My dad and I and a friend from work saw Bob Dylan at the Allstate Arena last Friday. Both of the dailies’ rock critics raved, but I must admit that I was a little bit disappointed.

Dylan has been playing a lot of keyboards on this tour, and as Kot points out his playing was out of left field on a lot of songs. Some songs Bob just nailed. “Tombstone Blues,” “Things Have Changed,” “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleedin’),” “Cold Irons Bound,” and a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar” were standouts. And the best song of the night was the boogie-woogie dance ’til its hurt jump of “Summer Days,” on which Bob and his fine band just played their hearts out.

But too many other songs just kind of hung there, and Bob was in poor vocal form much of the evening. I don’t mean his voice, which is an acquired taste. I mean his enunciation, his phrasing, his overall care with the delivery of the words and their accompanying feelings.

Particularly off the mark, I thought, were “Lay, Lady, Lay,” “Just Like a Woman” and in particular, “High Water (For Charley Patton).” The last is probably the best song on Bob’s most recent album, “Love and Theft,” (aside from “Mississippi”) and his performance of it last year at the United Center was fabulous.

He tried to mix it up, as is Bob’s tendency, and it just fell completely flat. Bob’s never boring, but he can be frustrating when he goes and does a thing like that. A week later in the tour and “High Water” probably sounds great. Ah, well.

Who can speculate, but I thought Bob really put a lot of conviction into his rendering of “Masters of War,” which is a great anti-war song because it doesn’t belabor obvious tragedy of war but discusses how the machine for needless war can be fed. It’s like a poetic, musical study in public-choice theory.

I cannot honestly say that I didn’t enjoy myself, because I did. But I look forward to seeing a better show next time around, which is hopefully soon.