Dylan's Top Ten NYC Performances

1.      8-1-71 Concert for Bangladesh, Madison Square Garden...From George Harrison’s introduction:, “Would you please welcome a friend of us all, Mr. Bob Dylan,” to the thunderous ovation following the astounding version of “Just Like a Woman,” this is the most satisfying short set of Dylan’s career, fueled by the pressure packed magic of Madison Square Garden.  The Prodigal Son returns, better than ever.

2.      10-31-64, New York Philharmonic Hall…It’s Halloween and Bob Dylan’s wearing all his masks: poet, prognosticator, prophet,  comedian, shaman, master of the talkin’ blues. The audience was spellbound and thrilled with every syllable. You won’t find better offerings of John Birch Paranoid Blues, Who Killed Davey Moore, or I Don’t Believe You.  

3.      8-28-65 Forest Hills Tennis Stadium...The storm after Newport. With Levon Helm & Al Kooper backing Dylan, Bob served nothing but aces in Queens. The crowd was bewildered as  Dylan debuted Desolation Row, Tombstone Blues, From a Buick 6, Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues, and Ballad of a Thin Man.  Unplugged and plugged in perfect harmony.

4.      11-11-02 Madison Square Garden…Dylan takes the stage perched behind a Yamaha keyboard and debuts “Yeah Heavy and a Bottle of Bread.” Fortified by his best touring band, Chez Dylan mixes his iconic anthems  with gems  from Love & Theft, and sprinkles in covers from the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Don Henley,  and Warren Zevon,  to create an abundant feast. The set ending Summer Days was tour de force.

5.      10-13-89 Beacon Theatre…From his initial creation,  Song to Woody,  to his latest Oh Mercy masterpiece, Man in the Long Black Coat, Dylan shocked the West Side  of Manhattan with a chaotic performance. Dressed in a gold leme suit and pointy white shoes, Dylan dropped his harp and mic on the floor during the Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat encore, and walked through the crowd before splitting stage left.  Adios Bob. May the lord have mercy on us all.

6.      10-17-93 Supper Club…From 1991-’93, The Never Ending Tour sputtered a bit. With a pair of sparkling acoustic shows at the intimate Supper Club, Bob righted the ship. All performances were memorable, but  One More Cup of Coffee, Queen Jane Approximately, and Tight Connection to My Heart were extraordinary.

7.      12-8-75 Night of the Hurricane, Madison Square Garden…The grand finale of the first leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue. Nuff said.

8.      10-19-88 Radio City…A blistering Subterranean Homesick Blues  kicks off a unique show featuring rarities like Bob Dylan’s 115^th Dream, With God on Our Side (With the Neville Brothers Vietnam verse), and Wagoner’s Lad. The set ending trifecta of  Silvio > In the Garden > Like a Rolling Stones is as rocking as Dylan gets, shades of ’66.

9.      11-19-01 Madison Square Garden… Six weeks after 9/11, Dylan returns to his town dressed in a pink suit. He unleashes a riveting 21 song show. I’ll never forget how he corkscrewed on the checkerboard floor during a Just Like a Woma harp solo, but the highlight of the night was when Bob said, “Most of the songs we’re playing here tonight were written here, and those that weren't were recorded here. So no one has to ask me how I feel about this town.” 

10.  1-17-98 Theatre at Madison Square Garden… Sharing the bill with “Van the Man,” Dylan set the night on fire with intense versions of Senor, Absolutely Sweet Marie and Tangled Up in Blue.  Tommorow is a Long Time was a pleasant surprise, and the Time Out of Mind tunes were sublime.

Honorable Mention: 2-25-98…Dylan walked away with all the important trophies from the 40^th Grammy Awards at Radio City, but his live performance was absolutely a Time Out of Mind experience. During Love Sick, Dylan endured the Soy Bomb intrusion to deliver an unforgettable Love Sick anchored by the spunkiest guitar solo of his career. During the acceptance speech,  The Dylan recalls the time he saw Buddy Holly in Duluth. Bob had The Right Stuff.

