Suze Rotolo passed away last week after a battle with lung cancer.  She was 67.

Rotolo was an activist, artist, writer and teacher. 

She was also, for a time, muse to the 20th century's greatest song writer, Bob Dylan. 

HANNAH GEORGAS
This Is Good
www.hannahgeorgas.com
Dist: EMI Music Canada


Vancouver-based singer-songwriter Hannah Georgas is the new love of your life – and she won’t break your heart. Her voice, bittersweet yet as spunky as an indie film heroine, will make you swoon as she sings about love, language and awkward situations.

Her full-length debut album, aptly called This Is Good, was produced by Howard Redekopp (Mother Mother, Said The Whale, Tegan and Sara) and Ryan Guldemond(Mother Mother).

This Is Good is a warm, whimsical collection of pop-roots songs, but it also offers a hint of Hannah’s secret life as a dancefloor diva. “Your Ghost” is about duplicity, while “Shine” is a celestial missive initially written for a car commercial. (It didn’t make the cut, but did appear on an episode of one of Hugh Dillon’s many TV shows.) “Come On The Dancefloor” feels like an electro-punk number. “I love to dance and I just wanted to write a song that would inspire people to rip it up on the dancefloor,” she says.

With a year of upcoming tours and as of yet untold surprises to come, you can count on seeing and hearing much more of Hannah Georgas in 2010 and beyond.

Read (Cult)ure's interview with Hannah.

Newsweek magazine call's Bob Dylan's Love and Theft the second best album of the decade, in a list that also includes Fugazi's last album!

Check out the list here.

Newsweek... who knew they had such good taste?

Because we are nothing if not consummate Bob Dylan connoisseurs, we would be remiss if we did not direct you to immediately watch the video for "Must Be Santa" from Christmas in the Heart. It's after the jump!

Ever since Bob Dylan finished the encore of his November 7th show in Kitchener with "All Along the Watchtower", I've been thinking about the power of the song and its lyrics.  

Some dismiss the lyrics as nonsense, but I can't accept that argument when lines like " Businessmen, they drink my wine/Plowmen dig my earth / None of them along the line / Know what any of it is worth"  seem so obviously applicable to Dylan's own thoughts on life during the post-motocycle accident period in which the song was written.

A quick Google search termed up this excellent close reading of the lyrics by Herb Bowie.

As noted in the analysis, "Dylan’s accomplishment here is nothing less than amazing."

Agreed.

I was excited when I heard there was going to be a new Bob Dylan song on the forthcoming NCIS: The Official TV Soundtrack - Vol.2 ,but I was freaking ecstatic when I learned the song is a never-before-released track from the Bringing It All Back Home sessions!!!  These are the same sessions that brought you Dylan classics "Subterreanan Homesick Blues", "Maggies Farm", "Love Minus Zero/No Limit", "It's All Right Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)", and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue".

To coincide with the album's release date, the November 3rd episode of NCIS will prominently feature the song, titled "California".
In addition to Bob Dylan's "California," the album also features new and previously unreleased tracks from Norah Jones, John Mellencamp, Sheryl Crow,  Joss Stone, and others.
You can see the full track listing and sample music clips at http://ncismusic.com.

There have been rumblings about this in Dylan cirlces for a few weeks now, but I guess I didn't really believe it was true!  Well, the awesome folks over at Columbia Records sent (Cult)ure the following press release this morning:

Christmas In The Heart will be the 47th album from Bob Dylan. Songs performed by Dylan on this new album include, "Here Comes Santa Claus," "Winter Wonderland," "Little Drummer Boy" and "Must Be Santa."

All of Bob Dylan's U.S. royalties from sales of these recordings will be donated to Feeding America, guaranteeing that more than four million meals will be provided to more than 1.4 million people in need in this country during this year's holiday season. Bob Dylan is also donating all of his future U.S. royalties from this album to Feeding America in perpetuity.

