2006

10/7

Uncategorized

Is that what I think it is?

by | Print
{mosimage}

Unlikely, strange, un-well-known, interesting covers of songs we know. 

Like it was for many people I know, my first exposure to Dylan was when I didn’t even know it (Guns N’ Roses playing his Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door, as it happened). Several different versions of Knockin’…, Blowing In The Wind and Forever Young later, I finally got around to listening to the creator of all of this prolific music. And then I discovered many more interesting renditions of his songs played by artists that included the likes of those purveyors of induced enlightenment, the Grateful Dead, and the sock-clad bad-assedness of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. These are three covers by artists whose range only underlines Dylan’s influence on all popular music that came after him: 


All Along The Watchtower - Grateful Dead 

You certainly can’t blame Dylan for it. His All Along The Watchtower, released on the John Wesley Harding album, probably just got a little lost in the crowd of classic albums that he put out with such amazing regularity in the 60s, such as Blonde On Blonde and Highway 61 Revisited - albums that are now spoken of mostly in hushed reverence. Not that he particularly needed it, but Dylan got a little help from his friend Jimi Hendrix when he covered, no, drenched what was an innocuous-sounding acoustic folk-rock number with wailing vocals and his signature electric guitar. Much like Joe Cocker did when he covered a certain other song at Woodstock, Hendrix now owned Watchtower. So much so that in future performances, Dylan played Watchtower the way Hendrix had! 

So imagine my surprise listening to a latter-day Grateful Dead concert (1), the end of one song giving way to a typically mishy-mashy start of another. I didn’t know it was this one until I heard the unmistakable There must be some way out of here, cried to the joker to the thief opening line. The song sounds cluttered at first, with guitars and a very tasteful keyboard going all over the place. But you’ll hear the signature riff in place through everything else, barely but surely playing anchor to the other instruments that seem constantly in danger of running away with themselves. In contrast to Dylan’s almost reticent and Hendrix’s authoritative renditions, Dead guitarist and singer Bob Weir’s vocals are airy and sound surprised, like he was invited up on stage at a karaoke night and was vocalizing the lines off the screen as he read them. With a couple of lengthy Jerry Garcia solos punctuating the performance, the music takes whimsical turn after whimsical turn. This is in sharp contrast to the version that I find myself going back to, the one whose motif is the grinding riff that Hendrix keeps going. This penta-instrumental romp builds to a crescendo and ends not with a flourish of any sort, but more with a lazy sigh.

 

Subterranean Homesick Blues - Red Hot Chili Peppers 

It’s almost like the Red Hot Chili Peppers took this Dylan number right out of 1965 and placed it in a time machine (complete with all of the cool gadgetry they devised, of course). Part of their The Uplift Mofo Party Plan album, RHCP catapults the blink-and-you-miss Subterranean Homesick Blues into the Funk-Rap-Rock realm, a sound that they prototyped and are still carrying as admirably as ever. If you’re a purist Dylan fan, prepare to be shocked, because that is how dissonant this will sound relative to the original.  

Flea’s bass slaps funk and sets the groove right at the beginning. Anthony Kiedis outright raps and is as cheeky and in-your-face as ever. The tempo of the original and of Dylan’s vocals in it lends itself very well to Kiedis’s delivery, and is quite possibly the biggest reason RHCP chose to cover this song in the first place. The bursts of wah-wah and overdrive at places in the song originally occupied by Dylan’s harmonica only serve to further emphasize the creative brazenness that has come to be so strongly associated with the Chili Peppers. A most unlikely cover, but one that works in the quirkiest sense imaginable.

 

Like A Rolling Stone - B.B.King and Jimi Hendrix 

How would two virtuouso guitarists interpret a brilliant song, some say the greatest of all time, a melody so full of character? This is one of those songs where Dylan gives full voice to his singing, something that often took a backseat to the story-telling aspect of his music. B.B.King and Jimi Hendrix give us their version of Like A Rolling Stone at a concert where they ask the venerable Paul Butterfield Blues Band to back them (2). Hendrix, known for playing Dylan at concerts, takes on vocalist duties over a solid rhythm section with surging bass guitar runs that complement either lead wonderfully. B.B.King, as always, stands out with his bending blues-style licks and as always, has an uncanny knack of playing them at exactly the right moments. 

Although both Hendrix and King play their parts adequately, there are no extended solos or duets. It would have been interesting to see how a guitar duel would have fit in the context of the song, if only to satisfy that greed to want to hear these two masters improvise within the space that a third gave them. Hendrix’s vocals lack the kind of colour that Dylan gave the song and got us used to. In spite of this, this performance stands up well enough for itself independently, and really, Jimi Hendrix and B.B. King playing anything together is well worth a listen to. Seemingly torn between wanting to do justice to a great song and wanting to do justice to their mighty talents, they come up just a little short on both counts. 

 

 

(1) This Grateful Dead concert took place on June 6th, 1991 at Noblesville, Indiana, USA. Nugs.net has an excellent collection of Grateful Dead concert recordings available, some of them even (legally) free for download. 

(2) B.B.King and Jimi Hendrix teamed up with The Paul Butterfield Blues Band to play The King’s Jam concert at New York City in April 1968.

 

(Ashwin Raghu likes to think about music when he’s not listening to it. His Fab Four would be Robert, Jimmy,John Paul and John, although Roger, David, Nick and Richard would run them close. Just as John, Paul,George and Ringo would. Looking back at that, he’s pondering the possibilities of a supergroup with John,John, John and John, and not necessarily in that order either. Did he say "think"?!)

