You Know You're A Dylan Fan If...

Volume 4



- you know where he almost mis-sings a line, (but you're sure he meant to do that)

- you prefer new boots to food

- you can sing all the versions of TUIB and know the accomanying dates of when and where they were sung

- your 5 year old son asks, "What will happen to me daddy , when you're buried in the rocks?"

- you & your significant other have dinner at home, at the table under a print of "L'Etranger", sporting top hats

- you appreciate rhymes like: once/months, juiced-in-it/used-to-it, virtue/dirt-you, travel-on/ Babylon, decoys/ turquoise, jealousy's/ sells us-he's, jeez/knees,

- you know names of everyone who has ever been in Dylan's band.

- you opened a bank account at The Bank of Montreal

- you believe that all roads lead to Dylan

- you only ride "Triumph" motorcycles

- you use binoculars to watch Bob on stage while standing in the FRONT ROW!

- you dig through Jakob's trash

- you found nothing interesting in Jakob's trash, so you dig through Bucky Baxter's

- you left his 1966 concert at the Worcester Centrum after his set, because you had no interest in seeing newfangled bands like Fleetwood Mac, or Led Zeppelin.

-you think 3 volumes of Greatest Hits is grossly insufficient.

-you actually paid money to see- and then sat through- "Feeling Minnesota" all because Dylan covers Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" over the end credits (and then you bought the soundtrack).

-you had the cover art of Self Portrait tattooed across your back.

-you have a Blind Willie McTell T-shirt, but you couldn't name one of his songs for the life of you.

-you know someone whom you believe to have warehouse eyes.

-you never believed the Grammys were rigged until Alanis Morrisette's "Ironic" beat out "Dignity" for record of the year

- at job interviews you say, "I'm just a song and dance man"

- you ain't seen Claudette since January

- you believe that a vast government/CIA conspiracy kept "Blind Willie McTell" off Infidels

- you become angry when you come across an article about The Byrds and it doesn't mention Bob Dylan

- you have a custom made Bob Dylan doll hanging in your home office complete with a miniature harmonica

- your neighbor named Quinn is getting a little annoyed at you for always calling him "Mighty" or "The Eskimo"

- you know Dylan wrote all of The Wallflowers' songs

- you refer to The Wallflowers as "The Bob Dylan Jrs."

- you think Bob is the MAIN Wilbury

- you leave a few minutes before the end of a concert just to catch a 3 second glimpse of Bob with a towel on his head!

- you watch the "Series of Dreams" video in slow frame

- you have a separate drawer for Dylan T-shirts ONLY!

- you buy David Kemper's art work cause you think it somehow gets you closer to Bob!"

- you own stock in Maxell

- you allow yourself to slowly go insane because of the "signed" classic, Daniel Kramer photo of Dylan "smirking", which hangs over your desk!"

- you really felt it cleared a lot up when Bob explained "Queen Jane Approximately" by saying "Queen Jane is a man."

- you have ever found an abandoned wall and written "WHAAAT?" on it.

- you can discuss at length and with total earnestness the relative merits of the Blood On The Tracks version of "Idiot Wind" versus the Hard Rain version versus the original New York version versus the Bootleg Series version.

- you took Pete Hamill's liner notes for Blood On The Tracks ABSOLUTELY seriously.

- Instead of cursing when angry, you say "Jeez! I can't find my knees!"

- you once said "whaddya MEAN someone else recorded a version of 'The Boxer'?!

- all you can do when you see the guards outside Buckingham Palace change shifts is sing "SIXTEEN YEARS!"

- you make (and win) $20 bets daring your friends to stump you on any Bob trivia ("What's the 3rd word of the 4th song on the 10th album?")

- you felt deeply betrayed when you realized that "Motorpsycho Nitemare" and "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" were the same song.

- you wear white cowboy outfits to work

- you've actually thrown one of those parties where everyone attending is dressed as a character in a Dylan song.

