Music Video Of the Week - January 2, 2026

"One More Cup of Coffee" by Bob Dylan  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Banned In the U.S.A.

My local supermarket sometimes plays classic rock on its P.A. system, and while I was shipping there today, I heard a song I hadn't heard before.  I listened carefully to the lyrics and memorized enough of them to Google them on my laptop.  It turned out to by "Keep Pushin'" by REO Speedwagon, released a few years before the Illinois band released Hi Infidelity, their nationwide commercial breakthrough.   Anyway, I punched up an audio-only video for the song on YouTube to hear it again, and I got a title card saying that the video was banned in my country because of an organization called SESAC.  I tried someone else's upload of "Keep Pushin'" and I got the same message.  What was going on here?  I then Googled SESAC and found out the awful truth.

SESAC is an acronym for the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers, a sister licensing organization of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcasters Music Incorporated (BMI), the groups that govern song rights.  YouTube was allowed to offer recordings of songs published under the auspices of SESAC until yesterday at 4 P.M., when a contract between SESAC and YouTube expired and negotiations to renew it had proven fruitless.  The result is that any songs written and/or recorded by music artists whose work is protected by SESAC are no longer available for hearing on YouTube.  Not just audio-only video clips, but also official promotional clips.  Not only is REO affected, so is R.E.M., as well as Nirvana, Green Day, Bob Dylan, Cheap Trick, and Adele.

And as you can see, you can say goodbye to Adele's "Hello."

The good news is that the ban on SESAC content is likely to be temporary. The bad news is that no one knows just how temporary it will be.  A YouTube spokeswoman  responded to requests for the state of affairs regarding SESAC-licensed artists.  

"We have held good faith negotiations with SESAC to renew our existing deal. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we were unable to reach an equitable agreement before its expiration," the spokeswoman said through a press release.  We take copyright very seriously and as a result, content represented by SESAC is no longer available on YouTube in the U.S. We are in active conversations with SESAC and are hoping to reach a new deal as soon as possible."

I don't know how much this is going to affect my Music Video Of the Week segment on this blog, but given that SESAC is smaller than its sister licensing groups, so it will probably be more of an annoyance than a major inconvenience.  Those who want to hear either of the two live Budokan albums from Bob Dylan or Cheap Trick might as well just buy them rather than hear them on YouTube (though you should just get the Cheap Trick album, because their 1978 Tokyo performance was as wonderful as Dylan's was horrid).  As for YouTube's efforts to regain the rights to uploading SESAC-licensed recordings . . . I hope they take REO's advice and keep pushin'.  

Music Video Of the Week - May 24, 2024

"Forever Young" by Bob Dylan and the Band  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Boxes

I have some sound advice for anyone who wants to build up their record collection (provided they own records and don't use streaming or the Cloud) . . . never get a box set.

I have four box sets in my record collection, and despite the good cuts between them, I wish I hadn't gotten them.  Well, except for Bob Dylan's 1991 inaugural Bootleg Series three-CD set, if only because it's comprised entirely of previously unreleased songs.  But the other three are mainly greatest-hits compilations on steroids, filled out here and there by a couple of unreleased songs and alternate mixes.  I really don't listen to them that much.  In fact, there are two that I don't listen to at all - because they're both on cassette.

Let me explain.  The first two box sets I ever got were Bob Dylan's Biograph from 1985 and Elton John's To Be Continued . . . from 1990, both retrospectives of their careers with a couple of alternate mixes and unreleased tracks thrown in for good measure.  Both of my copies are on cassette, because that was the only format I could play at the time.  I got my first compact disc player for Christmas in 1990; the following year, I got as a Christmas gift the Crosby, Stills and Nash box set on CD.  All of these box sets are entertaining enough, though I was always left with a pang of rue over the Crosby, Stills and Nash box set - mainly because, while many of the songs included were among the trio's best, most of them were in fact from their solo and duo projects, because as a group,  Crosby, Stills and Nash didn't put out many albums because they spent more time arguing than recording together.

