LMA Bob Dylan @80 !!!!

Bob Dylan is 80 today ! Amazing !!! Unbelievable ! Forever Young ! Are you Younger than that now ? Nah ? Why bother ? The times were a changing into the hellish worse, so why ?  Only another songwriter/hero/poet in the same league made it over 80,  and that was Leonard Cohen.  Well, Eric Burdon just got 80 this year too (May 11) and Tom Jones (last year in June) but they ain”t Bob or Lenny :)..

Last year I posted about Murder Most Foul, his dark poem on the death of JFK and lots else ramblings, and that was that. That is amazing, yes dudes it is !

A lot of my friends don't dig Dylan, the voice, the whining, the this the that. Well, as i told em, buzz off. Now, more than ever, leave me alone (und they did ;(

Bob is Bob, Bob is unique ! A poet, a pirate, a bootleger, a great promoter of his own enigma. Nobel and Oscar, too yep ! Took me many years to love him at his best, understand and care for his riddles, not take him seriously when he's at his most cryptical joker.  

He's been there all my life (OK, not when I was ten), but big over 35 years. Saw him in Frankfurt, missed him in Prague (missed the plane MF :(), came twice to Bucharest, was there but never met him face 2 face, bought his albums everywhere, read about him in Uncut where he was their absolute hero, argued and promoted him everywhere (DocandRoll par ex, No Direction Home, the 4 hr doc on him by Scorsese). And then there is the Rolling Thunder Revue by Scorsese on Netflix, one of the latest works on film on him (and it's great) !

Happy Birthday, Bob !  All Along the Watchtower !!!

*as we know from Big Mike, 'Bob is a Cool Guy' ! Tru !! And he's also 80 Now !!! :)

RIP Charles Grodin

 Charles Grodin is gone... The Heartbreak Kid, King Kong (1977 version) and Jonathan Mardukas from the cultissim Midnight Run ! last part in James Toback”s An Imperfect Murder in 1986. He was 86...RIP.

RIP Monte Hellman

Two-Lane Blacktop, Cockfighter, Ride in the Whirlwind, The Shooting, China 9 Liberty 37...these are some of Monte Hellman films, cult classics today. The director died at age 91 on April 20 2021. He helped Quentin Tarantino produce his first feature, Reservoir Dogs. He started out as an editor for Roger Corman, whre he met Jack Nicholson whom he directed in his quirky anti-westerns The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlind and in the war movies shot in Phillipines Back Door to Hell and Flight to Fury.

I met him briefly after the screening of Two-Lane Blacktop in Cannes Claasics, I think it was in 2005. We took a picture together, it-s on my print screens somewhere. Last film in 2010, Road to Nowhere.

The Guardian here 

RIP Jim Steinman

The wizard composer of Meat Loaf hits and many more is gone at 73 on April 19 2021 :(                       Jim Steinman composed and produced Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell (1977) and his follow up, (1993) Streets of Fire the now cult movie of Walter Hill, Bonnie Tyler and many others hits (Sisters of Mercy, Todd Rundgren) and an opera, Tanz der Vampire. A sense of unique melody and style, he was a legendary success in pop and rocknroll genre, namely Wagnerian Rock.

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