| A PAIR OF BOB TRIBUTES A NOD TO BOB, an artist�s tribute to Bob Dylan on his sixtieth birthday RED HOUSE RECORDS**** DULUTH DOES DYLAN SPINOUT RECORDS***1/2 Red House Records has been promoting singer-songwriter artists with vision for 15 years now and their roster includes some of the best �folk-type� artists around. The new �Nod To Bob� Bob Dylan tribute album contains 14 differing interpretations of Dylan�s songs that cover the board as to style and content, featuring both male and female artists alike. All of the cuts on this album cut the mustard, but my favorite stand-out tracks include Gary Davis And The High Flying Rockets country-blues version of �Sweetheart Like You�. Handy Award winner Gary Davis, an actor and playwright as well as leader of the new renaissance in country-blues classics brings a 1930�s - 1940�s feel to this number. We also get �Clothes Line Saga� a lesser known Dylan song from the Basement Tapes, well-done by Suzzy and Maggie Roche of the famous, influential and critically acclaimed threesome, The Roches. John Gorka, one of the major talents involved in the �new folk movement� gives an intense and thoughtful interpretation of �Girl Of The North Country� Next we have Spider John Koerner & Dave Ray�s cool cover of �Delia�, a song about shooting your woman dead, which was also covered by Johnny Cash a few years back. Another neat song on the album is a take on �All Along The Watch Tower� by Tom Landa & The Paperboys. This version wears a Latin and Celtic world-beat influence that does something altogether new for Dylan�s original version. Other great songs on Nod To Bob include �Restless Farewell� done-up in great style by Norman Blake and Peter Ostroushko. Peter Ostroushko played mandolin on the song �If You See Her Say, Hello� with Dylan�s band on the album �Blood On The Tracks�. Often called �the new Dylan�(as if there ever really could be one), The powerful and prolific singer-songwriter Greg Brown gives pledge to Dylan�s �Pledging My Time� to great style and effect. Rosalie Sorrels gives a stunning vocal performance with �Tomorrow Is A Long Time�. This was my personal favorite cut on the album and just blew me away, what a voice! Then at the end of the collection, we get a live version of �Don�t Think Twice, It�s All right� done by the great storyteller and songster Ramblin� Jack Elliott. Jack met Bob in 1961, and it turned out that they had mutual respect for each other�s talent. This respect really comes though on this cut, and the story Jack tell s to the audience in the club, demonstrates his power over a crowd when reminiscing. This tribute album works in ways that a lot of other like-minded experiments fail to please. It�s varied, interesting and not at all boring. Instead of the run of the mill carbon copies, or off the mark muddy one-offs that a lot of tribute albums end up being, we get an album dedicated to a famous artist, that�s entertaining song by song, yet also works as a whole. The next Dylan Tribute comes from Spinout Records, a small label based in Santa Clarita, California. These guys went to Bob�s hometown of Duluth, Minnesota and pulled together 15 local bands to give their individual respect to Bob. Up near the tip of Lake Superior, Duluth is a tough little industrial town with a creative, burgeoning music scene. This tribute, unlike the folk-oriented Nod To Bob, runs all over the board. We get mellowed out shoe-gazer pop, big off-the-boards distortion, funk-rock, wacked-out punk, straight-up bar band efforts, as well as many other vibes and sounds. What we have here are mostly small, unknown, local Duluth bands with names like Mayfly, The Black Eyed Snakes, Crazy Betty, The Black Labels, Low, and Accidental Porn doing their best to show their respect for Ol� Bob. The thing that holds this collection together -seems to me- to be the fact that all of these differing bands have been indelibly influenced by the great bard, and growing up in the town where Dylan was born has obviously imprinted some honestly heartfelt and intelligent appreciation for the great Mr. Zimmerman into the local psyche. So, Duluth Does Dylan, and they do it up well. Although the album stretches stylistically from one end of the musical spectrum to the other, the songs still come together in the end, giving a truly unpretentious and honest �tip of the hat� to their native son, Bob Dylan. |