Well, I don't have a working cassette player any more, the second one I've had since 2019 having broken like the one before it.  So I can't play the Dylan and Elton collections.  And the 1991 CSN box set?  That set led me to seek out Crosby and Nash's mid-seventies releases and the first album from Stephen Stills' group Manassas, as well as some of Stills' and Graham Nash's solo albums.  The box set seems less essential now.   

As for the cassette box sets . . . yeah, well, one of the four cassettes from Elton John's To Be Continued . . . is homemade, recorded off other sources, because the original one broke.

I'm thinking of just selling the CSN box set to a local record store, and I don't know what to do with the Dylan and Elton sets, because who's going to buy any cassette recording these days anyway?  Besides, in 1992, after the release of To Be Continued . . ., Polydor, which acquired the rights to Elton John's pre-1976 recordings, put out the two-CD Rare Masters, a more concise and compact collection of rare Elton John singles and B-sides, plus his and Bernie Taupin's contributions to the soundtrack for the movie Friends, and that is the essential big-time Elton retrospective.

One other thing.  I kept my box sets in a plastic crate in my bedroom, but both the box sets and the crate got so dusty that I put the box sets I put in the living room credenza with all of my old vinyl records (which I can't play because I have no working turntable) and condemned the crate to the basement.  I really don't think it's worth keeping them, especially when they all may be out of print anyway and no one likely cares about them anymore.  I remember that David Bowie threw Dylan a launch party at the Whitney Museum in New York when Biograph was issued in 1985; the party was probably more enjoyable than the box set.  (And, truth be told, some critics found Biograph to be too conservative in offering too many familiar tracks and not enough unreleased material from the vaults.)  

Box sets, in a word, are ridiculous.  They're nicely packaged but rarely offer anything essential.  Most of the essentials are in the packaging - the rare photos, the interview with the artiste, and the like.  But life is too short to get them just to hear an alternate mix of  CSN's "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" or an awful dance mix of Elton's "I Don't Want To Go On With You Like That" from house/dance pop producer Shep Pettibone (best known for his work with Madonna!).   Who needs any of that, really?  I did once say that box sets are worth it because it's always fascinating to hear alternate takes and unreleased songs, as it leads to a lot of second-guessing as to whether an artiste made the right call in rejecting them, but the novelty of such tracks - and box sets in general - has since worn off for me.

So yes, I was once into box sets, but my enthusiasm for them has long since waned.  I don't know what I'll ultimately do about the box sets I have mentioned here, but I will keep my set of the Beatles' Anthology, because that is essential.  Yeah, yeah, the three Anthology albums were released separately over a year and change, but to me they're really a box set, only without the box.       

The Concerts For Bangla Desh - Fifty Years

It was fifty years ago today, Sunday, August 1, 1971, that George Harrison staged rock's first major benefit concert.

When the non-contiguous Pakistani region of East Pakistan, also known as Bangladesh, began a war of liberation from the rest of Pakistan with the support of India, the Pakistani military responded brutally, creating a humanitarian disaster that was compounded by a tropical cyclone that hit the region.  Sitar player Ravi Shankar, whose family came from East Pakistan, went to George Harrison and asked him if there was anything he could do.  Harrison did the only thing he, as a musician, knew how to do - stage a benefit concert to raise money for the people of East Pakistan as they strove to overcome the odds of poverty, oppression, and natural disaster and create a new Bangladeshi nation. He was able to get the top musicians of the time to participate, including Billy Preston, Leon Russell, and Shankar himself.  But the biggest coup Harrison pulled off was getting his buddy Bob Dylan - who had only played once concert in the previous five years (the second Isle of Wight festival in 1969) - to take part.

