From: khematite@gmail.com   
      
   On Wednesday, 25 August 2021 at 05:03:19 UTC-4, Christopher Rollason wrote:   
   > Dylan has twice contributed to sleevenotes for releases by Dion (Di Mucci).   
   The most recent is for an album called Blues With Friends released in 2020.   
   Before that was a box set called King of the New York Streets which came out   
   in 2000.    
   >    
   > I have located Dylan's 2020 notes but not those from 2000. Does anyone have   
   them? If you do could you post them on the group?    
   >    
   > Thanks in advance!   
      
      
   "King of the New York Streets" is a 3-CD box tracing Dion's musical history.    
   Liner notes are found in s 48-page booklet, most of which consists of David   
   Marsh's comments about Dion's life in the Bronx and beyond and about the   
   various influences on his    
   music.  Page 33 is given over to Dylan's one-page comment on Dion and it goes   
   like this:   
      
   "The voice of Dion came exploding out of what Allen Ginsberg called 'the   
   hydrogen jukebox" in the fifties -- the hush hush age.  Torn right from the   
   start, he had it magically together in the mythic sense -- level-headed and   
   trustworthy, rhythmically    
   there's no mayhem -- just a sense of wonder.  In his voice he tells the untold   
   story in the seemingly secret language.  How else do you explain the   
   soulfulness of 'Teenager in Love'?  An unknowing ear would say it's a song   
   about youthful claptrap but it'   
   s not, not anymore than Tampa Red's 'Let Me Play With Your Poodle' is not   
   about dogs.  You can hear it in his haunted voice -- street corner hokum sure,   
   but also barrelhouse blues, the honky-tonk world -- even the most   
   sophisticated crooner in the    
   articulate way -- it's all there to put a spell on you.  I saw Dion way back   
   there when he followed Ritchie Valens and preceded Link Wray and the Wraymen.    
   Ritchie could pitch you over the fence and Link made you feel like you wanted   
   to take a grotesque    
   despotic world and hang it with barbed wire, but Dion was no less brilliant --   
   his level was cool-headed, made you feel longing, excited and entranced.    
   'Ruby Baby' is severe, round the clock -- listen you'll see.  Satire, cunning,   
   fidelity, it's all    
   there in spades.  Great singers pass by us like a parade of nobility.  There's   
   just something about them that rises above superficial culture.  Dion comes   
   from a time when so-so singers couldn't cut it -- they either never got heard   
   or got exposed quick    
   and got out of the way.  To have it, you really had to have it, no smoke and   
   mirrors then -- not a minute to spare --rough and ready -- glorious and grand   
   -- grieving with heartache and feeling too much but still with the always   
   'better not try it'    
   attitude.  If you want to hear a great singer, listen to Dion.  His voice   
   takes it's [sic] color from all pallets-- he's never lost it -- his genius has   
   never deserted him."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)