- you can't remember who else performed at the "Concert For Bangla Desh" and yet you own the CD and the movie.

- before playing Visions of Johanna you announce to everyone within earshot, "This is not a drug song!"

- you wear a harmonica brace out in public

- when you eat at a Hard Rock Cafe, you wait an additional hour to sit near some Dylan object.

- you entertain fantasies of receiving an inexplicable phone call from Sony appointing you to personally review through the entire Dylan archive in order to select tracks for an upcoming 16 CD box set, the Bootleg Series Vol. 4- 20

- if you catch yourself saying "You know they refused Jesus too", when someone says no to you.

- when asked a question, you ask yourself what Bob would say in this situation

- you've ever spent more than an hour trying to pick apart, "Wiggle, Wiggle".

- you want to know why there aren't all-Dylan radio stations

- you sing "John Brown" to yourself, every time ARMY commercials come on

- you keep telling your friends ad nauseam that, "It's not the singing voice, its the intonation, man"

- you see Dylan in concert at his very very worst and you convince yourself that he was actually excellent and you are just not getting it

- you analyize the jacket cover of Desire for hours

- you are completely confused with the viscious dychotomy of emulating Dylan in every conceivable way and Dylan's underlying messages of being your own person

- you've told your parents and guidance counselors that it has never been your duty to remake the world at large nor is it your intention to sound the battle charge.

- you thumb a winter ride from Nova Scotia to Nashville Tennessee just to hear Dolly Parton sing Positively Fourth Street

- you only vacation in Hibbing, The Village, Tangiers or East Orange NJ.

- you wouldn't mind getting paid in chess pieces

- you only know Bob's lines in "We Are The World"

- you're the resident expert on histoplasmosis

- you've been to Sugar Town and you've shook the sugar down

- you've actually worn flowers to Dylan concerts!!! (sheeeeeesh!!)

- you carry a Jack of Hearts around in your wallet

- you're making copies of song after song for your eight-year-old niece

- you buy a new pony and name her Lucifer

- your father-in-law is named Mr. Jones, and you ask him how it feels to be such a freak

- if you make it through a day without hearing bob, you get a restless hungry feelin' that don't mean no-one no good

- you went and saw "Dangerous Minds" only because of the Bob content

- you can't figure out exactly what the line "My love is like some raven, at my window with a broken wing" means, but you know it sounds brilliant.

- you've played your VCR in slow motion to see if you can read what Bob was typing on the typewriter in his hotel room in "Don't Look Back."

- Your four year old daughter thinks that any vinyl LP is called a "Bob Dylan", not a "record"

- you bought the Bootleg Series on CD - three years before you even owned a CD player

- you bought a $2000 computer just so you could use the Hiway-61 CD-ROM...and you also bought the cd-rom before you bought the computer.

- you have a copy of every Dylan concert you've been to

- you had the lyrics of "Time of Of Mind" memorized before it was even released

- you actually had an orgasm when he played "TUIB" at Jones Beach.

- you can't understand why Judy Collins has to ruin Dylan's songs (yet you own all of her Dylan covers)

- The pause, mute, and stop buttons on your CD player are completely foreign to you.

- you bought three copies of Newsweek's October 1997 issue: one for your coffee table, one for your own personal use, and the last to be put in the vault.

- you think the POPE should have run down the stairs to shake BOB's hand

- you've exceeded your 40hr/mo. limit with your Internet service provider and haven't gone anywhere except for Dylan sites.

- you hang around the ink well

- you're not really sure what an ink well is, so you go to the wedding of Mary-Lou

when a female friend asks for advice on her love life, you say, "My advice is to not let the boys in."

- when you hear references to "Dylan's People", you think they're talking about YOU

- you get upset when people say that "Dylan WAS good..."

- when someone asks you "what's love?" -- you say that "Love is just a four-letter word"

- you don't mind a bit when a friend NOT SO CLOSE gives you on your birthday a Bob Dylan Greatest Hits CD because he heard that you like Bob Dylan's songs.

