Category: Longform
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Masked and Anonymous, 2003 - ★★★½
I'd give it five stars for the soundtrack: all Dylan songs. The story is also all Dylan. And the lead actor: Dylan too.
Yes, in 2003, Bob Dylan wrote and starred in this film. In a country in state of constant revolution and war, with the dictator-president dying, a singer is released from prison to play a benefit concert. It's not clear why, but 'The Network' wants to broadcast it.
And Uncle Sweetheart, played by John Goodman, is hoping to get rich from it. It can't end well, and Jeff Bridges, as a journalist who talks a lot more than he writes, listens, or observes, is supposed to be uncovering the corruption.
It can't end well, and frankly it's a bit incoherent. Enjoyable enough though, and certainly interesting to the Dylan fan.
Incredible Story About the Smallpox Vaccine
Astonishing story in The Atlantic, about the smallpox vaccine:
At the heart of history’s most successful eradication campaign is a mystery. The smallpox vaccine—now also being deployed against monkeypox—contains a live virus that confers immunity against multiple poxviruses. But it is not smallpox or a weakened version thereof. Nor is it monkeypox. Nor is it cowpox, as suggested by the vaccine’s famous origin story involving pus taken from an infected milkmaid to immunize an 8-year-old boy.
The vaccine predates systematic, controlled manufacture, so several or many versions were made from various sources. And they were transferred by sending infected children around the world! I do seem to recall hearing that last part before, but not the fact that its true origin is shrouded in mystery.
Well worth a read. Via Kottke
Crucial Track for 30 April 2025: Death or Glory
"Death or Glory" by The Clash
I don't know if this song always makes me feel better, exactly, but I love it to bits and want it played at my funeral. So there's that.
Crucial Track for 29 April 2025: Hungry Heart
"Hungry Heart" by Bruce Springsteen
As far as representing my current mood goes, I'm actually just hungry. But Springsteen's 'Hungry Heart' is always a good choice. The story goes he wrote it for The Ramones, or at least was going to offer it to them. But he decided to keep it, and of course put it on The River.
That album — and most of his gigs since — wouldn't have been the same without it. But I'd still love to have heard The Ramones do it.
Crucial Track for 28 April 2025: The Prince
"The Prince" by Madness
Madness: At the heart of the ska revival of the eighties. I’d have gone to see them in Glasgow, on the Two-Tone tour, with The Specials and The Selecter, if it hadn’t been at an over-18s-only venue. I was 16.
Crucial Track for 27 April 2025: Ticket to Ride
"Ticket to Ride" by The Beatles
It’s interesting that, although I could give you various answers to the ’first single’ question, I don’t actually know what the first album I bought was.
Still, it’s bound to have been a Beatles one. So let’s go with the Red Album, and ‘Ticket to Ride’.
Crucial Track for 26 April 2025: I'm So Free
"I'm So Free" by Lou Reed
Lou Reed is one of my all-time faves, both with the Velvets and solo. This one popped into my mind this morning as we were walking back from badminton (playing the game, not the place where they have horsey things). It’s from the mighty Transformer album.
Crucial Track for 25 April 2025: Baby, I Love You
"Baby, I Love You" by Ramones
First love, eh? 'Music was my first love,' as an old song has it, 'And it'll be my last.' But that's not what this is about, really, is it?
Let's go with The Ramones (they were going to turn up some time, in one or another form, of course), where they made it on to Top of the Pops. Maybe because Phil Spector was at the controls, though we'd have to hope not.
Crucial Track for 24 April 2025: Leonard Cohen
"Leonard Cohen" by boygenius
'What is your favorite song from last year?' I am asked by the daily prompt from Crucial Tracks.
'Favourite,' I say. The 'favorite' spelling reads like a made-up element from thirties SF, or some such.
But I'm avoiding the question. The thing is, what this tells me is, I don't listen to much new music these days. Or, when I do, it doesn't impinge, doesn't resonate with me, become something I go back to.
I spent a chunk of 2024 listening through a list from The Guardian, of the 50 best albums of 2023, in order to check out what was good and recent. I had already heard the PJ Harvey, the Gina Birch, and the Boygenius albums, all of which I liked.
None of the others made enough of an impact to count, sadly. That is, none of them got a second play. One, I think, I gave a decent chance, but couldn't even finish.
And anyway, they were all new works from the year before last, not last year.
So for the purposes of this prompt, I'm allowing 'new to me' to count. And while I love PJ Harvey, so you might expect one of hers to make the cut, I Inside the Old Year Dying is too much an album. It's its own unique thing, but I don't recall a specific standout track from it.
So I'm going with Boygenius and, in another acknowledgment of my lack of new-music-attention, their one that namechecks an old singer — one of my favourites.
Crucial Track for 23 April 2025: Paradise by the Dashboard Light
"Paradise By the Dashboard Light" by Meat Loaf & Ellen Foley
I did not sing along to anything today, as the daily prompt asks. But I did find myself singing this Meat Loaf ditty, at least in my head. Maybe aloud, who knows?
Interesting that it appears as by Meat Loaf & Ellen Foley. Entirely appropriate, as it's a duet. But I don't think it was originally billed that way, and the modern approach would be to include 'Feat Ellen Foley' right in the title text. As I wrote about several years ago in Little, Feat...