is currently programming The Tchaikovsky Experience across its radio and TV channels, and spotlighting the composer in the latest edition of BBC Music Magazine. Therefore, we here at the Culture Club thought it would be a good opportunity to focus on his 6th Symphony, the Pathetique, and to tie in with this other […]
-
Song Structure in Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks
In many of the songs on Blood On The Tracks, Dylan adopts what I call a ‘single-stanza’ structure, which he uses very skillfully to highlight the emotional and thematic resonances of the lyrics. Tangled Up In Blue, Simple Twist of Fate, You’re A Big Girl Now, Lily, Rosemary and The Jack Of Hearts, Shelter From […]
-
The Fascination of Blake
Since the last meeting I have found that Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell has really stayed with me. And so I was delighted and interested to see a great piece by Philip Pullman in the Christmas edition of The New Statesman with an intensely personal view on how Blake resonates with us all. I’m […]
-
Blood On The Tracks and the Quest for Salvation
Michael Gray, in his book Song And Dance Man III, sees in Blood On The Tracks a crucial transformation in Dylan’s quest for salvation. From Blood On The Tracks onwards, Dylan shifts from woman as saviour: and to trace this process is to hear his slow train in the distance – to find his quest […]
-
Free Beethoven and Mozart Recordings via Podcast
The following post at Open Culture – Open Culture: Free Beethoven and Mozart Recordings via Podcast – promotes free classical recordings available by podcast on the iTunes music store. If the iTunes links in the above blog post don’t work for you (I got ‘failed to find the application’ error messages), go to the music […]
-
Themes of Identity in Blood On The Tracks
Aidan Day’s book Jokerman: Reading The Lyrics Of Bob Dylan provides some of the best analysis of Dylan’s work I’ve read (coincidentally, the same Aidan Day is also the editor of my Penguin edition of the Selected Poems of Tennyson). Day sees Tangled Up In Blue and Shelter From The Storm as of a type […]
-
Defying Time in Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks
Blood On The Tracks is an album of songs concerned totally with ‘the inexorable disintegration of relationships and with the dignity of keeping on trying to reintegrate them against all odds’ (Michael Gray, Song and Dance Man III). To express this theme he uses a finely honed craft and a conscious and very specific approach […]