- you say to your significant other - "There is just one of Bob's CD's missing in my collection and you'll give me that!"

- when breaking up with your significant other you say "Strike another match go start a new, it's all over now baby blue"

- for Halloween you buy your significant other a trumpet, and for Christmas you naturally get them a drum.

- when your new Dylan CD won't eject from the player and you know its a miracle!

- you give grocery money to your kid for college, but he goes out and buys Dylan tickets instead - and you don't get upset (thanks Dad!)

- you spend hours planning a road trip.-- Do you spend the time figuring out your route? No - you spend your time on what Dylan tapes you should bring!!

- when every song he sings is, without a doubt, your favorite song.

- whenever you go to San Francisco you go around telling everyone you meet "Tiny Montgomery says hello"

- you got mad when the Utah legislature changed the state fish from the rainbow trout to the Bonneville cutthroat trout, since it ruined that perfect reference in "Sign on The Window"

- you hold your head so high when you see your old friends go by (but it's still that sign on the cross that worries you)

- whenever you see an Arizona State football or basketball game on TV, you root against them since they gave him such a hard time there in ' 79.

- on January the 30th you hang clothes out on a line and ask your neighbor if the Vice-President's gone mad

- you introduce yourself to people you don't like as some of his pseudoyms like Keef Laundry, Big Joe's Buddy or Tedham Porterhouse.

-you've been throught all F. Scott Fitsgerald's books

-you imagine what Dylan and Joanies kids would have looked like. Then you think what it would be like to be one of them.

-you have a map of the USA with all the towns Dylan mentions in songs highlighted.

-you have been to the highlands

- you're asked to leave you english class and except a "F" for the day because you've gotten into a disagreeable argument because someone said Bob couldn't sing and wasn't God.

- you feel a bit closer to your sister, but envy her, because her birthday's on may 24th.

- you don't feel all that disappointed when yr "friend" attends one of the "finest school" and "only gets juiced in it."

- when you have a flash back to sometime in the '60's when you were listing to "Like a Rolling Stone", but weren't born til' 1979. (true!)

- when you don't speak to your sister for two-weeks because she insists that Rainy Day Women is only about smoking pot and nothing else.

- when your e-mail address is a variant of a Dylan song.

- whenever your family encounters financial difficulties, you urge your mother to "take her diamond ring...and pawn it, babe."

- you watched the A&E "Biography" of Johnny Cash for one reason.

- you struggle over the dilemma that if ever meeting him - if you'd give him his peace or ask for an autograph

- you host your 7th Annual Bob Dylan Birthday Party on Sunday, May 17th in Torrance, CA with a day of live Dylan Music!!! It's Great!!!

- you go to jail so you can "sit like Bhudda in a ten foot cell"

- you go to the Posters exhibition at London's Victoria and Albert Museum with the sole aim of buying a 1966 'Mr Tambourine Man' poster in the museum shop. And then finding that, for copyright reasons, they can't sell them.

- when you use him (alongside Dylan Thomas) as an all-encompasing yet perfectly understandable explanation for taking a few years' hiatus in the local 'desolation row' in your medical school application's Personal Statement

- you request your local FM rock station to play 'Lo and Behold!'

- you think of Bob every time you pick up a telephone.

- whenever you send mail, including fan mail to Bob, - instead of writing your return adress, you write "Desolation Row" on the upper left hand side of the envelope.

- you only read the books of Leviticus and Deutoronomy in the Bible

- you've actually looked for her in old Honolulu, San Francisco and Ashtabula.

- if every morning you have one more cup of coffee for the road.

- toward the end of a three-day cross-country trip, you drive a hundred miles out of your way because you noticed Highway 61 on your roadmap.

- you derive spiritual comfort from "Gotta Serve Somebody."

- you derive spiriual comfort from "Wiggle Wiggle"

- you drive 6 hours out of your way to go through Durango, Colorado hoping on the outside possibility that you might find romance ... only to realize there must be another Durango somewhere else, because there is no way there was ever a blisterin' sun for anyone to eat hot chili peppers in at that altitude.

