George Carlin on Life!

I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death. What's that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch and you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities. You become a little baby, you go back into the womb, spend your last nine months floating... and you finish off as an orgasm.

Beautiful Lenka around Sydney

Water Features

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In The City

Bob Dylan

The Beginning

Robert Allen Zimmerman,born May 24th, 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota.Later he would change his name to Bob Dylan. Bob started writing poems at around the age of ten and soon also taught himself to play the piano and guitar. His first musical inspirations were the likes of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard. In fact Bob Dylan's goal in his high school yearbook was to "Join Little Richard."

After graduating high school, the young Dylan went off to the University of Minnesota in early 1959. In University his desire of becoming a musical artist began. Dylan had begun to listen to folk and rock pioneers Hank Williams, Robert Johnson and Woody Guthrie. Dylan was soon playing in nearby coffee houses and it was at this time he adopted his stage name "Bob Dylan". It is still unsure where he got the name "Dylan" from, but it is presumed that the name was taken from the popular poet Dylan Thomas. In 1961 Bob Dylan got his break through. It is at this time he was offered a recording contract with Columbia Records. Dylan's first album was to be simply called "Bob Dylan". The album had none of Dylans works on it , Dylan played traditional folk songs on this album it was'nt until his second album  "Free Wheelin' Bob Dylan",that the world took notice. The second album contained only his own songs and this is what was to make Bob Dylan legendary. The album contained some of the most durable folk songs of the sixties. "A Hard Rains A-Gonna Fall", "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" and "Blowin' In The Wind".

Dylan's Blowing in the Wind was Cooke's inspiration to write A Change Gonna Come. He could'nt believe a white man wrote Blowing in the Wind.

 Sam Cooke Blowing In The Wind

 Dylan's next album dished out the same kind of protest songs. It was called "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and the title cut was a killer track. Some other good songs on the album were that of: "The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll", "Boots of Spanish Leather" and "Restless Farwell".

Josephine Baker The Times They are a Changin

Live 1973 Carnegie Hall

   Then followed another album which was called "Another Side of Bob Dylan with the classic "It Ain't Me Babe" amongst the tracks.It's around this time that Bob Dylan had become friends with Joan Baez. She had begun singing many of Dylan's unreleased works.

Bob Dylan and Joan Baez

     Dylan's next album "Bringing It All Back Home" the term "folk-rock" had been formed and Bob Dylan was leading the way. The recording took place in 1965 and was something new for Dylan. Into the recording, with Dylan, went a nine piece band. The album was half electric and half acoustic. Some of the songs from the album are: "Subterranean Homesick Blues", "Mr. Tambourine Man" and 

"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue". Joan Baez

Following are just a couple of Dylans Classics 

Bob Dylans Hurricane
 

This is about Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a boxer who spent 19 years in jail for a murder Dylan felt he did not commit.

Carter was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of 3 white people who were gunned down at a bar in Paterson, New Jersey on June 17, 1966. Police were looking for 2 black men and pulled over Carter and his friend John Artis. They were sentenced to life in prison.

Touring with the Rolling Thunder Revue, which featured Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell and Roberta Flack, Dylan raised over $100,000 for Carter's defense at a Madison Square Garden concert the day after visiting his prison. A month later, they held another charity concert, Hurricane II, in the Astrodome.

Dylan's efforts brought new publicity to Carter's case, getting him a new trial in 1976, where he was again convicted, with prosecutors claiming he killed the men in retaliation for a murder of a black man earlier that night. Carter was not freed until 1984, when his conviction was finally overturned.

Dylan A Hard Rains Gonna Fall

Bob Marley's version of Like A Rolling Stone

Bob Dylan and the Travelling Wilburys

The Forming of the Travelling Wilburys and the writing of Handle With Care
George Harrison was just finishing off an album and had a couple more tracks to cut.

 

" I just thought I would go into the studio tomorrow and do one, and it happened that Jeff was working with Roy and Roy wanted to come"- George Harrison

  It wasn't worth booking anywhere expensive so George telephoned Bob Dylan in Santa Monica whose 'little Ampex in the corner of his garage' was available the next day. 

