Dylan’s Other Son Heads a Starry Investors Group in Paradise

Another of Bob Dylan’s sons is making a move in the music world.

But unlike his younger brother Jakob.the singer-songwriter of the Wallflowers, Jesse Dylanisn’t a performer. After establishing himself as a successful video (Pearl Jam and Tom Waits, among others) and commercial director and producer, he’s now taking on the business end of music.

Dylan, 33, who heads a production company called Straw Dogs, has been named to the board of directors of Paradise Music & Entertainment, and will be active in the New York-based firm’s planned expansions, says the company’s chief financial officer, Phil Nappo.

Dylan heads a group of new investors that includes some top entertainment names, with actors Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Cameron Diaz, Morgan Freeman, Tim Roth, Lauren Holly, Aidan Quinn and Dan Cortese, musicians Trey Anastasio and Mike Gordon of Phish and Mammoth Records head Jay Faires among the nearly 90 new stockholders listed in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company was formed a year ago by bringing together three entities: music video and television producers Picture Vision (they did the HBO concerts for Garth Brooks and Janet Jackson last year), commercial production house Rave and artist management firm All Access (with clients including Daryl Hall & John Oates). At the time, a record company, Push Records, was also formed. The label is still more or less in a start-up phase, but has signed the folk-pop group Blessid Union of Souls (which had a big hit with its 1997 debut for the now-defunct EMI Records label) and such promising acts as techno-rockers Kidneythieves.

And word is that the firm is looking to expand dramatically, eyeing various other management and promotions firms for acquisitions. Young Dylan will have a strong hand in that matter.

“Jesse Dylan has grown his own business significantly,” says Nappo. “We’re looking at the synergies between our companies and his video business, and he is acquisitionally minded, as we are. And we perceive that there will be a lot of opportunities due to the consolidation of the major labels. A lot of good artists will be without labels or management.”

*

WINNING UGLY: Put three turntables, three sampling machines and a handful of randomly selected vinyl records into a room and what do you get?

Throw in producer Mike Simpson, hip-hop artist/producer Prince Paul and electronic dance music figure Dan “The Automator” Nakamura (of Dr. Octagon), and you get the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

That’s the name the trio took for a new album coming in the summer from DreamWorks Records, where Simpson, one half of the Dust Brothers, is an A&R; executive.

But wait, there’s more. The tracks are being sent out to an impressive roster of guest artists for vocal and instrumental additions and remixing. Songs are now in the hands of Trent Reznor and Foo Fighter Dave Grohl, with completed augmentations of others already including a De La Soul rap and overdubs and vocals by both the English band Cornershop and L.A.’s Spain.

“The whole thing has been an experiment,” says Simpson. “We don’t know where it’s going to go. I’m anxious to hear what people like Trent and Dave do with the tracks. The music we put together is already very cinematic, very dramatic.”

One drama could be competition with an album to be billed under the name the Handsome Boy Modeling School. The people behind that project: Prince Paul and Nakamura, with guest contributions from Beastie Boy Mike D., Brand Nubian and Beasties associates Mixmaster Mike and Money Mark, among others. It will be released by Tommy Boy Records, which is also putting out Paul’s latest album, “A Prince Among Thieves,” a “hip-hopera” with Everlast, Big Daddy Kane and De La Soul among its guests.

Simpson doesn’t expect conflict between the projects.

“The Handsome Boys album is completely different from ours,” he says. “It’s more a hip-hop record and ours is almost more classical in structure.”

Meanwhile, as the Dust Brothers, Simpson and John King are producing an album for young L.A. trio Artificial Intelligence, whose keyboardist is the son of the Doors’ Ray Manzarek. The busy pair is also starting work on its first movie score for “Fight Club,” directed by David Fincher (“Seven,” “The Game”) and starring Brad Pitt and Ed Norton.

*

HIS WAY: A lot of people have been surprised to hear the current hit “The Way It Is,” with the late Tupac Shakur’s edgy, anti-racism reworking of Bruce Hornsby’s social-pastiche original. Shakur’s urban streets are worlds away from jazz-schooled Hornsby’s Virginia woods.

Hornsby wasn’t caught off guard. He’d already known that Shakur was an unlikely fan. Shortly after Shakur’s death in 1997, Hornsby was asked to add a piano track to the song “I Wonder If Heaven’s Got a Ghetto,” for which Shakur had left a note suggesting a “Bruce Hornsby-type” piano.

“I played on the track and they called me back and said, ‘This doesn’t sound like you,’ ” Hornsby says. “My playing has changed some. It was so funny. They wanted a piano like Bruce Hornsby, but what I did didn’t sound like Bruce Hornsby to them.”

The “The Way It Is” version, though, samples Hornsby’s original. And it’s actually the fourth hip-hop track to use the song, following a 1991 record by English rapper MC Buzz B, a more recent one by the Bay Area’s E-40 titled “Things Will Never Change” and a new one by a Scandinavian act called the Navigators that Hornsby was just sent.

“Tupac’s is my favorite,” he says. “I was flattered that he did it, and I like the message.”

Hornsby is teaming with Branford Marsalis to do the score for Spike Lee’s film about the Atlanta child murders. He’s touring behind his “Spirit Trail” album and is making plans for an orchestral album later this year.