The twin concerts at New York's Madison Square Garden - an afternoon show followed by an evening show - were nothing short of magic.  Backed by a band that included Eric Clapton, bassist Klaus Voormann, drummer Jim Keltner, Pete Ham of Badfinger, and Taj Mahal guitarist Jesse Ed Davis, Harrison performed his biggest Beatles hits and choice cuts from his All Things Must Pass solo album, along with his charity single "Bangla Desh."  Preston also shone when he performed a rousing rendition of his song "That's The Way God Planned It."  Leon Russell - then the hottest singer-songwriter in rock and roll - did an astonishing medley of the Rolling Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and the Coasters' "Young Blood," bringing rock down to the core of its rhythm and blues roots.  There was great applause when George Harrison brought out a special guest - Ringo Starr, who sang his new song "It Don't Come Easy," providing the closest anyone ever got to a Beatles reunion in the seventies.  (John Lennon had been invited to take part and agreed to do so without his wife Yoko Ono, per Harrison's insistence, but Yoko's objections led to his withdrawal; Paul McCartney agreed to participate provided Harrison agree to the dissolution of the Beatles' legal partnership, to which Harrison said no can do.)    Dylan's sets of each concert were the highlights, though, with Harrison and Russell joining him for one of them.

Ravi Shankar opened each show with his orchestra, performing Indian classical music, at at one show, as seen in the movie, the audience committed a faux pas after several minutes of music when they applauded Shankar and his musicians.  Shankar thanked them for appreciating the tune-up and promised that they'd appreciate the performance even more. 😄

On a negative note, Stephen Stills, who was on tour promoting his second solo album and had performed at the Garden two days earlier, donated his stage and sound equipment to the Bangla Desh concerts but Harrison inexplicably didn't think to invite him to play in them. 

The proceeds from the concert and the subsequent album and movie got held up in all sorts of legal difficulties, but once those problems were all resolved, the money started flowing to Bangladesh - in 2021 marking a half century of independence - totaling $45 million by the 1990s.  Harrison has since been recognized as a farther to the modern Bangladeshi state. Shankar, for the record, was pleased with the results.  "In one day, the whole world knew the name of Bangladesh," he later said. "It was a fantastic occasion."

The Concerts for Bangla Desh is too monumental to do justice to in my Music Video Of the Week feature.  Instead, here's an audio-only video of the concert for your listening pleasure.  (Sound quality may be spotty.) 

Dylan at Eighty

I don't know if I can say much about Bob Dylan, who turns eight years old today, that hasn't already been said.

Called by one critic "the greatest rock and roll songwriter who isn't Chuck Berry or Smokey Robinson," Bob Dylan has written strong, clever, surrealistic songs about pretty much everything, with allusions to American history and culture, a dose of social, and a bit of absurdity.  Even if you know what his songs are about, you don't know what they mean.  Songs such as "Ballad of Thin Man," about a paranoid reporter at a circus sideshow, offered various interpretations centered around the straight man in a world he doesn't understand, but who really knows who Mr. Jones is or what he stands for?  Other songs like "Maggie's Farm," about nonconformity, took on whole new meanings in later years, such as in Britain where it became an anti-Thatcher rallying cry.  And only now can we figure out a modicum of meaning in "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" when we realize that our current Postmaster General has stolen the Post Office and locked the mailboxes. And with the specter of Donald Trump being President again, we have to ask, just what do we have to pay to get out of going through all of these things twice?

Of course, his protest songs "Masters of War " and "Blowin' In the Wind" are evergreen, and "Like a Rolling Stone" is probably the greatest rock and roll song ever, with its sense of protest and put-down.  And you'll probably learn more about relationships in listening to his 1975 album Blood On the Tracks than from anywhere else: Dylan's son Jakob describes the album as a document of his parents arguing.

It remains to be seen whether Dylan has one more trick up his sleeve after defying expectations for sixty years.  But it should be obvious that whatever he pulls next, it's going to be something we don't expect.  Happy birthday, Bob. 😊

Music Video Of the Week - May 21, 2021

"Subterranean Homesick Blues" by Bob Dylan  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Review: "Jimmy Carter: Rock and Roll President"

I like to refer to popular music in whatever else I'm talking about on this blog because popular music is the language with which I speak.  Popular music comes in handy to discuss social or political trends, for example.  Music is also how our 39th President, James Earl Carter, Jr., communicated.

