Bob Dylan: Live Albums Collection (1974 - 1995) Re-up

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Bob Dylan: Live Albums Collection (1974 - 1995) Re-up

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Bob Dylan: Live Albums Collection (1974 - 1995) Re-up

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Bob Dylan and the Band both needed the celebrated reunion tour of 1974, since Dylan's fortunes had been floundering since Self Portrait and the Band stumbled with 1971's Cahoots. The tour, with its attendant publicity, definitely returned both artists to center stage, and it definitely succeeded, breaking box office records and earning great reviews. Before the Flood, a double-album souvenir of the tour, suggests that these were generally dynamic shows, but not because they were reveling in the past, but because Dylan was fighting the nostalgia of his audience – nostalgia, it must be noted, that was promoted as the very reason behind these shows. Yet that's what gives this music such kick – Dylan reworks, rearranges, reinterprets these songs in ways that are still disarming, years after its initial release. He could only have performed interpretations this radical with a group as sympathetic, knowing of his traits as the band, whose own recordings here are respites from the storm. And this is a storm – the sound of a great rocker, surprising his band and audience by tearing through his greatest songs in a manner that might not be comforting, but it guarantees it to be one of the best live albums of its time. Ever, maybe.

by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, AMG

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Bob Dylan: Live Albums Collection (1974 - 1995) Re-up

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Hard Rain is a snapshot of Bob Dylan's fabled Rolling Thunder Revue, a traveling circus that was more notable for its excess and character than the music. There are some new interpretations along the lines of what appeared on Before the Flood. A few of the new versions hit home and Dylan is generally spirited throughout.

by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, AMG

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Bob Dylan: Live Albums Collection (1974 - 1995) Re-up

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On his third live album in a mere five years, Bob Dylan brings the big, professional showmanship of Street Legal to the stage, recasting recent and classic favorites into that album's image – and, he does that over the course of two albums, no less. It's a bit much, even for the diehards, even if moments work pretty well. Nevertheless, those moments work because of pizzazz, although those are the very moments that will make most long-term Dylan fans bristle. Which, of course, raises the question – who is this for? The dedicated aren't going to be dazzled by the slickness and the casual fans certainly aren't going to pay much attention to a live album from 1978. Interesting historically, perhaps, but only marginally.

by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, AMG

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Bob Dylan: Live Albums Collection (1974 - 1995) Re-up

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It may be his first live album in six years, but Real Live still is his fourth live album in ten years, and, as such, it still feels a little redundant. Nevertheless, it doesn't feel anywhere nearly as unnecessary as At Budokan and if it doesn't capture a historically significant tour, as Hard Rain did with the Rolling Thunder Revue, this is a better record all the same, capturing a working band – a working band featuring ex-Stones guitarist Mick Taylor, no less – on a pretty good night. That means there are few revelations – though diehards will certainly revel in "Tangled Up in Blue," which has several brand-new (not necessarily better) verses – but it's still pretty good all the same, providing lean, relatively muscular renditions of Dylan's great songs. This isn't an important, necessary Dylan record, but it's a good, solid live album, his best live album since Before the Flood, even if it's hardly as monumental as that.

by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, AMG

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Bob Dylan: Live Albums Collection (1974 - 1995) Re-up

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To commemorate 30 years since the release of Dylan's first Columbia album, a marathon tribute concert was held at New York's Madison Square Garden, with a galaxy of stars and voices from the past taking part. The cumulative effect of this tribute was staggering, revealing just how much truly great Dylan material there is to choose from all of his periods. A firm nucleus of the three surviving members of Booker T. & the MG's, plus G.E. Smith on guitar and Jim Keltner and Anton Fig on drums, anchors the bands, and most of the stars offer fresh slants on songs familiar and obscure. Among the more memorable interpretations are Richie Havens' moving "Just Like a Woman," completely within his style; the Clancy Brothers' fervent conversion of "When the Ship Comes In" to an Irish folk idiom; the swinging, countrified "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" from Mary Chapin Carpenter, Shawn Colvin, and Rosanne Cash; and a sullen "Masters of War" by Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready on acoustic guitars. Lou Reed went through the bootlegs to come up with the pounding "Foot of Pride," which is perfectly suited to Reed's declamatory style. Eric Clapton shrugs off his diffident manner to deliver one of the most electrifying performances of his life in "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" – each guitar lick and vocal cuts angrily to the bone – and George Harrison makes his first U.S. concert appearance in 18 years with "Absolutely Sweet Marie." Dylan himself appears at the end, wildly improvisational and harshly authentic in voice on "It's Alright, Ma" and "Girl of the North Country." By no means does this box contain the entire concert, though, and while the reason was probably to make the thing fit on two well-packed CDs, some of the deletions are inexplicable. To cite just a few examples, Harrison's "If Not for You" is missing; so are Clapton's "Love Minus Zero, No Limit" and some numbers by Booker T. & the MG's ("Gotta Serve Somebody" and "Lay Lady Lay" are in Stax's Time Is Tight box). Even Dylan's own performance of "Song to Woody" is not here; the booklet pleads "technical problems" but it sounded fine on the live telecast. Nevertheless, enough of the concert is here to suggest its triumph – and all were reminded that the fountainhead of all of this music was still alive, creative, and unwilling to be consigned to the history books.

by Richard S. Ginell, AMG

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Bob Dylan: Live Albums Collection (1974 - 1995) Re-up

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This show, taped for MTV, finds Dylan turning in an 11-song set, with eight of the songs dating from his 1963-1967 heyday, including such standards as "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and "Like a Rolling Stone." ("John Brown," a powerful antiwar song from 1963, had not been released on a Dylan album previously.) The '70s are represented by "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," and the '80s by "Shooting Star" and "Dignity" (a trunk song, the studio version of which had emerged only the previous November on Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Vol. 3). Dylan, accompanied by a competent five-piece band, approaches his material in a gentler fashion than on some of the originals – "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and "With God on Our Side," for example, seem sadder and less defiant than they did back in 1964. Otherwise, unlike some other Unplugged performances, this one doesn't offer a noticeably different view of the artist's work. But then, Dylan has been unplugged for much of his career, anyway.

by William Ruhlmann, AMG