Just got home from a Dylan concert

Have been a Dylan fan since his first album in the early 60s. After the last two concerts, I have to say he played on automatic. IMHO he is essentially a troubadour traveling the country at this stage of his career. I admire him for letting people hear him in all the little venues he now visits. His endurance is amazing. You are hearing and viewing a legend. But often his concerts are uninspiring muscically even though he is inspiring as a professional musician who is still willing to make the show go on regardless of whether he is having a good or bad day.
Bad live music still has an ambiance that is different than canned music. I certainly sympathize with people who no longer are moved by his live performances. In an interview a couple of decades ago in Rolling Stone or Playboy, Dylan said he was not sure how much longer he could be on the road because of all the drugs you have to take to be "up" every night. Well, like Neil Young says, "He is a survivor." Dylan, amazingly, just keeps on going even if he often looks like warmed over death. I guess you assess the man as a whole including his pluses and minuses. Many of us still feel a debt of gratitude for his early on standing up to protest the abuses of power. And he always did so in a most poetic way. He is a driven soul. May he find peace.

Jon

Dylan is a troubadour in the finest sence of the word. Think Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger. His album, Love & Theft, IMHO is as important as was Blonde on Blonde. What a body of work he has produced. Can you imagine what treasures have never been released?

I saw Dylan in Lansing Michigan in the early nineties and his vocals were illegible but his guitar playing surprised me, it was a terrific performance. I am glad I got invited, at the last minute, to this show and it was front row center to boot!

Saw him a short while back and I truly must say it was a pathetic performance. It's though when one of your idols is found to have feet of clay. Well maybe there was nothing wrong with his feet, but his singing was, even by his own standards, gawd awful. I guess I will put Highway 61 Revisited on the turntable and pretend this is 1965...

his vocals were illegible

Guess he should have hung on to those cue-cards from that famous Pennebaker video!

Marco