DaytonDailyNews.com

A co-worker overheard me talking excitedly Tuesday about seeing two of my favorite artists, Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello, at the Nutter Center — exactly a week after seeing another hero, Bruce Springsteen, while on vacation in New Jersey.

My friend swiveled around in his chair and demanded, "What would you have said, back in 1978, that you would be seeing those three performers in 2007?"

My response was immediate: "I would have told them they were crazy."

Back then, the likes of Costello and Springsteen provided blessed relief from the turgid pop music of the early '70s. Dylan already seemed a sage, an elder statesman. We lost so many artists to the "curse of 27" — Joplin, Hendrix, Morrison, the Stones' Brian Jones — who never lived past that age. Longevity was hardly something we could envision for our rock stars.

In our youthful myopia, we would never have dreamed that musicians in their 50s and 60s could rock this hard or have anything the least bit interesting to say.

Thank God, we were wrong. Here we are, in 2007, with the Rolling Stones' "Bigger Bang" tour newly declared the top-grossing rock tour of all time. When I stopped in Starbucks the other day, I was startled to see racks filled with new CDs by Annie Lennox, John Fogerty, Paul McCartney, Springsteen and Dylan — great performers from the era when we still had those quaint things called "records" and the only Starbucks was to be found in Moby Dick.

It matters in a number of ways. Obviously, it means we continue to be entertained — and challenged by — some of the greatest voices of our generation.

True, Dylan's actual voice is pretty raw these days. But with the songs from his latest CD, "Modern Times," you can't help but feel the presence of the master songwriter. His classic, "Masters of War," sounded as relevant today as it did, sadly, in 1963, during the war in Vietnam.

Elvis Costello drew goosebumps — just a man and his guitar — with "Crimson Tide," a stirring anti-war ballad co-written with T-Bone Burnett. His voice is much richer and more powerful than the clipped tones of his New Wave days. He has long since dropped the Angry Young Man persona that poisoned the first concert I ever attended, at the then-Victory Theatre in 1978, when he performed for less than an hour before evicting the audience by blaring white noise from a loudspeaker. Instead, Tuesday night, he reveled in the audience, developing a warm rapport.

Springsteen has always been known for that, of course, and during his performance at the Meadowlands last week he seems to have lost none of his sheer joy in performing despite the often dark and disturbing lyrics of his new CD, "Magic."

These aren't merely oldies acts, wearily dragging their greatest hits from stage to stage like a battered old suitcase. They're creating vital music, exploring new ground.

The curse of 27? After a week of great music, I'm hoping the curse of 87 doesn't hit them. My guess is they'll still be drawing goosebumps.