Where to start? Simply, Dylan's history dictates he has little right to be as good as he was last night at Vicar Street.
There are people topping the charts these days at a quarter his age who have no more talent than a budgerier's whistle. Flanked by empathetic, intuitive musicians clearly the match of both The Band and those rock'n'roll rascals in the Rolling Thunder Revue - with the added bonus of the sterling, duelling guitarist in Charlie Sexton - Bob Dylan jauntily strolled through his back pages with no secrets to conceal and plenty of surprises in store.
Chinese whispers said he would be playing an acoustic gig, but the reality of a rock set became apparent when the good, the great and the fans walked into the venue and saw a full band system.
Displaying a remarkable sense of time and place , Dylan's iconic status, so dismissed by both himself and his most staunch critics in the past, was reinforced by a set that encompassed the completely unfamiliar (one song at least foxed the Dylanologists) with the universally known: Blowin' In The Wind, Tangled Up In Blue, Highway 61, Ramona, Girl From The North Country, Like A Rolling Stone, Just Like A Woman and Desolation Row.
For those in attendance whose knowledge of Dylan was such that they barely recognised one song from another this gig was a beginner's guide in learning what the fuss was all about. For Dylan fans, it was a confirmation of the man's considerable stature and a reason to die happy.
