Bob Dylan
Hard Rain

When you already have all of Dylan's gems, in the end, you enjoy buying those albums you find for €5.90 on music store shelves... 

And that's how you might find yourself with Hard Rain...

Well, it's definitely worth all €5.90... but not more...

An album taken from the famous concert at Hughes Stadium in Fort Collins, Colorado, this is qualitatively the swan song of the splendid Rolling Thunder Revue...

An already exhausted Dylan... uncertain and resigned after the breakup with Sara, in this spring performance Mr. Zimmerman shows clear signs that he is now losing his way...

The concert opens with "Maggie's farm", revisited in an almost Country tone, and carried forward thanks to the guitar skills of the amazing T-Bone Burnett. The piece doesn't convince, and if we were to compare it with the Maggie's farm of Newport 10 years earlier... well, let's not even go there...

It continues with "One too many mornings", even here applause is not abundant... The uncertainty continues with "Memphis blues again" and "Oh sister" which didn't even convince in "Desire"; imagine live....

You can glimpse something interesting in the pseudo-choral version of "Lay lady lay".

Then perhaps you reach some highlights..."Shelter from the storm" in its electric version... Anxiety, desperation, and a voice that struggles, the song moves forward with dignity...

Thank God it continues with "You are a big girl now", a poignant yet delicate version. It's a cry of love to something lost, to a person in the backstage listening but wanting to leave... The downfall in style can be found in "I threw it all away" where instead of hearing Dylan, it seems like listening to Michael Bolton...

Let's not totally despair because something truly excellent is found.... It's "Idiot wind" electric, bitter, accusatory... the version I personally enjoy the most...

Later, Bobby would return to the studio after the divorce and record his first flop "Street legal"

Hard rain is definitely an album I recommend to all Dylan fans, also to see yet another facet of the minstrel... but I would never place it among the most important Live albums in history...