The New Lost Times

John Cohen to discuss Dylan photos in Minneapolis

John Cohen will be in Minneapolis on Sunday to discuss his photographs of Bob Dylan. Daniel Kramer will also participate in the event. Hopefully, The Celestial Monochord will write about it.

Below is a press release from the venue hosting the event, the Weisman Art Museum on the University of Minnesota campus.

Sunday, April 15, 2:00 p.m. Weisman Art Museum 333 E. River Road, Minneapolis

All His Raging Glory: Dylan’s Image and Identity
John Cohen and Daniel Kramer
$8/$4 WAM members, students, seniors
Tickets available at the Weisman Museum Store (612-625-9495) and at the event, pending availability.
 
Hear from two photographers who played key roles in shaping Dylan’s early image. John Cohen and Daniel Kramer will discuss images of Dylan as part of their wider bodies of work.
 
In addition to being a photographer and filmmaker, John Cohen is a founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers. His photographs of Dylan’s early years in Greenwich Village have been published in his book Young Bob. Cohen’s other work includes images documenting the abstract expressionist scene centered around New York's Cedar Bar; Beat Generation writers during the filming of Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie’s Pull My Daisy; and the "old time" musicians of Appalachia.
 
Daniel Kramer, a New York-based, award-winning photographer and film director, created a pivotal body of work of Bob Dylan in 1964 and 1965. His photos were used for the album covers Highway 61 Revisited and Bringing It All Back Home, both from 1965. The cover for the latter album was selected as one of the 100 greatest album covers of all time by Rolling Stone.
 
Presented in conjunction with the Weisman exhibition Bob Dylan’s American Journey, 1955-1965, on view through April 29. For more info: www.weisman.umn.edu, 612-625-9494.

John Cohen at the Virginia Film Society

Last night, the Virginia Film Society featured a screening of John Cohen's films The High Lonesome Sound and Dancing With the Incas at the Vinegar Hill Theatre in Charlottesville, VA. Cohen was there in person to present the films.

The OFFscreen blog wrote:

Tonight, Cohen will exhibit his first and last films: The High Lonesome Sound (1963, 30 min.) explores how the music of church-goers, miners, and farmers of eastern Kentucky express the joys and sorrows of life among the rural poor; Dancing with the Incas (1992, 58 min.) documents the most popular music of the Andes -- Huayno music -- and explores the lives of three Huayno musicians in a contemporary Peru torn between the military and the Shining Path guerrillas.

The screening cosponsored by the McIntire Department of Art.

Cohen's 1968 Dylan interview

New Lost City Rambler John Cohen's 1968 interview with Bob Dylan is included in a new book, "Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews" edited by Jonathan Cott. The interview was originally published in "Sing Out" back in 1968.

The interview is quoted in an article by Jim Fusilli at calendarlive.com (run by the Los Angeles Times). Fusilli writes:

He also understands that his fans have invented their own personal Bob Dylan to satisfy their needs. "[N]o one cares to see it the way I'm seeing it now," he told photographer and writer John Cohen in a 1968 article for Sing Out! "I no longer have the capacity to feed this force which is needing all these songs."

Read the article at calendarlive.com.

 

Mini "Interview" with Cohen

The editor of The Celestial Monochord reports on his brief conversion with John Cohen at the opening of Cohen's exhibit at the Icebox of Minneapolis (the quotes are approximate -- written down from memory):

Monochord: Ok, I have a question, and I wouldn't ask you this question if I wasn't somewhat eppifficated. In the DVD that came with Dark Hollar -- the Dillard Chandler documentary -- was that a drag queen? Was that a guy in a dress? What was that about?

Cohen: That was the same guy who was in the cafe before -- Dillard's friend. Same guy. They knew I'd be filming at this party and they were putting one over on me. When I saw them coming through the door and he was wearing women's clothes, I thought, MY GOD, what joke are they pulling on me?

Obviously, the editor of The New Lost Times also saw the exhibit and it is great -- seeing well-displayed real prints of fine photos ... there's no substitute. And Cohen is at least as excellent a photographer as anything else he's been during his career.

Read the whole story.

 

More about Cohen's "Young Bob" in Minneapolis

(from Cohen's "Young Bob" exhibit, via Pulse article)

 

From Nancy Sartor's article in Pulse, one of our local free papers:

As for the Minneapolis exhibit, Cohen said it’s the first one to showcase only his Dylan material. “I think this is the first time there’s been a show of just Dylan photographs and it’s not his famous period, it’s young Bob,” he said. “I’ve given Howard [Christopherson, Icebox Gallery owner] some things to hang up that have never been seen before, and there’s even more that I couldn’t show. There’s pictures of Dylan and his family, but that’s private so we don’t show that.”

Read the entire article.

 

Cohen takes cartoonist under his wing?

Andy Friedman is a youngish cartoonist whose work often appears in The New Yorker. He's also gotten up on stage a lot over the last few years in various capacities -- he seems to be still finding his schtick, but he currently has a very well-received band.

Anyway, he has consulted with -- and/or performed with -- John Cohen, but their connection is unclear. Friedman's website used to claim that he has been known to invite Cohen onstage with him (it's still in Google's cache, but is gone from the site). At a blog associated with our local free weekly, Paul Demko writes:

Initially the shows, as Friedman describes them, were more like dialogues about the intersection of visual arts and music. He picked the brains of such notables as John Cohen, of The New Lost City Ramblers, and multi-instrumentalist David Amram. ... In recent years he's become more of a traditional musical performer. His latest release, "Live From the Bowery Poetry Club," includes a full backing band and mines country-blues influences. The songs bring to mind Greg Brown and Dave Van Ronk.

Cohen has long worked to join the visual arts with music. A photographer, folk musician, and musicologist, he started making documentary films to try and bring sight and sound together. I can't suss out if Cohen and Friedman have any real connection, but it would make sense if they did.

Read the full story or visit Andy Friedman's website.

 

Cohen's "Young Bob" exhibit in Minneapolis

Finally, John Cohen's exhibit of early photographs of Bob Dylan is coming to Minneapolis.

Hosted by the Icebox Gallery, the exhibit runs from May 13 to November 4, and includes the famous photos of Bob atop John Cohen's rooftop, as well as additional images of Bob in 1971 and Cohen's photos of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Frank, and Woody Guthrie.

A sidebar at the Icebox site includes the following wonderful news:

MUSICAL EVENT:
May 11th at Mayslacks Bar
in NE Minneapolis 7 – 10 PM
Featuring John Cohen, Spider-John Koerner and Tony Glover, Paul Metsa, +

I am very happy.

UPDATE (5/2): Icebox has posted more about the May 11 concert.

 

John Cohen and the Voyager Record

The Celestial Monochord has published a lengthy contemplation on NASA's Voyager interstellar LP in the context of the Folk Revival. The essay was inspired by the recording by John Cohen included on the record.

The intensely humanistic Alan Lomax served as an advisor to the Voyager project -- it was Lomax who recommended to Sagan's group the inclusion of John Cohen's 1964 recording of a young Peruvian woman's wedding song. Lomax had himself recorded folk musicians in many countries, in part as a way around McCarthy's blacklist -- a clear case of the Cold War leading directly to "world music."

Read the whole article.