Bob Dylan has always been a matter of taste to many people of my generation. There were many folk singers back in the 1960's: Peter, Paul and Mary; Simon and Garfunkle; Crosby, Stills, and Nash (all did solo stuff); Joan Baez; Joni Mitchell; John Sebastian; Arlo Guthrie (son of Woody, grandfather of the protest song); et al.

My best friend and I used to argue for hours about who was the best. Dylan attracted the rebellious element growing with the dissatisfaction of most American youth by the mid-1960's. I had to admit, Dylan was definitely the poet of our generation. But like many song writers who have musical writing talent but lack performance skills, Dylan had me until he opened his mouth. Then all I could focus on was his horrible voice. His stage presence was even worse. I once watched him fumble and mumble through over an hour on stage before he decided he'd had enough and walked off without so much as an apology. But then I saw Miles Davis and Eric Clapton do the same thing.

Everyone on the above list wrote and performed protest songs against the war in Vietnam, and other government atrocities. Few of us liked LBJ, and none of liked Nixon. He was easy to hate, along with his cronies (sort like Bush, Jr.). To me, Dylan was no better than they were, a point many music historians and critics could argue endlessly about.

Bob Dylan is a favorite with the New York crowd and had a huge following coast to coast. In the history of folk music, he had the greatest impact in terms of how seriously people took his music. However, Dylan's lyrics stand alone, as they spoke to so many young people beginning in the early sixties with how they felt about the changing climate in our society. College Professors in the late 60's were fond of quoting Dylan along with other "beat" poets from the late 50's and early 60's. In that regard, I can relate to a certain level of Schumann's experience. I only wish Dylan had left the singing and performing to someone else, and left his genius for others to portray. Some say that this peculiarity is his charm, but I never got past it. To this day, I cannot stand the sound of his voice. I would rather hear the sound of seagulls. Give me someone like Graham Nash any day. ("Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, we're finally on our own. This summer I hear them calling, four dead in Ohio.") He rallied a generation to bring down a convention in 1968, not Dylan. Him, I could listen to all night.

"Find a song of freedom, buried in the ground. Mother Earth will swallow you. Lay your body down." Graham Nash.