Dylan Week: Bob Dylan's 10 Most Bizarre Moments
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This slot could easily go to the entire Self-Portrait albumâafter all, Dylan essentially spat in the face of his own myth with that album. But barely four months after SP, Dylan quickly released New Morning, which was seen as Dylan making up for SP. It's a homey, warm record that sounds like the logical follow-up to Nashville Skyline. That storyline fits well...with one exception. "If Dogs Run Free" was Dylan dipping his toe into the waters of free jazz...spoken-word...something. It was goofy, for sure.
Besides Don't Look Back and his cameo in Pat Garret And Billy The Kid, Dylan has had piss poor luck when it comes to his cinematic aspirations. Renaldo And Clara was a 4+ hour mess that was never commercially released, while Masked And Anonymous was a slightly shorter (and more interesting) mess. But there is nothing worse than Dylan playing a not-so-thinly-veiled version of himself in the truly terrible Hearts Of Fire.Bob Dylan: Hearts of fire (trailer) by mrjynBonus: here's Dylan's cameo from the little-known film Catchfire.
Just because Dylan loves rap music doesn't mean he's good at rapping. Listen to his cameo on Kurtis Blow's "Street Rock." You can hear Dylan at the very start, and at 6:12 mark.
You might think Dylan had to have lost a bet to appear on Dharma And Greg in the late '90s, but it's simpler than that: one of the show's writers, Eddie Gorodetsky, was friendly with Dylan, and asked him to appear unbilled as a bandleader.
After a lost decade filled with bad haircuts and worse album covers, Dylan emerged with his best album in many years with 1989's Oh Mercy. Its followup, Under The Red Sky, had terrible production and wasn't nearly as good, though it's also not as bad as its reputationâthe title track, "Born In Time," "God Knows" and "Cat's In The Well" are all good tunes. But for a lot of people, the album was defined by its first track: "Wiggle Wiggle," featuring Slash on guitar. The man who made English professors take rock 'n roll seriously was now imploring people to "wiggle like a bowl of soup."
After a near-death experience in 1996, Dylan came back with the phenomenal Time Out Of Mind, which still stands as one of his greatest albums ever. He performed lead track "Love Sick" at the Grammy's that year. But the one thing everyone remembers is when performance artist Michael Portnoy jumped on stage with "Soy Bomb" written across his chest, and started wiggling like a bowl of soup. Just look at Dylan's reaction.
Dylan starred alongside Brazilian model Adriana Lima in a lingerie ad for Victoriaâs Secret. Someone really had a "eureka" moment with this one.
<p>Dylan also <a href="http://starcasm.net/archives/66307">popped up</a> for an episode of <em>Pawn Stars</em> in 2010âit seems entirely appropriate that he was there to sign Chumlee's copy of <em>Self-Portrait.</em> </p>
<p>While visiting the childhood home of Bruce Springsteen, Dylan <a href="http://gothamist.com/2009/08/15/bob_dylan_taken_in_by_nj_cop_who_do.php">was arrested by</a> a Long Branch patrolwoman who mistook him for a vagrant: "He was wearing black sweatpants tucked into black rain boots, and two raincoats with the hood pulled down over his head. We see a lot of people on our beat, and I wasn't sure if he came from one of our hospitals or something. He was acting very suspicious." We're just surprised he wasn't wearing his blonde wig (see above)...</p>
...though that blonde wig got taken out of the closet for the video for "Must Be Santa." Which was from Dylan's Christmas album, Christmas In The Heart. Yeah. At least the video's fun!