In my travels, I’ve been lucky enough to have stumbled across 4 Bob Dylan albums. He has been a pretty big influence in my life, so I’m always thrilled to add him to my boneyard. He has such an extensive discography that it doesn’t seem possible to collect them all. Real Live was released in 1984 long after Dylan had cemented his legacy in music. The songs that he picked for the concert were older ones that the audience was familiar with. It creates a very intimate feel when you are listening to it nearly 40 years later.
Dylan starts the concert off with Highway 61 Revisited. I’ve always found this to be a complex and unusual tale. His voice is very defiant throughout the concert and there is an attitude that he brings that is pure electric. When he starts off on Maggie’s Farm you can tell that this isn’t going to be a show of love songs. License to kill had Aton of emotion and seems even more poignant given the 40 years of constant war since that night. He ends the first side of the album with an electric version of It ain’t me babe. The crowd clearly feels the energy and sings along with him.
The second side of the album begins with a version of tangled up in blue that includes lines missing from the studio version. Masters of War continued the war protest for the evening and Ballad of a thin man was a sharp indictment of a failed system. He closes out the album by bringing Carlos Santana to the stage to play a rockin version of Tombstone Blues.
