Great performance. Horrible venue.

A brilliant, compelling two-hour show by Bob Dylan and His Band was derailed Monday by a frustrating Magna venue that showed that it isn't capable of accommodating serious music fans.

Saltair, which doesn't deserve its full name proclaiming it as The Great Saltair, ruined the show several different ways:

» The one-laned off-ramp from I-80 was congested for more than one-half mile, delaying entrance to the show by 30 minutes or more for people coming from Salt Lake City.

» The will-call and tickets lines were woefully understaffed, with delays of 15 minutes or more exacerbated by those waiting standing under a hard rain.

» Once inside, there was a level, ungraded floor so that anyone shorter than 5 foot 5 couldn't see anything happening on stage.

» And to top everything off, a muddy parking lot (that cost $5 to enter) that took ages to leave at the end of the show.

The maddening thing is that these hardships have existed for so long. And yet it appears that nothing has been done to alleviate any of these problems that, simply put, force people to be uncomfortable going to see live shows at this venue. No wonder the venue usually serves easy-to-please teens.

Despite leaving downtown Salt Lake City an hour before show time, I missed the first 40 minutes of what turned out to be the best performance I've ever seen by the mercurial 68-year-old singer-songwriter. Although I didn't see Dylan last year at Deer Valley, I have seen him at the Hollywood Bowl and Madison Square Garden, and what I saw Monday topped those.

The Dylan camp reportedly brought in its own music system to the venue, so the usually muddy and echo-laden sound of Saltair was replaced by pristine clarity that showed off one of the best backing bands that Dylan has had since The Band.

Yes, Dylan sounded all night like he was gargling salt water collected from the Great Salt Lake, but that was expected.

The great thing about the songs of Dylan is that many he wrote more than 40 years ago are just as relevant. Take this line from a mesmerizing, swampy nine-minute version of "Desolation Row" that seems to have been written by someone watching Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck bickering: "The Titanic sails at dawn / And everybody' shouting, 'Which Side Are You On?' "

In a doom-laden, biting version of "Ballad of a Thin Man," Dylan seems to be writing about our fears of the unknown in this recession:

"Something is happening here / But you don't know what it is / Do you, Mr. Jones?" And in 'Highway 61 Revisited," he sang of world leaders who are kin to the "rovin' gambler ... tryin' to create a next world war," and in "Like a Rolling Stone," he seemed to be vengefully asking Bernie Madoff "How does it feeeeeeeeeel?"

How does it feel, Saltair, to ruin a concert?