Results for “dylan” 123 found
Bob Dylan, Nobel Laureate!
I had heard the rumors for years, but I didn’t think it actually would happen. My takes on a few Dylan albums:
FreeWheelin’ Bob Dylan: One of his most listenable and underrated albums, the same is true for Another Side of Bob Dylan.
Bringing It All Back Home: The album I fell in love with as a kid. Some of it is overwrought but mostly still amazing, perhaps his highest peaks.
Highway 61 Revisited: Half of it is wonderful, but it contains excess and some so-so judgment.
Blonde on Blonde: Many see this as Dylan’s peak, but I don’t listen to it much. Somehow the sound is a little harsh for my taste.
The Basement Tapes: The most overrated, too much murky slush and slosh.
Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, vol.II: The perfect medley.
Blood on the Tracks: Maybe the most consistent and listenable album, though it’s not pathbreaking in the way that the mid-sixties work was.
Time Out of Mind: An amazing “late career” work.
Dylan’s memoir is excellent, and his most underrated contribution outside of creating music is the CDs he edited for satellite radio, many hours of Dylan selecting and playing classics from early American musical history, blues, country, mixed styles, perhaps the single best look at the early evolution of American popular music. Many hours of listening pleasure. Bob Dylan Radio Hour. And the Martin Scorsese four-hour bio-documentary on Dylan is one of the better movies ever made, No Direction Home it is called.
If I recall correctly, three of the Conversations with Tyler turned to the topic of Bob Dylan. Camille Paglia loves the song “Desolation Row,” Cass Sunstein is a big fan, especially of some of the early period work, and Ezra Klein feels he is overrated, I guess that means especially overrated now.
Here are my earlier posts on Bob Dylan. Complain all you want, I say Bob Dylan is a better and more important artist than say Philip Roth. It’s not even close.
Congratulations to Bob Dylan, polymath!
Bob Dylan’s 70th birthday
It is today, here are a few underrated highlights of his career:
1. No Direction Home, the biopic directed by Martin Scorsese. It’s one of the best documentaries on American music more generally, and a superb albeit hagiographic portrait of Dylan and his music.
2. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan and Another Side of Bob Dylan and Blood on the Tracks and most of all Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits volume II are the albums I listen to most often. The last one sounds horrible from its name, but it was conceived conceptually, avoids the traditional problems of greatest hits albums (unlike Vol. I), and has some not otherwise available tracks; highly recommended. Then comes Time Out of Mind. I think of Bringing it All Back Home as the “best” Dylan album, but I enjoyed it so much at age fifteen that I don’t listen to it much today. Blonde on Blonde is overreaching and Highway 61 Revisited is half wonderful, half embarrassment in the lyrics.
3. Dylan as disc jockey is first-rate, and you can buy his XM Satellite Radio selections of early American music. He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the period.
4. As a singer Dylan is influenced by Al Jolson and Bing Crosby, as an acoustic guitarist he remains underrated.
5. Dylan once said that Barry Goldwater was his favorite politician.
Bob Dylan *Radio Hour*
Also known as German markets in everything, or alternatively why oh why can't we have a better U.S. copyright law?
Remember when Bob Dylan was DJ for those XM satellite radio shows, spinning a melange of blues, folk songs, vaudeville, gospel, and general bizarreness, with generally American themes, in the process proving himself one of the world's great musical infovres? Some of those shows are collected on CD, in Germany, vol. I, II, and III, four discs a box, twelve discs in total. The Amazon.de listings are here (they will ship to the US), or in German stores for about six dollars a disc, thank you Greece.
I own thousands of CDs, but these are among the very best and the song selection compares favorably to other collections of American music. The sound quality and transfers are first-rate.
Here is a Bach box, his major choral works and some of the major cantatas, MP3, and CD, 42 euros, 22 discs, John Eliot Gardiner conducting, these are some of the best recordings of the chosen pieces and even with shipping costs this is an extremely favorable purchase.
Have I mentioned there are many outrageous bargains in Berlin, not just my apartment?
For five or six euros, you can buy an excellent spaghetti bolognese, better than almost anything in WDC or Virginia. Apartments are cheaper, you don't need a car, mineral water and good bread is cheaper, gelato is cheaper, and in most social circles you're not expected to dress extraordinarily well. I'm not sure books are cheaper but they're not outrageously priced either, even many English-language editions. It's a strange feeling to come to Europe and have most things be cheaper, which still is not the case in Paris.
