Bulletins from Bob and Olivia

An interesting day...

At the post office box, I found my eagerly awaited copy of Bob Dylan's latest official Bootleg Series release, Vol. 9, The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964, offering 47 songs he wrote and put down on tape early on, attempting to persuade other singers to record his songs. Many of these appeared over the decades on illegal bootleg LPs and CDs, but this 2CD set supposedly improves and completes all others--offering the original Bob-and-guitar versions of tunes as familiar or obscure as "Rambling, Gambling Willie," "Oxford Town," "Seven Curses," "Gypsy Lou," "Paths of Victory," "I'll Keep It with Mine,' and "Farewell." (But what of "Percy's Song," "Dusty Old Fairground," "Lay Down Your Weary Tune," and a few others that we fans had always assumed were songs Dylan only recorded as demos?)

Hey, I don't care--what's here is great early Dylan and a major slice of folk-rock music history. God bless Bob; long may he live and write and croak out the songs on whatever form of electronic recording device comes next. Yes, buy this set.

Meanwhile, moving from demos to Demos, in brilliant and timely contrast to this look at 50 years past, and the early, more political Dylan, via email I also received an hour ago the brand-new MoveOn.org video extravaganza, this one a science fictional message, from the supposed 50-years-distant future, after the Repugnants have won the 2010 elections because too many Progressives--including me and maybe you too, each person somehow singled out for censure--refused or forgot to vote. A panicking Olivia Wilde (slender actress in a cluttered room) beseeches us, contacted back here in 2010, to get up off our butts and save the U.S. and world from Palin, Boehner, and other genetic mistakes-turned-political misbegottens.

The video is amazing, and is sure to ignite another silly media firestorm (as the fools like to call such folderol), but really it's a hoot, a cosmic goof, and a serio-comic call to action. Frag 'em if they can't take a joke!

I'll try to embed the MoveOn vid (never done that before), but if I fail, no worries: you'll be seeing it everywhere as the talking heads and bleating asses attack. (Go here.)