Being a Bob Dylan fan means that about once a year, you get an absurdly large pile of previously unreleased archival recordings to sift through, many of them of near or equal quality to the stuff that came out on the proper albums. A few months after the incredible Bootleg Series Vol. 14: More Blood, More Tracks, we have another: The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings, a 14-disc (14-disc!) box set of material from one of Dylan’s most fabled tours.
The collection will be released in June, in conjunction with a Martin Scorsese documentary about the Rolling Thunder Revue that will be coming to Netflix on June 12, Variety reports. (The existence of the doc has been previously reported, but the release date is new.) You can pre-order the box set now, and take a look at its mammoth tracklist, which includes three discs of rehearsal recordings, five full shows, and a disc of “rare performances” culled from other tour stops, all of which were “professionally recorded,” according to Variety‘s report.
The Rolling Thunder Revue tour featured a wild cast of musicians (Joan Baez, Roger McGuinn, David Bowie guitarist Mick Ronson, T-Bone Burnett) playing material from Dylan’s 1976 album Desire and songs from his back catalog, sometimes reinterpreted in bombastic fashion. Dylan often appeared in some sort of costume, wearing white face paint or a plastic mask. Netflix is describing the Scorsese film as “part documentary, part concert film, part fever dream,” which sounds appropriate.
Though the box set is not being officially marketed this way, it will essentially serve as a Bootleg Series-style accompaniment to Hard Rain, Dylan’s terminally underrated live album from the Rolling Thunder Tour. Watch a Rolling Thunder Revue performance of “Isis” below, and read the full Variety report here.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=81N7y-wOwps
