Maria Muldaur

Her voice is often on the edge of breaking up, her dancing is perfunctory and she certainly isn’t the sylph-like beauty that gave us ‘Midnight At The Oasis’ in the mid-seventies but this performance by Maria Muldaur is absolutely wonderful.

She has a sense of herself that you cannot ignore and when she sings songs like ‘Lay Lady Lay’ she somehow makes you think that it was always her song – Bob Dylan had very little to do with it.

Her presentation is sassy and sexy and when her voice has warmed up she has a deep and raunchy sound to her – the band supporting her is understated and perfect for the occasion – and she absolutely radiates a sense that she is happy to be there and happy to be doing THESE songs and that imbues them with everything that her voice may be lacking.

These are almost all Dylan covers - she does a fine version of JJ Cale's 'Cajun Moon' - and they concentrate on Dylan as a writer of love songs and songs of deep emotion and you do find yourself amazed that such a varied range could come from the pen of just one genius but the genius of Ms Muldaur is that she finds something of herself in every one of them and yet they don’t all sound or feel the same.
From the soft and Bluesy ‘Make You Feel My Love’ to the light but complex ‘Buckets Of Rain’ and to the raunch of ‘You Ain’t Going Nowhere’ (here titled ‘Ride Me High’) or the jazzy croon of ‘Meet Me In The Moonlite’ she celebrates Dylan but delivers Maria Muldaur.

This is packaged with the DVD and a CD of the same performance and the lack of ‘clever’ effects or un-necessary cutaways gives you the feeling of being there that you don’t always get from live DVDs.