Big things often come in small packages.  Such is the case with Legacy Recordings' recent excavation of Bob Dylan and The Band's 1974 tour.  40 concerts took place over 30 dates and 21 cities, with Dylan, Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, Levon Helm, and Rick Danko even playing two shows in one day in many markets.  The 1974 Live Recordings takes the form of a tiny cube, packing in 27 discs and 431 tracks (417 of which are previously unreleased).  The set contains every professionally-recorded Dylan track from the concerts, and every single (known to be) extant soundboard recording.  With 26 shows preserved of the 40, it's a remarkable, and remarkably exhaustive, chronicle of a tour that was succinctly documented on the double live album Before the Flood and here takes on massive proportions.  (It's also the second-biggest Dylan concert box ever, after The 1966 Live Recordings but ahead of Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings.)

The 1974 tour came at a heady time for the longtime Columbia Records artist.  He'd decamped to the David Geffen-run Asylum Records and the mogul had big plans for him.  Dylan's Asylum debut Planet Waves, released in January 1974, reunited Bob with The Band, who had backed him on his U.S. tour in 1965, on his 1966 electric international tour (famous for the shout of "Judas!" at one memorable U.K. date), and for the seminal Basement Tapes.  With Geffen's publicity team cranked into overdrive, Planet Waves became Dylan's first album to hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200.  The joint tour chronicled on the new box set began in Chicago two weeks before the album's release, on January 3, 1974.  It was Dylan's first full-length tour since '66 and anticipation ran high, to put it mildly.  The top ticket price was $9.50, and Geffen claimed that twenty tickets could have been sold for every one that was available.  (That's even more notable considering the notoriously press-shy Dylan didn't engage in customary radio station appearances, and local news media cameras were barred from inside the venue.)

Though the songs performed on tour were familiar, the arrangements were radically reworked by Dylan and The Band with a harder-rocking, fiery edge suitable for arenas.  The Band were headliners themselves by this point, and played like it.  They and Dylan challenged one another to reach the heights they achieved at each tour stop.  Beginning with the second show, the concert settled into a standard format: a six-song opening set performed by Dylan and The Band, followed by a five-song Band set, another three Dylan/Band "duets," a five-song Dylan acoustic set, a three-or-four song Band set, and the joint finale.  Only the performances featuring Dylan are included in this set, however, meaning that the Band's performances of such songs as "The Weight," "Up on Cripple Creek," "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," and others heard on Before the Flood are not featured here.  These major cuts result in the individual concerts not flowing as well as they must have in person.  As Dylan wasn't much of a talker (then as now!), there's not a lot of connective tissue in that department, either.  But the music is paramount, and there's much to offer in these rich sets.

Songs from Planet Waves initially appeared in the setlists, with the opening show in Chicago on January 3, 1974 offering up fresh live performances of "Tough Mama," "Something There Is About You," and "Forever Young" as well as outtake "Nobody 'cept You."  As the shows progressed, "Tough Mama" was first to go, and by the time of the final show on Valentine's Day in Inglewood, California at the L.A. Forum, only "Forever Young" remained alongside the undisputed "classics."

Dylan's acoustic sets each evening as heard here are as impassioned as the electric ones with The Band, with the likes of "Song to Woody," "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)," "Girl from the North Country," and "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" coming off as impossibly intimate and altogether affecting on disc.  (On the Before the Flood performance from the final L.A. show, the cheers after the "It's Alright Ma" lyric "Even the President of the United States must have to stand naked" received whoops and hollers; one can hear here that it was receiving cheers from its very first performance in Chicago.)

"Song to Woody" was heard only in Chicago and Philadelphia, and as the tour went on, Dylan dropped the less-well known songs including "Nobody 'cept You" and the 1963 "Hero Blues;" even the higher-profile "One Too Many Mornings" is only heard in one show here (Largo, Maryland, January 16).  By the final Forum show, it was all-killer, no-filler for fans of Dylan's groundbreaking '60s oeuvre.  (The second-to-last show was one of just two to include "Mr. Tambourine Man."  With Garth Hudson on accordion, it was reportedly performed at the wishes of Dylan's wife, Sara.)  The final shows were marathon affairs, likely due to their being recorded for Before the Flood.

Though the acoustic sets offer beautiful testimony to Dylan the folksinger, the electric sets most vibrantly animate these 27 discs.  Dylan's relish at bringing his tunes from the prior decade into the present is palpable, and with The Band he had a group of deeply intuitive collaborators.  When listening, it's important to remember that the number of Dylan's live performances between the end of the '66 tour and the beginning of the '74 one was limited.  (He played compact sets at the Woody Guthrie memorial shows in 1968, took the stage at the Isle of Wight in 1969, and joined pal George Harrison at The Concerts for Bangla Desh in 1971.)  This was a "comeback" in all but name.

