Positively 4th Street


Art of the book cover from David Hajdu's Positively 4th Street. Upper image shows Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, the lower Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña. The artwork is by Eric von Schmidt based on his classic poster for the 1964 Baez-Dylan tour. Ironically, the original posters were withdrawn and pulped as Dylan did not like them. Despite this, or perhaps because of, they are now valuable collector's items. As well as beautifully capturing the zeitgeist of the early 1960s Positively 4th Street makes a valuable contribution by reassessing the contributions of Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña, who are usually overshadowed by Mimi's sister Joan and Dylan. The first album by the Fariña's, Celebrations for a Grey Day is well worth exploring, particularly for Richard Fariña's use of the dulcimer. On the day that he died in a motorcycle accident in 1966 Richard Fariña had been attending a launch party at the Thunderbird bookstore in Carmel Valley, California for his first novel Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me. The book is an interesting example of 1960s rites of passage writing that survives in print today as a Penguin Twentieth Century Classic. Now judge Bob Dylan's own artworks here while Joan Baez sings Sibelius here.


Positively 4th Street was borrowed from the priceless 2nd Air Division Memorial Library in Norwich. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

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