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Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings [Box Set] Image
Metascore
90

Universal acclaim - based on 10 Critic Reviews What's this?

User Score
7.0

Generally favorable reviews- based on 5 Ratings

  • Summary: The 14-disc box set from the singer-songwriter features three discs of music from rehearsals as well as five complete live sets, including 100 tracks never released before.
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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 10 out of 10
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 10
  3. Negative: 0 out of 10
  1. Mojo
    Jun 5, 2019
    100
    You get the Dylan stuff from those places in full, which allows a real sense of how each show worked. ... There are plenty of other breathtaking moments, many collected onto a final disc of "rare performances." [Jul 2019, p.103]
  2. Uncut
    Jun 5, 2019
    90
    The two CDs from SIR Rehearsals in New York find Dylan in what might be described as his element. Which is to say, at the centre of a certain amount of chaos. His Approach to rehearsal is at best relaxed, if not entirely whimsical. [Jul 2019, p.44]
  3. Jun 18, 2019
    90
    Completists may want everything and not be satisfied until that happens, but in the meantime The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings is a remarkably healthy--and even at its mammoth length (ten-plus hours) still not exhaustive account--of a time when the magic of a traveling carnival show, under the aegis of Dylan and theatrical director and co-conspirator/writing partner Jacques Levy, could accomplish anything.
  4. 80
    Three discs worth of rehearsals are hit and miss; many songs are fragmentary and others don’t match the eventual live versions. Plus, the live shows don’t vary all that much in their set lists. Casual fans will probably stick with the ten or so Dylan songs they play on satellite radio. But true fans will greedily gobble this up and be more than pleased.
  5. 80
    Both the boxed set and the film sprawl proudly and unpredictably, just as the Revue itself did. And both projects traffic in revelation and put-on, sometimes simultaneously. ... Dylan completists will likely cherish newly unveiled rehearsal tapes . ... For those willing to dig in, the new box also makes clear how consistently impassioned Dylan’s Rolling Thunder performances were.
  6. Jun 7, 2019
    80
    Dylan is the unquestioned star, the magnetic, assured center of the sprawl. ... The longer view afforded by Dylan’s full set lists, rehearsals almost to opening night (with songs that appear nowhere else in the set) and a disc of additional rarities from along the itinerary captures both the acute showman’s focus the singer brought to this enterprise and the accelerating, play-for-the-moment drive that climaxes in that “Isis” from Montreal.
  7. Jun 7, 2019
    80
    The concerts all have excellent sound. While this box is only essential for hardcore Dylanophiles, it's immeasurably valuable for the way it illuminates a wildly spontaneous period in the songwriter's career.

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Score distribution:
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  2. Mixed: 0 out of
  3. Negative: 0 out of