This MTV Unplugged session provided a great musical setting for Dylan to bring out subtle new twists, interpretations, and life to some of his best material!

If you're a Dylan fan, you'll enjoy this recording!

This Album is nothing more than amazing, listening to it is like a time trip to the past. Mr. D was so up for this recording, his band sooooo good, the material so right. I grew up with those songs and hearing the way they're performed here, the images they conjure up, the poetry, well they put me back to when I heard them the first time on those original albums. The highlight of this album has to be the absolutely stunning version of "Desolation Row," but "Tombstone Blues," and "Dignity" are outstanding as well. Also, it's nice to finally get an updated version of "John Brown." Way back in the early sixty's Dylan recorded this song for a Broadside Album under the name Blind Boy Grunt. He also performed it during the short tour he did with the Grateful Dead. Isn't it amazing, how after all these years, the song is still very much relevant to what's going on in the world today. I was a little saddened that Dylan shortened "With God on our Side" by a couple verses, but that really doesn't take anything away from this five star album.

Recorded by Stephanie Sane

What a great album! Bob Dylan proves once again that he is one of the best musicians of the 20th century. Even folks who own all the songs featured on this album, should listen to it. The versions of "Like a Rolling Stone", "Knocking on Heaven's Door" and "The Times They Are A-Changin'" are among the best I've ever heard. Listen to "John Brown" and "With God on Our Side" and you'll see that Dylan's lyrics haven't lost any of their power in almost 40 years. "All Along the Watchtower" is great and "Shooting Star" simply touches your soul. Bob Dylan is a great musician (so is his band), but more than that, he is a poet.

Dylan's more than deserving resurgence in recent years traces its birth back, in my opinion, to this incredible live performance. This album has it all, mixing old and new music that more than satisfies longtime fans like myself and appeals to the younger generation, many of whom would know Dylan only by name had MTV not provided the medium for Dylan to prove his genius and longevity to them. Dylan's tendency to be reclusive and mysterious has made him inaccessible to some listeners in the past, but the appreciative audience is an important part of this recording, and you can tell that Dylan really enjoyed the whole performance.

The older songs on this CD are great, but they do have a different sound from their originals; this may disappoint some fans, and I admit it took me a while to appreciate this version of "The Times They Are A-Changin,'" but the soul of the songs remain the same, no matter what kind of modernized or different interpretation Dylan decides to go with on a certain night. I love "Tombstone Blues," and it does start the CD out with a great kick. It's always nice to hear Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower," if for no other reason than to let people know the song didn't originate with Jimi Hendrix. "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" has never been a favorite of mine, but this version is a enjoyable splash of fun in between a couple of slow, serious songs. "John Brown" is a significant track, dating back to the 1960s but never having been released. It truly reflects the anti-war feelings Dylan expressed so forcibly in his formative years. As great as the classic tracks are, the tremendous newer songs only build on the musical momentum and prove that Dylan's great songwriting days have yet to come to an end. I was a little surprised to see "Shooting Star" from the Oh Mercy album, but it sounds great and fits right in here. "Dignity" is another recent song that showcases Dylan's songwriting and singing.

Three songs particularly stand out on this CD for me. "Desolation Row" is a truly incredible, meaningful song that only Dylan could write and perform. Lasting more than eight minutes, I still always hate to hear it end. "Knockin' On Heaven's Door," a song which some listeners may not enjoy as much as I do, really starts building the momentum that reaches its crescendo with my favorite Dylan performance ever of his greatest song, "Like a Rolling Stone." Having wowed his audience for close to an hour, he is definitely "feeling it" when he gets to this trademark song. Its length is matched only by its powerful delivery, and I get the feeling listening to it that even Dylan is a little surprised at how great a show he is putting on. "With God On Our Side" is an interesting song with which to end the CD, but it reflects the heart and soul of music's greatest songwriter. Following on the heels of a rocking performance, it reminds listeners that the old Dylan so many have loved for decades is still there, even if his classic songs have been given a fresh overhaul.

This is by far my favorite Dylan CD. Having a rather small audience so close to the musicians makes this live performance a true personal triumph, and the sense of intimacy between Dylan and his fans is powerful and palpable. Dylan has never seemed happier or sounded better than he does here.

Bob Dylan has been known to purposefuly rush and slur his lyrics in live performances. Combine that with the toll time has taken on his voice, and some of his classic songs when played live are nearly unrecognizable. On Unplugged we see some of this, but only the good parts. The music is certainly different from that of the original song (most notable on "The Times they are a-Changin") but Dylan always keeps it meaningful and touching. He may rush the last few lines to verse, or sing it to a different tune, or change a few words, but on this album it sounds like Bob having fun with the music while still keeping it's integrity and meaning.

