iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Question, possibly for Roy Kelly: when did the Beatles stop wearing stage suits please?

Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

UPDATE: a link that works! WHICH BOB DYLAN CAME TO THE ISLE OF WIGHT? talk with audio and footage Sat Oct 10, Northwood House, Cowes, Isle of Wight www.ticketsource.com/isle-of-wigh...

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

WHICH BOB DYLAN CAME TO THE ISLE OF WIGHT? Talk with audio and footage at this year's Isle of Wight Literary Festival: My one remaining live event of the year. Tickets now on sale at www.ticketsource.com/booking/sele... If you see me, say hello...

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

This morning, with Iris, almost in Spain...

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I turn 80 years old today: a challenging idea for me to accept. But I am very glad to be alive, and still able to work. (I shall be speaking at the Isle of Wight Literary Festival on October 10th). I'm deeply to many people for their support over the decades, especially to my family and wife Sarah.

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Our house is for sale, and in French Property News this month; contact www.frenchestateagents.com/.../giles-ti...

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Very pleased to be giving a presentation - talk with video and audio - here:

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

In a recent issue of London Review of Books, I saw this - 'Jewish Restaurant, Brick Lane [London]', by Pearl Binder, 1931 - and thought how much the waiter looked like 1970 Bob Dylan:

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

My "Bob Dylan Encyclopedia" (750,000 words) was first published in the UK and Europe 20 years ago today: 12 July 2006. I was thrilled to see it out into the world, and never more so than when I saw this photograph of Seamus Heaney holding a copy:

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

45 YEARS AGO TODAY: updated edition of my Dylan book; this one reversed the title to THE ART OF BOB DYLAN: Song & Dance Man; published Hamlyns in simultaneous hardback and paperback. (US edition came a year later.) The main appeal of this 2nd edition was its far greater use of photographs.

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

First US hardback edition of THE BOB DYLAN ENCYCLOPEDIA was published 20 years ago today (June 15) in NYC. If you bought that edition, it included this CD-Rom of the whole 750,000-word text.

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

Have just finished J.G. Farrell's wonderful novel "The Siege of Krishnapur" (1973). Hard to pin down what makes this such a great book. The author's humane, thoughtful, calm personality glows unobtrusively in the background. He's great at Victorian tech, at characters and building a compelling plot.

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

13 days ago I lit the sitting-room fire in the evening; since then, a heatwave every day: very close to 40 degrees by mid-afternoon. But it could be worse. This is the view when I'm sitting at lunch on the terrace. But our house is for sale; if, like me, you work from home, you could buy it...

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

I'm one of the talking heads on this edition - this afternoon in you're in the UK and afterwards anywhere on whatever the BBC now calls Listen Again:

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

Three years ago today I was pleased to deliver a talk at the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa OK:

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

I'm very pleased to have accepted an invitation to speak at the Isle of Wight Literary Festival on Saturday October 10. Skeletal details are on my website: www.michaelgray.net It will be my first time on the island since, er, 1969...

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Here this evening, from our front door...

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

Probably my magnum opus, it was first published in the USA on this day 26 years ago:

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

My first gig of 2026: Tickets now on sale from 01305 266926 or share.google/PYuHzhpZsJYS...

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

A reminder, a miniature sample, of what's on offer from "Song & Dance Man" 50th Anniversary Series, Vol. 2, published by the FM Press, NYC and still available in paperback (sorry about this) from you-know-who:

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

A 1965 interviewer tells Bob Dylan he prefers caruso as a singer. Dylan replies: "I happen to be as good as him... and can hold my breath three times as long if I have to." He'd proved that last claim five years earlier, at age 19, as the "Window" release shows on his 1960 'East Virginia Blues'.

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

TOMORROW NIGHT! Friday Sept 26, 8pm The Séamus Ennis Centre, Naul, Dublin: tseac.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/...

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

This Friday - September 26, 8pm at Naul, Dublin: tseac.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/...

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

Two weeks today, just outside Dublin, Ireland. Why not come over? IS BOB DYLAN NOW HISTORY? IS BOB DYLAN NOW HISTORY? IS BOB DYLAN NOW HISTORY? I'm returning to The Séamus Ennis Arts Centre stage, to give this new talk with audio & footage: tseac.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/...

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

Published in Japan 52 years ago yesterday:

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

IS BOB DYLAN NOW HISTORY? Seamus Heaney Arts Centre, Sept 26, 8pm: talk with audio & footage: for anyone young, is 84-year-old Bob Dylan now just a historical figure? What history might he embody? Why he might matters In two halves with an interval. Tickets: tseac.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/...

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

It's already 2 years since the 50th Anniversary edition! Actually this 3-volume 2023 edition doesn't reprint the first but the 3rd, final version of the book: the 630,000-word "Song & Dance Man III" published UK at the end of C20, 2000 in the USA. And the text below is taken from its preface:

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

Out now: the summer 2025 edition, including a short new piece of mine linking early C19 poetry, Thomas Hardy, Rabbit Brown and Bob: thedylanreview.org

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

"IS BOB DYLAN NOW HISTORY?" The one talk I'm giving later this year (embedded with audio & footage) is at a great small venue outside Dublin in late September. Tickets are on sale now: tseac.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/...

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

Our splendid dog Iris, this afternoon:

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

It's referring there to the multi-thousand word critique of the "Rough & Rowdy Ways" album published in my book OUTTAKES ON BOB DYLAN, which this year came out in paperback and looks like this:

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

Maybe that Meta AI isn't so bad after all:

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

Look out across the fields... Gazing out the window 6.30 this morning:

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 15/06/2025

I finished writing the 630,000 words of "Song & Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan" 26 years ago today. Images: hardback; 1st paperback edition; 2004 paperback reprint; and, I'm grateful to see, Irish poet Paul Muldoon with a copy; plus the 2023 three-volume paperback republication:

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

BBC-TV's 3-part series "Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius" is exceptionally good (in spite of a couple of irritating talking heads). When I was at school, Austen was taught as an unexplained old novelist to be venerated. What this series does so well is emphasise, and prove, how very radical she was.

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

Seen by my spies in Exeter, Devon:

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

As Bob Dylan turns 84 on Saturday, I ask:

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

As Bob Dylan turns 84 this coming Saturday, I ask:

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

360 pages of work of mine on Bob Dylan's - work not in "Song & Dance Man: The Art of Bob Dylan" nor in "The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia". Now this is published in paperback, and with a great rare shot of Bob 1965 on the front cover:

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

My first live event of 2025 has me back at an old favourite in Vienna, on May 22:

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 11/05/2025

Two years ago yesterday I gave a talk at the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa OK - exactly a year after it had opened. And by the time of my presentation, it had for sale UK 1st edition hardback copies of my book "Outtakes On Bob Dylan" - a book that was published in paperback just last month.

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Michael Gray @michaelgray1.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

This is the back cover of new paperback "OUTTAKES ON BOB DYLAN: Selected Writings 1967-2021". The colour photo has me & my then baby daughter in front of the NYC wall used on the "Oh Mercy" album:

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