The real bootleggers may have been leagues ahead of them but credit is still due to Columbia for the consistently high quality of the material they have belatedly released under the Bob Dylan ‘Bootleg’ imprint. First, there was that richly rewarding and occasionally staggering three CD studio set, then the incendiary and historic so-called ‘Royal Albert Hall’ live show and, now, we have another wonderful stage outing in the shape of this ‘Rolling Thunder’ package from 1975.

An earlier, comparatively light-hearted companion to the much more corrosive Hard Rain album that hails from the end of the same tour, Rolling Thunder finds Dylan and his travelling minstrel band reveling in novelty, comradeship, a sense of the mischievous and, most tellingly, the freshness of the then newly released Desire album.

Prematurely dismissed at the time as an altogether too lightweight follow-up to the acknowledged masterpiece that was Blood On The Tracks, the deceptively easy on the ear Desire has since earned a place in the affections of Dylan fans… and many more, who, up until its release, would never have claimed to be any such thing.