Bowie Vs. Dylan

We here at Bowie vs. Dylan want to present to you a VERY special episode wherein Chaz and Jake rank the Top Ten Era/Phases/Whims/Career Choices of David Bowie's and Bob Dylan's career, and you're welcome to listen to it, because it's a TOP TEN LIST, and we believe it to be of similar quality to all the other podcasts that came before.   But we must warn you, the podcast is turning 40 today, and even though over the last two centuries the life expectancy of podcasts has literally doubled, and there is ample revolutionary medicine and surgeries available that podcasts of the past could not have even imagined, and 40 is the new 27.5, statistically, and at least as far as podcasts are concerned, I mean, have you seen that Bowie vs. Dylan lately?  What a listener. Anyway, but since the podcast is turning 40 today, we have to warn you that it's OVER THE HILL.  And that suddenly there's too many candles and not enough birthday cake.  And that it knows that it's 40 because the only weight-lifting it does is from st

This podcast about Bowie and Dylan in the year 2017 is presented to you, dear listeners, as a triple album, each LP containing clearly defined themes that feed one to another, and then back again from the end of LP #3 to the start of LP #1, so that you'll be stuck in an endless feedback loop of listening to this specific podcast for the rest of eternity.   Wherein: Bowie is again a Cracked Actor, Dylan is again Born Again Again; Bowie returns to the early 70's; Dylan returns again to the 1940's and 50's again, and once again, and then again again, and then again once more for good measure. Here's a sneak preview of each podcast LP's incredibly varied and easily identifiable and classifiable themes, just in case you want to know what you're getting into as you prepare to listen to this podcast and nothing else for the rest of your life: LP #1: authentically smooth, mid-tempo, jazzy, non-improvised croony-tunes that Frank Sinatra may or may not have sang at some point. LP #2: authentically smooth, mid-tempo

Bowie plays it cool and wavy in Berlin (but not really Berlin) while Dylan gets hot under the collar for Jesus in the year of Dylan's lord 1979.  There's obviously a lot to unpack in this episode of Bowie vs. Dylan, but the question on everyone's lips in this: Why DOES Jake has a slight but pronounced issue with Brian Eno?   Well, not to ruin the surprise, such as it is, but it's really just a feeling with no concrete evidence whatsoever beyond a solid and uncompromising body of work.  I mean, Jake really should like him just fine, and I guess he does, but he doesn't totally, he told me so, in a confidence that I am now gratuitously breaking.  And spoiler alert, Eno is Chaz's #2 all-time musician overall?!  What?  Now Jake has told me he's upset again, after cooling off considerably since they recorded the podcast, and he tells me to tell Chaz that he's not speaking to him until they both take a few weeks to think it over and make sense of this mess.   How does that make you feel, Chaz, of this edition of B

Sad Middle Aged Man #1: Calling out around the world! Sad Middle Aged Man #3: Are you ready to suck at Live Aid?! Sad Middle Aged Man #2: Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah BLAH BLAH! All Sad Middle Aged Men: For dancing in the street!! Sad Middle Aged Man #1: They’re dancing in LONDON!           Backup Sad Middle Aged Mens #2 and #3: Sucking at Live Aid… Sad Middle Aged Man #2: They’re dancing in PHILLY!           Backup Sad Middle Aged Mens #1 and #3: Sucking at Live Aid… Sad Middle Aged Men #3: They’re dancing in wherever the hell I am, I can’t really tell, Ronnie Wood is here?  New York, maybe, does Keith Richards know where we are, whoa, he doesn’t know where anybody is, I think I’d bet- All Sad Middle Aged Men everywhere: All we hear is music! Sweet music! There’ll be music EVERYWHERE, on this edition of Bowie vs. Dylan!

We here at Bowie vs. Dylan like to keep it light, you know, with delightfully frivolous lamentations such as the following: What really IS a choice anyway?  Does it need to be more than one?  Is one sufficient to make a choice?  If there's only one option, but one chooses not to choose it, and instead chooses no choice, is there an inherent binary anyway?  And if so, is there any such logical thing as no choice?  Why does Bowie like his hair to look like the halcyon bygone days of Jon Bon Jovi in 2005?  What exactly are the criteria of the so-called "Dave-cation?"  Why does Dylan tour with his old buddies/frenemies so often while on no sort of vacation?  Why did he give cryptic but strangely revealing interviews in 2001 only to disavow a project based on them helmed by none other than Martin Scorsese in 2005?  What exactly is the difference between PBS and the BBC anyway, I mean really, like, spiritually?  Why does Chaz smell so bad? What is the nature of life, but moreover, living? Hey, no big deal, we're j

