A portable toilet for Bob Dylan's hired help [paging William Zantzinger!] at his southern California compound is stinking up the oceanside neighborhood, and the folks across the street say they regularly fall ill from the stench.

Malibu homeowners Cindy and David Emminger said this morning that they have tried to contact the larger-than-life folk-rock icon about the smell, but they have had no success. The Emmingers said they also failed to get relief from the city or the company that owns the toilet.

The stink is so bad, Cindy Emminger said, that the couple and their 8-year-old son have had to move to the basement to flee the two-year-old smell. She said the odor is not from bodily waste but is "a really strong chemical smell" coming from the toilet.

She said she and her son have thrown up and suffered burning eyes and severe headaches as a result. Her husband has dodged symptoms so far, she said.

Has singer Bob Dylan staged the first protest of the 2008 Republican National Convention by persuading his son Jakob Dylan not to perform here in September? [reminder: it's always safe to ask a question]

That's the talk in the Twin Cities, although neither Dylan was available to comment Monday. [they've both since commented and said it never happened]

This much is known: The Minnesota Agri-Growth Council was negotiating with Jakob Dylan and his band, the Wallflowers, to perform for 5,000 invited guests at a nonpartisan industry bash called AgNite on Sept. 2, the second night of the Republican convention.

Representatives had agreed on a performance fee, although no contracts had been signed, said Daryn McBeth, executive director of the agribusiness trade group. Then, the deal fell through.

"The lead singer of the band, his dad is Bob Dylan, and I'm told he (Bob) weighed in and encouraged them not to do it because of the political nature of what's going on in town that week," McBeth said.

The manager for singer Jakob Dylan has denounced as "fabricated" any suggestion that Dylan's band, The Wallflowers, ever agreed to perform at a private event during the Republican National Convention, or that Dylan's father, Bob Dylan, urged him to turn down the offer of a possible gig.

"The Wallflowers were asked to perform at AgNite and declined," manager Rich Egan said in a statement Tuesday. "Any other additional information or conjecture that has been reported has been fabricated into a story where otherwise none exists."

• Bruce Springsteen – "Not only do I love Bruce's music, I just love him as a person". Mr Obama says he has met him, and calls him The Boss.
• Stevie Wonder – "Stevie had that run with Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Fulfillingness' First Finale and Innervisions, and then Songs in the Key of Life. Those are as brilliant a set of five albums as we've ever seen."
• Bob Dylan – "at least 30 tracks", including Maggie's Farm, which is one of Mr. Obama's favourites "for the political season... it speaks to me as I listen to some of the political rhetoric". In the song, Dylan sings about trying to be himself, "but everybody wants you to be just like them".

Earlier today, Prefix posted a story from the New York Post on a Dylan memorabilia lawsuit and counter lawsuit involving Peter McKenzie, the son of the the man who lent his couch in New York to a 19-year-old Bob Dylan in 1961. The tone of the Post article, and the Prefix post, we must confess, leaned strongly in favor of McKenzie, due to the lack of comment provided by Jeff Gold on the matter. But now, Gold has given his side of the story on his own blog, and the details he provides are pretty damning:

One day McKenzie mentioned he’d bought something on Ebay and the amount he’d paid, and so I went online, found the listing, and saw his Ebay user ID. I was spending a lot of money with him, had become concerned, and thought it prudent to keep an eye on his Ebay purchases (which is publicly available information.)

A month or so later I saw that McKenzie had purchased three vintage Dylan albums in a short time on Ebay. I asked myself “If Peter McKenzie had known Dylan and had all this memorabilia, why would he be buying a copy of Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits and two copies of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan ?

An alarm bell rang a few weeks later when McKenzie offered me a “signed and inscribed” copy of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan which he told me he’d gotten 20 years ago from a mutual friend of his and Dylan’s. When he sent me a photo of it, it appeared identical to one of the copies he’d bought on Ebay a few weeks earlier, with an inscription and signature added. Both album covers had multiple scratches, imperfections, and flaws in exactly the same places—it seemed obvious that they were one and the same.

I had Peter send me the “signed” “Freewheelin’” on approval, and hired a highly regarded certified forensic document examiner (formerly with the US Treasury Department) to conduct a formal comparison of the Ebay “Freewheelin’” to the one Peter was offering me.

[...]

The forensics examiner concluded that the “Ebay Freewheelin’” was in fact the same album that McKenzie was offering me, with an inscription added after the fact. He determined that some of the items I had purchased from McKenzie and the book dealer were genuine, while others were found to be “not genuine.”

In short order, I hired a lawyer in New York (McKenzie resides there) who called and confronted McKenzie with the bad news. McKenzie denied that anything was not authentic, but asked to speak with me. He insisted he would give me a full refund and implored me to keep this “between us” (something I never agreed to do.) The book dealer, when contacted, expressed concern and made full restitution to me for the “not genuine” items they’d sold me from “Peter McKenzie’s collection.”

Dylan recently praised Obama for redrawing the U.S. political map. “Poverty is demoralising. You can’t expect people to have the virtue of purity when they are poor. But we’ve got this guy out there now who is redefining the nature of politics from the ground up... Barack Obama,” Dylan told the Times newspaper in a recent interview.

His 1964 track The Times They are a-Changin became the anthem for his generation, symbolising the era-defining social struggle against the establishment.

