Nash Edgerton Presents: Bob Dylan - "Duquesne Whistle" (Dark Comedy, Shakespeare?)

Bob Dylan's been on "The Never-Ending Tour" for about 40+ years straight now... rapidly releasing a new album every couple years and continually re-inventing himself as the "new Bob Dylan" for a fresh generation of youngsters. Sept. 11th saw the release of Dylan's landmark 35th album - Tempest, which is pretty impressive since he's 71 now! I always say that Bob Dylan's music is a whole lot like Lil' Wayne's prolific output; You either love it or hate it. A couple of my favourite albums from his damn-near expansive backcatalog are easily Blood On The Tracks, Nashville Skyline, and Blonde On Blonde. It was an utterly AMAZING experience, when I saw Bob Dylan live @ Temple with my dad and buddy Jeremy a few years back on the Christmas In The Heart album tour (2009). Aside from a bunch of random grizzly-voiced old/new tracks spanning the bulk of Dylan's discography, I really only recognized about 4-5 staple tracks puled from Highway 61 Revisited (1965). Over the course of Bob Dylan's long-running career, he's managed to re-tweak, personalize, and pioneer a whole bunch of assorted musical styles: Folk, Country, Blues Rock, Hip-Hop, Gospel, Bluegrass, etc.


Tempest bares slight resemblance to the title of Shakespeare's final play, "The Tempest" and and features a running vein of Mariachi neatly inter-woven throughout. The title track is a massive 14-minute composition that's about Titanic [Leonardo DiCaprio] and "Roll On John" is a tribute to John Lennon, which goes on to reference lyrics of a few classic Beatles songs. For all intensive purposes, "Duquesne Whistle" is the album's lead single, it's companion music video was directed by Nash Edgerton, and debuted exclusively over @ The Guardian late last month. Bob Dylan appears as part of an interesting street gang, who really don't do much of anything besides wonder around the dark city streets, but always seem to be in the right place @ the wrong time. "Duquesne Whistle" (clip) is a stripped-down mix that falls somewhere in-between a Dark Comedy & Romance. The lead character is a whitty young man, chasing after a cute woman he that crosses paths with day after day; He ultimately comes to his gruesome demise after running into a man on a ladder ... who let's just say, has some connections. So, head on over to your local record store and pick up a copy of Bob Dylan's new album, Tempest!