Welcome to the 1st Annual BvD Obie Awards, an unnecessary and confusing side entry award appendage to the Actual Obie Awards!  Presented posthumously, back-dated 20 years to 1999. Our presenting sponsor is nobody.   Best Adult Contemporary Album Sandwiched In Between Two Industrial-Lite Albums in the Year of Our Lord 1999, Award: David Bowie Best Attempt at Killing Oneself Through Never-Ending Never-Ending Tours in the Year of Our Lord 1999, Award: Bob Dylan Best Line Reading of a Lost Crappy-Cheap Crime Movie Trailer Featuring Iffy New Jersey Gangster Accents, Nomination: Jake, Bowie vs. Dylan Podcast Best Early 70's BBC Announcer Accent For the Duration of a Strange 1966 Bob Dylan Interview Featuring Not-A-BBC-Announcer Interviewer, Nomination: Chaz, Bowie vs. Dylan Podcast Best New Original Podcast Featuring Two Brothers Discussing David Bowie and/or Bob Dylan, Nomination: Bowie vs. Dylan Best New Original Podcast Featuring Two Brothers Discussing David Bowie and/or Bob Dylan, Award: Vacant, No Suita

We here at Bowie vs. Dylan want you to stop us if you've heard this one before: Two well-meaning podcasters record a perfectly okay episode involving the comings and goings of David Bowie and Bob Dylan in the year 1972.  They drink a beer with one hand, pat themselves on the back with the other, and call it a day.   Except: the digital file stored on the voice memos portion of a state-of-the-art iPod 4 becomes somehow corrupted and refuses to transfer to one of the well-meaning podcaster's computer hard drive.  This podcaster furiously attempts to uncorrupt the ostensibly but allegedly corrupt file, which nonetheless proves itself literally corrupt and thereby unretrievable.  The first podcaster hides the corruption from the second podcaster, who is prone to tantrums and various hissy fits, by attempting unethical bribes and outright witchcraft to avoid what becomes unavoidable, which is that the two podcasters must surmount all odds and just, you know, record it again. It's a tale as old as time.  Have you

We here at Bowie vs. Dylan bet you thought you could just skip past the storytelling parts of this special VH1 Storytellers podcast and get to, like, the music, man.  Well, too bad for you, because VH1 Records (still a thing, sure) demanded that we list all of the tracks on this episode as containing both the story AND the telling, but also whatever song comes after.  Lot of story, a lot of telling, precious little music is how they roll.  Also, podcasts don't have much music in them, man.   Podcasts are by their very nature a spoken word medium, because of the 1st amendment.  Ever heard of it?  And, music is extremely challenging to license for podcasts, especially ones with 40 listeners who are just dying to get shouted out on air for sending us emails at bowievsdylan@gmail.com.  Finally, its expensive, dang, we here at Bowie vs. Dylan tried to call Bowie's and Dylan's management about using just a little taste of that sweet non-spoken word manna from heaven they call music, but- SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNN

Setting: Newly minted Bowie tries to achieve early Bowie in England, while Bob Dylan is at the height of his Dylan-ness, also in England for part of the year, getting "Judas!!!" yelled at him by wankers. Bowie answers an advert in the paper, whereby he pays good pounds to climb into a tiny door presented to him by a very young John Cusack.  He inexplicably transforms into Bob Dylan's body and mind for 15 minutes, and then is deposited on the side of a freeway in New Castle.  Whilst embodying Dylan, Bowie goes to dinner where everyone, including him, looks like the majestically frizzy Dylan of 1966. Dylan #1: Blonde on Blonde? Dylan #2: Blonde on Blonde. Dylan #3: Blonde on Blonde? Blonde on Blonde? Blonde on Blonde! Dylan #4: Blonde on BlondeBlonde on BlondeBlonde on BlondeBlonde on BlondeBlonde on BlondeBlonde on BlondeBlonde on BlondeBlonde on BlondeBlonde on BlondeBlonde on Blonde. All Dylans: Blonde on BlondeBlonde on BlondeBlonde on BlondeBlonde on Blonde. Bowie (once deposited on the freeway): It

Setting: Two men age-group 18-49, with so many more important things to do, nonetheless talking to each other and roughly 41 other souls about David Bowie and/or Bob Dylan.  Their respective rooms are dark; their tone slight, but uniformly pensive. Man #1: Bob Dylan's single from the year two thousand and fifteen is as follows: The- Man #2: (interrupting jovially): Are we talking about David Bowie's history of musicals right now? Man #1: The Night- Man #2: (interrupting haphazardly): Because it's a rich, rich...rich historical text. Man #1: The Night We- Man #2 (interrupting wildly): Why, in 1968, of all year, Bowie was thinking of thinking of maybe writing and producing one. Man #1: The Night We Called- Man #2: (interrupting rather rudely): It's about a man with a very ordinary name who's ANYTHING BUT ORDINARY, you see. Man #1: The Night We Called It- Man #2: (interrupting as if it's now a joke that only he can truly appreciate): Ever heard of Ziggy Stardust, friend? Man #1: The Night We Called It