Now Bob Dylan - who could justifiably claim to be the architect of Barack Obama's 'change' catchphrase - has backed the Illinois senator to do for modern America what the generation before did in the 1960s.

In an exclusive interview with The Times, published today, Dylan gives a ringing endorsement to Mr Obama, the first ever black presidential candidate, claiming he is "redefining the nature of politics from the ground up".

Dylan, 67, made the comments when being interviewed in Denmark, where he stopped over in a hotel during a tour of Scandinavia.

Asked about his views on American politics, he said: "Well, you know right now America is in a state of upheaval. Poverty is demoralising. You can't expect people to have the virtue of purity when they are poor.

"But we've got this guy out there now who is redefining the nature of politics from the ground up...Barack Obama.

"He's redefining what a politician is, so we'll have to see how things play out. Am I hopeful? Yes, I'm hopeful that things might change. Some things are going to have to."

And I can kinda sorta see it: a prank/hoax designed to lower the pressure on a guy who was probably headed for the morgue otherwise, if he kept up the pace and drug consumption level he'd maintained for the last couple of years. And while we're at it: a hoax/rumor that would ratchet UP his cult mystique level, which was already sky high. A clever move no matter how you look at it.

Amsterdam - Bob Dylan's much reported motorcycle crash in 1966 never actually happened and the pop icon went in rehab instead, according to a new book published on Friday. Dutch painter and author Jan Cremer claims to have seen Dylan during the detoxification process. Cremer, 68, makes his claim in his book, Ik, Jan Cremer III, that went on sale in the Netherlands.

In the book, Cremer writes about his life in the Netherlands and New York in the 1960s when he lived a wild life, mixing with the stars of the pop music scene.

In the 1960s, Cremer lived in the Chelsea Hotel in New York where Dylan also had a room. This is where Cremer allegedly saw Dylan suffering from the detox process.

Another side of Bob Dylan

David Allen, Staff Writer
Article Launched: 05/24/2008 06:52:52 PM PDT

HE'S A sophisticated songwriter and a Pulitzer Prize winner, true. But on his XM Radio show, "Theme Time Radio Hour," Bob Dylan's between-song comments reveal not only a man with an encyclopedic knowledge of music, but a man with a weakness for silly humor.

How silly? Keep reading, because I transcribed Dylan's quips from his show's first season and am presenting the best - or worst? - below.

Take that, Dan's Slice of Wry!

Happy birthday to Dylan, who turned 67 on Saturday. Some of his jokes are even older than that. Personally, I think they're a scream, but even if most of you disagree, I expect Ontario politicos Paul Leon and Gary Ovitt will be repeating them for years.

"I got a friend who's learning to become a ballerina. She's improving by leaps and bounds."

"Getting married's a lot like getting into a tub of hot water. After you get used to it, it ain't so hot."

"I once had a cross-eyed teacher who couldn't control his pupils."

"You know, I sleep at the edge of the bed. It doesn't take long for me to drop off."

"Two dogs talking. One says to the other: `You're crazy. You ought to go see a psychiatrist.' The other dog says: `I'd love to, but I'm not allowed on the couch."'

"I was having dinner with our announcer, Pierre Mancini. The only difference between Pierre Mancini and a canoe is that sometimes a canoe will tip."

"Take our engineer, Tex Carbone. He's so laid back it takes him two hours to watch `60 Minutes.' I'm the complete opposite. I can make Minute Rice in 30 seconds."

"I just came back from a pleasure trip. Took my mother-in-law to the airport."

"What do you do if you miss your mother-in-law? Reload, and try again."

Rights to Dylan tunes are Blowin' in the Wind

Lawyers in Europe are trying to figure out who owns the rights to some Bob Dylan's songs in Germany, Bloomberg News reports. At first blush, it looks like pinning down those rights is as difficult to decipher as the troubadour's distinctively muffled singing style.

Sony BMG is trying to claim the rights in the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice, the top court in the 27-nation European block. Sony is up against a company called Falcon Neue Medien Vetrieb GmbH, which sells two compilation CDs in Germany that contain tunes from three Dylan albums: The Times They Are A-Changin', Highway 61 Revisited, and Bringing It All Back Home.

Just why is this case so complicated? The three albums at issue were released before 1966, which is the year Germany introduced a copyright law. The ECJ is being asked to rule on whether Sony BMG can assert copyright under a 2006 EU law, which automatically grants continent-wide protection to copyright holders who owned rights in any of EU's 27 member nations prior to July 1, 1995. Sony is basing its claim on the copyright it held over the Dylan material in the United Kingdom. Falcon has won the cases in Germany, but the country's highest court, the Bundesgerichtshof in Karlsruhe, has referred the matter to the ECJ, which could ultimately ship the case back to the Bundesgerichtshof for reconsideration.

So, you could say that Sony is basically arguing that the times they are indeed a-changin' because the 2006 EU legislation overrides the German state of affairs prior to 1995, while Falcon Neue Medien is basically arguing the court should bring it all back home to Germany and leave things as they were. The ECJ will decide whether to ship the case back down Autobahn 61 to be revisited by the German Supreme Court in Karlsruhe. And as for what the court may say, obviously the answer is blowin' in the wind.

The case is C-240/07 Sony Music Entertainment.