Here Angus recommends five CDs for Germany, good picks but the Dylan and the Bach round out some Alvin Curran and some gospel in my living room.
Dylan movie. Sort of.
The new Dylan biopic, starring Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Ben Whishaw – all as Bob Dylan – is starting to get some coverage. As a lifelong Dylan fan, I’m excited to see the movie. The film is currently doing the rounds of the film festivals, and is going into wider release slowly from September through March (depending on your country).
Early reports only whet my appetite:
- A slew of trailers (both official and unofficial) on YouTube [HT: Cass Sunstein]
- This is Not a Bob Dylan Movie: a beautifully-written essay in today’s NY Times magazine
- A wrap-up of other reviews, from filmmaker Todd Haynes
- Some extremely high variance early reviews.
An aside: From many hallway conversations, I can report that Dylan is a surprisingly popular artist among the econ gliterati.
Bob Dylan’s XM broadcasts, as DJ
Too good to be true. I wish to rebel against the Staffan Linder theorem; maybe I’ll have my head frozen after all. Note: the downloads are not quick.
Emergent Ventures, 33rd cohort
Alex Bartik and Arpit Gupta, Chicago and NYU, to work on zoning codes, machine learning, and LLMs.
Sasha Przyblski, 16, Ontario, building more durable batteries.
Egzona Marina, Kosovo and MIT, to promote science and neuroscience education in Kovoso.
Aldrich Heinz Alvarez, Manila, travel grant to San Francisco and Singapore, wearables that harness multi-modal AI.
Molly Cantillon, Stanford, for a hacker house at Stanford.
Ayush Tambde, Dublin (Mumbai), physics and wormholes, and to finance a trip to San Francisco.
Candela Francisco, 17, Buenos Aires, to become the world’s greatest woman chess player.
Aabhas Senapati, Harvey Mudd, from Ahmedabad, general career support, and for work on ecosystems.
Erick Li, Mexicali, to visit a social science conference at Harvard.
Lorcan Geraghty, Country Wicklow, Dublin, EirSpace, aerospace for Ireland.
Regan Arntz-Gray, Brooklyn, writing on feminism.
Steven Gong, Waterloo, to make videos on topics related to physics and math.
Dominic Sobhani, Midwest, Columbia University and now Tokyo, Progress Studies-related meet-ups and also personal travel.
Tomas Markey, 17, Ballineen, Cork area, Direct Air Capture Engineering.
Alexander Koch, Germany, Bay Area, robotics and robot learning.
Dylan Iskandar, Stanford, computer science, music, general career support.
Vesuvius Project, Bay Area.
Mark Koyama and Desiree Desierto, for British economic and political history, including in the 17th century.
Grant Getzelman, Bay area, computational wetware.
Naina Kumar, McLean, Virginia, 16, surgery + AR.
Ukraine:
Yanchuk Dmytro, Kyiv, repairing electric station short circuits.
And here is Nabeel’s AI-driven directory of previous EV winners.
What I’ve been watching
1.” In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon,” a two-part special on MGM+. It’s time to admit that either he or Bob Dylan is the greatest songwriter in American history. At four hours I was never bored, and there is plenty of coverage of Simon today, and also his wife. My main gripe is they don’t say just how good an album Hearts and Bones is, rather they only mention it was a commercial failure.
2. The Miracle Worker, Amazon streaming, an old Arthur Penn movie, black and white, about Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller. There is plenty to object to about this movie, including some dramatic clunkiness and a variety of stereotypes, including (but not only) about the disabled. Nonetheless the best scenes are amazing, most of all when Anne and Helen “have at it,” in extended fighting sequences, without dialogue of course. They are some of the most powerful and best acted scenes in Hollywood history. Kudos to Patty Duke most of all.
3. You Can Call Me Bill, currently in theaters. At first the viewer thinks this movie is terrible, and in a way it is. A 90-minute monologue of William Shatner? Yet as the narration proceeds the tale becomes ever deeper. Yes, he seems like this corny guy with no taste, but repeatedly you end up asking yourself whether your own philosophic musings are actually much better than his schlock. Unclear! And he was so productive. He just loved to act. Did he ever know the difference between his good and his bad work? Was there a difference? And how is it that he, now well into his 90s, stayed far more vital and alive than just about any of you are going to manage? Recommended, provided you are willing to sit through the spills and turns and winces. Those are indeed the point.
4. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. If nothing else, this movie illustrates the Solow model that the capital stock is indeed costly to maintain. It also shows there is a Laffer Curve when it comes to monster fight scenes, which apparently are no longer scarce.