 

Howard Weiner's new book, Tangled Up in New York

 http://amzn.to/18kegXu 

 

 

Tangled Up in New York

Tangled Up in New York: Shakedown on the Streets is the inspirational, hilarious, and strange saga of a forty-eight year-old salesman who bagged his day job to hustle books on the streets. From Memorial Day through Halloween, Howard “Catfish Weiner hauled his Dylan/Dead memoirs from Battery Park to Yankee Stadium in search of an audience for his prose.  Along the way, Catfish becomes one with his oppressive environment, fusing with the strange brew of humanity stampeding along the steamy asphalt jungle. This is the quintessential and timeless tale of a New Yorker pressing on against all odds to manifest destiny, on his own terms. 

During his unprecedented 2012 book tour, Catfish meets up with Dylan's Never Ending Tour in Bethel Woods, Port Chester, and the Mohegan Sun. His tour also makes stops for Dylanfest at the Irving Plaza, and opening day for the Tempest Pop-Up-Shop in New York.
 

Take a look inside on Amazon... http://amzn.to/18kegXu 

 

4-18-13 Scarlet Town

Bob Dylan and his band were fabulous at Lehigh University.  The journey began when I met my accountant at Tobacco Road on 41st Street by Ninth Avenue, where our bartender, Honey, took our money. We then drove west across Jersey with live Dylan thundering all the way to Bethlehem. Since we were two miles from Stabler Arena, we stopped off for cocktails at the Sands Casino. Unfortunately, we got lost driving around the 2,600 acre Lehigh campus. After forty-five futile minutes, we paid a pizza delivery guy twenty bucks to escort us to the arena.

We strolled into Stabler, stomping to the beat of the “Early Roman Kings.” The acoustics of the venue were crisp, and there wasn't a shabby seat in the house. Dylan crooned a tender “Tangled Up in Blue,” and the warm tone of Duke’s guitar infused the band with a renewed sense of purpose.

The joint was jumping as Dylan"s harp solos pierced the night during “Behind Here Lies Nothing.” Dylan delivered the Holy Grail ,” Blind Willie Mc Tell,” followed by another '80s gem, “What Good Am I?” Oh Mercy!

The Thunder on the Mountain jam raged from fast to slow to loud to soft and back again. Dylan changed gears, shifting the sound this way and that way, and Duke and the boys were right on his tail. But no song captured the essence of the show better than “Scarlet Town.”  Whenever I hear this Tempest delight,  I imagine an old mill town like Bethlehem, where the evil and the good live side by side, and all human thoughts seem glorified.  Dylan’s performance was phenomenal.

I've loved hearing the heavy echo on Ballad of a Thin Man every show for the past four years, but eliminating the echo for this tour is a touch I like. The roaring crowd adored Dylan as he stood before the faithful and marched in place, before splitting for the next cowtown on his schedule.

An hour after the parking lot emptied, my accountant and I were still enjoying brews, shuffling to Tempest, and inhaling the magic of Lehigh. Both the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Band played legendary shows here in 1981. We split after midnight and drove straight into pure fog. Arriving in Chinatown by 2:30, we closed the night out with a succulent feast down below at Wo Hop.

Howard Weiner interview with David Gans

 

Listen to my my interview with David Gans on Tales from the Golden Road 11-11-12.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elwzLlxUwVo

Go West Young Men! 8-7-82

Thirty years ago today. An excerpt from Chapter Four of Tangled Up in Tunes:

Doug was waiting for me in the gravelly Tennyson Park lot, leaning against his yellow Caddy and spinning a red, white, and blue ABA basketball on his index finger. The windows were rolled down, and “Casey Jones” was cranking. He said, “Howie, I got a proposition for you. You’re gonna love this idea. It’s right up your alley. The Dead are in Wisconsin next weekend at the Alpine Valley Music Theatre. We can get tickets from Ticketron. Howie, picture this: We are outdoors with Jerry in the Midwest next Saturday night. I hear this place is amaaaaazing!  Can you imagine how hot Garcia will be in the Midwest? It’s only a sixteen-hour drive. Let’s do it. Whattaya say?” 

The time had come for us to leave the Tennyson Boys behind. Our pursuit of Jerry’s next transcendent jam was paramount. I informed my parents I’d be heading West with Doug in my Chevy. My parents were fond of the Doug. They knew I was crazy, but if Doug was part of my posse, then there might be some merit to it. In the classic tradition of exploration made famous by Lewis and Clark and perpetuated by Kerouac and Cassidy —  look out, America — here comes Catfish and Schmell!