"Tombstone Blues" is a great opener. It gets the crowd energized, and is one of the great Bob songs you wouldn't know unless you bought the album Highway 61. My only complaint is that he cut out 2 verses, one of which had the great line "The sun's not yellow, it's chicken."

"Shooting Star" is a memorable, fairly obscure Dylan song.

On "All Along the Watchtower" Dylan rushes the ends to the verses but somehow it works. He surprises us with his quick delivery but it remains meaningful.

"The Times they are a-Changin" is barely recongnizable until Dylan belts out the first line. Dylan's band is great on this one, never losing track of their place despite Bob's playing around with the lyrics. Still, you find this tune stuck in your head afterwards the way it is performed here, as opposed to the famous original.

"John Brown" is Dylan's previously unreleased track. Hard to get through the brisk mumbles in some places (luckily the lyrics are included) but in the end it's an emotional anti-war piece that ranks up with his best.

"Rainy Day Women" here seems like Dylan just wants to get it over with, but the crowd sure loves it. I liked it as well.

"Desolation Row" is one of Dylan's best performances on the whole CD. Dylan sounds like he really wanted to play it, and it shows.

"Dignity" is also a part of "Greatest Hits 3" but otherwise unreleased. An upbeat number sandwiched between slow ballads.

"Knockin on Heaven's Door" is one track I've heard too many times, whether by Dylan or by other artists. Still, Dylan keeps it short here with only 2 verses, and he manages to switch the words around a little.

"Like a Rolling Stone" is drawn out to near 9 minutes on this performance, but it is one of my favorites on the whole CD. The crowd sure is into it, cheering at multiple places during the song. Dylan mumbles a few early lines, but really gets into it at the end.

"With God on Our Side" is one of Dylan's early protest songs. A welcome, surprising inclusion on this package. Dylan's band is great here; they amazingly manage to precisely follow Dylan's unpredictable beginnings and endings to verses. This inclusion seems like one Dylan himself really was eager to play, which makes it all the more memorable.

No matter if you are a hardcore Bob Dylan fan or a casual listener, everyone will find something they like on Bob Dylan's MTV unplugged performance. It has all the classics like "Like A Rolling Stone", "The Times They Are A-Changing", "All Along The Watchtower", "Rainy Day Women#12 & 35", and "Knocking On Heaven's Door." It also has some rare gems to please the hardcore fans like "Shooting Star" and "With God On Our Side." I gave it four stars because the performances are pretty standard for the live material Bob Dylan was doing in the 90's. However, that is not a reason to not buy this album because is just simply Bob Dylan playing good music and who could complain about that?

this set captures one of America's Greatest Poet's doing His thing.He seems at ease&the words just flow non-stop here.His 60's stuff Live is where He really shines but He gives it up here in full gear.worth checking into strong Musicianship&The Words Flow.

For this reviewer, the point of buying a recent live concert of someone with a long career is to hear the jextaposition of old and new, stuff that your Dad has heard and stuff that's so new you don't know yet.

This is hard to do. There are very few successful live recordings which do this. Lou Reed succedded to do that in his 1983 live in Italy record (although his career was 'only' 20 years old at the time), but failed in 'Perfect Night', where the new (er) stuff works well, but with few exceptions the older stuff doesn't. David Bowie's Live in the BBC concert fails miserably in the first half of the concert, but hits the bull's eye in the second half.

Bob Dylan, however, doesn't even try in this record.

Out of thee 11 songs, all but 3 were written in the 1960s, and one of the three songs is "Knockin' on Heaven's Door". this makes this a wonderful show for the people who left Dylan at woodstock ( yeah I know he wasn't there), but it feels a little like a nostalgy show for everyone else.

Some of the Oldies work wonderfully. Tombstone Blues, All Along The Watchtower, John Brown and of course, Like A rolling Stone, are brilliant, but others are just OK, and "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" has to go. The new songs, are great, especially Dignity, which is one of Dylan's best songs.

Overall, this is a strong record, filled with good songs by one of America's top songwriters. It's Dylan in top form - I'd just would have prefered a little more of the new and the exciting, and less reliance on songs 30 years past.

Dylan live....can frustrate you and please you in the same breath. This is a classic. He rollics his way through old and new and brings a new fresh buzz to all the tunes. The slide playing on The Times They Are A Changing drips with passion and creates a new hillbilly political song. The band is spot on. And Dyan attacks his acoustic. Plays leads for most of the show. A spellbinding performance of With God on Our Side. A great CD....GET IT!

