This fifth entry in Dylan's much hailed Bootleg Series chronicles the his legendary carnival like 1975 tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue. Legend says that Dylan wanted to do something fresh so he got together a new group of people, some new and some old, and set out to re-invent himself with new energy and purpose. This set, which was taken from shows in the early parts of the tour, displays Dylan at some of his most free and open, feeding off his assembled band.

Once of Dylan's best qualities is the fact that no matter how old, new, bland, or ballsy a song of his is, he has the power to change it to be whatever he wants it to be. He can re-invent everything from the mood to lyrics without making the song any less powerful. Anyone who has seen him on tour lately can attest to that and it's just as obvious here.

Featuring some, at that time, new material the tour had to be a treat for fans because I can't imagine the songs can sound anymore passionate than they do on the record. A good bunch of songs that ended up on the 'Desire' record (which I do not yet have) are quite spectacular. Many thanks to the splendid violin work of Scarlett Rivera, which adds some extra flavor to already great songs. "Isis" is Dylan at his most passionate, "Sara" at his most open, and "Hurricane" at his most political.

Songs like "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" and "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" are that much more touching with Dylan injecting spirit into them with his voice being in top form. "Tangled Up in Blue" can stand side by side with it's studio counterpart, this time Dylan's coming across even more personally part of the song. "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" is even more tense and dramatic here than the original with Roger McGuinn of Byrds fame lending a hand.

Folk singer Joan Baez contributes vocals to a couple of tunes and her vocal performance is the perfect compliment to Dylan's rough voice. Being an old friend of Dylan, she fits naturally into songs from his early career like the classic "Blowing in the Wind" and one of his more well known unofficially released tracks "Mama, You Been on My Mind".

Although bootlegged many times over, this will easily stand as the definitive issue from the legendary Rolling Thunder Revue. A treat for Dylan's newest fans and longtime fanatics alike, it captures the freewheeling, loose feeling that the tour was supposed to be all about. One only can hope Columbia keeps pushing these Bootleg Series releases out as they've been nothing but universally hailed as worthy releases (a sixth one is already slated for next year). The 2 video and one audio bonus DVD adds that much more to the set, allowing the viewer to grasp the collective feel the tour was about as well as getting a glimpse of Dylan in one of his more unique looks with his mysterious white face paint.

I can't take these discs out of my cd player. I play them over and over again. These are some of the best performances of these tunes I've ever heard. His energy is very high - but not that "charge through the song as fast as I can" stuff. He's focused, he really interprets the lyrics - hell - he even enunciates clearly. You'll be surprised, as I was, that his acoustic work here is far better than it was on the previous "bootleg" release from 1964. The song selection is also outstanding, without a single clunker in the group. And this rag-tag pick-up band does a great job of staying right there with him - without the strained shrillness of the '75 (?) concert performance he did with The Band. He's clearly having a great time, and it's very infectious. The DVD is a nice touch with performances of Tangled Up in Blue and Isis. This album also demonstrates, for those who don't already know, that the songs from Desire are among his best. Superb liner notes, too. I can't say enough good things about this album. If you're a Dylan fan, this is an absolute "must-have".

Official releases of live Dylan recordings have never been all that good (until the release of Live 1966 a couple of years ago). Dylan and the Dead, Live at Budokan, Before the Flood, none of these ever stood up to his studio albums. Even Hard Rain, a single-disc document of the second half of the Rolling Thunder Revue tour (the first half of which is documented on Live 1975) is not fantastic, despite a few stand-out tracks.

But this collection makes up, indeed, more than makes up, for all that. This is Dylan at his absolute best, and that means this is music at its absolute best. Whether supported by a full band, alone with his guitar, or accompanied by Joan Baez, these songs are things of beauty and joy. Lacking the hostility and combativeness of the Live 1966 show, this recording finds Dylan at the height of his expressive power. He's got nothing to prove here, no argument to make, no point to drive home. He just has his songs in all their glory. And most of the songs are better than their studio versions. A-Hard Rain's A-gonna Fall, Mr. Tambourine Man, Isis, Romance In Durango, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, Love Minus Zero/No Limits...these become the definitive versions upon first listen, no matter how many times you've heard the originals.

A live Dylan album has never really been the way to introduce someone to what Bob is all about. That's all changed now. If you know and love Bob already, you will love this. And if you've never heard much of his work, well, you will still love this.

In November of 1975, Bob Dylan was hitting his stride in a way he hadn't since his mid-'60s amphetamine-fueled heyday. In January, Blood On The Tracks-one of Dylan's most accomplished and affecting albums-had been released. That spring, he began popping up in his old Greenwich Village haunts, hungry for some new inspiration. By the end of the summer, he had recorded the adventurous, genre-bending Desire, which would go on to be Dylan's only chart-topping LP of the '70s. Yes, the man was on an undeniable roll, his critical and commercial standing reaching new and unprecedented heights. And to cap off this banner year, Dylan embarked on one of the most exciting and innovative tours of his career.

This tour, dubbed the Rolling Thunder Revue, is given its due on the new volume of Dylan's on-again off-again Bootleg Series. The 22 songs collected on the double-disc paint a well-nigh definitive picture of what went down as Dylan and his merry band of musicians played a string of tiny theater and small arena dates in the northeast United States and Canada. For the past 27 years, die-hard fans have had to rely on decent-to- terrible sounding bootlegs of these now-legendary shows. But Live 1975 presents crystal clear recordings of Dylan and the Rolling Thunder band in all of its glory.

And this is a good thing, because this band was really something else. On paper, it looks like chaos, like a bad idea gone horribly wrong. The glam-rock lead guitar of ex-Spider From Mars Mick Ronson, the country fried pedal steel and mandolin of David Mansfield, the gypsy violin of Scarlet Rivera-these ingredients should by all rights make for a foul-tasting combo. But, somehow, the sonic mismatching conjures up a beautifully loose and ragged atmosphere, appropriate for the carnival-esque feel of the tour.

The Rolling Thunder '75 tour saw Dylan reclaiming some of his best-known tunes and transforming them with new and exciting arrangements. "It Ain't Me, Babe," one of Dylan's undisputed classics, is irreverently given a loping, almost-reggae beat. And the formerly hymn-like "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" is played as a pounding, vintage Chicago blues, with Dylan hollering like a man possessed.

The songwriter seems positively ecstatic in his new musical surroundings. In the opening cut, "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You," he shouts "get ready!" His voice sounds warmer than ever before or after. Elsewhere, on the solo acoustic cuts and the handful of duets performed with Joan Baez, he actually sounds happy to be there, happy to be performing for his audience. Yes, Live 75 offers a glimpse into what a happy Bob Dylan might sound like. Surprisingly enough, Dylan doesn't need to brood to be brilliant.

Also highlighted on Live 75 are the weird and wonderful songs from Desire, which wouldn't be released until 1976. Dylan debuted more than half of the album on this tour, and the performances, quite frankly, blow away the studio versions. The gripping performance of "Isis" is worth the price of admission alone. And the mysterious "One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)," one of the stranger songs Dylan's ever written, is given a bone chilling and precise reading. Dylan would never again perform many of these songs, making this tour even more special.

If Live 75 had been released immediately following the Rolling Thunder tour, it would have been undoubtedly hailed as one of the great live albums of the '70s. Better late than never, I suppose. Fans can only hope that Dylan's Bootleg Series continues with more regularity in the future. The man's vault is bulging with unreleased material that is vital to our understanding and appreciation of this great songwriter. Volumes 1-5 are just the tip of the iceberg.

Tyler Wilcox

I bought this CD just after watching Bob rock hard at the Patriot Center of George Mason University outside Washington. About the only difference between now and the Rolling Thunder days is that he wastes even less time on chatter to the audience (the only time he spoke at GMU was to introduce the players)and the songbook he draws from now has two and half more decades of classics. Beyond that, he liberally mixes the familiar (Tangled Up in Blue, Blowin in the Wind) with the overlooked gems (Tonight I'll Be Staying Here with You, Love Minus Zero), and gives the lyrics a new musical arrangement virtually every time he performs them. Six songs here are from the then not yet released Desire, and Dylan's energy and joy at previewing them makes for some of the most exciting music on the two CDs. Poet he surely is, but above all Dylan is a rocker (any doubts on this score are forever erased by his version of Brown Sugar played on the current tour). The day he first plugged in is, I would argue, one of the two or three most important days of the last half century in music. Joan Baez doesn't get that -- she sings her four duets, unquestionably the low points of the discs, as if the songs were meant to be hushed hymns, not quick and stinging vocal jabs. Equally clueless is the guy who calls out at one point, "sing a protest song," to which Dylan replies, "here's one for you" and fires into the incestuous Oh, Sister. Nice touch. Disc two is slightly stronger than disc one, better songs, less Joan, but either one blows away most everything else you've bought this or any other year.