I pulled up in front of the Schmell residence before noon on Friday. We wanted to tackle the bulk of our sixteen-hour-trip in one day and cruise into East Troy, Wisconsin, triumphantly on Saturday, August 7, 1982. Doug emerged from his house with a duffel bag slung across his torso and a box of Maxell cassettes carefully balanced in his right palm like a tray with Dom Perignon. Stepping into my Chevy, he admired his precious cargo and said, “Howie, these tapes are bad news for Van Halen fans.” It was a smug remark—one that a Garcia junkie could appreciate. Comparing anybody to Jerry was comical to us. We understood Garcia’s virtuosity, and it was our mission to spread the word to non-believers. Despite the fact that the Dead’s latest studio efforts were lame, the legend of Garcia was growing, and his cult following was on the rise.  

Chuck and Paul, neighborhood Deadheads, joined us on our journey to Wisconsin. Chuck was a serious young man–Fred Flintstone in tie-dye. He was also a person of great interest to us because he had a substantial bootleg collection, but a bad reputation when it came to returning borrowed tapes. Our other passenger, Paul Blatt, was a tiny red-headed cat I met at Rockland Community College–a mini-Bill Walton, minus athletic prowess. Cordial Paul spoke in soft squeaky tones and was always willing to roll with the flow of the group.  

Charging on to 80 West, I claimed the fast lane and refused to budge—left hand steering, right hand juggling java, joints, Marlboros, and boots. Endless Pennsylvania seemed bleak – blue collar town followed blue collar town through Amish Country, insane amounts of highway construction and detours along the way. We ran into three thunder storms, or maybe it was the same one chasing after us. Sheets of precipitation rap-tap-tapped off the windshield as I raced past monster trailers and trucks on the bedraggled two-lane highway. The sky darkened by the time we reached Ohio. Feeling famished, we stopped for food at a place in Youngstown that had a menu boasting of gizzards. A grease-stained bucket of rest area Roy Rogers chicken would have to suffice. One more cup of coffee, a hit of speed and one more ’77 Dead tape; I refused to give up the wheel until Cleveland was in the rearview mirror. By 3 A.M., my comrades were snoring as I pulled into a rest area and slipped into a spot between tractor trailers.  Four Deadheads and 100 truckers were motionless beneath the stars, but they were still tearing down the road in their dreams.  

On Saturday morning, we blew by Chicago, purchased a road map, and found a quaint cabin in Lake Geneva by noon. We had stumbled upon a wonderful Wisconsin resort town, and the weather was perfect—ah-hoooo! Cotton-candy clouds in sapphire skies dangled over a crystal clear lake. This expedition turned up nothing but gold, and the impending jam was still a seed in Jerry’s mind. 

Our heroes opened with a Music Never Stopped -> Sugaree ->Music Never Stopped loop. Once again, the band had rewarded me for my dedication with a combination that was never played before and would never be played again. Garcia raged on, peppering away on the set ending “Let It Grow.” Weir shouted the lyrics at Jerry, begging him to deliver: “Let it grow, let it grow, greatly yield.” And yield, Garcia did.  It’s a guitar lover’s feast offering three separate instrumental segments, with the middle one being the longest and most complex. The band executed flawlessly, setting the stage for Jerry’s mid-summer tirade. 

I finished out the year seeing the Dead at Landover, Maryland (9-15-82), Madison Square Garden (9-20 + 21-82), New Haven (9-23-82) and Syracuse (9-24-82), as well as catching the Jerry Garcia Band at the Felt Forum (11-11-82 early & late shows) and in the Wilkins Theatre at Keane College, located in Elizabeth, New Jersey (11-15-82 early & late show). In 1983, I got serious about following Jerry around. 

Tangled Up in Tunes: Ballad of a Dylanhead is available at www.tangledupintunes.com The kindle version is on sale through August 9th for $5.99.

He Was A Friend of Mine: Happy 70th Birthday Jerry

“There's no way to measure his greatness or magnitude as a person or as a player. I don't think any eulogizing will do him justice. He was that great, much more than a superb musician, with an uncanny ear and dexterity. He's the very spirit personified of whatever is Muddy River country at its core and screams up into the spheres. He really had no equal. To me he wasn't only a musician and friend, he was more like a big brother who taught and showed me more than he'll ever know. There's a lot of spaces and advances between The Carter Family, Buddy Holly and, say, Ornette Coleman—a lot of universes, but he filled them all without being a member of any school. His playing was moody, awesome, sophisticated, hypnotic and subtle. There's no way to convey the loss. It just digs down really deep.”

