Coffee bar chain to release new Dylan influences compilation

A well-known chain of foreign-owned coffee bars is to release Artist’s Choice - Bob Dylan, next week. The new CD assembles 16 tracks of the type Dylan has played on Theme Time Radio Hour, by musicians of the Stanley Brothers, Junior Wells and Billie Holiday vintage.

But, as with its Dylan Live At The Gaslight 1962 CD release, the “global” coffee bar company doesn’t supply online outside the US/Canada. How terribly quaint!

I assume the new CD won’t be available from local coffee bar outlets, either - I failed to find any evidence of the Gaslight CD in its central London branches last year.

I’d start to boycott the chain if I hadn’t been doing so for years. I never darken the doors of their coffee bars. Not for any ideological reasons, though – I just can’t bear to drink coffee from grossly oversized mugs, or to sit amongst serried ranks of shiny happy customers with too much time and money to waste. I choose to waste mine in Caffe Nero or Coffee Republic.


Gerry Smith