"Jimmy Carter: Rock and Roll President" is a CNN film exploring how Carter embraced music in conveying his message and his principles as a presidential candidate and as President.  The film is a joyful, energetic look at a side of Carter that many of us forgot exists.  We hear stories from Carter himself, his son Chip, and his former aides - along with commentary from Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Gregg Allman (who died in 2017), and Nile Rodgers about how the President not only liked the music, he understood it.  It's a re-affirming celebration of American music, particularly seventies Southern rock, country and western, rhythm and blues, and jazz.  Even Carter's hairstyle symbolized a new, relaxed attitude reflecting the music he loved; as rock author Nicholas Schaffner once said, Carter in 1976 had as much hair as the Beatles did in 1964.  

Some priceless moments include President Carter providing the vocals at a White House jazz concert while Dizzy Gillespie plays "Salt Peanuts," Aretha Franklin performing "God Bless America" at Carter's 1977 inaugural gala, the story of Carter's deep friendship with the Allman Brothers Band, and a story from Willie Nelson about how he smoked pot with, it later was revealed Carter's son Chip in the White House.  President Carter clearly comes across as the man Nile Rodgers describes in this documentary as a President who saw the world the way musicians saw it.

The film notes, though, that this rock and roll Camelot couldn't last, as the economy soured and American embassy staffers in Iran were taken hostage.  Indeed, the rise of Ronald Reagan - whose greased-back, pre-Elvis hair and his indifference toward newer forms of music signaled a return to a Presidency out of touch with popular culture - pretty much slammed the door shut on this era.  (Reagan at least hosted Frank Sinatra and Marvin Hamlisch at the White House; I can't think of one musical performance ever hosted at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue by the outgoing administration of Donald J. Trump.)  But this documentary is still a wonderful time capsule reminding us of what what was and what could be again.

Originally broadcast on January 3, "Jimmy Carter: Rock and Roll President" re-airs on Saturday, January 9 at 10 Eastern time on CNN. I presume it's also on On Demand.  I think I'll see it again. 😊  

Dylan's Three Kings

Fifty years ago today, Bob Dylan released his long-awaited followup to his Blonde on Blonde double album . . . the spectacularly great low-key album John Wesley Harding, which I already reviewed on my blog.  In celebration of this milestone, I present the liner notes of John Wesley Harding - written by Dylan - which are as essential as the record itself.

*

There were three kings and a jolly three too. The first one had a broken nose, the second, a broken arm and the third was broke. "Faith is the key!" said the first king. "No, froth is the key!" said the second. "You're both wrong," said the third, "the key is Frank!"

It was late in the evening and Frank was sweeping up, preparing the meat and dishing himself out when there came a knock upon the door. "Who is it?" he mused. "It's us, Frank," said the three kings in unison, "and we'd like to have a word with you!" Frank opened the door and the three kings crawled in.

Terry Shute was in the midst of prying open a hairdresser when Frank's wife came in and caught him. "They're here!" she gasped. Terry dropped his drawer and rubbed the eye. "What do they appear to be like?" "One's got a broken vessel and that's the truth, the other two I'm not so sure about." "Fine, thank you, that'll be all." "Good" she turned and puffed. Terry tightened his belt and in an afterthought, stated: "Wait!" "Yes?" "How many of them would you say there were?" Vera smiled, she tapped her toe three times. Terry watched her foot closely. "Three?" he asked, hesitating. Vera nodded.

"Get up off my floor!" shouted Frank. The second king, who was first to rise, mumbled, "Where's the better half, Frank?" Frank, who was in no mood for jokes, took it lightly, replied, "She's in the back of the house, flaming it up with an arrogant man, now come on, out with it, what's on our minds today?" Nobody answered.

Terry Shute then entered the room with a bang, looking the three kings over and fondling his mop. Getting down to the source of things, he proudly boasted: "There is a creeping consumption in the land. It begins with these three fellas and it travels outward. Never in my life have I seen such a motley crew. They ask nothing and they receive nothing. Forgiveness is not in them. The wilderness is rotten all over their foreheads. They scorn the widow and abuse the child but I am afraid that they shall not prevail over the young man's destiny, not even them!" Frank turned with a blast, "Get out of here, you ragged man! Come ye no more!" Terry left the room willingly.