Bob Dylan’s press release regarding the death of Jerry Garcia’s is one of the most poignant, and perceptive pieces I’ve ever read. It always makes me feel the immediacy of Jerry’s passing as if it just happened, and I know that Dylan gets It. In that glorious paragraph, Dylan sketches the essence of Jerry Garcia, the enlightened soul who gave us everything he had.  

I became a Deadhead on January 24, 1981, after experiencing Europe ’72 in the backseat of my friend’s Honda Civic following a New York Islanders hockey game. On that evening, Michael Bossy became the second player in NHL history to score fifty goals in the first fifty games of a season. It was a thrilling live spectacle, but hearing my first Ramble On Rose on the way home stole the show. The Jerry switch in my brain was flicked on when I heard him croon,

“I’m gonna sing you a hundred verses in ragtime. I know this song it ain’t never gonna end.”

In Jerry’s world, the music never stopped. Songs went on and on, and they melted into exotic combinations: Dark Star > Sugar Magnolia > Caution…Playin’ in the Band  > Uncle John’s Band > Morning Dew > Uncle John’s Band > Playin’ in the Band. The jams fearlessly stormed into unchartered territory, but were seamlessly balanced  like mathematical equations. It all roles into one. 

Buddy Holly, Orrnette Coleman, Eddie Lang, Hank Williams, Bob Dylan; Jerry absorbed them all, and cherished the supernatural spirit of everything that was awesome and wholesome about music. Jerry and his cosmic band mates poured sonic inspiration into a psychedelic blender at Kesey’s Acid Tests, launching a distinctive genre of music that was true its roots—The Grateful Dead.

Perhaps, nobody appreciated other artist’s music more than Jerry. Just consider the songs Jerry Garcia Band tackled: Dear Prudence, Tangled Up in Blue, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Harder They Come, After Midnight, Second That Emotion, Tough Mama, Let it Rock, And It Stoned Me, Russian Lullaby, When I Paint My Masterpiece. I suppose that’s what love will make you do.

Jerry turned me on to Dylan. When the Grateful Dead toured with Bob in 1987, I became the happiest Dylanhead on the planet. A few years later, the Grateful Dead shared the stage with Branford Marsalis at the Nassau Coliseum. That Jerry > Branford jam in Eyes of the World enlightened me to the world of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bud Powell.

Songs were sacred to Jerry. That’s why he slowed down the tempo and prolonged the jam. I know this song, it ain’t never gonna end. Every nook, cranny, and crevice in the valley was explored and magnified. When our lives are in spirit, we want to stop time in its tracks. Jerry could stop time: 9-3-77 Englishtown, 8-27-72 Kesey’s Farm, 9-18-97 Madison Square Garden.

I’ll take a melody

 And see what I can do about it.

I’ll take a simple C to G

And feel brand new about it

“He's the very spirit personified of whatever is Muddy River country at its core and screams up into the spheres,” said Mr. Dylan. Thankfully, Muddy River country still rages in these conformist times. You can hear It on the 24/7 Grateful Dead Channel, and you can see It and feel It in every hippie living the life they love at a summer festival. It’s been seventeen years since Jerry’s passing, and  every year, the big fella  looms larger than ever. I savor his angelic voice every day. And his passionately patient solos scream up into the spheres and beyond.

Thank you Dear Mr. Fantasy. Happy 70^th Birthday! You know our love will not fade away. 
Tangled Up in Tunes: Ballad of a Dylanhead is available on Kindle for $5.99 to celebrate Jerry's Birthday. www.tangledupintunes.com

www.tangledupintunes.com

Tangled Up In Tunes Review

This is the review of my memoir which appeared in the Books Upon Your Shelf column in issue 161 of Isis Magazine. I enhanced the text with some photos.

Its been a while since our last books review column, but this month we have four new items to introduce you to. Two of these are already available with two more due in late March and May.

Derek B.

Tangled Up in Tunes: Ballad of a Dylanhead

by Howard Weiner

Pencil Hill Publishing

            Reviewed by Derek Barker

Howard Weiner's "Tangled Up in Tunes: Ballad of a Dylanhead" is a memoir of a ramblin'  man who  has  followed Jerry Garcia, the Dead, and Bob Dylan for three decades. It's an American road rhapsody that  maybe  should  have  been  titled "Heading for Another Joint". After all, that's where the story ends.

