bobdylan.com has undergone a nifty redesign including the Dylan Geo feature which allows you to access tour information by city and ... some "blogs" but I don't know what that's all about. Can anyone do one? Anyway, the push is also all part of the next installment of the Bootleg Series, Tell Tale Signs. I almost preordered the deluxe package until I saw they were going to charge me $40 postage. I strongly doubt that is reasonable.

The track list is as follows. Some interesting stuff, although many double ups for tragics. Haven't had time to seek professional opinions - like, what's the difference between this "Series of Dreams" and the one on Bootleg Series 1-3? I guess I can put up with yet another version of Dignity for the promising outtakes from World Gone Wrong and Time of Out Mind.

Update: I've had a little play with the social networking aspects of the new site. You can create playlists which will stream in full, do blog entries (but no comments!), comment on gigs and so on. Seems pretty well put together and easy to use. You can download a free song Dreamin' of You, an outtake from TOOM, which features some lyrical snatches familiar from Standing In the Doorway.

Disc One

Mississippi (Unreleased, Time Out Of Mind)

Most of the Time (Alternate version, Oh Mercy)

Dignity (Piano demo, Oh Mercy)

Someday Baby (Alternate version, Modern Times)

Red River Shore (Unreleased, Time Out Of Mind)

Tell 'Ole Bill (Alternate version, North Country Soundtrack)

Born in Time (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)

Can't Wait (Alternate version, Time Out Of Mind)

Everything is Broken (Alternate version, Oh Mercy)

Dreamin' of You (Unreleased, Time Out Of Mind)

Huck's Tune (From Lucky You soundtrack)

Marching to the City (Unreleased, Time Out Of Mind)

High Water (For Charley Patton) (Live, Niagara, 2003)

Disc Two

Mississippi (Unreleased version #2, Time Out Of Mind)

32-20 Blues (Unreleased, World Gone Wrong)

Series of Dreams (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)

God Knows (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)

Can't Escape From You (Unreleased, December 2005)

Dignity (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)

Ring Them Bells (Live at the Supper Club, 1993)

Cocaine Blues (Live, Vienna, Virginia, 1997)

Ain't Talkin' (Alternate version, Modern Times)

The Girl On The Greenbriar Shore (Live, 1992)

Lonesome Day Blues (Live, Sunrise, Florida, 2002)

Miss the Mississippi (Unreleased, 1992)

The Lonesome River (With Ralph Stanley, from Clinch Mountain Country)

'Cross The Green Mountain (From Gods And Generals Soundtrack)

Disc Three

Duncan And Brady (Unreleased, 1992)

Cold Irons Bound (Live, Bonnaroo, June 2004)

Mississippi (Unreleased version #3, Time Out Of Mind)

Most Of The Time (Alternate version #2, Oh Mercy)

Ring Them Bells (Alternate version, Oh Mercy)

Things Have Changed (Live, Portland, Oregon, 2000)

Red River Shore (Unreleased version #2, Time Out Of Mind)

Born In Time (Unreleased version #2, Oh Mercy)

Tryin' To Get To Heaven (Live, London, England, 2000)

Marchin' To The City (Unreleased version #2, Time Out Of Mind)

Can't Wait (Alternate version #2, Time Out Of Mind)

Mary And The Soldier (Unreleased, World Gone Wrong)

I finally got myself organised with a only slightly illegal US iTunes account (in your face, Neil Young) and it is so.much.better than the denuded Aussie version. Got some free TV shows, pre-ordered the new Randy Newman CD, downloaded Keith Olbermann's Countdown vodcast -- life is good.

Browsing the country section I was struck by an ad for a Kurt Nilsen duet with Willie Nelson. Kurt Nilsen ... that face ... that face .... yes! That hobbity Norwegian bloke who boggled the globe when he won the first (and only?) "World Idol" telecast? And, erm, Willie Nelson. Singing, erm, "Lost Highway." So I clicked the preview and ... it was pretty adequate! So I paid a buck for it.

You can see/hear it on YouTube.

Willie is Willie, dude can sing "Lost Highway" in his sleep and probably did. I like it OK, but think it'll go better after a few RTDs. Could really stand to lose some of the strings though.

Gurrumul from Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu has been getting quite the buzz in the last few months and I finally got the CD from the label, Skinnyfish and it is indeed as beautifully astonihsing as they say. He sings in various languages of the Yolŋu Matha accompanied and produced by Michael Hohner (who also owns the label) who gives just the right amount of musical support, but of course it is the soul deep voice that gets everyone excited. The harmonies throughout are also something special.

Apart from the music itself, I'm very impressed with what Skinnyfish has done to promote it and make getting it simple. Easy to use multimedia links at the label page, easy online payment options, his own YouTube channel and the traditional mark of care, a very beautifully put together CD digipak with booklet (including the lyrics and English translations.) Lotsa much bigger labels could learn from it.

