Monday, February 27, 2017

Dylan Cover #265 Mountain "The Time They Are A-Changin'"

In this ongoing Monday Series we will be exploring various artists versions of Bob Dylan song's. Today's tune is a cover by Mountain playing "The Time They Are A-Changin'":

This month we will focus on the band Mountain's fairly recent Dylan Cover album Masters of War

Thoughts on Original
:
From the first time we tackled a cover of this tune:
Well it is his most famous song for a reason, it is one of the greatest ever produced in any genre, ever.

Cover:

Thoughts on Cover Artist:
January we are going to focus on Mountain. Here is some info on the group, we have never really known them or been a fan outside of classic rock radio. Regarding the bands decision to do a full album of Dylan covers here is the rationale:
After 5 to 6 years on a recent worldwide Mountain tour, we were asked to record a new CD. During the touring Leslie heard Neil Young's rendition of Blowin in the Wind and decided to perform it acoustically at our shows. The reaction was clearly overwhelming leaving Les and I to a serious look, again, at the musical and political significance of Bob Dylan's repertoire. I personally felt that Leslie's vocal power would match the power in Dylan's lyrics. The melodies simple and direct would match Leslie's lyrical guitar expressions. The drum feels were spontaneous and most of the basic tracks were first takes in the studio. Personally, I just tried to punctuate the hell out of the song. It took about 3 years to contemplate exactly what Dylan material we would decide to record Mountain style. The final result is Mountain CD MASTERS OF WAR
Thoughts on Cover:
Well we have focused on a few cover albums in this series so far. We checked in on The Hollies, The Byrds, and The Jamie Saft Trio for a month of their covers from dedicated Dylan influenced albums. Safe to say for these ears Mountain has been the least memorable as the style hasn't meshed very well for RtBE. Warren Haynes always sounds nice when playing guitar as he does here, but for us Leslie's voice was just too polished/flamboyant/showboat-y during these four covers we highlighted. We will be back to various covers of Dylan next Monday.  

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