Blending the gospel with the secular; Dylan in New Orleans, November 1981: This show was recorded for a proposed live album, which was never issued (apart from “Heart of Mine”, which appeared on Biograph), Dylan scholar Paul Williams calls this “one of his most inventive tours”, and the setlist — which mixes songs from the past with gospel material, new tunes from Shot of Love and, a rarity for Dylan, unrecorded original material — certainly bears this out. The band is great — anchored by the rhythm section of Jim Keltner and Tim Drummond, and including Fred Tackett on guitar and AL KOOPER on organ! — and as for the man himself, well, he’s on fire. Interestingly, he sounds far different to the wired, vitriolic presence of Hard Rain, nor is he akin to the shouting man of Before the Flood. Dylan’s in a friendly but intense mood, performing each song with care and attention — even the stuff he’s played to death, like “All Along the Watchtower” — and the Shot of Love material gains tremendously in particular; if you’ve only heard the rather stiff studio versions, you haven’t really heard these songs. There’s also the very interesting “Thief on the Cross”, a great piece of Dylan hard rock which the man himself scrubbed from the track list for both Biograph and the first Bootleg Series collection. And when Kooper’s organ kicks in to “Like a Rolling Stone”, it’s hard to not feel a chill down the spine. Strongly recommended, and certainly a candidate for official release at some point.
– Pat Thomas is the author of Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975.
