Saw Dylan last night. We had front row tickets, on the right side of the stage. But when we got to our seats, someone was occupying them and offered to switch... their seats were also front row and were pretty much dead-center. Err... ok, deal!

I knew about 1/3 of the songs, which is more than I expected to know. He did a few of the better tunes from his latest record, Tempest. He did Visions Of Johanna, he did All Along The Watchtower, he did Tangled Up In Blue and he did Ballad Of A Thin Man. Which was far more of his classics than I dared hope for. And all the rest of the stuff I didn't recognize sounded fine - except for not being able to understand the lyrics.

Bowie said Dylan's voice sounded like sand and glue, in 1971. These days, it's more like Louis Armstrong with a bad case of laryngitis after getting punched in the throat. He's nearly unintelligible, if you don't already know the song. But, I don't think he's ever been one to worry too much about how his voice is perceived. So, he's still at it.

He didn't play guitar. But, he did play piano for most songs, standing up. And he played harmonica on a few.

Honestly, I was worried about the show. I had heard a lot of bad things about his live shows, and am not crazy about his latest record. But, it turned out to be a really good time. And it didn't hurt that I was 25 feet from him the whole time.

Couldn't get any good pictures, though. With nobody between me and the guards standing in front of the stage, there was no way to hide while taking a pic. Had to settle for sneaking a couple at the very end.

iPhone

The lights never got brighter than that. It was a dim yellow, the whole time.

AV-Club Favorite, Dawes, opened. We didn't rush to get there, so we only caught their last few songs. But they sounded good. They ended up standing next to us, at the end of Dylan's set. And we photobombed some pix they took with fans.