With a minimum of official-site fluff and a maximum of the depth of insider's information and scholarly minutiae that netsurfers expect to find on fan-generated sites, Columbia Records today launched the official Bob Dylan Web site, bobdylan.com.
The site, produced by Silicon Alley Web developer and editor Dan Levy with help from Literary Kicks Beat aficionado Levi Asher, offers breaking news about upcoming shows and albums, unreleased live and studio performances in RealAudio, period photographs, extensive discographies of both official releases and collector's rarities, a hyper-detailed chronicle of Dylan's "Never Ending Tour" from 1988 to 1996, and a searchable lyric database (Dylan has written 31 songs about trains).
Bobdylan.com also features musings on the music and writings that influenced the former coffeehouse singer from Minnesota (such as Harry Smith's recently re-released Folkways Anthology of American Folk Music), and essays written for the site by cultural figures inspired by Dylan's work.
This week's offering, "Tracking Bob Dylan," by actor and former Digger Peter Coyote, weaves together personal recollections of crossing Dylan's path in Greenwich Village and Woodstock in the '50s and '60s with Zen-inflected meditations on his style and significance: "Dylan's detachment is impeccable. He sings as one already dead, beyond the pull of superficial temptations, beyond the expectation that things might get better or ever be different.... Why else would I have paid such a king's ransom of attention to Dylan, except to talk to myself sometimes with his voice?"