Weiner, or "Catfish" as he's known to his friends, seems to have spent much of his life rambling   around   the   States, sometimes for his job, but more often to attend concerts, firstly to see Jerry Garcia and later Bob Dylan (100 Dylan, and 200 Dead and Jerry Garcia Band shows). The man might ramble but the book certainly doesn't, and I found it to be a good read.

There could maybe have been more analysis or commentary on the concerts- that would have made the book more informative, but probably less easy to read. And anyway, I guess song analysis is not the aim of the book.

Just when he thought his road days were over, Weiner witnessed the horror of 9/11 first-hand from a street corner in Downtown Manhattan. That night he decided to quit his day job and revisit his road-tripping Glory Days; pursuing his muse like never before.

The book opens in 2008 with Weiner in Minneapolis to see Dylan's November 4, Election Day concert. "Dylan's voice was gruff like an old carnival barker at the end of a double shift," Weiner writes. "Either you were drawn to the rumbling or you were repulsed, but everyone listened. Dylan's mysterious web of charisma hypnotized the audience." The book's real beginning starts with Chapter Two, "It's Alright Ma (It's My Life Only)". The best way to provide a flavour of this book is to let Howard Weiner take up the story:-

"I'd been born eighteen days prior to JFK's assassination and given up for adoption immediately," Weiner writes. "My new parents, Lenny and Doris Weiner, picked me up in Cheverly, Maryland, and drove me back to Brooklyn-my first road trip. By the time I was three, my adopted mother had died of an illness on December 31, 1966, and my father and I moved into my grandmother's shoebox apartment on Walton Avenue in the Bronx. My earliest memories, however, are not of grief or longing for my mother, but of the sounds of my father's records ... Infatuated by the soundtrack of West Side Story, I could see the jets and Sharks rumbling on a city playground, and I dreamed of a girl named Maria."

' ...I was turned on to The Beatles by my teenage cousins, the Baskin boys-Jeffery, Seth and Keith. They lived with my Uncle Murray and Aunt Ruth in a yellow house surrounded by a healthy yard with enormous trees. It was the last home on a dead-end street in Deer Park-an unpretentious high-rise ... I was amazed that they each had their own bedrooms-I was holed up in a single bedroom with Dad and Grandma ... I nagged Dad until he bought me my first two Beatles records: "Let It Be" and a 45rpm single of `All You Need is Love' with `Baby You're a Rich Man' on the fipside. The plastic inserts that had to be placed in the record holes of 45s were funky. Yellow, red, and green, the inserts resembled flattened ship steering wheels with gaps on the outer rim. It was as if their sole purpose was to forever lodge themselves in our memories so we would never forget 45s after they were passe."

"...Dad remarried, and we relocated ... Weekend road trips with the family became frequent. I didn't ask my parents for much, but I demanded respect; the radio must be playing. Sometimes I successfully negotiated sitting shotgun so I could  scan  the  dial.  Music  and motion became  an intoxicating combo Icould never shake. The names of the bridges and roads sang sweetly like a rhapsody..."

"The first station I tuned into was 66 WNBC New York. Some of the jingles that made an indelible impression upon me were: `Indian Reservation,"Love Train', `Crocodile Rock', `Song Sung Blue', and a song sung nasally-'Lay, lady, lay; lay across my big brass bed.' I was drawn to Dylan's nasally twang, but he didn't receive much exposure on the AM dial. I began to dig more of Zimmy's stuff after receiving an eight-track tape of Dylan's "Greatest Hits Volume II" as part of a larger shipment from Columbia House. Cost? Only 99 cents! Enrolment was a breeze and membership was bliss. Busting open a piggybank? Unnecessary. However, due to a seemingly innocuous stipulation in my relations with Casa De Columbia, I had to purchase seven new albums or tapes at inflated club prices over the next three years. Gotcha, cha-ching! Welcome to the American Dream-fantasize now, pay later, or defer forever. And enjoy those groovy tunes."

