Bob Dylan fans, collectors and completists can’t seem to get enough, as the enigmatic music legend has been releasing multi-CD and vinyl sets of outtakes, demos and concert recordings for decades.
Next up is The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1976 Live Recordings, a whopping 39-CD box that includes every show, professionally recorded, on the fabled second leg of Dylan’s mid ‘70s cross-country tour. It will be released Nov. 6.
The first leg of the tour, from 1975, received its own box set treatment seven years ago.
This new one’s particularly notable because the 1976 Rolling Thunder stretch began in Lakeland (at the Civic Center April 18) and continued, over the days that followed, into the Tampa Bay area.
Dylan, along with Joan Baez, Roger McGuinn and a top-tier band, played St. Petersburg’s Bayfront Center April 20, and Curtis Hixon Hall in Tampa on the 21st.
Included in this collection, too, is the complete April 22 performance from the Belleview Biltmore’s Starlight Ballroom, for an invited audience. Dylan and company had been staying at the vintage resort hotel in Belleair, and rehearsing in the ballroom, in preparation for the tour.
A performance in the afternoon, and one that evening, were videotaped by a production crew from TV’s Midnight Special, part of a Dylan-approved promotional plan.
To date, the TV footage has never aired nor been made available in any format.
Learn all about the television event that never was in this Catalyst exclusive, from the Vintage St. Pete and Vintage Pinellas series:
Vintage Pinellas: Bob Dylan’s TV Special
The Bayfront Center Arena, Curtis Hixon Hall and Belleview Biltmore have all been demolished. The Lakeland venue is now known as the RP Funding Center.