I saw Dylan in Pittsburgh in the late fall of '07. Major disappointment, and I still wish I had the damn money back. Not that his voice was "deteriorated," though to tell ya the truth, I couldn't tell if it was or not. The sound system was absolute shite. If they'd sent the bass player to Scranton it might have improved a little, because the bass was the only damn thing you could hear. The setup was about par for a third-rate bar band in the 60s, minus a thick cloud of cigarette smoke and the smell of warm beer.

Nobody ever went to see Dylan because "It's got a good beat and you can dance to it." The only song in the set that I could recognize was "All Along the Watchtower," since the band copped the Hendrix licks. I have no idea what else he did because absolutely none of the lyrics were remotely intelligible. (Of course all the songs had new and radically different arrangements, though I thought I heard the piano part for "Rainy Day Women" at one point.) If I'd been driving, I'd have left after the second or third song. Dylan spent most of the show at the keyboards, with his back to the audience. I probably would have, too.

What really infuriated me was, I could have seen Doc Watson the same week but my entertainment budget was already blown on the Dylan show. I wouldn't go from here to the printer cable to see Dylan again. (For the record, the only other time I've seen him live was at the afternoon show of the Guthrie Memorial in NY, in the 60s.)