Dylan, Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp dropped into Durham last night to play right across the street from McKinney at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. They were all great, but the evening was curiously unmoving. Music at its best is either a very intimate experience or a spectacular event, and everything in the middle is likely to disappoint.

That got me thinking about how technology has changed our experience of music. We carry 5000 very high quality songs on our iPhones for immediate gratification. And we go home at night to watch 42 diagonal inches of re-mastered, first row quality HD video of the best performers in the world. That leaves us going to a stadium (albeit one designed for baseball games) to listen to overcranked amps from a band 400 yards away. No wonder it left me hungry for more.

The proof is in the difference between this concert and Willie Nelson’s solo concert at the Durham Performing Arts Center right next door just two months ago. As someone last night said, “When Willie walked on he looked every bit his 75 years, but as soon as he strapped his guitar over that old man’s paunch, he lost 40 years and you were transplanted back to a different time.” An intimate experience. Kinda cool to have the comparison side-by-side right in the neighborhood.