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MTV UNPLUGGED was nominated for a 1996 Grammy Award for
Best Contemporary Folk Album. "Knockin' On Heaven's
Door" was nominated for a Grammy for Best Male Rock
Vocal Performance, and "Dignity" was nominated
for Best Rock Song.
It can be taken as a simple twist of fate: the most famous
artist of the rock era to symbolically "plug in"
finally goes "unplugged." Yet, while everyone
remembers how Bob Dylan startled the folkies by
"going electric" at Newport, few recent fans
recognize that he returned to his acoustic roots shortly
thereafter (on 1968's JOHN WESLEY HARDING), and that his
biggest success afterward was a mostly acoustic album
(1975's BLOOD ON THE TRACKS).
It is the musical touches of BLOOD ON THE TRACKS that MTV
UNPLUGGED emulates, adding drums to the combo of acoustic
and steel guitars, organ, and bass. It's the sound of The
Bard playing a cafe in a country-blues-folk paradise -
songs are softer in volume and presentation, but lose none
of their bite. The opening "Tombstone Blues"
trades its double-time fervor for a confident country
jaunt, the organ lifting the stream of consciousness
verses and guiding them into epiphanic choruses, as Dylan
and John Jackson trade bluegrassy licks. The full-band
reading of "The Times They Are A-Changin'"
straddles the fence between messianic uplift and detached
melancholy, the author seemingly aware that the change has
come but uncertain if it was for the best.
While the song selection of MTV UNPLUGGED relies
predominantly on the classics, the lesser-known numbers
are the tours de force. "John Brown," a song
Dylan has long performed but never recorded, is given a
solo reading with the spite usually reserved for
"Masters Of War" - all poignancy and no mercy.
And the closing "With God On Our Side" finds
rock's poet laureate at the end of the millennium, looking
back and wondering if anything's been learned. His hoarse
voice weary, Dylan seeks the same answers that canonized
artists have searched for through eternity.
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