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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mary Lee Kortes does Dylan live on classic albums night, 19 Feb 2005
My favorite all-time cover of a song is usually the Indigo Girls doing Dylan's "Tangled Up in Blue," but I am always on the look out for other versions of the track just to confirm by opinion. This is how I happened upon "Blood on the Tracks: Recorded Live at Arlene's Grocery," in which Mary Lee's Corvette covers Dylan's entire album from start to finish. For those of you who are astounded by the audacity of Mary Lee Kortes to try and get away with covering an entire Dylan album it should be pointed out that the gig at Arlene's Grocery was for a "classic albums night." It just happened that the evening was recorded and ended up being the group's second album. Kortes is a singer-songwriter whose most notable success to date was writing song "Everywhere I Go," which Amy Grant recorded. On the night in September of 2001 when this album was recorded Mary Lee's Corvette consisted of Andy York (guitar), Rod Hohl (acoustic guitar), Diego Voglino (drums), Brad Albetta (bass), and Andy Burton (piano/organ). Their version of "Blood on the Tracks" does not offer a radical reinterpretation of the text, I suspect because of their reverence for the original and the fact that the gig did not really give them enough time to come up with a lot of major changes. The most notable differences are on "Idiot Wind" and "Meet Me in the Morning," at least to my sensibilities, but you can make up your own mind. I was quite leery of the beginning of "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" when Kortes invited audience members up to try singing some of the length song's verses, but their extreme efforts suggest the sense of fun that the evening represented and Kortes does get the song back on track once she takes over. Ultimately, throughout these ten tracks Kortes sounds like Dylan without sounding like Dylan (i.e., the intonations and rhythms rather than the tell-tale nasal twang). How much you like this album will rest entirely on whether you find her versions to be close enough to the originals, or different enough, to suit your tastes. This album is going to cut both ways with Dylan fans to be sure. Just listening to the clips provided above should assure you that listening to this one all the way through once would be worth the time.
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