bob dylan albums i have

time out of mind
highway 61 revisited
blonde on blonde
john wesley harding
blood on the tracks
biograph
hard rain
the times they are a-changin'
the freewheelin' bob dylan
nashville skyline
bob dylan and the band - the basement tapes
planet waves
desire
oh mercy
before the flood
pat garrett & billy the kid
empire burlesque
bringing it all back home

patti smith albums i have

horses
easter
gone again

When you're strolling down a crowded city street on a finecool winter's afternoon with your son in a pram you're pushing and your wife beside you and the world seems alright.

Complete strangers will stop in mid-stride and smile and comment on how beautiful your baby is. And I feel kinda embarrassed because he is beautiful, but I don't want to jinx him this early in life by admitting that.

And Matthew sleeps as we walk. Lulled by the motion of the pram over the ground, rocked by the changing surface and serenaded by the talk and the jackhammers and the traffic tooting its way through rush-hour.

Until he finally cracks, his sereneness shattered, his placidity turned grumpy and he starts wailing like any other hungry baby. We scurry off to the car and wait for that motion to settle him as we drive home in the early evening of a Wellington Friday.

OOOOOHHHHHHH, and I just remembered another reason life is good today.

Bob Dylan and Patti Smith are playing a concert in Wellington in September, and tickets went on sale today and I got some. Close to the front. In the centre. 

I have seen Dylan once, in an outdoor show in Wellington, circa 1986, where he played with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and some dick kept yelling "Tom Petty, Tom Petty" right through Dylan's show, like he had no idea who Dylan was.

Patti Smith I have never seen. But the first entry I wrote in Soundtrack to a Life, about the fragment of Born to Run I heard, could almost have been written about Because the Night. I heard that song on the radio about the same time - god knows why NZ commercial radio was playing Patti Smith! - and thought it was the most perfect song I had ever heard.

So, these are two of my all-time favourite artists. Roll on September.