- when you catch the bus with a comic book and you want get to California

- You change your middle name on your library card to "Dylan"

- You repeatedly stress the cultural signifigance of "Talkin' Hava Negeilah Blues."

- You can sing the words to "Subterranean Homesick Blues" backwards.

- You once beat up then sued Bruce Springstein for image theft.

- You plan on starting your calendar from year "zero" after Dylan dies, the first year of A.D. time. (After Dylan).

- you know people who have many contacts among the lumberjacks, who get them facts when someone attacks their imaginations

- When you successfully argue against a major university that Bob Dylan is a philosopher and that your thesis paper should be regraded. Not only is it, but the Philosophy dept. considers giving Dylan his own course(True, Univ. of Pittsburgh)

- you understand that Bob Dylan has never had a #1 "pop" hit and realize that's a good thing!

- you spend the last hour of a car trip with your significant other in silence because they cannot fully appreciate "Visions of Joanna", and you are so mad you refuse to talk to them.

- whenever you go to a hardware store, you go straight to the "rocks & gravel" section

- every time you are in a grocery store and see a display of canned vegetables, you stop to "give it a good read."

- You wished you'd had the foresight to sew your phone number in the bra (because you did a "Flashdance"-style removal of it -and threw it at his feet as he hit the last chord of "Like A Rolling Stone" -it landed cups up!- whereupon he actually grinned and chuckled and turned to Tony the bass player and said, "Did you see that?!" and then when he came back onstage for another encore, was looking for it and kidding around about "Where's the bra? Who took it?!"; it was the stagehands who whisk away anything thrown onstage ---- 9:30 Club in DC. )

- you ask your sister-in-law to put on a CD, any CD, and she can't because.....she doesn't like Dylan!!!

- you hire a sketch artist to draw all of your pictures of Dylan, cuz hey, Dignity Never Been Photographed!

- you copy every picture of Bob from the web, put them in a briefcase, put on a long black coat, go down to the river, looking at the pictures, and sit there on the bank and watch the river flow

- you create a unique disease for yourself, call it 'Bobdylanism' and proudly tell people, "I'm terminal!"

- when someone asks where your house is located, you reply, "It's not a house, it's a home."

- if someone asks you "Who the hell do you think you are?" and you reply, "I and I"

- you check Krogsgaard to see what Bob was doing on your birthday

- you plan to see Jesse Dylan's movie adaptation of a Playstation video game

- you laugh everytime you play "Bob Dylan's 115 Dream", even whenever you play it 10 times in a row

- you've ever been thrown in jail for carryin' harpoons.

- you've ever asked your blue eyed son where he's been.

- you like to spend some time in Mozambique

- if whenever asked for directions, you say, "Down the highway, down the tracks."

- you go to a party see a bunch drunks, and say to them, "I look at you and I wonder", "How does it feel to be such a freak?", "I wish that for just one time I could stand inside your shoes" and so on. Them not picking up on these Dylan lines suddenly want to step outside and kick the crap out of you but you and your buddy just sit there and laugh.

- you've ever had a job in the great north woods

- you own a bumper sticker that tells people, "I brake just like a little girl"

- you listen to "If you see her say hello" 87 times after breaking up with someone

- when somebody pisses you off, you figure it's ok because someday they'll be in a ditch with flies buzzin' around their eyes

- you've ever shot a man named Gray just so you could take his wife to Italy

- you bought the Byrd's Greatest Hits just because four songs on there were Dylan covers

- you tell your significant other that you want to fly to the other side of the country for a Dylan show and they tell you, "If you go, Our marriage is over." (I went and we are still together)

- you invite your partner to a Bob concert and they say, " Didn't we learn our lesson the last time?"

