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List Price: $29.95 | | Publisher: Continuum
Salesrank: 134397
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| Our Price: $18.78 |
| Used Price: $8.33 |
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| Media: Paperback |
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Editorial Review:
"The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia" is one of the most wide-ranging, informed, entertaining, provocative, and compulsively readable books ever written about popular music. It's the culmination of over thirty years of dedicated research and scholarship by Michael Gray.Bob Dylan's outreach is too wide, too deep and too long for any book about him to cover it all. He'll be 65 years old when this book is published and his career spans 45 years of American history. The many different kinds of entry that are in the book include: biographies of singers, musicians, songwriters and composers who have influenced Dylan and/or worked with him; critical assessments and factual details (including place and date of recording, date of release and original catalogue numbers) for all Dylan's albums and for a large number of individual songs from decades of work; and, Dylan's key career and biographical moments.The many different kinds of entry that are in the book also include: biographies of writers, poets and other key cultural figures who have impacted on Dylan's work and/or who are mentioned within it, from William Blake to William Carlos Williams and from Lenny Bruce to Franz Kafka, in each case delineating the often surprising ways in which they connect to Dylan's work; short biographies of music critics and authors of books and major websites on Dylan; critical assessments & facts on Dylan's own books and films; and, discursive subjects, from Dylan Interpreters to Cowboy Heroes, and from The Use of Hollywood Dialogue in Dylan's lyrics, to 'frying an egg on stage'.
The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia: Revised and Updated Edition Reviews:
Perfectly MAD book!! 
2009-06-11 - Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3AAZ28KZV5MIT
Dylan Encyclopedia 
2009-02-27 - Paperback binding is very poor. When the book is opened, the binding splits. Recommend don't buy since it won't last very long.
how we think 
2008-10-28 - In a way, I am too much like this book to offer anyone else an opinion about what can be found in hundreds of pages. If anyone imagines intellectuals walking around like a book that never ends, try thinking of me as being like this book. I believe in intoxication in words the way other people have been seduced by sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I already know many of the songs by Bob Dylan, and Michael Gray has information that goes way beyond what I learn by trying to sing them when I want to know how I really feel.
Just a bit on the movie "Annie Hall" can surpass my ability to say anything. I think like Woody Allen when I confront a monstrosity like the culture that I belong to in more ways than one. I believe in flawless recitation, and the Bob Dylan Encyclopedia description of the setting of a comment about the song "Just Like a Woman" whereby "a vacuous hippie character played by the wonderful Shelley Duvall recites the lines quoted as if they're far-out and profound, . . ." makes me want, even more, to be that far-out and profound, in addition to gaining more information about sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
Thinking is not at all what it used to be for people who spend a lifetime waiting for television to tell them something. What is in this book is a form of culture that rarely appears on the screen that people are checking for news every day. It rocks even as it remains words on a page.
Don't believe Amazon
2008-10-19 - Amazon lists this book as "In Stock" and available for next day delivery...don't believe it. I ordered this book over two weeks ago (intended as a birthday gift) and after many emails and phone conversations with "customer service" (who continues, 16 days later, to claim that this book is "in stock" and will be delivered tomorrow!)
I finally cancelled my order out of complete frustration. I'll buy a copy of the book from a different vendor; after all this aggravation I'm hoping my son enjoys the book.
Disappointing
2007-08-20 - After all the hype and expectations, this tome was an utter disappointment. The entries are leftovers from Michael Gray's research for other Dylan books, namely "Song And Dance Man" (which I also own but have never waded through), and he doesn't seem to have edited it or put forth any additional effort. Many of the passages have incorrect information or mere guesses. I was in a book store in Berkeley returning from a recent Dylan tour, and they were selling it for $15. They had stacks of them. This was really a disappointment since I paid full price when it was first released. Anybody who gushes over this book in a review here simply does not know his/her Dylan history.
