The Random iTunes Fairy has pulled this “two days, same artist” routine often enough on Random Weekends that I’m tempted to suspect foul play. As much as I know about the apparent patterns that show up within random distributions, sometimes it just seems fishy.
Today’s selection is one hop in the time machine away from yesterday’s. After hearing Bob Dylan croaking through a cut from the 2009 album Together Through Life, here we find him kicking off a famous concert in 1966.
Today’s Random Weekend selection is a by-the-numbers blues song from Bob Dylan’s 2009 album Together Through Life.
Dylan was 68 when he released this album, a rowdy boot-stomper of a record that came on the heels of his marvelous late-career trilogy of Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft and Modern Times. At the time, it wasn’t out of the question that this would be his last album.
The fifth and final 2016 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee is the polar opposite of the previous four.
While fellow inductees Cheap Trick, Chicago, Deep Purple and Steve Miller were classic rock acts that waited decades for their first nomination, N.W.A. is a pioneering rap act that made it to the ballot in their first year of eligibility. N.W.A. didn’t get in that year — 2013 — nor did they make it in ’14 or ’15 despite making the shortlist both years. But in 2016, they became the fifth hip-hop act inducted into the Hall.
Steve Miller is yet another 2016 Rock & Roll Hal of Fame inductee who waited more than two decades for the privilege. First eligible in 1994, Miller made it into the Hall in one try once nominated. Though he performed with The Steve Miller Band for the duration of his career, he was inducted as a solo artist.
Miller raised hell in the press room after his induction ceremony, calling out the Rock Hall for its pettiness and lack of respect for artists. He said the Hall offered him two tickets to the ceremony, for him and his wife, and charged $10,000 for any additional seats (including for bandmates performing with him on the show).
2016 was a big catch-up year for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to the long-awaited inductions of Cheap Trick and Chicago, the English hard rock band Deep Purple made it into the Hall after a 22-year wait.
Considered part of the “unholy trinity” of English hard rock bands, along with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, Deep Purple had been nominated twice before (in 2013 and 2014) before finally making the cut.
Meet Me In Montauk 