Over the years I've seen Dylan probably about 8 or 10 times since the 1980s. He is, as I'm sure you found out, a mixed bag. In some of his later shows he did remain seated behind his keys for most of the show as Kyle pointed out. During some of the shows it was near impossible to make out a word he was saying...he seemed to mumble, wheeze, and groan an entire set. Everything seems to depend upon his mood/inspiration level during a show. Songs at Dylan's live shows shift and change. He rearranges them, plays them at different tempos, and turns them upside down and inside out. Sometimes you glimpse what he was going for...sometimes you wonder why he is bothering doing this. He seems to always have a crackerjack band with him...which is a plus...but in general if you go expecting to hear anything sound close to what it might have sounded like on the album...well...you will mainly be disappointed.

The truth is Bob does not have much of a voice left. Some would say he never had a voice but what he had he made work for him in ways some singers with tremendous pipes could never approach. The best live Dylan I have ever heard did not come in person but on the Bob Dylan Live 1975 set released several years ago. Here Dylan rips through his songs with a fantastic band and literally sounds like he is going to tear the roof off the place. Personally I think this is a must own live record and really a fantastic Dylan set.

Sadly Dylan's voice seems little more than a rasp now and so the only place he can sort of work the subtleties of a song and play with his vocal delivery is in a studio. In a live setting all nuance is lost and you just get an odd croak, mumble, caterwaul thing going on that after 4 or 5 tunes becomes a bit difficult for a lot of people to take. There are no melodies in a live Dylan set these days and when you combine this with taking one of his ballads and recasting it as a roadhouse rave-up playing it at lighting speed or slowing one of his faster songs down to a dirge...well...what a lot of people end up doing is asking "What song is this?"

A Dylan show today mainly always includes a sea of people walking out during the show. Many times by the time you get two thirds into the show, two thirds of the audience have left. The people that stay tend to be just the Dylan die-hards and these folks mostly revel in the fact that so many people head for the exits during the show.

The interesting thing to me is as his live shows have become sort of a game of "When does the mass exodus begin?" his studio albums got better. From Time Out of Mind to Tempest Dylan has turned out outstanding records. So really there are two Dylans to consider these days...the man to be reckoned with that pours the wisdom of the ages into churning out still potent studio records and the wreck in a Nudie suit appearing at a concert hall near you.

It's funny but I remember when Dylan did his MTV Unplugged deal and a lot of people complained about that set. They said "Oh, he's done!", "Washed up!" "He sounded terrible!" but I guarantee if he could manage a live set now that sounded like that people would not walk out but give a rousing ovation to get him to come back out and play one more.

A friend of mine that went to see Dylan for the first time a couple years ago and was one of the early walk outs shrugged and said "Well, at least I can say I saw Bob Dylan."

Yes...you can say you saw Bob Dylan.