Dylan, Haydn, Handel

FREE! Music for grown-ups on the BBC in the next 10 days

Hidden among its vast TV and radio output, the BBC broadcasts some magnificent music for grown-ups every week of the year. And it’s all free – well, sort of….

Wed 14 Jan
1200 & 2200 Handel, Composer Of The Week – BBC Radio 3
(3/5, continues Thurs-Fri)

Thurs 15 Jan
2300 Bob Dylan, Theme Time Radio Hour – BBC Radio 2

Sun 18 Jan
2400 Bob Dylan, Theme Time Radio Hour – BBC 6Music

Mon 19 Jan
1200 & 2200 Haydn, Composer Of The Week – BBC Radio 3
(1/5, continues Tues-Fri)

Thurs 22 Jan
1400 Handel’s opera Agrippina Acts 1 & 2 – BBC Radio 3
2300 Bob Dylan, Theme Time Radio Hour – BBC Radio 2

Friday 23 Jan
1400 Handel’s opera Agrippina Act 3 – BBC Radio 3
2100 Folk America – Birth Of A Nation (1/3) – BBC4

Online access: many BBC radio programmes are broadcast live online – please see the channels’ web sites for details. Some BBC radio and TV programmes are also accessible online via iPlayer for a short period after transmission:

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer

And Dylan, Haydn and Handel are profiled in my new book, Music For Grown-Ups, published on 15 Jan 2009.

For full details, please click on the book cover at the top left of the Home Page of the master website:

www.musicforgrown-ups.com

Gerry Smith

Great rockpop lyricists – new series of collectable free booklets

Bob Dylan was the launch title of Great Lyricists, a new series of collectable booklets given away with Saturday 21 June’s edition of The Guardian, the London liberal-left daily newspaper.

The nicely designed booklet, running to 26 pages, includes the lyrics of eight Bob songs, six from the 1960s, plus Tangled Up In Blue and Blind Willie McTell.

The series of eight freebies continued in yesterday’s sister paper The Observer, with Broooooooooce Springsteen, and today’s Guardian with Morrissey.

Remaining subjects include Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, as well as Chuck D, Patti Smith and a young lad from the Arctic-Something-or-Others.

I’ll be buying all bar two, filing the beautifully designed but unwanted rag in the bin, on my out of the filling station shop.

Gerry Smith

Morrissey – a post-Punk Dylan?

A couple of weeks before a Morrissey gig, a thirty-something friend had defined Mozza as “a post-Punk Dylan”.   

Though a recent convert, I’m a great admirer of Morrissey (and The Smiths).  I went to see Mozza solo at his enthralling recent London Roundhouse gig with the challenging Dylan comparison in mind – it had had me ruminating for days.  Morrissey, ex-front man of English post-Punk indie pioneers The Smiths and a solo artist for over twenty years, is certainly the nearest musician there is to a Dylan for a younger generation. 

Like Dylan, Morrissey’s main strength is as a writer: he’s a superior pop lyricist to anyone of his generation.  Like Dylan, Morrissey is revered by a large, loyal fanbase.  Like Dylan, Morrissey/Smiths had a profound impact on the direction of popular music.  And, like Dylan, Morrissey has a charismatic stage presence. 

But comparisons stop there.   

Dylan has far more depth and breadth than the Mozz.  His writing and music draws on far more sources than Morrissey’s.  Both his artistic canvas and his palette are far richer than Mozza’s. 

In a nutshell, Dylan is a great artist with universal resonance: he explores what it is to be human.  Morrissey is a great entertainer with a narrower focus: he explores what it is to be Morrissey.  

Gerry Smith