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Bob Dylan, who doesn’t allow photographers at his performances, returned to NEPA last week for the first time since 2003.

SCRANTON — Forget that his vocals can sometimes resemble more croaking than singing, and take a Bob Dylan show for what it is: The legend doing the songs he wants with the arrangements that he wants before a rapt audience.

Watching Dylan’s performance Wednesday, Aug. 10 at Toyota Pavilion at Montage Mountain was like watching history unfold before your eyes. Some of his most well-known songs were mixed in with deeper cuts, including three in a row from 2001’s “Love And Theft.”

Following a cover-heavy 45-minute performance by legend-in-his-own-right Leon Russell, Dylan’s set started with the slightly bluesy “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” with “The Poet Laureate of Rock ’n’ Roll” clad in his trademark western-style suit and hat behind the keyboards. “It Ain’t Me, Babe” featured a great lead in and warbling organ while Dylan came out to center stage with his harmonica for a bluegrass-tinged rendition of his Oscar-winning song, “Things Have Changed.”

Dylan and his harmonica stayed front and center for “Tangled Up In Blue,” which preceded “Beyond Here Lies Nothin,’” for which he strapped on his guitar. The three “Love and Theft” songs followed: The tender “Mississippi,” “High Water (For Charley Patton)” and the rockabilly-esque “Summer Days,” which featured a great Dylan organ/Charlie Sexton guitar dance and Tony Garnier’s fantastic upright bass.

The nine-minute “Desolation Road,” from 1965’s “Highway 61 Revisited,” featured a tasty tangent that only added to Dylan’s mellow, low-key performance. That album’s title track followed, and had Sexton’s guitar and Dylan’s organ again playing off each other well, making the song a standout. Dylan handled a guttural guitar solo on “Simple Twist of Fate,” which, these days is a rare treat, as the musician mostly spends his time behind the keys or manning his harmonica. A peppy version of “Thunder On The Mountain,” from 2006’s “Modern Times” featured Dylan doing a few equally peppy dance moves.

An incredible — and devilish — “Ballad Of A Thin Man,” which featured woeful and searing Dylan harmonica, closed the set proper on a magnificent note.

Following the first song of the encore, an amazing version of “Like A Rolling Stone,” Dylan spoke to the audience for the first time to say, “Thank you very much,” before introducing his adept band. The show’s final song was the searing “All Along The Watchtower,” which was deep and dark thanks to layers of guitars, bass and organ melded together, while Garnier’s chugging bass offered an ominous tone.

Bob Dylan is one of rock ’n’ roll’s most mysterious entities. He’s been the voice of social unrest, he famously jumped from folk to “electric,” to Christian music and back, and has put out some of his best, most well-received works in the past decade. He’s a poet, who sometimes sounds more like he’s reciting stanzas than singing, a painter and more than anything, an enigma.

The receptive and sizeable crowd that stood before Dylan Wednesday night got it. They got that his vocals are an acquired taste, they got that his songs you hear on the radio probably aren’t going to be what you hear or even recognize in concert — and they got that rare glimpse into the magic and mystique that is one of America’s greatest musicians.