Lucinda Williams writes and performs heart-searing roots rock on the rarefied level of AOR demigods like Tom Petty and Neil Young; she's also opened for Petty and Young. So the least she deserves is her own Seventies-rock-style double live album, recorded at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium, no less. She and her impeccable three-piece band give her songs' meticulously recorded original versions a run for their money; led by Doug Pettibone's Crazy Horse-esque lead guitar, they deliver "Changed the Locks" (from 1988's Lucinda Williams) with the spiteful fury of Bob Dylan circa '66, and crack open the downcast title track of 2001's Essence, transforming it into a brawny rocker. The twenty-two-song collection suffers from bloat, uneven pacing and an overabundance of tunes from 2003's World Without Tears. But it's still an effective summary of Williams' career as a prophet of, as she puts it, "all that's alarming, raw and exposed."

“All Along the Watchtower”

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."