CHAPTER 8: DYLAN GOES ELECTRIC
On July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan walked onto the Newport Folk Festival stage with an electric guitar and detonated the uneasy truce between folk tradition and rock & roll. But another strange figure from the Cambridge folk world was there too: Mel Lyman, the harmonica player from Jim Kweskin’s Jug Band, who answered the turmoil with his extraordinary solo rendition of “Rock of Ages.” One moment pointed toward amplification, youth culture and the coming rock revolution; the other toward something darker and more inward that would eventually lead Lyman from the folk clubs of Cambridge to the Fort Hill Community in Roxbury. Two men came out of the same folk universe and headed toward radically different Americas. This September, Boston Babylon follows both roads inside the Motherlode Inner Room on Patreon.
INTRO
Hurricane Carol:
Swan Boat Time
Before Boston learned how to rock & roll, Hurricane Carol blew the roof off the joint.
CHAPTER 1
The MIT Riot:
The G-Clefs
Boston’s rock & roll revolution didn’t begin in a nightclub—it began when the kids knocked the stage down at MIT.
CHAPTER 2
Banned In Boston:
Blacklisted
Boston had been banning entertainment for generations; Alan Freed simply gave it something loud enough to ban.
CHAPTER 3
We Shall Overcome:
The Folk Singers
Before Cambridge became synonymous with computers, it was busy rewriting America with an acoustic guitar.
CHAPTER 4
Harvard Squares:
Leary & Alpert
Harvard set out to study consciousness and accidentally helped blow the doors off reality.
CHAPTER 5
The British Are Coming!:
The Invasion
The British came back to Boston in 1964, and this time the teenage girls opened the gates.
CHAPTER 6
The Birth of Americana:
Gram
Gram Parsons came to Harvard for an education and left with a new idea of what American music could be
CHAPTER 7
The Combat Zone:
Ground Zero
While Boston worried about what rock & roll was doing to its children, the Combat Zone was busy teaching the grown-ups how to misbehave.
CHAPTER 8
Dylan Goes Electric:
Newport '65
Dylan plugged in at Newport, Mel Lyman blew into his harmonica, and somewhere between them the folk revival stopped looking backward.
CHAPTER 9
The Velvet Underground:
Jesus Chrysler
The Velvet Underground came to Provincetown for a five-night stand and left having rattled the farthest edge of America.
