Blood on the Tracks [Live]

Mary Lee's Corvette | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 13, 2002)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Live
• Label: Bar/None Records
• ASIN: B00006BXI9
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #229,870 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Now This Takes Guts, August 14, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Blood on the Tracks (Audio CD)

What on earth is she doing, thinking she can go onstage and do a song-for-song performance of one of Bob Dylan's greatest records ever? I had my doubts when I heard about this; but then I listened. And I was amazed. I was amazed at how great these songs sounded being sung by a woman with an amazingly soulful voice. The bitter anger and rage of "Idiot Wind", the sweet, sweet "Buckets Of Rain", the sad resignation and sarcasm of "You're A Big Girl Now" all come shining through. And the spontaneity of the whole evening is captured in the annoying, but thankfully short performance of an audience member during "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts".

This is a must for any Dylan fan. Mary Lee Kortes has managed to make you want to listen to these songs all over again and she makes you hear them in a new way. She reminds you of what gems they are and to rejoice in the fact that these songs exist in the world. Don't miss it...and at the very least, give her the respect she deserves for taking on this very daunting challenge and rising to it.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fresh Look At A Great Work, July 15, 2004

By 

William C. Altreuter "Outside Counsel" (Buffalo, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood on the Tracks (Audio CD)

In "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" Jorge Luis Borges created an author who set out to re-write "Don Quixote" as a contemporary work and ends up creating a verbatim transcript of the original. The story's narrator, a critic who is reviewing the "new" Quixote, argues that Menard's work is characterized by an ironic subtlety, and is, therefore, a distinct artistic achievement.
My copy of Mary Lee Kortes' "Blood On The Tracks" arrived yesterday. A few years back New York bar called Arlene's Grocery had a promotion called Classic Album Night: performers were invited to do a set consisting of song for song renditions of iconic sides. Ms. Kortes volunteered to do "Blood On The Tracks" as the finale on an evening when other artists had done "After The Gold Rush" and The Band's second album
. The document that resulted is a useful way to re-listen to a work that can sometimes elude its original emotional impact due to over-familiarity. There is no better album about heartbreak-- "Sinatra Sings For Only the Lonely" and "In the Wee Small Hours" are its only peers-- but because of its immediacy, and because it has been so frequently applied as a balm its power can occasionally be blunted. Ms. Kortes knows its power, and approaches each song with a freshness that signals her enthusiasm and deep love for the material. She understands "Blood On The Tracks", and feels it the way that all of us who love the album have felt it.

"You'll never know the hurt I suffered nor the pain I rise above"-- it must have felt wonderful to have snarled those words in front of a tight playing band, halfway through the set, knowing that she'd found the heart of this music and that this risky adventure was coming together. Ron Rosenbaum's theories notwithstanding, I believe that the key to "Blood On The Tracks" is "You're A Big Girl Now", which is Dylan's singing at its most plaintive. She nails it. She even gets the humor, calling up an audience member to sing the first couple of verses of "Lilly, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts". The liner notes say that the guest vocalist told her later that he'd almost lost his job at the law firm where he worked because of his undignified performance, but it is hilarious, a little tour of Dylan's vocal quirks. It's too bad, in a way, because I love the song and would like another serious version, but in the context of the album it really works. Too bad she sticks to the verses on the album: there is at least one-- Joan Baez sings it-- that he skips, so she skips it too. ("Lilly" is one of those Dylan songs that sounds like he must have a trunk full of, even though it really is unique. A symbolic Western-- could anything be more Dylanesque? There are plenty of Dylan shaggy dog stories, but nothin' like the Jack of Hearts.)

The whole thing is an audacious experiment that works, and I'm glad I found it. I think I'll check out her original work: she has an appealing voice and a good band.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mary Lee Kortes does Dylan live on classic albums night, February 11, 2004

By 

Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Blood on the Tracks (Audio CD)

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.