Bob Dylan just announced the release of a new live album, The Complete Budokan 1978 which includes two complete shows (February 28 & March 01) from newly remixed and remastered 24-Channel Analog Tapes.
You can read the full press release here and listen to “The Man In Me” from this set here.
I’m a big fan of Bob in 1978 and especially the Asian tour, so I’m very excited to finally hear these shows in pristine quality. I just dug out my audience recordings of those two gigs just to get me pumped up for its November release date.
themidnightcafe.org 
Have you seen the price. 4CD or 8LP box set. Each £165 Japanese issues only. Sony can get lost.
It is definitely expensive.
I think $159 is high. But eight years ago I paid $600 plus $75 shipping for the 18-disc collector’s edition of The Cutting Edge. That was also in a 12 x 12 box case. It included a large photo book and a smaller book that had some photos as well as discussed each song. It also included 10 film frames from Dont Look Back, and nine 45 rpm records. And for Christmas they sent those of us who had gotten it MP3 files of 14 concerts from the 1965 tour. So maybe four CDs plus shipping from Japan and inflation for about 1/4 that price is not too outrageous, although I think maybe $130 would be more reasonable. Hopefully the price drops before it ships with Amazon’s price guarantee.
It is a lot of money. Will I personally be purchasing this set? Probably not. Will I still find a way to listen to it? Probably yes.
But it really isn’t $159 for four CDs of music. It is $159 for four CDs and a bunch of collectibles. Let’s be honest, most people don’t buy music in a physical format anymore. You either stream it or download an MP3 or FLAC file. The people who want sets like these are collectors and collectors are willing to pay more money for a nice package.
I don’t really buy CDs anymore but I regularly buy Blu-rays and it is the same in that market. I often pay more money than I probably should for collector’s sets of movies I love. They come in nice packages and often come with posters, lobby cards, color booklets, etc. I could easily watch these movies through streaming services, but I like having the physical copies. I like collecting them and so I’m willing to pay more money for something cool I can put on a shelf.
Blu-rays are sometimes worth buying for the extras. E.g., there’s a 2+ hour documentary on the 2-disc set of The Lovely Bones that’s like a mini course on how to translate a book to the screen.
Plus, on a regular Blu-ray player a disc normally looks better than streaming, and if you have a 4K TV it may do some upconverting to improve the picture even more. And from what I’ve read of the Panasonic 4K player it makes Blu-rays look almost like 4K on a 4K TV, and makes DVDs look almost like Blu-rays. I may be getting one for that reason.
All of that is very true. I’ve not yet upgraded my player to a 4K one, mostly because it annoys me to think about having to yet again purchase movies I’ve previously owned on Blu-ray, DVD and even VHS. I’m not yet convinced its all worth the extra expense. I’m sure I’ll eventually upgrade as that seems to be the way things are going.
I’d love to complete these dates with the available LB#’s.
All I have are:
1978-02-21 – LB-7291 & LB-11035
1978-03-01 – LB-10930
Can anyone anyone share anything else? I would be happy to help with these three.
Missing are:
1978-02-21
http://www.losslessbob.wonderingwhattochoose.com/detail/LB-01237.html
1978-03-01
http://www.losslessbob.wonderingwhattochoose.com/detail/LB-00649.html
http://www.losslessbob.wonderingwhattochoose.com/detail/LB-07295.html
Hi Mat. I would appreciate it if you could update the links for the Japan shows. (I assume you have moved them from Amazon to Google?)
I have not reuploaded them to Google yet, but I will. It is about 20 gigs worth of music so it will take me several days to get it all up. I”ll try to get it all posted over the next week or so.