Ed Bott's Media Central

If you’re a Bob Dylan fan, you must read Lee Abrams’ series, The Dylan Diary. It’s the story of how this longtime radio exec, who now works for XM Radio, managed to convince Dylan that he should do something for XM:

Getting through was not easy. The label was pretty useless. Of course the label usually owns the plastic…the managers own the artist…in Bob’s case it was appearing that Bob owns Bob, and there lies the challenge.

From Part 2:

This ain’t no radio show. This is an epic. We talked through the vision. I Was expecting to guide then through the process, but in reality their vision was exactly what I hoped it would be. Theater-of-the-Mind. Americana radio. The glory of an AM from 500 miles away at 3am. Whacked humor. Ear Candy. Arthur Godfrey meets Bob Dylan…in 2006. Eddie Gorodetsky, a legend of his own, was brought on to help Bob produce the show. Jeff Rosen was deeply involved. Their team is set to make magic. Eddie’s request for tapes of old jingles, air checks and ads so hokey that they are genius made me very confident.

We first got copies of the song lists. For technical reasons we need to make sure they are in our system. As deep as the XM library his, they had us stumped on a few. Good! Symbolizes that the musical direction will break every radio rule. Perfect. In fact that they have no clue about what a traditional radio show should look and sound like means that the show WILL be a PURE reflection of Bob and uncompromised for mass consumption. I believe that because the show IS so unusual that it WILL be mass appeal…but certainly not by trying to be.

And my favorite part:

Last Friday I had the chance to present the idea to the ENTIRE XM marketing force. Had a five minute demo that included dozens of major artists talking a bout Bob that we culled from our Artist Confidential series. Priceless comments from Coldplay, Paul McCartney, Willie Nelson, Judy Collins, Phil Collins and many more. At the end of the CD there was BOB DYLAN talking about the show. Surreal. It really was Bob. And he was talking about the show. Had a PowerPoint, but kind of tossed it to wax on about the show hopefully better than A PowerPoint.

I only hope there will be some way to time-shift this. As much as I’d love to sit down every week and listen to the Bob Dylan show, that isn’t the way the world works anymore. I want to record it, save it, carry it on my portable music player, put it in my car for a long drive.

Are you listening, Lee?

(via Doc Searls)