Since it is a holiday and it’s an American holiday (Labor Day) and the current climate is iffy at best, adding a Bob Dylan concert to the mix only seems appropriate.
For this particular Labor Day 2025, I’ve decided to add the last hour of the over-three hour original concert given at The Warehouse in New Orleans on May 3, 1976. According to the notes of this one-of-a-million unofficial-bootleg-clandestine recordings of this concert – this was the evening show, and also according to the notes, all officially released recordings were edited out. Basically, this is a celebration for a series of concerts that were significant, unique and presented a 1970s Bob Dylan during the peak of this period. Also the subject of documentaries, essays, entire volumes of observations and meticulous research.
For those of you who don’t know anything about this particular era of Bob Dylan or know anything about Bob Dylan at all (we’re getting to that point where events which seemingly took place yesterday are now relegated to the dim-distant past by people who were far from being born yet), here’s a rundown (stalwarts and diehards, skip this part and hit the Play button) via Wikipedia:
On October 30, Dylan held the first Rolling Thunder Revue show at the War Memorial Auditorium in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Intended to contrast with the bombast of his 1974 tour with The Band, the first leg of the tour was small, spanning only thirty shows. The majority of the first Revue was booked at intimate venues, including smaller arenas, theaters and gymnasia; aside from two shows in Upstate New York, a four-show Canadian leg and the concluding concerts in the New York metropolitan area, the tour’s itinerary was entirely confined to New England. However, the secrecy surrounding the Revue’s intended destinations, the new material Dylan was premiering, and the inclusion of Joan Baez on the same bill as Dylan for the first time in a decade ensured prominent media coverage.
On November 2, 1975, the tour stopped at the University of Lowell. Dylan’s inspiration for playing Lowell was Jack Kerouac, a pivotal influence on his oeuvre who was born and raised in the city. Dylan, Beat Generation colleague Ginsberg and various band members visited Kerouac’s gravesite.
According to Larry Sloman, who documented the tour in On the Road with Bob Dylan (1978), “Onstage it was like a carnival. Bobby Neuwirth and the back-up band [dubbed ‘Guam’] warmed up the audience. Next, Dylan ambled on to do about five songs. After intermission, the curtain rose to an incredible sight, Bob and Joan, together again after all these years.”
Dylan and Baez often opened the second half of the show duetting in the dark on “Blowin’ in the Wind”. Then Baez would take center stage with a dynamic six-song set, followed by a solo set from Dylan. He was joined by the band for a few numbers, until the finale song, Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” featuring everyone on stage. The spirit was considered extremely warm, leading Joni Mitchell, who only intended to play one concert, to stay on for the remaining three nights of the tour.
The dramatic finale of the tour took place on December 8 in Madison Square Garden, where, to an audience of 14,000, Dylan performed a benefit concert for his latest cause, the imprisoned boxer Rubin Carter. The concert was titled “The Night of The Hurricane,” in reference to Dylan’s song, “Hurricane”, which was released in November 1975. Among those appearing on stage were Muhammad Ali and Coretta Scott King, the widow of the slain civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.
Enjoy the holiday, if possible.