The first thing anyone should consider when listening to a recent Dylan recording is yes, his voice has changed. Thirty plus years of singing have taken their toll on Bob. So no the Dylan of 'Dylan Unplugged' and the one of "Highway 61 Revisted" are not the same. If you can't deal with the difference than you probably shouldn't get this album. Secondly, performing many songs thousands of times caused Dylan to change the melody and the way he sings songs. Past these two points is a great recording of old and newer songs. I had the chance to hear Dylan live and this CD captures the feeling of being there and many of the songs like 'Dignity' sound exactly the same. A few other reviews mention this and they're correct. I think i like Dignity the best of all the tracks, but only because I heard it first in concert. So if you have heard Dylan live or would like to, 'Dylan unplugged' is perfect to revisit or visit the experience.

Dylan may have played them louder in the sixties, but the MTV Unplugged edition of Dylan's classics is just as meaningful and memorable as any. Shooting Star and Dignity sit beautifully along side older favorites, and every track is given a smooth acoustic feel and a real controlled tempo. Desolation Row is a real jem, perhaps even darker and more mysterous than any other recorded version, it will keep you gripping your seat to the bitter end. In fact every track is excellent... no missteps here. This was my first Dylan album and 1000 listens later it is as smooth as ever.

This live album marked the beginning of his latest comeback. His band is great and his performance is inspired. I just wish they had released the entire concert; Hazel and I Want You were performed on the show, and they are magnificent versions. My Brazilian CD has an extra song, Love Minus Zero/No Limit, also wonderful. However, the released songs are great, my highlights being Tombstone Blues, John Brown, Dignity and With God On Our Side.

Dylan's voice is great on this album. It is raw and full of heart. All the songs are great but the best is John Brown because of the intensity and meaning of the lyrics and how they are sung. All along the watchtower is very good too. The highway 61 songs are top notch as well.

This live performance has it all. Deeply memorable versions of his best songs. Excellent singing some of his best ever. And With God on Our Side and Desolation Row are just over the top.

I only listened to the clips provided, and since All Along the Watchtower is my favourite song - I was eagerly awaiting the MTV rendition. Dylan lamely strayed from the tune, instead of singing he said the words and sped up the music, making the song lack in appeal. For a better live CD, try Live at Budokan.

Having pretty much stopped listening to Dylan when "Slow Train Coming" came out, preferring to listen to the sixties albums, and the stuff from '74 to '78, with the exception of the very poor "Desire" album, I didn't think he could do it anymore, and Then "Time Out Of Mind" came out and gave me a new belief in 'the man'. So, I went and bought "Oh Mercy", "Infidels", and "Empire Burlesque". My feeling is that none of those are up to the standards of earlier Dylan, save for the occasional great song like "Most Of The Time", but "Unplugged" was a wonderful surprise! I don't know what the 'disappointed ones' were looking for - they surely couldn't have expected Bob to be singing 30-year-old songs with the same vocal style he had back then, after smoking 2 or 3 packs a day, and they must realise that he wouldn't want to faithfully reproduce the original recordings. Here we have Dylan backed up by a superb team of musicians, giving old songs a new lease of life, with different arrangements that really work. The most important thing is that Dylan sounds like he cares about these songs. He conveys emotion, as he's almost always done, even when the voice is shaky, and the versions of "Watchtower" and "Rolling Stone" are great, the former because it's simply thrilling, and the latter because the organist plays those wonderful chords and then Bob, struggling to sing, sings "how does it feel?" in a way that sends shivers down my spine and tears to my eyes. If you listen to the CD right through, you may well feel emotionally drained, and your faith in Bobby D reaffirmed. Buy it - today!!!

Anyone who's recently seen Bob Dylan live knows that he loves to entertain those who want to be entertained, and this album does just that. This album, more than any other live material I've listened to, also captures Dylan's essence as a rocker.

"Tombstone Blues" comes off with a crispness and a clarity that you don't get from Highway 61 (of course, thirty years of sound technology and practice makes a big difference)and "Dignity" was quite a find, aurally and musically, for more recent Dylan converts like myself. The rollicking sound of both of these songs is well balanced by the soulfulness of "Desolation Row" and "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." As far as ballads go, "Desolation Row" is to my ears one of Dylan's strongest live efforts and along with "Dignity," my favorite song on the album. And of course if anyone doubts Dylan's ability to lay right into our collective social consciousness, listen to "John Brown."