{mosimage}

({mhauthor})

Also by

Share This

2006

10/7

Uncategorized

Is that what I think it is?

by | Print
{mosimage}

Unlikely, strange, un-well-known, interesting covers of songs we know. 

Like it was for many people I know, my first exposure to Dylan was when I didn’t even know it (Guns N’ Roses playing his Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door, as it happened). Several different versions of Knockin’…, Blowing In The Wind and Forever Young later, I finally got around to listening to the creator of all of this prolific music. And then I discovered many more interesting renditions of his songs played by artists that included the likes of those purveyors of induced enlightenment, the Grateful Dead, and the sock-clad bad-assedness of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. These are three covers by artists whose range only underlines Dylan’s influence on all popular music that came after him: 


All Along The Watchtower - Grateful Dead 

You certainly can’t blame Dylan for it. His All Along The Watchtower, released on the John Wesley Harding album, probably just got a little lost in the crowd of classic albums that he put out with such amazing regularity in the 60s, such as Blonde On Blonde and Highway 61 Revisited - albums that are now spoken of mostly in hushed reverence. Not that he particularly needed it, but Dylan got a little help from his friend Jimi Hendrix when he covered, no, drenched what was an innocuous-sounding acoustic folk-rock number with wailing vocals and his signature electric guitar. Much like Joe Cocker did when he covered a certain other song at Woodstock, Hendrix now owned Watchtower. So much so that in future performances, Dylan played Watchtower the way Hendrix had! 

So imagine my surprise listening to a latter-day Grateful Dead concert (1), the end of one song giving way to a typically mishy-mashy start of another. I didn’t know it was this one until I heard the unmistakable There must be some way out of here, cried to the joker to the thief opening line. The song sounds cluttered at first, with guitars and a very tasteful keyboard going all over the place. But you’ll hear the signature riff in place through everything else, barely but surely playing anchor to the other instruments that seem constantly in danger of running away with themselves. In contrast to Dylan’s almost reticent and Hendrix’s authoritative renditions, Dead guitarist and singer Bob Weir’s vocals are airy and sound surprised, like he was invited up on stage at a karaoke night and was vocalizing the lines off the screen as he read them. With a couple of lengthy Jerry Garcia solos punctuating the performance, the music takes whimsical turn after whimsical turn. This is in sharp contrast to the version that I find myself going back to, the one whose motif is the grinding riff that Hendrix keeps going. This penta-instrumental romp builds to a crescendo and ends not with a flourish of any sort, but more with a lazy sigh.

 

Subterranean Homesick Blues - Red Hot Chili Peppers 

It’s almost like the Red Hot Chili Peppers took this Dylan number right out of 1965 and placed it in a time machine (complete with all of the cool gadgetry they devised, of course). Part of their The Uplift Mofo Party Plan album, RHCP catapults the blink-and-you-miss Subterranean Homesick Blues into the Funk-Rap-Rock realm, a sound that they prototyped and are still carrying as admirably as ever. If you’re a purist Dylan fan, prepare to be shocked, because that is how dissonant this will sound relative to the original.  

Flea’s bass slaps funk and sets the groove right at the beginning. Anthony Kiedis outright raps and is as cheeky and in-your-face as ever. The tempo of the original and of Dylan’s vocals in it lends itself very well to Kiedis’s delivery, and is quite possibly the biggest reason RHCP chose to cover this song in the first place. The bursts of wah-wah and overdrive at places in the song originally occupied by Dylan’s harmonica only serve to further emphasize the creative brazenness that has come to be so strongly associated with the Chili Peppers. A most unlikely cover, but one that works in the quirkiest sense imaginable.

 

Like A Rolling Stone - B.B.King and Jimi Hendrix 

How would two virtuouso guitarists interpret a brilliant song, some say the greatest of all time, a melody so full of character? This is one of those songs where Dylan gives full voice to his singing, something that often took a backseat to the story-telling aspect of his music. B.B.King and Jimi Hendrix give us their version of Like A Rolling Stone at a concert where they ask the venerable Paul Butterfield Blues Band to back them (2). Hendrix, known for playing Dylan at concerts, takes on vocalist duties over a solid rhythm section with surging bass guitar runs that complement either lead wonderfully. B.B.King, as always, stands out with his bending blues-style licks and as always, has an uncanny knack of playing them at exactly the right moments. 

Although both Hendrix and King play their parts adequately, there are no extended solos or duets. It would have been interesting to see how a guitar duel would have fit in the context of the song, if only to satisfy that greed to want to hear these two masters improvise within the space that a third gave them. Hendrix’s vocals lack the kind of colour that Dylan gave the song and got us used to. In spite of this, this performance stands up well enough for itself independently, and really, Jimi Hendrix and B.B. King playing anything together is well worth a listen to. Seemingly torn between wanting to do justice to a great song and wanting to do justice to their mighty talents, they come up just a little short on both counts. 

 

 

(1) This Grateful Dead concert took place on June 6th, 1991 at Noblesville, Indiana, USA. Nugs.net has an excellent collection of Grateful Dead concert recordings available, some of them even (legally) free for download. 

(2) B.B.King and Jimi Hendrix teamed up with The Paul Butterfield Blues Band to play The King’s Jam concert at New York City in April 1968.

 

(Ashwin Raghu likes to think about music when he’s not listening to it. His Fab Four would be Robert, Jimmy,John Paul and John, although Roger, David, Nick and Richard would run them close. Just as John, Paul,George and Ringo would. Looking back at that, he’s pondering the possibilities of a supergroup with John,John, John and John, and not necessarily in that order either. Did he say "think"?!)

{mosimage}

({mhauthor})

Also by

Share This

Comments

Leave a Reply




Close
E-mail It