When someone attacks your imagination.... ;-)

But no one has any respect!

They probably expect you to give all your checks to some tax deductible charity organization.

Man, it must be a real drag, M. Ted. They've got a lot of nerve, don't they?

Look, I am not going to waste my time looking up "facts" for you. There are more biographies out there about Dylan than you can shake a stick at. Just read a few of them and you will find all the facts and opinions you could possibly desire.

I don't give a toot who sold the most records, frankly. Anyway, aren't "folkies" supposed to wear their low record sales like a badge of righteousness? (grin) Some of them do that, and no one can ever accuse them of "selling out", because their conspicuously low profile guarantees they will never get stuck with that label! They will never have to face the "Dylan" test of "How can he still be acceptable to US (the people who are really in the know) when he's this popular? He must have sold out, the dirty little rat!"

I do give a toot, however, to who reached my mind and heart the strongest and thus affected my life the most. When it comes to that, Dylan's way up there. It's not about his record sales or the lack of them...whichever way you want to look at that. Seems to me that people use that argument BOTH ways in order to pick on Bob Dylan, which tells you a lot about the human mind, but nothing about Bob.

Didn't I hear recently that Mariah Carey's record sales had surpassed anyone else's, including the Beatles and Elvis?

And so what? Does it matter? I think not. She's not likely to win a Pulitzer Prize, because she has not enlarged the boundaries of cultural perception. Dylan did, and he did so profoundly.

He is as significant to his own time as Shakespeare was to another time...but you will almost have had to be there to appreciate that...if it registers on you at all, that is. I bet Shakespeare didn't register on a lot of people back then either.