Bob Dylan: a ground-breaking artist, yadda yadda yadda... Well, we know that; what we're not sure about is whether the marketing campaign for his latest money-spinning compilation is a Good or a Bad thing.
As part of the campaign for the three disc-set - which with one exception features no new material - some bright sparks at Sony have come up with a clever way in which you can mess with the famous 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' video to send a message to your friends. Try it - it is fun. But however much we know about Bob's ads for Victoria's Secret, however much we know not to expect the expected with him... well, this sticks in the craw. Likewise the video for the Mark Ronson remix of 'Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)', the new track stuck on the end of the new anthology. Paul Morley has written previously for OMM about the horrors of the record. The video (shown for the first time on Channel 4 last night) is, again, very clever (we catch glimpes of 'Bob' from the Freewheelin' days onwards as he morphs through time), but entirely wrong-headed in the context in which he attempts to place him, presenting the old curmudgeon as, for instance, the Woodstock generation's paid-up pied-piper. Surely it's all the work of that man in that trench coat. Or am I just the curmudgeon?