- your significant other covers your personalized DYLNFAN license plate with a sign that says, "Dylan Victim"

- your significant other is so fed up with your obsession that they started a support group called "LOAD" (Loved Ones Against Dylan)

- you burst into loud obnoxious song whenever your friend Joey comes into the room

-you dreamed you saw Saint Augustine

- you insist on having Wedding Song played during your own wedding ceremony, and you can't stop smiling thru the harmonica breaks even tho your new father-in-law is sweating bullets, rolling his eyes and muttering threats (a true Kodak moment!).

- you get offended when you hear Garth Brooks singing "To Make You Feel My Love" - and seethe even more when by chance see the god-awful video where he flashes that bullshit grin of his on the line "you ain't seen nothin' like me yet" HOW DARE HE MOCK BOB!? (no offense Garth!)

- You know the REAL reason why the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball organization named their stadium "Bank One Ballpark" (BOB)

- you're just too stubborn to ever be governed by enforced insanity

- you name all of your kids Bob, even if they're girls

- you want to marry Bob Dylan

- -you watched VH1 all day waiting to see if he won Legend of the Year so they would show the NDY video and cursed violently when he didn't. What could they have done with the 200 votes I sent in?!?!

- when you go to your first Dylan concert, spend an hour of it pushing yourself to the stage, and then break into tears once you get there because you swear you've found religion.

- your spouse claims you've been labobomized

- your term paper in Ethnomusicology is based on the Comedy of Bob Dylan (B+)

- you spend most of your wedding reception looking for Bob to join the wedding band and sing 'CEPT YOU- then join you and your spouse for a drink at the bar. Especially so when the the wedding invitation was sent back return to sender

- if when you heard Big Pink was for sale you sat down and made some calls

- you go to a function and you realize the only person on the scene missing is the Jack of Hearts.

- you pop in an old tape of Blood on the Tracks, and your 7 year old son, (who's heard Dan Bern) asks if this is one of those pretenders, or the Real Dylan.

- you've ever been stoned at the breakfast table

- your last name is Street, and you relinquish to your wife all rights for names of future children just so you can have a first born named Justin Sullivan Positively Street IV

- you're better than no-one and no-one is better than you

- you honestly consider Van Morrison, and Joni Mitchel "opening acts"

- you've read "Invisible Republic" by Greil Marcus 3 times and find disappointment only in the fact that "Sante-Fe" was only devoted two words instead of the chapter it deserved

- you listen to Dylan music in the morning, during the day, and in the evening, but at night when you're going to bed you turn him off, because sleeping while Bob's playing - that's just disrespect

- you're amazed and proud of the fact that when you go to a Dylan concert, any one of hundreds of songs could be played and you'd be able to sing along after the first phrase (but you DON'T sing along).

- you bought a "We Are The World" single (on vinyl) at a garage sale just for the 20 seconds of Dylan

-you watch the Beatles Video Anthology just to hear George Harrison say "look out kid its something you did, god knows when, but you're doing it again" (he really does)

-you don't like John Lennon because he doesn't believe in Zimmerman

-you're the only one who laughs when Principal Skinner says "the times, they are becoming different" on the Simpsons

-you think the street in the backround on "Freewheelin" is more sacred than Abbey Road

-you try to learn how to play the police siren (like on "Highway 61")

- you are undaunted by the fact that the '65 Hollywood Bowl version of "Like A Rolling Stone" sounds like Bob with a Casio keyboard.

- you spend time at work e-mailing the official Bob Dylan site with corrections to the lyrics of "Sitting on a Barbed-Wire Fence."

- when you meet new people you separate the interesting ones from the losers, by quoting the first half of a Dylan line to see if the other one responds by ending the quote.

