Funny you should mention that. I go to a cafe that plays a blues program all the time...satellite radio or something. There was this blues song on by some blues singer, and it was a carbon copy of a Dylan song...but the words had all been changed. Whereas the Dylan song was about a rather complex theme, the blues song was some standard thing about the guy's negotiations with his woman. I can't remember which darn song it was now, but it just jumped out at me at the time and I thought it was kind of funny that someone would do that. They replaced some pretty meaningful lyrics with a whole brand new set of lyrics that were totally banal.

Another case of some very obvious "borrowing" of a Dylan song was Rod Stewart's blatant imitation of "Forever Young"...even using the same title as the original. He basically took Dylan's 1974 song, altered the chord pattern, altered and simplified the tune, eviscerated the chorus, and took most of the lyrics, changed them slightly, added a couple more, and then mixed up the order of the lines. This was a very shoddy attempt to pretend to have a new song on Rod Stewart's part, but it worked, and it was new musically speaking. The damn thing was a radio hit. (grin) I think it's lacklustre.

So my guess would be this: attempts to improve on Dylan's songs have generally not been too successful, thus far. I've heard some great covers, though. Sean Colvin does a great job on "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go". Joan Baez does certain Dylan songs very well....such as "Farewell Angelina" and "Love is Just a Four Letter Word". She also added an additional verse to it, so I guess that's a rewrite. Hendrix's version of "All Along the Watchtower" was another really good adaptation of a Dylan song, by the way, although I don't know why he says "somewhere in the tall distance". He added the word "tall" to that. Strange.

I agree that folksongs should be open to development. Dylan himself has almost endlessly revamped and revised his older songs over the years, and I expect that others will do so as well.

To those who don't get that "Blowin' In The Wind" was an angry and passionate protest song...well, that's sad. Check out that link Peace provided. By God, that was a time, and Bob Dylan, more than any other soul alive wrote the songs that fired up the movement. Joan Baez has always said that, and don't tell me she didn't get out there and fight for her ideals. She's still doing so. Judy Collins always said so too.

If "Blowin' In The Wind" isn't literal enough protest for you, then listen to "The Times They Are A-Changin'". If that isn't literal enough for you, then listen to "Masters of War". Or try "Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol". Or listen to "It's Allright, Ma...I'm Only Bleeding" (the song that protests just about everything in society).

If you can't see it, then you're the man who keeps looking up and never sees the sky. You're the one who turns his head and just doesn't see. You're the one who doesn't hear other people cry.

You think Dylan didn't care about that stuff when he wrote those songs? I think you're completely wrong about that. He cared about it right to the bone, and it's totally obvious if you listen to his voice when he sings, specially at the live concerts. He went with it full force for about 3-4 years, 3-4 very concentrated years, and then he started getting extremely uncomfortable with being the New Left's political icon. He felt he was being used by other people and he didn't want that. That's when he stepped away from the protest material and went into more personal songs and soon returned to electric music (which he'd played with great gusto in a series of high school rock bands). This was considered a betrayal by the folk establishment of the time. It was not a betrayal. It was a man trying to escape being put into a box by other people, and the actions of a man not content to rest on his laurels and keep doing the same damn thing over and over again till hell freezes over. He wanted to do something new and different.

Want to know what I think? I think that nothing beats Dylan's acoustic live performances in '65-66. I think he was at the absolute top of his craft then, and I think his finest writing (arguably) was on the 1965 album "Bringing It All Back Home". I love the electric stuff that came in the next 2 albums too, but Dylan alone with just an acoustic guitar and a harmonica was the ultimate and you could hear the words a lot clearer that way. It was more intimate. So I understand, what the folk audience was upset about at the time... Still, for him at that time it had become very boring to keep doing that. He wanted to work with a band. I can understand why he would've felt that way too.

Some people are happy to just keep doing the same thing. Others have to move on.