Additionally, Bob Dylan is partnering with two international charities to provide meals during the holidays for millions in need in the United Kingdom and the developing world, and will be donating all of his future international royalties from Christmas In The Heart to those organizations in perpetuity. Details regarding the international partnerships will be announced next week.

Bob Dylan commented, "It's a tragedy that more than 35 million people in this country alone -- 12 million of those children -- often go to bed hungry and wake up each morning unsure of where their next meal is coming from. I join the good people of Feeding America in the hope that our efforts can bring some food security to people in need during this holiday season."

Christmas In The Heart will be available for pre-order starting today on Amazon.com

 

As one of the multitude that is dying for Mad Men's return (August 16, and yes, I have marked my calendar), whiling away the hours until its return is as painful as watching Sal hit on Ken right in front of his wife (seriously, I almost cried). Until we can know what's happening with the takeover and Don and Betty's new baby, we have to make our own fun. The lovely people over at AMC have given us Mad Men-ize yourself. As you can see, Peggy and Pete look happy to see me (does that mean Pete's alive?!), Don is Don, Roger's amused, and Joan looks suspicious. My actual hair doesn't look like that, but I couldn't bear to part with the leopard skin pillbox hat (or my cigarette or my martini). What? It's the '60s! That's how they do business, and I'm sure my ciggies are toasted.

The final night of Ottawa's Bluesfest finished with all the thunder and excitement a grand finale deserves. Jack White's new super-group, The Dead Weather (featuring members of Queens of the Stone Age, The Kills and The Raconteurs, along with White) took the stage at eight to deliver an incredibly rocking set that was enthusiastically embraced by the crowd.

The highlight of the show, for this listener anyway, was the final song of the encore: an fierce rendition of Bob Dylan's "New Pony" from the 1978 album Street-Legal. (The cover also appears on Horehound, the Dead Weather's recently released debut album.)

The song, I suppose, shouldn't have come as a surprise, given that the White Stripes have previously covered Dylan's "One More Cup of Coffee", as well as his arrangement of the traditional "Blackjack Davie"...  All the same, it was a delightful and surprising finish to a fantastic festival.

In December of 2007 I discovered Bob Dylan. I spent the next year listening to all of his albums in chronological order. My listening habits, however, were weighted towards the studio work, so I'm not as familiar with some of the concert albums.

While fiddling with my new MP3 player, just now, I stumbled across a live version of "It Aint Me Babe" from 1984's Real Live... and it blew my mind.

The 80's are often thought of as the low point in Dylan's career, and yet, here, in this performance of an old Dylan standard, the man sounds as good as ever. I think what really sends shivers up my spine is the moment when Dylan reaches the first chorus and sings, "It aint me babe," and then, suddenly, a crowd of thousands takes over, singing, the "No, no, no's". Dylan becomes silent, letting the crowd sing the next "It aint me babe", before coming in for the final, "It aint me you're looking for, babe," to finish the chorus.

Today is the 40th anniversary of opening night of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.

The Ottawa Citizen has a short article and a nice slideshow of performers who have played the NAC over the years. 

In the slideshow, be sure to watch for the photo of (Cult)ure favorite Bob Dylan - whose guitar was stolen backstage at the NAC only to be returned by the roommate of the thief!

(I don't know if you could tell)

We invite you to take this quiz over at CBC.  Though I always liked Dylan, there were a hanful of articles in celebration of his 65 birthday, including one on CBC, that really spurred my love for him. So, I guess that's two things I love: the CBC and Bob Dylan. You should check them out. 

...right now:

On sale as of today!!!!!!!!!!!

As you probably know by now, we here at (Cult)ure love us some Bob Dylan in a big way.

The new issue of Rollingstone reports that Dylan is set to release a new album in late April. While the comparisons to New Morning and Planet Waves (two of Dylan's mediocre 70's albums) and references to accordion on every-single-track don't exactly set my heart aflame with anticipation, the promise of a "surprising" follow up to Modern Times is most definitely intriguing, and any new album by Dylan is cause for celebration!

You can prepare for the release new album by revisiting some of (Cult)ure's Bob Dylan related articles: