Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan Live 1975 (The Bootleg Series Volume 5) - Amazon.com Music

It had been my opinion that as brilliantly written as they were, Dylan's songs were best rendered by others (except sonny & his wife): McGuinn, Baez, Harrison, The Band, Hendrix spring to mind. Then came BLOOD ON THE TRACKS, and nothing was the same after that. How could it be?
I remember sitting in the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies at U of T and being tapped on the shoulder by Millard as Anton Pegis was hermeneutically investigating Acquinas. "Tickets are on sale in 20 minutes." An abrupt departure by 2 PhD candidates and a mad race to Maple Leaf Gardens to score 4 tickets. Pegis asked us later what the fuss was about. When told, he demanded going, 84 year old wizard of Phenomenology that he was. I can hear every note of every song from that concert even today. McGuinn, Baez, Burnett, Rivera, Lightfoot, Anderson, Mitchell, Neil, all showed and played their part in an unbelievable event that blew across the North American landscape, at once both ephemeral and eternal in its power and appearance. There was a social issue attached: Reuben Carter had been jailed for a murder he did not commit. There were private issues at hand: Dylan, as well as many of the rest of us, had elements of his life unravelling and lay bleeding on the tracks. Friends and lovers rallied around each other while a wind blew in through the land south of the Maple Leaf.
This CD set is a remarkable document of the premier American songwriter of the Twentieth Century at the top of his game, in full command of his powers, singing and playing as though his life depended on it. The shows are from Boston and Montreal, and represent Dylan at a mountain top. Whether he ever got there again is up for debate, but at this point in time, when all hell had broken loose and most of us who cared about the condition of the world felt like knockin on heaven's door, Dylan gave voice to the deepest concerns, anxieties and cries for love from our collective souls, a whole well's deeper than our collective Jungian unconscious.
Did you have to be there? Probably, but even so, ask yourself if you can deny what you hear on these tracks........