"What seems to be the problem?" Frank turned back to the three kings who were astonished. The first king cleared his throat. His shoes were too big and his crown was wet and lopsided but nevertheless, he began to speak in the most meaningful way, "Frank," he began, "Mr. Dylan has come out with a new record. This record of course features none but his own songs and we understand that you're the key." "That's right," said Frank, "I am." "Well then," said the king in a bit of excitement, "could you please open it up for us?" Frank, who all this time had been reclining with his eyes closed, suddenly opened them both up as wide as a tiger. "And just how far would you like to go in?" he asked and the three kings all looked at each other. "Not too far but just far enough so's we can say that we've been there," said the first chief. "All right," said Frank, "I'll see what I can do," and he commenced to doing it. First of all, he sat down and crossed his legs, then he sprung up, ripped off his shirt and began waving it in the air. A lightbulb fell from one of his pockets and he stamped it out with his foot. Then he took a deep breath, moaned and punched his fist through the plate-glass window. Settling back in his chair, he pulled out a knife, "Far enough?" he asked. "Yeah, sure, Frank," said the second king. The third king just shook his head and said he didn't know. The first king remained silent. The door opened and Vera stepped in. "Terry Shute will be leaving us soon and he desires to know if you kings got any gifts you wanna lay on him." Nobody answered.

It was just before the break of day and the three kings were tumbling along the road. The first one's nose had been mysteriously fixed, the second one's arm had healed and the third one was rich. All three of them were blowing horns. "I've never been so happy in all my life!" sang the one with all the money.

"Oh mighty thing!" said Vera to Frank, "Why didn't you just tell them you were a moderate man and leave it at that instead of goosing yourself all over the room?" "Patience, Vera," said Frank. Terry Shute, who was sitting over by the curtain cleaning an ax, climbed to his feet, walked over to Vera's husband and placed his hand on his shoulder. "Yuh didn't hurt yer hand, didja Frank?" Frank just sat there watching the workmen replace the window. "I don't believe so," he said.

He's a Poet, And He Knows It

Bob Dylan won the Nobel Literature Prize?

Okay, I have a problem with that, because even though I'm a Dylan fan, I have long advocated against the idea of treating song lyrics as poetry, and thus as literature.  Because, as I explained in an essay I wrote back in 2010, song lyrics are not as powerful or as provocative when read off a page as they are when sung.  True, Bob Dylan may have freed songwriting from standard rhymes and boy-girl relationship concerns.  However, even "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Visions of Johanna," as sets of lyrics, don't, when read, have the same power and depth as poems like Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" or Walt Whitman's "When Lilacs Last In the Dooryard Bloom'd" or poems from British literature such as Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud" or Milton's "Can You Lend Us Two Bob 'Til Tuesday?" ;-)  Yes, his lyrics have been published in book form, but the lyric books were mainly to learn the words when you couldn't make them out on the records.  And I don't think Dylan got the prize for "Tarantula." :-D

But then again, Dylan still had to write the words down on paper, and he had to get them to conform to a proper meter to make them fit, even if half the time you don't know what the words mean - although you have a general idea of what the song is about.  I know "Ballad Of a Thin Man" is about a paranoid newspaper reporter at a freak show, but what to make of lyrics like "You're a cow!  Give me some milk or else go home" or "You put your eyes in your pocket and your nose on the ground"?  Even Mr Jones himself couldn't have figured it out.  But then that must be what got Dylan the prize in the first place.  His pen produced some wonderful words that people are still trying to dissect years later, and one finds an interpretation in them that is different from other people's interpretations . . . even though the understanding of what the song is about (as opposed to what the words mean) is the same for everyone.  And isn't that what the best poetry achieves?

That said, I still feel embarrassed every time I admit to having recited a couple of Dylan's early songs in poetry readings in college.  It compensated or my lack of musical ability.  But then, giving a literature prize to a song lyricist isn't any more perplexing than giving the Nobel Peace Prize to the president of Colombia for trying to end a civil war he failed at ending . . . or for that matter, celebrating Madonna for destroying rock and roll by inducting her into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  

Something is happening here, but I don't know what it is.  

