I bought a used DVD of this on eBay. I had heard of the Holy Modal Rounders but was not familiar with their music. Robert Christgau, a great writer about music, is a big admirer of theirs so I thought I would give the film a chance. The Rounders started in the early 1960s but most of the film takes place between 2000 and 2003. The music has been called psychedelic folk.

Here is the trailer and the entire film. I don’t normally post entire films but IMDB doesn’t show it streaming anywhere and the DVD is out of print.

I recommend the film. It certainly is honest and one of the two main performers, the late Steve Weber, doesn’t usually come across well. His behavior, to put it kindly, is erratic.

Peter Stampfel, who is still around, seems much more reasonable.

There are lots of performance clips and interviews with folks such as Christgau and Dave Van Ronk. Sam Shepard, who was in the band for several years, is also interviewed. There is even a clip of their appearance on Laugh-In.

I thought ‘A Complete Unknown’ which is about Bob Dylan’s life from 1961-1965 was excellent. Timothee Chalamet is outstanding as Dylan and does a fine job singing and playing guitar as well as acting. The rest of the cast is excellent, too. It’s especially hard to portray living and recent figures when we know what they sound like but this cast carries it off. It’s much harder than, for example, playing George Washington since we don’t know what he sounded like and there are no photographs of him.

It’s very impressive that they didn’t whitewash Dylan’s behavior. There are times he behaves badly. The film also gives insight into how difficult it is to be famous.

I am a big Dylan fan and have been (most of the time) for 60 years,

Dylan and Bob Neuwirth play “Railroad Bill” in the studio (jn what I assume is 1965). Like other old songs like “Delia” and “Stagger Lee”, “Railroad Bill is based on a real person. Dylan didn’t record it until the Self Portrait sessions in1970 and it wasn’t released until 2013. I listened to it today for the first time and thought it was great.

I also like Dave Alvin’s 2000 version:

Tom Wilson, shown in the booth when Dylan is recording, also produced artists such as The Mothers of Invention, Simon and Garfunkel, and the Velvet Underground.

I was a little disoriented when songs were performed out of the order in which they were released on records. Maybe they were actually written in the order in the film. This is not a documentary and the creators have the right to artistic license to film the story their way. The audience member shouting “Judas” and Dylan saying “Play It Loud” actually happened in 1966 at a show in England.

There is a fine documentary on Dylan’s performances at the Newport Folk Festival from 1963-65 titled The Other Side of the Mirror. It was released in 2007. The documentary Dont Look Back covers his 1965 tour of England. The tour is now shown in the new film but something he got in England was mentioned.

The part about Al Kooper playing organ on “Like A Rolling Stone” even though he was not an experienced organ player seems like something they would make up but it really happened in a way generally like it is shown in the film.

Dylan’s early albums are solo with just his voice and guitar. I don’t think they would have been made that way less than 10 years later. Look at the recordings of John Prine, Steve Goodman and Jim Croce. The singer is accompanied by a full band, I saw all of them in the early 1970s. Prine and Goodman played solo and Croce was accompanied by another acoustic guitarist. Dylan going electric probably influenced having these artists recording with a band.

At the end, there is text about Dylan playing at the Guthrie Tribute Concert on January 20, 1968. He was accompanied by the Band and they did three songs – “I Ain’t Got No Home”, “Grand Coulee Dam”, and “Dear Mrs. Roosevelt”. The performances are great – loud rock and roll. There are recordings but the sound quality is only fair. The three songs are on YouTube and there is a box set of the two tribute concerts. Unlike in 1965, the audience was very enthusiastic.