Seeing Bob Dylan walk out on stage is like seeing Babe Ruth, Robert Frost, and the Pope all rolled into one, at once. An icon. A poet. The God of rock n' roll. Tonight, when Dylan and his band took the stage resting in the middle of the baseball infield at Frontier Field in the heart of Rochester, NY, the crowd, both young and old, new and seasoned, stood and clapped in unison. Dylan didn't acknowledge them with a "Hello" or a "Thanks for coming out." He did what he does best: he tore right into a song. Manning the keyboard while everyone else took positions around him, the first song of the night was, "Cat's In The Well" from the album, Under the Red Sky. Though most would consider neither--the song nor the album--to be among the pantheon of Dylan's finest, if anything the song was a sign of what was to come for the entire night: diversity.

Songs both new and old came flying out one after another. Second to bat was, "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere", which Dylan and the band nailed, followed up by equally impressive renditions of "Tweedle Dum & Tweedle Dee", and then "Positively 4th Street". A change of pace here, a two-step there, and just like that everyone was rocking, be it in their seats, or on the covered infield. Strangers dancing with strangers. Husbands dancing with wives. Mothers and fathers rocking with their sons and daughters. Time wasn't captured here, it was defied. Just like Dylan's career.

Dylan, now a full forty-four years removed from the release of his first album, Bob Dylan, and twenty-four hours removed from the release of his latest, Modern Times chose a vast array of time-spanning material to fill the set-list. Reaching deep into his closet, which only happens to consist of the greatest back catalog of any songwriter ever, he took out gems from classic albums such as: Blonde On Blonde ("Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again" and "Leopard-Skill-Pill-Box-Hat"), John Wesley Harding ("I'll Be Your Baby Tonight"), and Highway 61 Revisited, by rocking the stadium silly with the title track. He got the hair on the back of everyone's neck to stand up with a chilling rendition of the as-relevent-now-as-it-was-then-classic, "Masters of War" off of The Freehwheelin' Bob Dylan. He played a rarity, "Joey" off of Desire. And he also hit a couple home runs with "Sugar Baby" and "Summer Days" off of 2001's release, Love & Theft. With each song's start and conclusion the phrase heard most was "Wow" from the lips of his disciples.

And Dylan himself was not only visibly into it, dancing as he pounded away at the keyboards, but was completely audible, even to those who wouldn't know all of the lyrics by heart. And his band, which Dylan recently referred to as "the best I've ever played with", was equally brilliant, transitioning from blues, to rockabilly, to classic rock n' roll without even the slightest misstep.

The performance was flawless.

And then Dylan and his band came back out for the encore, first playing the song Rolling Stone magazine named "Best Rock Song of All-Time" in 2005, "Like a Rolling Stone", before concluding with "All Along The Watchtower." The lights went out, and then came back on. Dylan and his band were standing center-stage and took their well earned bow. They exited, the lights went on, and the thousands started heading for the exit gates. On the way to their cars some were overheard comparing the just finished concert to past Dylan shows they've attended. For the others just having seen Dylan for the first time they were trying to find something to compare the show to. The most common word used among both groups then was "great". And that word, great, can be used to describe almost any part of Dylan's career, from the folk beginning, to the rock revolution, to his revival in the last decade. But tonight the word "great" only applied to tonight. And it's one that anyone who was there will not soon forget.

Justin Holt graduated from Edinboro University in 2002. In 2005 he released his first novel, Payday. Justin can be found online at justinholt.net.