It's a small world: Dave Barry reacts to Bob Dylan quoting Dave Barry--- on playing Van Morrison with Stephen King and Bruce Springsteen. (And Mr Morrison has said that "Gloria" was just Bo Diddley.") What goes around, comes around--- just about midnight, makin' ye feel so good, makin' ye feel alright....
Key quote: "...and the crowd would scream as only truly receptive booksellers can scream."
SIDENOTE: Because I never did write those notes on James Brown's passing, check out Rolling Stone's tribute here. Writes Gerri Hershey, "James Brown leaves a cultural wake as wide as his dear friend Elvis did." Actually, no. Brown's was wider-- much wider-- than the one Elvis left. He had only one peer as a genuine musical, to say nothing of racial, trailblazer, and that was Ray Charles; everyone else belonged to the second tier of significance at best, including Elvis, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Guthrie, Sinatra, Dylan, Hendrix, Johnny Cash, and yes, eventually Van Morrison, among others, all of whom became genre-definers in their own ways. But Brother Ray and Godfather James belonged to an entirely different apogee, in the same way that Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson twained the invention of the modern American literary voice. Some re-invent image or melody or style or technique; it's the few, the very very very few, who reconceive rhythm, and its relationship to meaning, as (much as) we (ever) understand it.
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