Flop Eared Mule give Gurrumul a "strong buy" rating.

Combined June/July eMusic downloads list, over the fold.

SMH FAIL.

Update. Sadly they have fixed the caption.

Went to the monthly Balmain Ukulele Klub meetup on Monday night over at the Gladstone Park Bowlo. It was Dylan night! I do not play the ukulele and don't anticipate taking it but it was a lot of fun and it warms me to know these thriving subcultures exist across the city. The house band of friends of mine (buy the CD) did a great job with some Dylan songs, including a clever Red Sails in the Sunset/Beyond the Horizon medley. Then there was a ukulele tutorial on more Bob songs, then an open mic of Bob songs. All on uke, of course. Col Joye was there, big uke man apparently.

* Joke totally stolen.

Muxtape, World Youth Day edn.

Further: How awesome is it that Mick/Proddy doctrinal stoushes are back in the papers? Party like its 1953!

A box of 'em. $2 each. Yank their arm and they shriek. If they're all here, who's minding teh internet?

My probably libellous and ignorant impression of Wynton Marsalis, based entirely on message board scuttlebutt, is that he is some kind of intense jazz purist who bags out other jazzbos for defiling the artform via crass commercial cross over. But here he is with the ever picky Willie Nelson for an album, Two Men With the Blues. The snippets there sound alright, although they stopped working for me after the first couple. "Georgia on My Mind" with solo trumpet can't be a bad thing. The YouTube DVD preview there is most enticing. Noice work as always, Mickey Raphael. Think I'll pick this one up soon.

PS. This is my 100th post on the new site.

I'm no theology geek but I'd sort of imagined the Second Coming would be heralded a little more, I dunno, auspiciously. Rather than just slipping the announcement in a Daily Tele article. Jesus will literally walk amongst us!

And it's happening here! Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi OI Oi!

I mentioned before I'm liking "El Esquimal" the cover of Quinn the Eskimo by Los Chijuas. I knew they were Mexican but didn't know when it was recorded til I just went looking. 1968, turns out. It's on my muxtape and also an MP3 is here.

I got the rerelease off eMusic where it has this random fugly cover which gives you no idea of the era, the contents or anything else of consequence.

So after googling I find the original 1968 cover which was deemed too ... appropriate I guess for teh cutting edge of now. (Is that Peter Sellars????)

Bah. Shut up, Musart-Balboa. You might be a cheapie rerelease factory without even a website but surely you could find some other royalty free clip art? I hereby banish you from my Cover Flow!

PS, on eMu it's also on this "Mexi-delico" compilation which is very cool.

There's this new show, see, on Ch.7 tomorrow night at 7.30pm The One: Search for Australia's Top Cold Reader Psychic. I've attended a few of the studio tapings on account of a good friend of mine, Richard Saunders, is one of the judges. I met Richard through the Australian Skeptics and he has taken on the daunting task of being commercial TV token skeptical whipping boy for low rent reality show. Go, Richard! Join our Richard Saunders Fans Facebook page! So I am in the audience for episodes 2 and 4 and watched episode 5 filming from the green room and back of the studio yesterday.

Richard has done an excellent job with a very tough gig, and has managed to institute a few extra controls on the "tests" although even with that they barely rise above parlour game level (except for one which is just deeply full of FAIL on the crass test.) And yes there's a legitimate discussion to be had about doing more harm than good in legitimising the mystery-monging but these shows are going to happen anyway and in Richard they actually had someone capable of, under pressure, quickly breaking down what was happening and really revealing the workings of cold reading on the spot. Of course he only gets a few lines and the vast bulk of logical fallacies, utter non-sequiturs, post-hoc rationalisations and face-palm moments have to go unchallenged. But the lines he gets are good, although its all in the editing, I guess. I took lots of notes in the last two sessions I was at so I might make further comment once I see the edited version. Podblack blog has made a loose comment about live blooging the first show. I hope she does, that should be fun.

I didn't take any of Skeptico's Cold Reading Bingo cards but perhaps you can print out some to play along at home. I guarantee you odds vastly better than the local Lions club version. You can't lose, in fact.

In my time there I saw lots of readings and "challenges" but not a single inexplicable or even particularly impressive thing, I did see a lot of the standard psychological techniques done to varying degrees of inexpertness and the glorious laws of probability at work. Which doesn't mean it won't "make good TV." It was interesting although LONG to sit through an entire day of faffing about for a few minutes of film. That's the glamour of showbiz I guess.

On the other end of the scale of seriousness I've been reading Ray Hyman's The Elusive Quarry: A Scientific Appraisal of Psychical Research and it comes highly recommended.

Via Phineas, I present this July 4th tribute to/for our American friends.

I'm back on the right side of the digital divide. To celebrate, I did a new muxtape just of stuff I listened to in my first couple of hours of plugging the thing in. The opening song is a Mexican cover of Quinn the Eskimo.

That is all I want to say about anything.