Customer Reviews

Blood on the Tracks

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I came to May Lee's Corvette through their own music, having recently purchased 700 Miles, which I highly recommend. In reading reviews of it on Amazon, I discovered that she'd covered one of my favorite Dylan albums. I suppose a love for the original might predispose someone to finding this informal sounding cover on the blasphemous side, but I found myself firmly in the positive camp, along with most of the reviewers here.

There's a warm, open reverence that comes through and I think the secret is how deeply the band - Mary Lee Cortes in particular - has internalized Blood on the Tracks. The place inside her where those songs live enables her to sing in her own voice, yet sound like Dylan at the same time. And it's that in-between area on the borderline between the two musical identities that allows the affection for the material to evoke the essence of the Dylan version while expressing it in a new voice. The recording is charmingly casual and its edges add to its intimate quality - it sounds like your friends are doing it, not some band of posturing rock stars. And Mary Lee Cortes has a sweet and pure presence that provides a very fulfilling contrast, and at the same time, a perfect complement to the craggy, prickly Dylan. Very highly recommended.

I'd have to go with Rolling Stone on this one, accept I'd give it 5 stars: "Your eyes do not deceive you. And your doubts won't last. This is a complete re-creation of Bob Dylan's untouchable 1975 divorce album, executed with a quietly direct magnificence enhanced by the modesty of its origins (a one-time 2001 New York club show, rescued from a soundboard cassette) and eclipsed only by Dylan's definitive recording. There is a savory Blonde on Blonde air to the organ and piano coursing through the band's faithful acoustic picking, while the bright bite in Mary Lee Kortes' voice -- the high-mountain sunshine of Dolly Parton, with a sweet-iron undercoat of Chrissie Hynde -- turns up the female hurt and fight in "Tangled Up in Blue" and "You're a Big Girl Now." The ultimate compliment: Dylan likes this album so much he has featured one of the tracks on his Web site."
DAVID FRICKE
(RS 906 - October 3, 2002)

First up, I loved Mary Lee Kortes' liner notes, about preparing for the great night at the Arlene Grocery, when she was invited at short notice to perform Blood On The Tracks with her band, at a Classic Album Night (the date is sadly unspecified, but was a Sunday night, some time in 2001 well before September 11). I loved the spirit with which she engaged on this act of folly and bravura, and the sense of fun and fear the whole project embodied, typified by the line, "On the Wednesday before the show I thought it might be time to learn the harmonica." Of course, that gave her plenty of time to learn to play better than Bob (only joking). She also explains how the existence of a record of the night, on this CD, also evolved in an almost accidental, ad hoc sort of a way.
As we know, pop will eat itself, and there is a worthy tradition of albums that recreate other albums in their entirety. Abbey Road alone has inspired several (Booker T & the MGs - McLemore Avenue, Mike Westbrook - Off Abbey Road, George Benson - The Other Side Of Abbey Road, etc.). On the subject of the Beatles, Laibach did Let it Be, Big Daddy did Sgt Pepper and Ramsey Lewis tackled the White Album. Aside from the moptops, there was, for example, Petra Haden's multi-tracked acappella version of The Who Sell Out; Philip Glass orchestrated "Heroes"; Charlie Hunter did a jazz quartet reworking of Natty Dread; Joe Gallant remade the Grateful Dead's Blues For Allah; Carla Bozulich paid homage to Willie Nelson's Red Headed Stranger; there was a multiple artist recreation of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours; and, getting back to Dylan, Robyn Hitchcock made an album of the "Albert Hall" concert bootleg.
This is a companion piece to the original Blood On The Tracks, it does not seek to replace it. I for one enjoyed hearing it a lot, and expect to be playing it alongside the original in the future. Bob Dylan liked it, too. He posted one of the songs onto his website.
Since the idea was to play someone else's album live, for fun, not too many liberties have been taken with the songs or their arrangements. Idiot Wind follows the angry album version rather than the earlier version on the Bootleg Series CD; alternative verses of Lily are not adopted, as they are not heard on the album. What we get is the body of the original album inhabited by another soul who is a gifted singer, and it is a purged soul, with warmth, spirit, anger and all the other emotions to be found in the songs. It is all we could ask of such an undertaking.

Combine a good voice, a tight back-up band, and a set of some of the best songs ever written, and you will get a very enjoyable album, and indeed, you can't go wrong buying this one. So why do I call it overrated? Because 4 or 5 stars (Rolling Stone gave it 4) requires more originality--some flash, at least, of creative brilliance. Without any of their own songs on the album, this can only be achived through creative interpretations of Dylan's songs, but that's generally lacking on this album. There are a few notable exceptions, such as the psyschedelic touch on Meet me in the Morning, and some interesting pacing in other songs. In some ways the most original aspect of the album was the choice of including that bit with the random guy in the bar doing Lilly and the Jack of Hearts. The guy cleverly parodies dylan's exaggerated vocal style on the original BOTT (eg in Idiot Wind), while giving us a tour of Dylan's many voices--giving us his BOTT voice in one line, jumping to Nashville Skyline in the next, and Dylan's Oh Mercy voice a bit later. Buckets of Rain, by the way, I think is a great interpretation, and throughout the album is technically excellent. I was a little disappointed that she went with Dylan's angry interpretation of Idiot Wind (the one you get on the original BOTT) rather than a sad melancholy interpretation as Dylan does in the bootlegs (my personal favorite).

This isn't imitation, but remarkable interpretation....Mary Lee takes Bob Dylan's songs and puts something of herself into each one of them. And that's what makes this record so compelling. She's really FEELING these somgs, the way anybody who loved the original Dylan album felt them, and she manages to give them new life, new emotion. Listening to this album, we can all reconsider, relearn, and relive this classic together. Thanks, Mary Lee, for being brave enough to take on the challenge. I'm impressed. I bet Bob Dylan is too.

Ms. Kortes' voice isn't all that, nor is this performance some wondrous revelation into a different Dylanesque dimension. But for those of us who are smitten with Dylan's original compositions on "Blood on the Tracks", these songs could be performed by Roseanne Barr and still be worth three stars. (Well, maybe not Roseanne Barr -- but definitely Roseanne Rosannadanna.) Props to Mary Lee's Corvette for paying homage to one of the greatest albums of the 70s with straightforward aplomb. Ultimately, though, this is a pleasant novelty worth a listen or two, nothing more.

Okay, a faithful rendition of "Blood on the Tracks" is worth two stars for the novel idea. Good musicianship and voice is worth another star. Beyond that, this album doesn't offer much. I wanted to like it, just like I've tried to like my ex-wife's new husband and my white supremacist nextdoor neighbor. The cover of "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts" is horrid and should be excised from all future pressings, and the vocalist on this song should be forced to crawl the length of Highway 61 on his bare kneecaps. The rest of the songs range from serviceable to borderline inspired but there was probably less need for this than for a Herve Villecheze Film Festival