Arriving late the following morning, Roy shook hands with Tom Petty - who Jeff, and to a lesser extent, George, had assisted in the production of a Del Shannon album in 1987. Petty had just backed Dylan on the tour that had terminated at Wembley. Petty had either tagged along, or was asked by George to come along.

  From merely providing refreshments, Dylan lent a hand when Harrison  with his B-Side only half-finished said  "Give us some lyrics, you famous lyricist" Bob enquired as to the subject matter.

George looked around and saw a box with Handle With Care written on it.

We sat on the grass and outside Dylan's and from the germ of an idea that George had on the guitar we wound up writing this song called 'Handle With Care'." - Tom Petty

Knockin on Heavens Door Gun's'n'Roses

Latest Dylan News

Dylan at the Byron Bay Blues Festival 2011

 This year’s Bluesfest will run from Thursday, April 21 to Tuesday, April 26.

BOB Dylan’s extra concert at Bluesfest has been approved by the Byron Shire Council after an extraordinary meeting today.

The extension to a six day festival, instead of the normal five day event to accommodate an extra concert by the American singer-songwriter will only apply to this year’s event. Councillors voted 6-1 in favour of the extension more....

Auguste Rodin and The Gates of Hell

     One of the greatest and most prolific sculptors of the 19th century, Auguste Rodin was born November 12 1840 and died November 17 1917.His masterpiece The Gates of Hell many recognize as the greatest sculptor of all time.It was a project that Rodin was engrossed in until his death in 1917.

       The Beginning 

of this masterpiece came in 1880 when Rodin received a commission from the French government to design monumental doors for a proposed new museum. His starting point was Dante's Inferno, but the many figures he created in plaster for his Gates of Hell including models for The Thinker 1880 and The Kiss 1886 came to represent the sculptor's own vision of humanity's battle with good and evil.

    The sculpture itself  stands at 6 m high, 4 m wide and 1 m deep and contains 180 figures. The figures range from 15 cm high up to more than one metre. Several of the figures were also cast independently by Rodin.

  The following all appear in the Gates of Hell

Adam And Eve

In 1880, Rodin proposed to Turquet, the Undersecretary for fine Arts, to flank his 'Gates of Hell' by two colossal statues: Adam and Eve, the first sinners.more....                                                      

The Kiss

'The Kiss' is inspired by Dantes'Divine Comedy. In Canto V of the 'Inferno', Dante and Virgil meet the illicit love couple Paolo and Francesca in the Second Circle of Hell, where the carnal sinners are punished. Dante's narration is based on historical facts that must have deeply impressed him as a young man.

Fugitive Love

Fugitive love' is a version of the popular theme of lovers, carried by the wind. Rodin detached this group of lovers from the The Gates of Hell, where it replaced The Kiss around 1887 as the dominant group at the left door. Again, the love couple represents Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta, who were murdered for their illicit love affair and eternally damned.

 Meditation

The free-standing version of 'Meditation', which Rodin modeled in 1885, is slightly larger than the small body included as damned soul in the composition of the 'The Gates if Hell' in the right corner of the tympanum.

Ugolino and His Sons

The plaster in the Musée d'Orsay shows Ugolino still with a raised head; in the final version, included in 'The Gates of Hell',  the sculptor goes the last step: the Count is facing down like an animal, no longer able to maintain a reflective distance; as a last human gesture,  his left arm is supporting the head of his dying son, the other son still clinging to his father's back.

Gates of Hell

    Rodin was not only a sculptor of public monuments but a tireless artist who produced numerous small and intimate sculptures. These works range from highly developed pieces such as Eternal Spring, The Burghers of Calais and his first piece The Age of Bronze.

 Rodin's Final Year

 

      In 1917 Rodin married Rose Beuret on 29 January in Meudon. Rose died on 14 February and Rodin died on 17 November. He was buried in Meudon on 24 November, next to Rose. Their tomb is dominated by The Thinker

Auguste Rodin Quotes

      There is nothing ugly in art except that which is without character, that is to say, that which offers no outer or inner truth.

     Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.

 

     There are unknown forces in nature; when we give ourselves wholly to her, without reserve, she lends them to us; she shows us these forms, which our watching eyes do not see, which our intelligence does not understand or suspect.
 

Paulo Coelho One his Favorite Artist Auguste Rodin