Dylan's voice certainly isn't what it used to be, but as anyone who has seen him perform lately well knows, he has more than compensated for it with his entrenchment as a rocker and as an entertainer. This album does a masterful job of capturing Dylan as both and it has all of the qualities you look for in a live album but don't often find: great sound, good rhythm and a Bob Dylan staple, poignant lyrics. If you're going to go on a roadtrip, this is definitely an album to bring!

Dylan's voice is just plain awful especially during 'Rainy Day Women'. One thing I do however like is that his grainy voice makes knockin on heaven's door sound 50 times better than the original, don't know why though. Other than that, it's painful to listen to no matter how much I enjoy his music. Some days he has it, other days he just doesn't.

this album captures the real sound Bob Dylan as he is known today. It has some great jam sessions, a great selection of songs and an overwhelming aura to it. It is an essential album for any Dylan listener.

The critics showered Bob Dylan with praise after his appearance on MTV's Unplugged program, but this set demonstates that there was a lot of "un" from Dylan that night. In addition to being unplugged, he was also uninspired, unintelligible, underwhelmed, and unexciting. Dylan's rather high-pitched vocals did not do justice to his songs, and those songs--classic but tired warhorses like "All Along the Watchtower" and "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"--needed more commitment from the singer than they received to offset the fact that they have appeared all too frequently on other live albums (including the dreary "Dylan and the Dead"). A lot of lesser performers racked up huge sales and launched comebacks through this venue, but Dylan fared less well. A more adventurous song selection might have helped (the seldom heard "Shooting Star" is the best cut here), but more inspired vocals would have helped even more.

Definitely one of his best ever. 'Shooting Star' is one of the most beautiful love songs I've ever heard, Dylan brings 'All Along the Watchtower' with all the energy needed, and you can hear he still believes that 'The Times They Are A-Changing'. 'John Brown', like 'With God On Our Side', is a song against war, written in full Vietnam-period, but still aplicable today, and sung with sadness and anger. The only other song that truly stands out is 'Desolation Row', a beautiful ballad of nonsense that still makes sense.

This album joins "Live 1966," "Before The Flood," and "Hard Rain," as a masterful Dylan live album. He's generous here, performing a lot of crowd-pleasers and favorites. The new arrangements and the great band breath new life into "Watchtower," "Heaven's Door," "Rolling Stone," "Rainy Day Women." Dylan's in great voice and he's never sounded better than on "Unplugged." The newer songs, "Shooting Star" and "Dignity," are wonderful as well and can rightfully take their place beside his earlier classics. Anyone who says that Dylan has lost his edge as a performer should pick up "Unplugged." You'll hear the sound of Dylan storming through his back catalogue, casting off all aura of nostalgia and making his best-loved songs brand-new again.

Bob Dylan's live concerts of the 80s and 90s have often been criticised by fans and critics as 'ruining' or 'spoiling' songs from his, or perhaps their own, heyday of the 1960s. But Bob Dylan has always been an artist of far too much integrity to merely churn out exact replicas of earlier efforts, and ablbums like "MTV Unplugged" show that criticisms like these are unfounded.

Firstly, this album is simply full of great music and playing. From the opening bars of "Tombstone Blues" to the furious guitar punishing through "Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35" the musicians Dylan is working with here are clearly enjoying and pushing themselves.

And the interpretations! Songs which you will have considered perfect suddenly become EVEN BETTER on this album. "Love Minus Zero" has aged along with its author, and is presented as a giddyingly yet subtle haunt sound. "Shooting Star" is sung with so much emotion just listening to it becomes terrifying, as if Dylan or we will fall off its waves of sound at any moment. One or two of the songs performed are not enhanced by changes in Dylan's voice and performing style, but most become remarkable new treasures.

Although "MTV Unplugged" is probably more likely to impress those already appreciative of the Dylan project (in other words you'll like it more if you're a fan),it must be the most intense and committed album of the 'Unplugged' series. At once relaxed, fun and thoughtful, this is a brilliantly inventive, lyrically explosive and just plain great album

This soundtrack to Bob's appearance on the TV program gives us a Dylan who really seems to be enjoying himself. Backed by the great band that he's been touring with the past several years, Bob sings and performs these songs with a great deal of passion and urgency that hasn't been apparent in the three albums that preceded it. The introduction of a steel lap guitar, a rollicking organ and tight percussion breathes new life into Dylan classics such as "Tombstone Blues", "All Along The Watchtower" and "Like A Rolling Stone" as well as the only new song on the album, "Dignity". Bob sounds almost euphoric on the closing track, "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" and seems to be fully aware of what a stunning performance he has just given. This is an energetic, fun listen and I highly recommend it.