You wouldn't know it from looking at my vast collection of books devoted to Bob Dylan, or my vast collection of contraband CD's containing Bob Dylan music, or the nearly 1000 Bob Dylan 'items' (I like how iTunes calls them that) stored in my computer, or the Bob Dylan LP's that fill up a good chunk of wall space (for example: three copies of 'Highway 61 Revisted': one original U.S. mono, one U.S. stereo, one CBS UK mono; and multiples of 'Bringing It All Back Home,' 'Freewheelin',' and 'Blonde On Blonde'), or the b&w Bob Dylan prints and posters that are part of the rotating art gallery that is my apartment, or the DVD's (legal and otherwise) of Bob Dylan performances and documentaries, but I am not, strictly speaking, a Dylanologist. I don't study him in any kind of academic sense, or go on internet boards to discuss his activities or parse his lyrics, or speculate about his personal life in any way really, or travel great distances to see his shows (ok, ONCE I went to Las Vegas because I thought it would be fun to see him play in Las Vegas specifically, but there were also female friends I wanted to meet up with, who live in LA, and it was an excuse to hang out), and I wasn't able to sit through all of 'Masked and Anonymous' (I'd made it through the original loooonnnggg version of 'Renaldo and Clara,' and felt I'd done my time with him, cinematically). I don't listen to Dylan because he's Important, although he is, or read about him to unlock secrets. I simply find his work endlessly fascinating, almost all of it, except for maybe that patch of half-hearted '80s stuff (that Don Was album, and the shows with The Dead), or the tour where G.E. Smith played guitar (the only time I walked out on a Dylan show). And it happens that some smart people write about him, like Greil Marcus and Sean Wilentz. I'd read them on anyone they'd care to tackle, but it happens that Dylan is a perfect subject for the ideas that interest them.

I'm reading Wilentz's 'Bob Dylan In America' now, and it's one of those books that's going to take a little while, because I read the chapter on 'Blonde On Blonde,' and then I have to go and listen to 'Blonde On Blonde' and all the music that didn't make it on to the finished 'Blonde On Blonde,' and then while I'm at it, I pull out that 'Highway 61 Revisited' UK LP I mentioned, and try and decide whether side one of the UK album is mastered a hair faster than the US LP I know so intimately. Then I read the chapter on the 1975 Rolling Thunder tour, and Wilentz writes about a show from that tour -- New Haven, the matinee -- that I'm not familiar with, so I download it, because he mentions the lyric changes in a specific version of 'Tangled Up In Blue' from that show, and I compare it to the other Rolling Thunder versions I do have (Providence? or Waterbury?). If Wilentz starts in on the Basement Tapes, I'm going to be with this book through Halloween (he does write about the Dylan Halloween concert in 1964 at Philharmonic Hall, so another break in the reading process...). At which point there will be another Dylan book out, Greil Marcus's collected Dylan writings since the late '60s.

It's going to be a big Dylan fall, in other words. Two major books, and in mid-October, two major releases: the long-bootlegged Witmark Demos (with some song titles that aren't ringing any bells, but as I say, I'm not a Dylanologist per se, and I'm sure there are people who already own every track), and a boxed set of all the Dylan albums from his debut through 'John Wesley Harding' in Mono. Theoretically, I'm one of Those People who would leap at the Mono Box, but the truth is I'm on the fence about it, since I already own all those albums in mono except 'JWH.'

Before Dylan rounded up the characters who would be joining him on the Rolling Thunder Revue, he spent some time back in the Village, popping into clubs, hanging out with friends. On one night in July '75, he went to see Ramblin' Jack Elliott at the Bitter End, and got on stage to sing a bit. This song, 'Abandoned Love,' is from that night. He recorded it during the 'Desire' sessions, but it didn't make the album, and didn't surface until the 'Biograph' box. Those Dylanologists can tell you whether he ever played the song live again after the Bitter End, but I'm guessing not. It's one of those moments where he appeared, unexpected, did something new, and unexpected, leaving the song behind, dazzling those few people lucky enough to be in the room. Like this eyewitness:

http://expectingrain.com/dok/books/encounters.html