“The Bob Dylan link Eyolf Østrem does not want you to read or see”

There are currently nine (and counting) [edit: ten and counting] [edit: twelve and counting, one of them to this post] identical comments in this site’s spam box, all pointing out the shocking instance of web censorship in the headline: “The Bob Dylan link Eyolf Østrem does not want you to read or see.” They’re all from a guy named Richard Clark, and they point to jamesdamiano dot yolasite dot com (see? I don’t mind you seeing it — or reading it, if you have a week to spare).
But it’s not just my blog that gets flooded. At the discussion board over at expecting rain, we find, from the same Richard:

“The Eyolf Østrem link about The Bob Dylan James Damiano Plagiarism Litigation”

And at rec.music.dylan (r.m.d.?!? does anyone actually post there anymore?!) we have:

New ! Dylan E-book
New Dylan Book Eyolf Østrem ?

It’s like the flu: not every year, but with consistency to be counted on, it comes flushing over you and there is nothing you can do but wait for it to pass: James Damiano’s campaign to convince the world that he “wrote songs released by Bob Dylan”, as it says on his facebook page.
I have no idea what my name is doing there. He has nothing new to say, and neither do I, so I’ll just point to the conversation we had back in the 90s:

Did Dylan steal ‘Dignity’?

It’s remarkable that nowhere in the humongous material that he has amassed is there a sounding example — just a snippet would do — of the song “Steel Guitars” that Dylan allegedly stole.
Can we from this conclude that the song doesn’t even exist, to paraphrase Damiano?

[Update: I just found another incarnation of the videotaped depositions, which are a hoot to watch, btw, and lo and behold, there, in the background of Danny Gallagher’s testimony, is “Steel Guitars”! I have seen that snippet a couple of times now, but I had no idea that was the song, because I was listening for something that may have sounded like Dignity…]

What we do get is a musicologist who plays a generic melody line over the accompaniment of “Dignity”. Of course Dylan’s song sounds a lot like that…

We also get a number of other hit songs by mr Damiano, and man, would Dylan just die to lay his filthy, thieving hands on those beauties!

14 thoughts on ““The Bob Dylan link Eyolf Østrem does not want you to read or see””

  1. Eyolf, anyone who glances at your site will know your stance. Don’t even bother giving a response, it’s like getting sucked into a filthy whirlpool with bitter people in little boxes swirling round (much like Expecting Rain).

    People may write songs, but it’s also quite possible they’re massive tossers.

    By the way I’m the one who came up with the whole G-A-D chord thing. I was the first one to play those chords together.

  2. he probably didn’t put a sound sample of his song up cos he didn’t want any other great american songwriters from stealing it.

  3. Dear Professor Eyolf:
    Thank you very much for all the work you put into the Dylan chords website – I have learned quite a lot from your work.

    I am very sorry to bog you with such a petty question – but it has always been a fantasy of mine to play Tangled up in blue with the guitar style from 1984 REAL LIVE.

    I am looking at your chords but you have 2 symbols that confuse me ….

    What chord is ” /b ” ?? And Finally – what chord is “C/g” ???

    Sorry :( Thanks so much once again – looking forward to your response Professor.

  4. to eyolf, you heard the christmas album yet?

    to mr. seto, “/b” means the bass note changes to a ‘b’ note. if you listen to the recording, you can hear a descending bass line every fourth line: C – B – A. so you don’t change anything in the C chord except the bass note, or the C played on the third fret of the A string (change it to a B, or second fret played on the A string).

    C/g means you’re playing a C chord with a g-note in the bass. the “G C/g G” figure is very common in dylan’s work (it constitutes the majority of “another side of bob dylan”), and the easiest way to play it is play a regular C chord, but then place your ring finger on the third fret of the top E string, rather than the A string, muting the A string while you’re at it.

  5. Do not waste you time with this. Just let him be. I agree with Oisin O’Faghain here. If you get to involved with all this stuff it will stop you from doing the things you like – internet wars can eat you up. Better spend you time reading some old Watzlawick book – „Pragmatics of Human Communication“ helped me a lot to not get too involved.

    @christopher f. – I heard a few songs… Not love at the first tone, I must admit.

    @Dave: Use archive.org and http://members.fortunecity.com/travelingwilburyguitarsite/… – 2006 should be a good year for digging.

  6. @T and Oisin: Don’t worry — I don’t waste a second more on this than what I can justify — to myself and to any court :)

    @Dave: There’s a FAQ entry about why there are no Wilbury songs. That was quite a while ago, though, so maybe it’s time to reconsider the stance.

    @abraham: in my absence, christopher f. answered to my satisfaction, hopefully also to yours.

    @christopher: thanks for answering the eternal slash chord question to my satisfaction.
    And, yes, I’ve heard the Christmas album, I have it in my heart, and all is good. All is good… must be santa and he loves me, yeah yeah yeah

  7. I totally agree with T and Oisin… Don’t waste a moment with this argument. I would say that strictly speaking, one could consider every single songwriter and for that matter, musician there ever was to be a copy-cat… I’m sure a lot of these songwriters and musicians themselves will know exactly what I mean. Even the late great Woody Guthrie considered himself, in his own words “the biggest song-stealer there ever was” – forgive me as I forget the reference for the quote – a little help there anyone?
    Your work is outstanding, rather spend your precious time on the ever so precious transcriptions… I have spent the last year or so trying to figure out “wade in the water’ and the V.D. songs and still getting nowhere fast. You certainly have great talent for transcribing and teaching us all to be great copycats of the greatest copycat there ever was.

  8. im sorry, this is totally unrelated, but this page came up in my search for a tab for ‘wade in the water’ off the minnesota tapes, as i can’t find it in the dylan chords zip (the first place anyone goes to learn a dylan track)… so just wondering if anyone has a link or some info about a tab for this song??
    thanks,
    nick.

    1. Ah, “Wade in the Water”… One of the two remaining official tracks. It’s in open G tuning, I seem to remember, and possibly with a capo somewhere. I just haven’t taken the time to figure out all the slide patterns yet. Perhaps when I’m done with the series of lessons.

  9. anywhere we can get dylan.pdf without doing all this miktex \ ruby stuff ? My heads aching !!!!!

  10. The Missing Bob Dylan Plagiarism Link

    http:// www. viddler. com/ explore/ dylan_1/ videos/ 2/ (remove the spaces if you want to watch)

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