Wednesday assorted links
Central African Republic estimate of the day
Published in the journal Conflict and Health last April, the report suggests that the world’s deadliest humanitarian crisis in 2022 was not in Afghanistan, Ukraine, or other places featured regularly in the news — but in CAR.
The Central African Republic has neither reliable birth and death registries nor regular censuses. To figure out how many people were dying, Karume’s team traveled by car, boat, motorcycle, and foot to conduct interviews across the country. When they analyzed their survey data, they estimated that nearly 6 percent of CAR’s population died within 2022, in a country with a median age around 15. Scaling for population size, this toll would amount to a loss of more than two New York Cities. And yet, the world outside of Africa is barely aware that CAR is a country. The title of the team’s report asks: “How can we not know?”
Here is more, by Amy Maxmen, via Dylan Matthews.
Monday assorted links
3. Again, Sweden has done immigration the worst.
4. On the Biden-Xi AI agreement?
5. Why don’t more intellectuals convert to Protestantism?
6. Vultures are underrated (NYT). I liked this line: ““It makes sense that an animal that depends on scarce resources can really benefit from being intelligent,” said Thijs van Overveld, a vulture researcher at the Donana Biological Station in Seville, Spain.” One of the best pieces I’ve read in a while.
7. National Gallery of Art receives major Haitian donation.
8. A claim that Hsieh and Moretti does not replicate. I am happy to link to a response from the authors.
Emergent Ventures Africa and Caribbean, fourth cohort
Sokhar Samb is a Data Scientist from Senegal. Her EV grant supports her work of drone mapping Senegalese cities and towns such as Dakar and Semone by capturing high-resolution aerial imagery and Light Detection.
Cesare Adeniyi-Martins is from Nigeria and founded Abelar to promote the special jurisdiction economics charter cities in Africa. His EV grant is for general career support.
Alecia McKenzie is a Jamaican author currently residing in France. Her EV grant supports her work at the Caribbean Translation Project to translate Caribbean literature (originally written in English, French, Spanish, or Dutch) into Mandarin Chinese.
Lorenzo Gonzalez is a Belizean currently residing in Canada. Lorenzo has a Masters degree in Economics from the University of Waterloo. His EV grant is to support his writing on tourism on Belize Adventure to promote economic growth in the country.
Keeghan Patrick, Graduate student at MIT; Shergaun Roserie, Mechanical Engineer at FAANG; and Dylan Paul, current MBA student at Harvard Business School. All three are from Saint Lucia. Their EV grant is to support their work through their organization, Obtronics, which, among other activities, offers robotics engineering educational programs to students in St. Lucia.
Raymer Medina is from the Dominican Republic. His EV grant supports his work on low-cost robotics design and development.
Thomas Aichele is multi-based in Chicago, Dakar, and Abidjan. Thomas works in the FinTech industry in West Africa. His EV grant supports his writing on technology infrastructure progress in West Africa.
Marla Dukharan is a Trinidadian Economist. Her EV grant is to support the production of a documentary on the causes and effects of the EU taxation blacklisting of Caribbean countries.
Mary Najjuma is a Ugandan Engineer and current PhD candidate at the London South Bank University. Her EV grant supports her research on rural efficient and optimal cooling hubs.
Andrew Ddembe, Ugandan social entrepreneur. This follow-on grant is to help support the work of his organization, Mobiklinic, in promoting medication care and education in rural Uganda.
Farai Munjoma was born and raised in Zimbabwe and resides in Edinburgh. He founded the Sasha Pathways Program, a virtual career accelerator for African youth. His EV grant is to support the career development program.
Stéphanie Joseph, originally from Haiti, is currently residing in the US. Stéphanie is a current MBA candidate at Harvard Business School. Her EV grant supports her project on land-mile financial inclusion in the Greater Caribbean.
Evalyn Sintoya Mayetu is a Kenyan guide on the Greater Maasai Mara. She is the country’s first female safari guide to achieve Silver Level certification. Her EV grant is for general career development.
Dr. Collin Constantine, born and raised in Guyana, is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Girton College, University of Cambridge. His EV grant supports his research on integrating income distribution and the balance of payments constraint into macroeconomics, focusing on the Caribbean.
I am very thankful for the leadership of Rasheed Griffith here, he also wrote those descriptions.
On U.S. life expectancy disparities
From the excellent Dylan Matthews:
Case and Deaton are highlighting a real problem, confirmed by other researchers: Americans with different levels of education die at different rates, and the least-educated Americans have seen their death rates surge in a way that more-educated Americans have not.