By  Chapter Three, "The  Golden Road  (To Unlimited Devotion)", Weiner has been introduced to the guitar playing of one Jerry Garcia:- "Hip to FM ditties like `Casey   Jones' and `Ripple', I used to think of the Grateful Dead as   just another good-time group with a Grate name ... Gripped by  "Europe  '72" the Grateful Dead's triple album, I surrendered my mind to the mysterious sounds. The Dead garnered country, bluegrass, jazz and Delta blues, tossed it in a psychedelic blender, and served it with rock and roll sensibility. These  songs  exuded a strange American presence. No simple label could do them justice. I'd cracked a musical language barrier.

Those with absolutely no interest in the Grateful Dead should be aware that Bob Dylan doesn't arrive in Weiner's story until  Chapter Seven (page 83 of 256). Weiner discovers Dylan quite by accident or, as the chapter's title states, by a "Simple Twist of Fate". It all starts for Weiner when he pushes home a tape in a friend's car. The tape is "Blood On The Tracks":- "I knew an epiphany when I was in the middle of one," writes Weiner. "...I wanted to rewind the tape and absorb what I'd heard so far ... The Dylan switch in my brain was flicked on." Weiner's revelation was superbly timed:- "My universe was perfectly aligned," Weiner continues. "I had found Dylan, and Garcia had bounced back from his coma and was finding his stride again. In May of 1987 it was announced that Dylan and the Dead would tour together again-except, this time, Jerry and the Boys would serve as Dylan's backing band, in addition to playing their own show. I could hardly believe it. Lady Luck was my soul mate."

Weiner had this to say about the July  12,1987  East Rutherford concert- "The Giants Stadium concert was an affirmation of my faith in the creative powers of Dylan and Garcia.  Nobody  could  have  grasped  the historical repercussion that this concert would have on Dylan's career, but I knew something was happening. I'd witnessed Dylan busy being born again, his career resuscitated by the Dead, in the swamps of East Rutherford"

After working as a travelling salesman, and moving home for what seems like the hundredth time - always taking his music collection and his three cats along for the ride -Weiner headed back to New York City. It was 1997 and his father and Jerry Garcia had both recently passed away. Weiner got a job selling copiers and rented a duplex in the desirable Yorkville neighbourhood on the Upper East Side. Things were going well until 9/11. Life would never be the same for New Yorkers after those two planes hit their target. The event would   provide the catalyst for a change in Weiner's life:- "I decided to leave my day job," he wrote. "I could better serve the world spreading music, even if it was karaoke." Weiner began spending a great deal of time on the Internet back amongst the Dead community and he very soon "pined for [his] glory days of touring with the Dead". On November 19, 2001, Weiner saw Dylan play at Madison Square Garden. When Dylan sang "'You can't repeat the past. I say, 'You can't? What do you mean, you can't? Of course you can." Weiner saw this as a "call to action". He writes, "My vision wasn't clear, but I knew it involved Dylan's Never Ending Tour and a road map." And so his Dylan road trip was about to start.

Still living in NYC and working as a karaoke host, Weiner began attending Dylan classes at The New School, New York. The classes, called "Discussing Dylan", were run by my old friend and ISIS subscriber Robert Levinson. In May 2005, near the end of the first Dylan semester, Weiner attended  a  clutch of Dylan concerts. The shows he witnessed were so good that he decided this was it; he was going to write a book about Dylan's Never Ending Tour. "Tangled Up in Tunes" is the result of that notion. However, as I've already stated, the book is not solely about Dylan, as the subtitle "Ballad of a Dylanhead" suggests

In May 2008 Weiner was accepted into The New School MFA Creative Writing program and in 2010 he received his Degree. The story ends on September 1, 2009 in The Joint, Las Vegas, with the author's 100th Dylan show. "It would be a confirmation more than a celebration-a continuum of my existence," writes Weiner. "I love the life I live, and I'm gonna live the life I love. The lights went out and Dylan appeared on stage. "When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way...Selah

Howard Weiner  created and hosted the radio show "Visions of Dylan" for WBAI 99.5 FM, New York,2006 - 2008. In 2010, he received an MFA Degree in Creative Writing from The New School, New York. All passages quoted in the above review are used with the permission of the author.

The book, a 6" x 9" Trade Paperback, was self-published by Pencil Hill Publishing on January 6, 2012. It is available direct from www.tangledupintunes.com at $14.00. "Tangled Up in Tunes: Ballad of a Dylanhead" can also be bought from Amazon.com (both  physical  and  Kindle)  and  from
Amazon.co.uk (in Kindle format only).