Our hot tub broke down last Monday, making it no longer hot. On Wednesday, my grandfather’s clock jammed; it takes six months to clean and repair. You guessed it: on Friday Michael deBettencourt gave the last rites to my 15-year-old, 275,000 mile Geo/Prizm/Toyota. It was a long week.

I needed something to pick up my spirits — something old, but new, something familiar, but challenging. I scored a ticket to see Bob Dylan play at the Tsongas Arena in Lowell last Saturday night. My wife, Joyce, has her limits. (One of our first dates, in Boston, was Handel’s Messiah at Symphony Hall, immediately followed by Bob Dylan at the Orpheum. Talk about culture shock.) Joyce has her standards, so I went solo.

My “best available seat” turned out to be standing in the mosh pit, 20 or so feet in front of the stage. My fellow aficionados were primarily UMass-Lowell students, too young to drink, too young to have known the Dylan of the 1960s, only aware that he was a must-see. The occasional gray beard gave a certain authority of experience to the crowd, though they (we) were decidedly in the minority.

Dylan sauntered on stage only a few minutes late, attired in a black jacket, black pants with a yellow stripe up the side, and a broad white boater’s hat. His five-piece band was in uniform, and as eager and enthused as the excited throng that stood and swayed before them.

For nearly two hours Bob Dylan held the audience in thrall, primarily on keyboard, playing 16 songs which ranged from the 1960s to the last decade. His voice was its typical gravelly grind. His flawless rendition of epics, from Visions of Johanna to A Simple Twist of Fate, was impressive. When he strummed his guitar or blew his harmonica, the excitement in the arena was palpable. The music was loud and fast. An impressive rendition by an aging idol.

Occasionally Dylan seemed as if he were about to smile; instead it was to bare his teeth to evince a certain word. One clear line emerged from The Ballad of a Thin Man when he enunciated: “You don’t know what’s happenin’, do YA, MisTAH Jones?” Beyond introducing his band, he never interacted with the audience. But at the end he spread his arms wide to accept the adulation.

What makes Bob Dylan’s concert a treat is the challenge that accompanies the show. First, how and why is the old man still singing his heart out? He turns 70 next May. And then, what is he singing? It’s a challenge to identify many songs, because they are old tunes played in a different tempo, designed to breathe fresh life into familiar refrains. Each new version sounds like an old song on speed, which, in a way, it is. With a catalogue that spans half a century, over 60 albums and 500 songs, it is a feat to follow the master’s voice.

The audience was cranked up as he burst into Gonna Change My Way of Thinking, from his 1979 album Slow Train Coming. That melded easily into a faster version of It Ain’t Me, Babe. Tangled Up in Blue brought an eruption of excitement, camera-phones flashing, hands clapping, feet stomping. And the final number, Like a Rolling Stone, had the audience cheering and singing along. The enthusiasm was electric.

Other tunes — A Simple Twist of Fate, Highway 61 Revisited, and Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again — enlisted a familiar ring, though the tempo was a little off-putting. New songs such as Thunder on the Mountain and Honest with Me were more easily recognized.

To play to an audience made up primarily of generation X, whose parents were babes themselves when Dylan burst on the music scene at the age of 19 in January 1961, is amazing. I know I never cared to listen to music from my parents’ generation; but then, there was no Bob Dylan in the 1920s. Saturday night’s audience was awed by his performance, at least from the vantage of the floor in front of the stage.

The man who has influenced generations continues to leave his mark on the listening public. It was a pleasure once again to see his grizzled face and hear his gruff manner.

Now I can return in peace to fixing my grandfather’s clock, repairing my hot tub and removing my car to an automobile burying ground.

Gazette contributor Tom Dresser lives in Oak Bluffs.