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Overall, the concerts maintain a similar structure from February through December. Each opens with an instrumental, includes an intermission midway, and all clock in at more than two hours of music. The set lists generally reflect Dylan’s most popular songs and there are only a handful of variations over the year. These performances were warmly received by audiences each night, but the critics were less enthusiastic, some dismissing them as “Dylan Goes Vegas” and worse. Overshadowed by the cool reception given Live At Budokan and Street Legal, scant attention has been given these concerts in the intervening years. Thanks to a few hardy tapers, we have the recordings so we can hear for ourselves.

Where Live At Budokan can sound highly polished, even prim; by the autumn concerts, Dylan’s sound has evolved into something else altogether. As Dylan and his musicians rolled into Charlotte, North Carolina for this evening in December, one would expect the manic pace of the tour and the length of each concert to have taken a toll on Dylan’s voice and enthusiasm. Instead, the accumulated performances seem to goad him further, reaching a kinetic vocal frenzy at points jarringly at odds with the lush instrumentation of the band. The overall effect has put off many casual listeners, but the genius within it emerges with repeated listening.

One hundred ten concerts into the tour, Dylan’s performance defies easy description, but could hardly be further from the staged spectacle of Las Vegas. At their best, these performances leave nothing untouched, pressing relentlessly towards an incandescence which sets Dylan, the performer, apart from his peers. Listen to Dylan’s tooth-and-nail singing on Mr. Tambourine Man as he wrings every last ounce from the melody. Listen to Tangled Up In Blue, sung as a lounge confessional; Petrarch’s poetry ominously replaced by the Bible’s Book of Jeremiah, proffered by a woman in a dress “made of stars and stripes.” Listen to the band rage through Maggies Farm and Masters of War and listen to Dylan alone with his guitar and harmonica somehow make It Ain’t Me Babe sound just as urgent without any of the thunder. Here’s a performer who sounds as though he’s singing for his salvation and doesn’t intend to hold anything back. Exhilarating, exhausting and even a bit alarming, these performances leave nothing in the cupboard and are not to be missed.