Dear Listeners- We here at Bowie vs. Dylan know that it's generally uncouth to share such an emotional outpouring, especially since we haven't had anything to drink this morning (yet), but hey, what the heck?  The internet is such a rotten place sometimes, and we'd like to change that in whatever small way that we can actually control, so here goes: WE REALLY APPRECIATE YOU. So much so, in fact, that we'd like to ask your forgiveness in advance for the 1 hour and 45 minutes that you're about to be subjected to of pure podcast petulance.  Because although David Bowie and Bob Dylan were and are generally congenial fellows with many friends, acquaintances, and collaborators (see Episode 10 of this podcast), they also each had their share of frenemies, enemies, and rivalries, all of which are covered in exhaustive and exhausting detail, by real-life brothers (and #1 For Realz Rivalz For Life) Chaz and Jake.  Warning: It's a petty, salacious, violent, uncaring, contentious, and downright mean episode, just like

Chaz and Jake sift through the mild emotional wreckage that was the year 1996 for tasty goss on their muses both dead and alive.  Spoiler alert: there's not much to say, except that the brothers somehow spew an unhealthy 75 minutes of morning drive-time jock-talk with what amounts to practically nothing.  We leave it to you, dear listeners, to decide if that's any different at all than their other podcasts.   Here's Bowie's year: He's at least lookin good, I guess? Let me just check my notes on Dylan one more time, there's got to be something here...wait, how did we miss this?!  Says here that a handsome man with the surname Dylan fronted an inexplicably popular alternative rock band with several top ten hits with an album that sold 4 million copies and won a bunch of Grammy's!  Bob Dylan was in a band called the Wallflowers?! That wasn't in my narrative at all!  You'd think I'd have caught it, but boy, does this change everything, we're gonna have to go back and re-do the points, Chaz is NOT going to be pl

Charlie and Jake beckon you to join them in their 1970-era drug and sex-fueled arts commune that's really just a dilapidated house with some stairs that you can sleep on/under.  Why, you ask? Well, we want you to express yourself, of course, through mimery and "joke" albums that debut at #4 on the Billboard charts.  We want you to try your novelty singles in Italian, and to put out a "real" album 4 months later only to see it debut at #7.  We'd really think it was neat if you released some HEAVY music, man, but also to sing of the simple pleasures the country life can bring after you move back to NYC to be accosted by jackasses with megaphones.  All of this is encouraged in our awful condemnable house! But really, it's all about us making a space spiritually and physically fit for you to bring a child into the world in it.  Seriously, have a baby and try and raise it through infancy in the house.  It'll be a good idea!  He or she can sleep under Stair #8, it's surprisingly roomy.   I hate to do this to you

Grizzled musical veterans Chaz and Jake return to relevance discussing Bowie and/or Dylan (fresh off their BvD Awards for Worst Years Ever) in the "monumental" year of 2012.  Bowie does almost nothing besides play "Heroes" a couple times each for every single world event, but nevertheless transfigures his manic energy to Charlie, who can't stop interrupting and saying all the things that Jake was about to say before he says them.  Dylan tries to terrify Jake with the possibility that he's already released the comeback old man mortality record that was promised, but Jake is too busy trying to figure out how to be juuuuust the right amount of interested in Dylan's career to be the kind of fan whom Dylan doesn't want to go straight to f***ing hell. So go ahead and feed this entire podcast into Google Translate (say, Egyptian?), then feed it back through to English to enjoy an experience that might just make more sense than the actual thing on this edition of Bowie vs. Dylan.

Hey there.  Are you through with Tin Machine for a year?  Are you distracted from writing decent songs by your exhausting but highly fortuitous involvement in a better-than-decent supergroup?  Did you remix one of your songs so many times that the remixes turned back into the original song somehow?  Did you fire G.E. Smith for no good reason?  Do you need some good old-fashioned cash stacks and the only way you can think to stack cash is to "retire" your classic material on a massive tour?  Did Don and Jon and Bon and Juan Wan hire Slash to provide some disappointing licks for your disappointing album?  You mean you haven't had enough of Jake and Charlie's nuclear and extended family blabbering on about maybe the subject we asked them about? THEN BOY DO WE HAVE ANOTHER TREAT FOR YOU. Because it's Dylan's turn to steer the Nadir-O-Rater into the yawning abyss of 1990.  Hang on tight, because it's a mildly boring ride ripe with self-parody on this VERY special Part 2-ish Diamond Jubilee/Tarnished Tin episode

If you've ever felt ironically let down by Never Let Me Down, or have felt the very fire extinguished from your chest by Hearts of Fire, or have wondered just how low David Bowie could sink, reputationally but more importantly point-wise in the year 1987, and whether Dylan could actually be worse in that year (good thing he didn't put out an album, or it might have been close), or what a glass spider might look like, or how long Dylan's earrings extend down his shoulders, but also have longed to know what various members of Charlie and Jake's nuclear and extended family sound like in small snippets talking about music that no one should be subjected to whilst various babies and other small children prattle on in the Christmas-inspired backdrop of suburban Minnesota, then BOY DO WE HAVE A TREAT FOR YOU. It's part 1 of the self-described-in-a-later-episode "Diamond Jubilee", that's really just Fool's Gold or Tarnished Tin, in this very special episode of Bowie vs. Dylan.

Join the Crackpot Corner that is Charlie and Jakes' conversation for a close look into Bowie and Dylan in the year 2001.  Charlie's talking points are long and lustrous, but devoid of officially released albums and curiously beholden to odd collaborations with rappers.  Jake's are certainly thick and wiry, but hidden under a Stetson hat, under which may be revealed a classic album and an exhaustive touring schedule.   OR IS IT THE OTHER WAY AROUND?   It's not!  But tune on in anyway, because someone won an Oscar; someone played a child's keyboard; someone finds their biggest fans distasteful; someone judged a fake fashion show with very real consequences; and someone broke someone else's will to answer any more multiple choice questions with multiple multiple choice questions, on this golden birthday edition (November 19th) of Bowie vs. Dylan.

Quick multiple choice question for you all:  Which wildly non-sequiturous tangent do Chaz and Jake NOT go on at some point in this podcast which purports to report on the comings and goings of David Bowie and Bob Dylan in the year of all years 1981? a. Two words: Robert Van Winkle, y'all. b. The artistic merits of the 4th Batman movie, or was it the 3rd?  The truly sucky one, not the one that just mostly sucks, you know, with Bat Crotches and stuff. c. Copyright infringement law as explained to middle-schoolers. d. Whether Dylan fell off and/or boarded his 80's Caribbean yacht and/or schooner. e. Whether Bowie used makeup to play the Elephant Man or if his face just looked that way. f. Whether Charlie should seek medical attention for his smell or if he's just as God made him.  Just remember as you attempt to answer correctly and thereby win this game and thereby the door prize which consists of a number of free podcasts: you must answer in the form of an answer; there's actually more than one made-up

Jake seems to sound the same while discussing Bob Dylan in the year of all years 1974, but Charlie sounds...different somehow, while discussing David Bowie.  It's not the content necessarily, it's still a buzzsaw of singles, classic 70's records, and questionable (NSFW?) album art.  And it's not his tone, which continues to be cheeky, sarcastic, vaguely mean, and unnecessarily triumphant.  It's more, I don't know, his timbre?  Less scratchy?  Clearer somehow?  More personable?  Still whiny and nasally, sure, but you can hear the words better.  I think.  But I'm not sure why!  Maybe you, dear listeners, can figure it out, as you fire up the old podcast listening machine, share an in-person brotherly or sisterly hug with the ones you love,  hoover up some cocaine and/or infidelity with CBS executives, and try not to cringe during the "members" portion (you'll know it when you hear it) on this very special shuckster/guru-filled episode of Bowie vs. Dylan!

Bowie's not with us anymore, but that doesn't stop him from attempting to stampede a very much alive Dylan (editor's note: "very much" is a little strong here) in the juuuuuust passed year of our Lord 2018.  You see, his record label is deathless and is intent on shoving reissues, 4th remasters of "legendary" concerts from 1978, and "greatest shows on earth in the year 2000 at Glastonbury on the night Bowie played it" at an alarming clip.  And well, Dylan might not be able to keep up because his record label is deathless and is doing the exact same thing even though Bob lives (we're pretty sure he toured 9 months of the year...anyone?), but just to a slightly lesser extent given his afore-mentioned livingness.  So it's a thinly veiled battle for artistic supremacy that's actually a vehicle for childish emotional outbursts and barely masked sarcastic comments that occasionally hit too close to home.  Happy New Year from Chaz and Jake on a very special episode of Bowie vs. Dylan that's just like all the others