Collectors Music Reviews

Thunder Under The Starlight (Highway HW-013/14)

Starlight Theatre, Kansas City, MO – August 7th, 2010

Disc 1 (68:44):  Intro., Watching The River Flow, Señor (Tales of Yankee Power), Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine), My Wife’s Hometown, Rollin’ And Tumblin’, Just Like A Woman, Ballad Of Hollis Brown, The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll, Cry A While, Workingman’s Blues #2, Highway 61 Revisited

Disc 2 (43:29):  I Feel A Change Comin’ On, Thunder On The Mountain, Ballad Of A Thin Man, Like A Rolling Stone, Jolene, band introduction, All Along The Watchtower

The third show of Bob Dylan’s summer tour was in Kansas City, Missouri.  Thunder Under The Starlight on Highway is the second CDR release of the show following Kansas City 2010 on Justin’.  Highway utilize an excellent stereo audience recording of the entire show.

He starts off the show with the blues arrangement of “Watching The River Flow,” one of the more energetic set openers in the Dylan repertoire.  By contrast, the second number “Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)” is much slower and more stately.  Dylan seems to loose his place in the middle and botches a verse. 

He does the same in “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine),” forgetting were he is in the narrative of the song.  Both are relatively old songs and proves that even after forty years one can make errors even in your own composition.  

Kansas City is notable for featuring many ”newer” songs.  ”Just Like A Woman,” an upbeat “Ballad Of Hollis Brown” and “The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll” serve as older foils for ”My Wife’s Hometown” and ”Rollin’ And Tumblin’.”

The Modern Timestrack ”Working Man’s Blues #2″ serves as a modern day rebuke of the older tunes.  Instead of finding solutions in a murder / suicide on a South Dakota farm or from the politics of Maryland, Dylan sings:  “Meet me at the bottom, don’t lag behind / Bring me my boots and shoes / You can hang back or fight your best on the front line / Sing a little bit of these workingman’s blues.”

It serves as a ballast for the show, the emotional highpoint.  “Highway 61 Revisited” sounds a bit banal after that.  But the rest of the show is very good, featuring a scarce performance of “I Feel A Change Coming On.”  Closing the set is “Ballad Of A Thinman” and the encores are the most frequently triad of “Like A Rolling Stone,” “Jolene” and “All Along The Watchtower.”

Like the other titles, Highway use high quality CDRs for the discs and use photo quality paper for the inserts.  The show is good enough to be on silver, but as it is this is a good title worth having. 

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