mike marqusee chimes of freedom: the politics of bob dylan's art (new york: new press, 2003): "I wrote this book with the hard rain headed iraq's way", he tells us in the finely nuanced introduction justifying a rereading of dylan's politics, as dialectical product of and intervention in the sixties. we live in a political world, marqusee knows, better than christopher ricks whose eloquent theologies of bobness miss so much of the historical grain that made it all happen and still crackles through heavy old vinyl's dusty grooves. nor does marqusee overstate or wrongly wrench: simply by setting up the pertinent contexts he lets the cards and shards of meaning fall into place and sends authentic tumult surging back into that weird body of work. in truth his book gets bitty, and not all its thoughts are new; but it's as fine a recent reminder as I know of how much I love that rimbaudian hobo's rasp from and against its exploding times. joe

paul morley words and music (london: bloomsbury, 2003): sixty miles out of lucierville I quit the winking neon strip and stop at the reynolds' return. at the bar the talk flurries on. ­ it's an alternative history of pop, says colin harvey: a thought experiment: what happens if we circumvent the beatles for once, read the vital tradition as the road from cage and satie to omd and saw? ­ but, but, I don't think I like that tradition, stammers richard briers: the noises it makes ­ so dull, so, so ugly... I feel that morley's just written out all of the beauty of pop, and after that what's the point? ­ my problem, interjects pam shriver, is his political blindness. he's an sf evangelist, technology's making us all safer and happier: he never sees power in the equation, can't grasp that things can get worse. it will never be over, I think, this colloquy: from the bright soho day I first saw a copy to the flickering lights of all those bloomsbury boozers, it's too important to put down, too flawed to forgive, it's too wrong to love, he's too good to hate. on the road again I start on the sixty light years to kill kylie hills. joe