In mid-1975, Bob Dylan started gathering a group of musicians with the intention of playing small clubs and concert halls in the kind of out-of-the-way cities his blockbuster touring schedule by then typically steered around—the Rolling Thunder Revue. Dylan had long seemed occupied by the project of subverting his own fame, or at least recapturing a sense of purity within it; he once said the 1970 album Self Portrait was an attempt to do something most people couldn’t possibly relate to. What emerged—and what is documented here—is a tour whose loose, almost ragged approach in some ways undercut the seriousness of his work (check out the casino-bar/variety-show arrangement of “I Pity the Poor Immigrant”) and in others amplified its power, bringing out a physicality and viciousness rarely heard in him before (“One Too Many Mornings,” “Idiot Wind”). (Compared to the 1975 recordings of the same tour, the 1976 shows are definitely tougher.) At some point, the joy of listening to Dylan is hearing him take these gambles over and over again never knowing how they’ll pan out. Eventually, you realize the gamble is the prize.