But the relevant divide does not seem to be between people who earned a bachelor’s degree — who remain a minority among American adults — and people who didn’t. Other research suggests that the problem is concentrated in specific areas of the US, and between the very least-educated Americans (particularly high school dropouts) and the rest of the country, rather than between college grads and non-grads.
Moreover, the cause of the divergence between high school dropouts and the rest of the country does not seem to be caused by “deaths of despair.” There is no doubt that the opioid epidemic in particular has wrought spectacular damage in the US. But some researchers are finding that stagnating progress against cardiovascular disease is an even bigger contributor to US life expectancy stalling out, and to mortality divides between the most- and least-educated Americans.
A lot of what you read about “deaths of despair” is in fact wrong or misguided.
Songs Sold for a Song
In our principles textbook, Modern Principles, Tyler and I discuss securitization and give the interesting example of music securitization with the picture at right (I’m pretty proud of the caption.)
But what has happened to these big purchases of song portfolios? Ted Gioia runs the numbers and finds that the rock stars sold at the top and the financiers are taking a bath!
On Thursday, Hipgnosis announced a plan to sell almost a half billion dollars of its song portfolio. They need to do this to pay down debt. That’s an ominous sign, because the songs Hipgnosis bought were supposed to generate lots of cash. Why can’t they handle their debt load with that cash flow?
But there was even worse news. Hipgnosis admitted that they sold these songs at 17.5% below their estimated “fair market value.” This added to the already widespread suspicion that current claims of song value are inflated.
Hipgnosis’s share price actually dropped after the announcement.
Last year, I predicted the following:
“Don’t be surprised if the folks at [private equity group] Blackstone end up owning all those songs. But if it happens, they will probably acquire the music at a sharp discount to what those songs were worth just a few months ago.”
Can you guess the buyer in the deal announced on Thursday? Yes, it was a Blackstone-backed fund. And they definitely got that discount.
But there’s one part of this story that I love.…It confirms my sense that karma is at work in the universe, and everything tends towards justice and fairness—if you’re willing to wait long enough.
Here’s that element of karma. The old rock stars actually did defeat the system. They screwed the man, and did it big time.
By my measure, Bob Dylan sold out at the top, and gets to laugh at the financiers who overpaid him. The same is true of Paul Simon and Neil Young and all the rest.
When I launch my hedge fund, I’m going to invite them to join me as partners. They are shrewd operators, every one of them.
Why are folk songs such a poor guide to economics?
Oliver Anthony (perhaps he should leave his town of per capita income 13k?) is the centerpiece of the column, but I’ll excerpt the bit of Springsteen:
When singers turn to economic issues, who plays the role of victim? Very often it is people who have lost their jobs, such as in Bruce Springsteen’s “My Hometown,” about a textile mill leaving the singer’s hometown. (Springsteen is not generally considered a folk singer, but many of his songs have folk roots and channel folk vibes.) That sounds terrible, and for many former workers it was.
But in fact the mill was relocated further south, where presumably it helped to create other jobs. Was this development an egalitarian way to help spread prosperity to a poorer part of the country? Did it help spur the transition of New Jersey to a service economy? That seems to have worked out: Average household income today in Freehold, Springsteen’s hometown, is more than $133,000. Or were more sinister forces at work? Was the factory closing a form of regulatory arbitrage against trade unions that protect worker interests?
No matter what your view, the song doesn’t clarify the issue very much. Nor should it be expected to.
As a general rule, music and the arts excel at pointing attention toward the seen — that is, identifiable victims or beneficiaries. In contrast, many of the most important insights of economics concern the unseen — that is, people who benefit in non-obvious ways, and sometimes many of them actually are unidentifiable. Automation, for instance, will throw some people out of work, but economics teaches us that in the longer run it usually benefits society, through both lower consumer prices and the creation of jobs in other, less visible sectors of the economy. You don’t hear many songs about that.
Not surprisingly, Bob Dylan is the hero of the story.
Friday assorted links
1. Good profile of Merve Emre. And profile of Avi Loeb (NYT).
2. Web scraping for me but not for thee.
3. Street plans for Irish YIMBY.
4. Super-fragmentary new evidence on human origins.
5. Michael Webb podcast on AI, jobs, income, etc. with 80000 Hours. And AI gives a paralyzed woman her voice back.
6. Claims about art, against authenticity, and also concerning Bob Dylan.