Just watched part 2 of Scorcese's Dylan documentary, No Direction Home. For some reason, I liked part 2 better than part 1, but anyway, it's fantastic, really a must for any Dylan fan.

It's a mix of concert footage and interviews with Dylan (both current and historical) and pals including Joan Baez, Al Kooper, Pete Seeger, Allen Ginsberg.

This documentary examines in great detail the two big "controversies" that surround Dylan: his switch to electric instruments and his prickly relationship with the press. Included are rare old concert videos plus comments from Dylan himself and various people who were on the scene.

Lots of gems here. We see the concert where a fan hollers "Judas," as Dylan takes the stage (Dylan responds by telling his bandmates to "Play it fuckin' loud!" and telling the heckler "I don't believe you. You're a liar!"). It's hard to understand nowadays what a big deal it was when Dylan stopped doing the folky thing and started playing only originals with a noisy bluesy band. This film really delivers the story.

There are some hilarious segments where interviewers ask Dylan some really asinine questions. Dylan asks one of them if the answer isn't contained in his music, and the guy admits he hasn't heard any of Dylan's songs! Dylan incredulously asks how the cat can be asking him this stuff when he hasn't even heard his songs, and the guy mumbles "...my job..." Another wild-eyed character asks a long involved question about the symbolism behind one of the album covers, on which Dylan wears a motorcycle t-shirt. Dylan kind of shrugs and says he never thought about it much. "Well, I've thought about it a lot!" the wild-eyed guy says.

Dylan is of course famous for giving curt, cryptic or just plain nonsensical answers in interviews, and after seeing this doc, I think I understand why. I think Dylan is one of those people who is great at doing, but poor at explaining. Personally, I have an analytic personality, and I can explain every note, chord and scale that I play. However, there are many far better players than I who are hard pressed to tell you the names of the chords they're playing, much less the concepts behind their soloing skills. Songwriters are like this too: some are analytical, some are intuitive. Dylan's one of the latter. He's not much good at explaining how he does what he does (and he doesn't need to be).

I can certainly relate to the exasperation with cluesless music journalists. Some of the few who have seen fit to write about me have obviously seldom heard a blues band before, much less sat down and listened to my music. On several occasions, I've had reviews of my shows published (in European newspapers) with the headline "The Blues Doesn't Have to be Sad!" Wow, what an insight!  Other times, I've had writers ask me how it is that a white guy is interested in blues (of course, those who write for actual blues magazines tend to ask young black guys the mirror image of this question).

I highly recommend No Direction Home. Also Scorcese's concert flick about the Rolling Stones, Shine a Light.