Culture

Dylan Stumps the Grammys

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Bob Dylan turns 74 today.

On February 20, 1991, Dylan was handed a Grammy “Lifetime Achievement Award” by Jack Nicholson. (Will they grant him a second one soon? The man is still working, after all.) Dylan in 1991 was beginning to receive the oldies act treatment and he did not appear to enjoy this fact even a little bit. Since 1991: nine albums, a hundred or more live performances every year on what critics decided to call his “Neverending Tour,” a dozen releases from his bootleg series. And his paintings and twisted-iron sculpture series, which he debuted two years ago.
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Tom Waits’ Letterman Tribute

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

David Letterman retired from his 33-year-plus career hosting late night television last night. One of his best guests through the years was Tom Waits, who usually showed a flair for comedy that he did not often display anywhere else. (The sad fact is that not many television shows have requested Tom Waits to appear at all, much less bring whatever object or idea that had sparked some comic possibilities in his brain.)

Out of Letterman’s 6000-plus shows, Waits appeared on only 10, whether or not he had a new album or tour or play or film to advertise. Last week, he appeared for the last time and debuted a song that keeps lingering with me, “Take One Last Look.” He directed it as a tribute to Mr. Letterman and was accompanied by Larry Taylor (once of Canned Heat) on upright bass and Gabriel Donohue on piano accordion, with the horn section of the CBS Orchestra helping on the choruses.

On his website, Waits joked, “I don’t know when I will see Dave again. I guess from now on we’ll have to settle for bumping into each other at Pilates.”
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Discrediting Reality

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, 1st Marqués de Dalí de Pubol, was born 111 years ago today. “A nice round number,” he is not reported to have not said to anyone about this or any other number, except round ones, today or any other day.

Salvador Dalí was the most local of artists—many street scenes in his works replicate from childhood memory the turn-of-the-century streets of his hometown of Figueres, many beach-scapes are photorealistic recreations of the rocks and outcroppings and jetties of the nearby Port Lligat beaches he loved—and his works bring viewers into a yet more local setting: his mind and his dreams.

His body is interred in a crypt in the Dalí Theatre and Museum in Figueres, across the street from the church in which he was baptized and received his first communion.

Dalí’s popularity as an artist has never really had peaks and valleys; his work started to attract notice when he was in his mid-20s and his course through life took him from attention-getting to admired to loved to beloved, and now he is thought of as one of the major visual artists of the 20th century.

His self-promoting persona sometimes outshone the creations but at times it was his chief creation.

And for $30 from various websites, you can purchase a melting wristwatch, as seen at top, a visual reference to one of Dalí’s most famous paintings: The Persistence of Memory.
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