BOB DYLAN : MTV UNPLUGGED

  1. Tombstone Blues
  2. Shooting Star
  3. All Along the Watchtower
  4. The Times They Are a-Changin
  5. John Brown
  6. Desolation Row
  7. Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
  8. Love Minus Zero/No Limit
  9. Dignity
  10. Knockin' on Heaven's Door
  11. Like a Rolling Stone
  12. With God on Our Side

Label : Columbia

Venue : Sony Studios, New York City, New York, USA

Recording Date : November 17-18, 1994

Released : May 2, 1995

Length : 69:33

Review (AllMusic) : This show, taped for MTV, finds Dylan turning in an 11-song set, with eight of the songs dating from his 1963-1967 heyday, including such standards as "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and "Like a Rolling Stone." ("John Brown," a powerful antiwar song from 1963, had not been released on a Dylan album previously.) The '70s are represented by "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," and the '80s by "Shooting Star" and "Dignity" (a trunk song, the studio version of which had emerged only the previous November on Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Vol. 3). Dylan, accompanied by a competent five-piece band, approaches his material in a gentler fashion than on some of the originals -- "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and "With God on Our Side," for example, seem sadder and less defiant than they did back in 1964. Otherwise, unlike some other Unplugged performances, this one doesn't offer a noticeably different view of the artist's work. But then, Dylan has been unplugged for much of his career, anyway.

Review (Wikipedia) : MTV Unplugged is a live album by Bob Dylan, released in 1995 by Columbia Records (reissued in 2007 by Sony[citation needed]). It documents Dylan's appearance on the then-highly popular MTV Unplugged television series, recorded at Sony Music Studios in New York on November 17, 1994 and November 18, 1994. It gave Dylan his best sales in years, reaching US #23 and going gold, while hitting #10 in the UK. The singer-songwriter had originally wanted to do a set of traditional folk songs. At MTV's behest, he instead performed mostly classics from his early albums. The album was assembled from two live shows recorded at Sony Music Studios in New York on November 17, 1994 and November 18, 1994. Dylan wore the same clothes both nights for the sake of continuity in the home video release. Performing "With God on our side" Dylan significantly omits two verses about the Germans and the Holocaust and about Russians, possibly because they dealt with American allegiances during the Cold war, which ended in 1991. This live album features one of only four released recordings of the early Dylan song "John Brown". The other live recording of this song is on the 2005 LP Live at the Gaslight 1962. Of the two studio recordings, one is featured on the Smithsonian-Folkways compilation, The Best Of Broadside 1962 - 1988 (Dylan is credited as Blind Boy Grunt). The other studio recording appears on The Bootleg Series Volume 9-The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964, released on October 19, 2010.