The Live 1974 Recordings finds Dylan rediscovering these songs and inviting the audiences to do the same.  The "thin, wild mercury sound" of the '60s had been replaced by a rootsier, earthier, and heavier one that developed over successive tour dates.  Though some songs hewed relatively close to the studio records in shape or form - "Like a Rolling Stone" is generally faithful to the record despite the distinctive musical personalities of The Band(mates) - but most were imbued with a new sense of immediacy and intensity driven by Levon Helm's furious drumming.  The Blonde on Blonde showstopper "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I Go Mine)" exemplified the new, freewheeling feel, and the song opened and closed numerous gigs on the tour with ample spirit and energy.  The ballad "Lay, Lady, Lay," crooned by Dylan on Nashville Skyline, gains a propulsive rhythm and twangy sense of momentum; any tenderness lost on the song is made up for with the warm renditions night after night of "Forever Young."  The electric songs reprised from The Band's earlier outing with Dylan (including "Maggie's Farm" and "Ballad of a Thin Man") didn't disappoint, either, with "Thin Man" ratcheting up the drama and sheer ferocity in each of its successive 15 performances.

The fast and furious takes of "All Along the Watchtower" incorporate the influence of Jimi Hendrix (who famously covered the John Wesley Harding song in 1968) with Robbie Robertson serving up frenetic licks matched to Dylan's sneering, emphatic vocals.  Urgency permeates "The Ballad of Hollis Brown" and sped-up but still poignant takes on "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" and even "Blowin' in the Wind," the latter a late addition to the setlists.  When Dylan sings "The Times They Are A-Changin'" (a setlist mainstay), he means it.  By giving these songs a new sonic identity, Dylan was subtly reinventing himself.

A chronological listen to the shows is rewarding, as Dylan and The Band tweak the setlist and the arrangements in big and small ways throughout the 30 dates, adjusting to the audience and to each other as they find new routes in and out of each composition.  The formation of the rambunctious spirit of the subsequent Rolling Thunder Revue is evident here, with Dylan adjusting his increasingly mannered and theatrical vocals to the contours of the accompaniment with zeal.  The blend of Dylan's elastic vocals with Robertson's guitar, coiling and weaving its way through Danko's anchoring bass, and the sometimes-rival, sometimes-complementary pianos/organs of Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson, proved indelible.

The multitrack shows originally recorded by Rob Fraboni and Phil Ramone have been newly mixed to splendid effect by Chris Shaw and mastered by Steve Addabbo.  While the soundboard shows (preserved on quarter-inch tapes as well as cassettes) have a by-nature flatter feel than the professionally-recorded performances, quality is uniformly high.

The package designed by Geoff Gans is simple but effective; in addition to the discs - all of which are housed in paper sleeves with unique Barry Feinstein photos of Dylan and his musical compatriots in action - the cube contains a 44-page booklet with an essay by singer-songwriter Elizabeth Nelson reflecting on the tour as well as track listings for each disc plus copious photos and memorabilia.

Asylum released the original Before the Flood in June 1974, documenting the Forum performances, plus one track ("Knockin' on Heaven's Door") from New York's Madison Square Garden.  The double album was an international success, reaching No. 3 in the United States and No. 8 in the United Kingdom.  But Dylan's time at Asylum was coming to a close.  On September 12, a Rolling Stone headline read, "Bob Dylan Goes Back to Columbia Records."  David Geffen was disappointed, telling the magazine, "The tour I put together sold a huge amount of records for him.  Every time he did a concert he sold his catalogue.  He has a lot of stuff in the vault that's about to come out, but with this deal, ownership of his masters reverts to him after five years.  Also, he gets a retroactive raise on his past records.  What I did was make it possible for him to get his masters back from Columbia.  He should thank me.  At the time he went with me, they weren't that interested in him."  While praising Dylan elsewhere, Geffen was typically blunt in his assessment: "Bob Dylan has made a decision to bet on his past.  I was more interested in his future."

Today, fifty years after the reunion tour with The Band, Bob Dylan is still on the road - enthralling, frustrating, and surprising audiences with his idiosyncratic, engrossing, and bewildering live shows during which he's backed by another smashing band (lowercase) well-matched to his shape-shifting interpretations.  The seeds of the so-called Never-Ending Tour may well have been planted with the electrifying performances on The 1974 Live Recordings.  Don't think twice...it's (more than) all right.

Bob Dylan's The 1974 Live Recordings is available for purchase (from Amazon U.K., Amazon Global Store, and third-party sellers) as well as via download at Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada!