When I can remember to tune in, Bob Dylan's weekly radio show on XM Satellite Radio is always a treat. And as Duff McDonald writes in Vanity Fair, the shows are a great insight into Dylan's passions and foibles.
To wit: He's played George Jones nine times; Tom Waits and Dinah Washington eight times, and Bob Wills & his Texas Playboys, Louis Armstrong and Van Morrison have gotten seven plays each on his shows to date.
Easily half of the music he plays was recorded before 1960.
He can tell you how to hang drywall, walk like a runway model, give yourself dreadlocks or pack a suitcase. He shares recipes for mint juleps, rum and coke, figgy pudding and "the perfect meatball."
The Vanity Fair article also collects many of the witticisms and asides Dylan has tossed off. Like "John Lee....one of those guys that always sounds better without a band. Thirteen bars here, eleven bars there, nine there. Doesn't matter to him. Nobody can do more with less than John Lee Hooker."
Or: About Sinatra singing Summer Wind: "West Coast weather is the weather of catastrophe. The Santa Ana winds are like the winds of the apocalypse. But the summer wind that Frank's singing about may be a little lighter. Come on in, Frank."
