There is no one quite so hard to define as Bob Dylan. It seems that every time he appears in the news he has radically transformed his image, his sound, his message, or some combination of the three. Most recently, Dylan made an appearance at the Newport Folk Festival sporting a shoulder-length wig, a fake beard and a fake mustache. His purpose for doing this? No one knows.

Over the years, Dylan's live performances have echoed his chameleon-like personality. Rarely does he play a song true to its album version. Instead he alters them nearly beyond recognition, with varying rhythms, instruments and lyrics. Fans find themselves competing with each other at concerts to see who can recognize the songs first. Usually recognition occurs about halfway through the second verse – that is, if Dylan even chooses to include it. This is all part of the fun of a Dylan show. Dylan-philes have been circling bootleg tapes for decades, highlighting the abundant workings of his numerous songs.

But now the bootlegs have become official. Dylan has started releasing live selections of his songs in his Bootleg Series – the most recent, Volume 5, Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue.

This double album showcases a wide-variety of Dylan's repertoire, sampling live cuts from his 1975 tour, The Rolling Thunder Revue. The songs traverse his career from his early folk/protest roots to his 1976 release, Desire.

Traveling with Dylan on this tour were a caravan of musicians, friends, poets, and anyone else he collected on the way. Most notably present on this album are folk-singer Joan Baez; the Byrd's Roger McGuinn; and Scarlet Rivera, a long-haired gypsy violinist whom Dylan randomly asked to join the show after seeing her on the street with a violin case.

Although the songs are all taken from different shows along the tour, they progress smoothly and are delivered as though they were all in one set. Disc one plunges into the opener, "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You," a song from his country-flavored album, Nashville Skyline. The song, originally recorded as a gentle, meandering number, takes on a vigorous persona, with a powerful backing band and Dylan's aggressive vocals.

Next, comes "It Ain't Me, Babe." One of his most well-known acoustic ballads, Dylan electrically transforms this song into a galloping rove, culminating in one of his expert harmonica solos.

Another shocking song adaptation is the protest song "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll." The song depicts the injustice of the court system in the trial of William Zanzinger who killed Hattie Carroll, a black mother of 10 children. The original acoustics are morphed into a plodding bass-driven beat over which Dylan croons with vengeance, "But you philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears / Take the rag away from your face / Now ain't the time for your tears."

The highlight of disc one comes in the mellow "Mr. Tambourine Man." Dylan's vocals show maturation with a deep, rich sound, far different from the nasal wails of his youth. This song stays true to its original version from the Bringing It All Back Home album, but there is a certain intimacy in this live recording that the original song lacks. The gentle strum of his acoustic and his timid vocals give this song a vulnerable, endearing charm.

Disc two opens with the gorgeous "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." As with "Mr. Tambourine Man," Dylan sticks to the album version of this song with soft acoustic strumming complementing his harmonica solos and the gentle puzzle of his lyrics, "The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense / Take what you have gathered from coincidence ... This sky, too, is folding under you / And, it's all over now, Baby Blue."

Disc two also includes the epic song "Hurricane," the song Dylan wrote in defense of the wrongfully imprisoned boxer, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. In fact, the impetus for the Rolling Thunder tour was Dylan's desire to draw attention to the plight of the boxer. Dylan prefaces the song with a plug for Carter, asking the audience, "If you've got any political pull and all, maybe you can help us get this man out of jail and back on to the streets." The song quickly swirls into a whirlwind of guitar, harmonica, and Revera's incendiary violin bowing with Dylan flashing "Here comes the story of the Hurricane / The man the authorities came to blame / For somethin' that he never done / Stuck in a prison cell / But one time he could-a been the champion of the world."

Although Dylan's peculiarities surface every now and then, they never get in the way of his music. And as Live 1975 shows, the music is Dylan's crown and glory. There is no new material on this album, but listening to it is like listening to the songs for the first time. Each version is unique, and no matter how it has been altered from its studio to its live version, every song is inherently Dylan.

Contact Julie Bender at bender.10@nd.edu

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