Great love tends to work that way, Thomas. ;-) You see the good in people when you love them. Everybody nicks tunes, consciously or unconsciously, and it's in the grand folk tradition to do so. The only reason Dylan gets criticism for it is this: he was a big success when he did it.

I see plenty of things wrong with Bob (he's got his dark side and he had a very big ego), but I don't resent his success. I think his nastier and less objective critics are primarily driven by precisely the fact that they resent his success.

I am perfectly aware where Dylan borrowed trad tunes, and I think that in most cases he greatly improved upon the original songs in his rewrites. I have done rewrites on trad songs too. It seems like a perfectly normal thing to do in the folk tradition to me.

Dylan also recorded "No More Auction Block" and performed it live quite a bit. It's a cool song. "Blowin' In The Wind" is better, in my opinion, both musically and lyrically. It's considerably deeper.

If you think Dylan relied on "punters" who didn't "know any better", then what the hell do you think the entire mainstream pop music business relies on, and every other popular style of music, not to mention our stupid political system and our mass media???? They rely on punters who don't know any better, that's what.

Find something to criticize that matters a bit more than whether Bob Dylan adapted some old trad songs to new lyrics.