It's night time in the big city...

Hours turn into days, turn into weeks, turn into months.

I have not yet written anything about my views on Theme Time Radio Hour. My favourite hour of the week. Themes, dreams and schemes...

What an amazing show! Not only has Dylan shown himself to be a great writer, poet, singer, musician, unwitting philosopher and tireless troubadour – now he has the acclaim of being the World’s Greatest DJ!

Well, that is my opinion anyway. Completely objective, of course...!

Each of these shows is perfectly balanced and choreographed. There are reels of interesting background information about the artists; jokes and quips; a true range of influential songs covering just about every style and form of 20th Century North American and British music; a really well-thought-out congruency and flow... pure perfection. In this aspect I think it is a fabulous radio show that is unlike any other.

Dylan has a dry delivery of speech (not his regular conversational voice, but his ‘radio voice’) that sometimes cracks me up. With his (suspected) phoney emails, occasional rants (much toned down from his youth!) and his obvious passion for the music he plays, Dylan is being the ultimate host of generosity. He is a smaller radio-version of Dickens’ Ghost of Christmas Present (‘Come in and know me better, man!’ Well, a little bit better anyhow!).

I have heard that he has a portable recording studio so he can record the slots wherever in the world he may be. As he is often on the road, it is sometimes possible to hear the weariness in his voice. Many times, though, he is in fine form. He laughs and jokes along, caught out singing along to some tracks with a contagious joy. He reads poetry, includes many quotations and cultural references and places new emphasis on lyrics that highlight the subtexts of songs. He plays adverts and snippets from movies and TV shows. He explains the political background of the times, the influence this has on artists and the way the public reacted to the music.

The shows are a history lesson, a chance to hear long-forgotten tracks that deserve to have their rightful place in our hearts and minds; a tribute to the ground-breakers who changed cultural perceptions.

Some of the songs he plays are plain horrible (sorry to say!) but they all have a reason for being on the play list. After one tawdry country song, Dylan himself was heard to say something along the lines of, ‘They don’t make songs like that any more. There’s a reason for that...’

I could sit and listen to Bob Dylan all day. He is fascinating and entertaining. I am always disappointed when the hour is up. I like his ‘radio voice’ – and the clipped way in which he says dates always makes me smile (‘nineteen and sixty five’). It is so delicious and old-fashioned in a way. This makes it even more amusing and revelatory when he throws in a rap song and finishes it off with an imitation of Snoop Doggy Dogg, announcing ‘fo’ shizzle manizzle’ or some such. Priceless!

One thing he never does is talk about his own music. It is funny, but the lack of self-reference is something you get used to. Sometimes, when you hear what the theme is going to be, you find yourself automatically making a mental list of all of Dylan’s own songs that would fit the theme and probably surpass half of the music played. But we have to remember that this show is about the artists Dylan himself listens to and is influenced by. It isn’t a stage for Bob to talk about himself (he would probably never do that anyway). The closest I ever heard to a self-reference was during the episode about ‘musical instruments’. Dylan listed the most popular instruments, saying that the harmonica was the top selling instrument of all time. After a brief silence his amused voice muttered, ‘You’re welcome...’!