Eric R. Danton SOUNDCHECK: Music News & Views

10:01 a.m. EDT, May 13, 2011

The usually inscrutable Bob Dylan has responded on his website to what he calls “this so-called China controversy” following his first-ever shows there this spring.

The iconic singer and songwriter addresses talk in the press that he had previously been denied permission to perform in China, that his shows there were attended mostly by ex-pats and that the Chinese government demanded to approve his setlists.

None of it’s true, Dylan says, repeating variations of the refrain “ask anyone.”

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That’s a little disingenuous, given the very real restrictions on the media in China, but point taken: sometimes a story is indeed too good to be true, and the truth in this case seems to be that Dylan’s trip to China was less Nixonian than just another concert tour for a veteran musician who doesn’t intend to stop.

Dylan adds a playful twist of the knife at the end of his missive when he refers to the slew of books, present and forthcoming, written about him. “So I’m encouraging anybody who’s ever met me, heard me or even seen me, to get in on the action and scribble their own book,” he writes. “You never know, somebody might have a great book in them.”

Copyright © 2011, The Hartford Courant

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