- you just KNOW there's a deep meaning to "All the Tired Horses"

- when someone asks you what you do for a living, you retort, wouldnt you ask this question to a carpenter or a plumber

- you can ride like Annie Oakley and shoot like Belle Starr

- you go to an art gallery whilst eyeing up the paintings and sculptures you say to the person next to you, who you've never seen before, in your life, "Inside the museum infinity goes up on trial" --- the person looks at you like you're some kind of freak - (may be you are)

- you think it would be really romantic to rest in a field and be half asleep near the stars even to have a small dog licking at your face

- your favourite bands are Corky the Kid, and the FAB clocks and Brown Bumpkin and Sidney Ciggy are your favourite composers

- you play Madame Butterfly to lull yourself to sleep

- whenever you take a train ride you always use the window seat, slouch down, and wear your dark glasses

- after Bobs triple grammy award winning speech your friends ask you if they can borrow your Buddy Holly and Robert Johnson records

- you have declared September 21 D Day - the official release date of GKATCF and wonder how long it will take Columbia to release All Hallows Eve...

- your 14 year old (ahem... Jacob) can now recite the complete "Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie" -- he's heard it so often

- a cop pulls you over and you say, "it ain't me you're lookin' for"- then when they throw you in jail you yell "I shall be released"

- you have ever dated a girl because you knew she had a "Leopord Skin Pill Box Hat" and then insisted she where it whenever the two of you went out.

- if when a friend mentioned their present lack of satisfaction with life, you respond, "If you don't believe there's a price for this sweet paradise, then remind me to show you the scars"

- you only drink Daring Dylans (2 oz Tequila, 1 oz Kahlua, crushed Ice, 4 oz Chocolate, Mexican Hot) and Bob Dylans (12 oz Surge, 4 oz Jagermeister, 16 oz Ice) -- (or Burgandy or the harder stuff)

- you only want to hang out with Jacob because Bob hung out with Arlo

- if you see your neighbor carrying something, you help him with his load, and you don't go mistaking paradise for that home across the road

- if you watched the Spice Girls Top Ten Countdown on MTV because you heard that "Baby Spice" had that Wyclef video on her list.

- a lady at the supermarket runs her shopping cart into yours, and you reply, "don't think twice, it' all right."

- all the people you used to know are an illusion to you now.

- you are hunted like a croodile & raveged in the corn.

- you've seen pretty people disappear like smoke.

- you fly from Vienna to NYC for the tribute concert without a ticket for the show; spend 24hrs hustling for the ticket; risk life, limb and pocket to eventually secure one; and then weep in joy at your phenomenal good luck.

- you sport a 'I been to sugar town..' bumper sticker despite the fact that only one in a thousand who see it will understand (and the other 999 will be sure you're a wanker boasting about your vacation)

-your name is Jones, and you come along and empty the trash

-your most common reply to any question is "What's it to ya Moby Dick? This is chicken town!"

-you save your money and rip it up

-at the wedding of MaryLou, you swaggeringly approach the bride and say "Stop all this weeping, swallow your pride. You will not die, it's not poison."

-your dreams are beyond control

-you've ever been thrown in jail for carrying a harpoon, but then you busted out (don't even ask me how)

-your answering machine message says "I'll call you tomorrow if there's phones where I am"

-you would've gone out after her, but you didn't feel like letting your head get blown off

-you've had the Mexico City Blues since the last hairpin curve

- you have dogs named Hamlet, Lefty, Lucky, Boo and Charlie T.

- your den is identical to the cover of Bringing It All Back Home, complete with lounging mannequin in red dress.

- you've ever wiggle-wiggled til you've raised the dead.

- you've seriously hypothesised that the Jack of Hearts and the Man in the Long Black Coat are the same person.

- you chew gum. (you don't want to be a bum, after all.)

- you never go anywhere without carrying a roll of tens should your best of friends need money

- you've ever demanded at a diner, "Give me a stringbean, I'm a hungry man."

- you watch the Three Tenors concerts on PBS in the hope that Pavarotti will cover "It Ain't Me Babe"

- you've ever threatened to knock an enemy clean out of his spleen. The truest fans will also promise to stand o'er his grave til you're sure that he's dead.

- you think that if he really tried, Dylan could explain in rhyme why there's no use in trying to deal with the dying.