Jokerman - Greg murders Bob Dylan

  • Thread starter Thread starter Greg_L
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Fuck I always love your sound. I don't know the original, so it's pretty much like listening to a Greg original. I can pretty much guarantee that the vocals on this are better than the original...:D

Everything sounds great, man. Can't really critique anything.
 
Greg doing melodic punky Dylan doing sedate reggae {with authentic Sly'n'Robbie bass & drums} flavoured post born again period mysteries......cute. Well sung and I always loved the lines
"You're a man of the mountains
but you live in the clouds
Manipulator of crowds ~you're a dream twister
You're going to Sodom and Gomorrah
but what do you care ?
Ain't nobody there that would want to marry your sister".

Dylan's stuff has so often lent itself well to imaginative covers.
Yeah, cute.
 
RAMI said:
Fuck I always love your sound. I don't know the original, so it's pretty much like listening to a Greg original. I can pretty much guarantee that the vocals on this are better than the original...:D

Everything sounds great, man. Can't really critique anything.
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Lol. Thanks. I suspect I'll hate it tomorrow, but for now it's okay and was fun to do.

Here's the original. I pretty much kept it faithful to the original. :p
[video=youtube;1XSvsFgvWr0&ob]video[/video]
 
grimtraveller said:
Greg doing melodic punky Dylan doing sedate reggae {with authentic Sly'n'Robbie bass & drums} flavoured post born again period mysteries......cute. Well sung and I always loved the lines
"You're a man of the mountains
but you live in the clouds
Manipulator of crowds ~you're a dream twister
You're going to Sodom and Gomorrah
but what do you care ?
Ain't nobody there that would want to marry your sister".

Dylan's stuff has so often lent itself well to imaginative covers.
Yeah, cute.
Click to expand...

You're gonna have to translate that first sentence for me. :confused:

I'm not a big Dylan fan at all, but some of his stuff is okay. My wife and I like this song for it's weird lyrical ambiguity. I'm not into lyrics by any means and I'm usually turned off by lyrical math homework, but this song's lyrics have always interested me. Is he saying he's Jesus? I don't know. I don't care. It's just a silly song from someone that obviously thinks too much. :laughings:
 
Greg_L said:
You're gonna have to translate that first sentence for me. :confused:

I'm not a big Dylan fan at all, but some of his stuff is okay. My wife and I like this song for it's weird lyrical ambiguity. I'm not into lyrics by any means and I'm usually turned off by lyrical math homework, but this song's lyrics have always interested me. Is he saying he's Jesus? I don't know. I don't care. It's just a silly song from someone that obviously thinks too much. :laughings:
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Well, around the end of the 70s Dylan went through a born again christian period and did 4 Lps, the last of which was "Infidels" in which he was kind of tailing off the christian bit and "Jokerman" is on that album. He does it in a reggae kind of style with Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare on bass and drums, who at the time {early 80s} were the most in demand reggae rhythm section. Your cover is a punky version, but in my opinion, the guitars are very melodic and the melody of the song, I always dug anyway. On the 'Infidels' album, the song is pretty sedate, almost calming......if it wasn't for the lyrics, which are pretty poetic, rather ambiguous, full of biblical references that could allude to his Judaism or his christian period or frustrations with both. Or neither at all, just him stringing together intersting imagery and words, a la Dylan. Jokerman and other songs on the album caused all kinds of debate among Christians and Jews as to whether Dylan was slipping, had slipped, had fallen from Jesus, had returned to Judaism, mysteries, mysteries ! Hence.....that opening sentence.
The lyrics probably do seem pretty daft, but sometimes, one recognizes 'insider references' that wouldn't mean much to most people. I just like that kind of thing.
Either way, it's not really important.
 
Most Dylan songs are built for reinterpretation by other performers - he just wasn't terribly expressive. Imagine his back catalogue without the likes of Cocker, Hendrix and Loyacano!
This is good fun & wow, mate you wrap your vocal chords around a lot of words in this one.
Cool.
Oh, bass from heaven!
 
I was never big on Dylan, but then when I heard highway 61 revisited it struck a chord with me. I've heard a lot of his albums and none of them do it for me, but I can keep going back to that album and find new things to like about it.

This is a cool cover it really sounds like it's your song not his and you managed to change it enough that none of the kids today would know it's a Dylan song lol
 
rayc said:
Most Dylan songs are built for reinterpretation by other performers - he just wasn't terribly expressive. Imagine his back catalogue without the likes of Cocker, Hendrix and Loyacano!
This is good fun & wow, mate you wrap your vocal chords around a lot of words in this one.
Cool.
Oh, bass from heaven!
Click to expand...
Haha, thanks Ray. Yeah I was a little worried about the sheer volume of words in the lyrics. It's fine for the slowpokey original version, but I'm going literally twice as fast. I didn't know if I could fit it all in. I know the song well enough though that it came out pretty naturally. It was much easier than I originally had thought.

FoulPhil said:
I was never big on Dylan, but then when I heard highway 61 revisited it struck a chord with me. I've heard a lot of his albums and none of them do it for me, but I can keep going back to that album and find new things to like about it.

This is a cool cover it really sounds like it's your song not his and you managed to change it enough that none of the kids today would know it's a Dylan song lol
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Thanks FP. The inspiration for this comes from the Ramones "Acid Eaters" album. They did a cover of My Back Pages which totally kicks ass.
 
I'm really digging this arrangement and I love the raw sound of it.
The drums sound awesome to me too!
 
Very fun....feels like I just stepped off a roller coaster! The original of this song (which I hadn't heard before) pales in comparison to your cover.

"Rough and ugly"??....I didn't think so.
 
Thanks Sharon.

New mix up top. I fixed a ton of things that bothered me this morning with fresh ears. Bigger guitars and drums particularly. I had left compressors on that I didn't mean to. I thought it sounded a little flat and thin :spank: :o
 
sharonclowe said:
Very fun....feels like I just stepped off a roller coaster!
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I was watching TV just now and this comment popped back into my head.

This is exactly what I shoot for when I record music. This is my only goal as far as reaching out to a listener. Pure fun energy. That's it. No deep messages, no floating through a complex soundscape. Just wild kinetic energy like a Sherman tank falling off a cliff. :D
 
man ........ really nice.
How bout posting this ..... well, you know where. Let's just see what happens.

Anyway ..... this is really nice all the way around .... good playing, singing and tracking/mixing.
Yeah ..... almost exactly like the original!

:D
 
Lt. Bob said:
man ........ really nice.
How bout posting this ..... well, you know where. Let's just see what happens.

Anyway ..... this is really nice all the way around .... good playing, singing and tracking/mixing.
Yeah ..... almost exactly like the original!

:D
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Thanks a lot Boob. Yeah, I'm a little ahead of you on the first thing. ;)
 
I really, really love this recording. Just on the merits of the drum sounds alone, awesome. You've probably answered this question a thousand times already, but remind me again, how do you record your drums? Are you using Glyn Johns or something similar, or individually mic'ing toms, etc? I am recording a new track right now and it's my first attempt at real drums. I'm following all the typical advice, I replaced all the drum heads - top and bottom, tuned all the heads, made sure the room sound is decent, and I'm trying out both the Glyn Johns and the Recorderman techniques, but man, I'm telling you, my drums aren't sounding anywhere even in the ballpark of yours. That first fill that starts off the song in your recording, man, right away I was like "yeah!"

Beautiful.

Edit: Sorry, just went back and looked at your drum recording sticky post again and saw that you use Recorderman.

Dave
http://www.soundclick.com/davedewhitt
 
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