**UPDATE 3/20/10 -- Featured on ExpectingRain today.  Welcome fellow Dylan fans, I hope you enjoy what you read here.**

The first real job I had was in a coffee shop.  A barista -- as I was called -- and a damn good one at that; the shop I worked for wound up making me the manager of my own store within three months.  I was 18 years old: fresh out of school and still unacquainted with reality.  This was well before I decided to return to college, filled with dreams of becoming a journalist.  No, at this point, I was undecided, and latched on to the first thing I was passionate about.

I won’t go into much more detail about the past; I left that job on a down note and the surrounding events are part of what led me to my self-awakening.  What I took away from that time in my life, however, is priceless.  Not a day goes by that I don’t drink -- nay, savor -- a cup of coffee: Ethiopian Harrar or Sumatra Mandelhing from a local roaster -- always 2 to 10 days out from the roast and ground just before brewing.  (I’m a bit of a fanatic.)  Coffee, it turns out, has a lot in common with wine.  Both beverages can either be mass-produced and of poor quality, or specially grown and imbued with unique flavor profiles.

Another effect my tenure behind the espresso machine had was establishing a now-beloved ritual: Bob Dylan Fridays.  It used to be that I was in control of the music selection in my shop and, with perhaps too much free caffeine and time, developed themes around what I played.  Each day would always be somehow correlated to where the coffee was from, or just how that particular coffee made me feel; I was mostly just having fun, but quite a few customers enjoyed the spectacle.

Bob Dylan Fridays officially lasted for two years; now I carry on the tradition alone.  All day, the only music I’m allowed to listen to is Dylan.  I usually pick a random, distinct time period to start from: early-60’s “thin wild mercury” Dylan; mid-70’s rustic-country-reawakening Dylan; early-2000’s croaking-cowboy throwback Dylan; and all the others, far too numerous to mention.  By the end of the day though, I’ve usually had five or six hours of constant Bob.

For a coffeehouse, Desire is the album that comes to mind first -- “One More Cup of Coffee” did get a bit of play while I was working, but the customers were more amused by this than I.  “Isis” has always stood out, to me at least, as the best track out of the nine.  I’ll admit that these days I almost tune out the epic “Hurricane” in anticipation of what follows.  And, whenever I get married, my fiancée is going to have a hard time scheduling the wedding for any date besides the 5th of May.

There’s a wild pioneer sound to Desire that you won’t find in most of Dylan’s other work.  The outtakes from this album, as well as live tracks from his tour during this era -- The Rolling Thunder Revue -- are certainly worth seeking out, if you dig that persona.  It feels exotic and homey at the same time, a strange but inviting mix.  That violin and mandolin combination, thrown together with Emmylou Harris singing backup, seals the deal.  Most non-Dylan-fans (should I say non-believers?) I play the album for really get into it -- constantly commenting about how much better his voice sounds than on earlier songs.

As I sit here, sipping on Sumatra and jiving to “Mozambique,” I can’t help but smile.  Part of me wishes I was still behind the counter, serving up shots and singing along, and making my customers laugh.  The other side of me feels more contented, like I’ve gained the ability to get closer to the music.  Before, I had to take care of transactions and focus on the rocket science that is coffee, distracting me from a total listening experience.  Ever since I left that java-junkie job my Dylan Fridays have been an infinitely more intimate event.  I might still drinking coffee and listening to Bob, but now I get to really groove on his words and absorb their meaning at a deeper level.

Above, there’s that horribly old picture of me from my barista days up there -- I cannot believe I found that!  Also, continuing with my post from last week, Bob Dylan Fridays seems to be, at least in some spirit, born again on these pages.  If enough people seem to like it, I’ll carry on with this theme...

Does anybody else have a similar connection to Bob Dylan and coffee or any other Dylan-related traditions?  Or even any coffee related rituals?  What do you think of the album, Desire?  Please leave your comments below.