The Concert For Bangla Desh - Forty Years Later

I saw today, for the first time ever, the documentary film of the Concert For Bangla Desh documentary film forty years to the day after the original concert in New York's Madison Square Garden. It's probably one of the finest concerts - and the greatest benefit concert - in rock and roll history. George Harrison organized it in response to a plea for help from his friend, Indian musician and sitar master Ravi Shankar, whose father was born in Bangladesh (now one word), when the country than known as East Pakistan was fighting for independence from Pakistan proper. The India-Pakistan war that resulted was an embarrassment for the Nixon administration, as I recall - they backed Pakistan, the ultimate loser - but Bangladesh lost a great deal even after winning its independence. The humanitarian crisis that resulted was beyond comprehension, and Shankar hoped that his Beatle buddy Harrison could help do something about it.

Harrison did not disappoint, bringing together some of the greatest rock and roll musicians of the time (and all time, in many instances) for a pair of concerts in which some mighty fine music was generated. Concertgoers supported a good cause with the price of admission to either the afternoon or evening show and got Leon Russell performing a medley of the Rolling Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and the Coasters' "Young Blood;" Billy Preston offering up his tune "That's the Way God Planned It;" Ringo Starr (the only other Beatle in the show) performing "It Don't Come Easy," his big hit at the time; and Harrison performing solo and Beatles tunes. And this all-star band included Eric Clapton, Klaus Voorman, and Taj Mahal guitarist Jesse Ed Davis.

But the biggest surprise for the audience was Bob Dylan, then making few public appearances - coming onstage to sing classics such as "Blowin' In the Wind" and "Just Like a Woman" with Harrison and Russell backing him on guitar and bass, respectively - and backing vocals. Magic!

The Concerts for Bangla Desh were far more focused, musically and philanthropically, than many other benefit concerts. It targeted a specific cause for relief in a specific place. And unlike Live Aid, which tried to be all things to all people by offering a sixteen-hour revue of popular performers that suggested quantity more than quality (what was Duran Duran doing at that show, anyway), the Bangla Desh shows had a small list of like-minded musicians for whom the music mattered as much as the cause. (After all, the shows started off with Ravi Shankar and his group Indian musicians playing a disciplined form of music that required attention and concentration to listen to as well as play.) George Harrison didn't try to draw more people by inviting the Osmonds to take part, did he?

Although it took more than a decade for the proceeds from the concert to make it to Bangladesh, it was still a success on balance. Money from record and video sales has continued to go to relief for what is still a very poor country. And they need it.

Learn more by going here.

Slow Train Coming

Why are we still enamored with Bob Dylan even today, as he turns seventy years old?

Dylan isn't a traditional rock and roller like Elvis Presley was or Rod Stewart is. He's not someone who struts onstage or plays flamboyant arrangements. His music is menacing, but in a more subtle and sly way. He pretty much lets his voice - commonly compared to the sound of a cow with a limb caught in a barbed-wire fence - deliver the edge to the many poetic stories his songs represent.

And what songs they are! Originally a folk singer in the tradition of Woody Guthrie, Dylan adopted and adapted the ideas of the musical heroes of his teenage years, Elvis Presley and Little Richard, and added a rock and roll sound with electric instruments that sounded spare and basic but could still pull a scab off an uncomfortable wound. Many of Dylan's tunes, whether acoustically or electrically arranged, probe such sore spots. His way with words and rhymes created a world dominated by strong women, Biblical characters, wanderers seeking truth, and a motley crew of jokers and thieves. Only in a Dylan song like "Desolation Row" could Romeo and Cinderella meet through mistaken identity. Only in a Dylan song like "Sweetheart Like You" could we be introduced to "the most beautiful woman who ever crawled across cut glass to make it deal."

Dylan's songs, open to personal interpretation and universal in themes of love and betrayal, are not confined to any particular time and place, making them open to all sorts of musical re-arranging and interpretation by the many recording artists who found their own meaning and their own voice in Dylan's words.

That's why we still care about Dylan today.

Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited with their humorous parables of American culture, are considered the masterpieces in the Dylan catalog, but I recommend John Wesley Harding from 1968 as an example of Dylan's low-key side. Its on that album where, after a devastating motorcycle accident, he quietly delved into the meanings of freedom, relief, and love . . . and found himself renewed.