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19/01/2006
A new Judas!
Judas! number 16 has just just dropped onto my doormat: a five minute scan over coffee picked out several tempting pieces of Dylancrit for indulgent enjoyment at the weekend.
Top of my list is the latest in John Hinchey’s dissections of the albums, taken from the forthcoming second book in his Dylan series. His article on Blood On The Tracks looks as if it offers some telling insights. Even if you don’t agree with what he’s saying, Hinchey’s always a stimulating read.
Judas! has the Dylan expertise you’d expect from such a mag. And it encourages a wider range of opinion than you’d dare hope for: my skim-read of the new issue revealed the Editor admitting that he’s less than overwhelmed by the current live shows, and a reader daring to reject Dylan’s non-music writing. (I happen to agree with the correspondent’s negative judgments of both Tarantula and Hearts Of Fire - who wouldn’t? But to dump Masked And Anonymous (“terrible”) and Chronicles (“rubbish”) in the same dustbin suggests a lack of discrimination. To my mind, both are minor masterpieces.)
The point is: Judas! provides a platform for Dylan criticism that’s light years from the breathless cult worship you often encounter in fanzines. Kudos.
As with any magazine, on any subject, each issue is a mixed bag. There’ll always be a couple of must-read pieces, occasionally from writers you haven't read before. And you soon learn to ignore the odd article from lower down the Dylanlit food chain – “About The Time The Door Knob Broke: some meandering navel-gazing about my epiphany, when I first realised, on a number 74 bus just about to pass Woolworth in Wigan (or was it a number 75B in Oldham, just passing Marks & Spencer?) that Dylan is the best singer-songwriter of the 1960s - truly awesome, sublime and transcendent”.
But in every issue of Judas! so far the good heavily outnumbers the mediocre and worse. So I’ll be re-subscribing, grateful that publishers Woodstock and Editor Andrew Muir are making the effort to produce a fitting Dylan quarterly.
www.judasmagazine.com
Gerry Smith
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