Just back home from "Bringing It All Back Home", the Bob Dylan Congress in Frankfurt, at which other speakers included Richard Klein, Stephen Scobie and Peter Kemper, but didn't include, unfortunately, Betsy Bowden, who was going to speak on "The album as Aesthetic Unit: Bob Dylan and Frank Sinatra" - which, if it resembled an earlier talk given in the rather different setting of Flagstaff, Arizona in 1998, would have looked in particular at Sinatra’s 1957 album Come Dance With Me and Dylan’s album of 40 years later, Time Out Of Mind. (These details are included in the entry on Ms Bowden in The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia.)

Good to see again at Frankfurt, though, various Austrian Bob Dylan Convention Castle Plankenstein regulars. Those conventions are no more: instead of an annual coming together for hearing new bootlegs, exchanging news, catching up, watching previously unseen or favourite footage, now everyone sits at home at their computer, with instant access to last night's setlist and able to download every new morsel of Dylan rarity within 24 hours of its emergence. Quicker gratification, greater isolation.