Jokerman

One of the joys of Bob Dylan's career/ story is the droplets and sidesteps scattered throughout the last seven decades of music making- not just the giant, canonical albums or the times he changed the course of popular music, but the ginnels and alleyways he ventured down for a few minutes/ days before diverting again. One of those moments happened on 22nd March 1984 when he appeared on Letterman to promote a new song and album with a three song set backed by a trio of total unknowns, The Plugz. The song he was promoting was his new single, Jokerman... 

As this is Dylan there are different versions of how Dylan met The Plugz, an unknown Californian punk/ New Wave band. In one version Dylan saw them at a club, in another his son Jakob tipped him off. However it happened, at some point drummer Chalo got a phone call and was asked to bring some musicians down to Bob's house to jam. Chalo, bassist Tony Marsico and guitarist J.J. Holiday (who had a decent knowledge of blues guitar) trouped down to Bob's and after a couple of weeks had knocked a load of songs around, rarely playing the same ones twice (as is Dylan's habit). One day Dylan came in and asked the trio if they knew of Letterman and did they want to play on it. 

Jokerman was the lead single from 1983's Infidels, an album that saw Bob come out of his Born Again phase and return to more secular music. The album was produced by Mark Knopfler, had ex- Rolling Stone Mick Taylor on guitar and Sly and Robbie as rhythm section- nevertheless, it's 80s Dylan and must be approached with caution. But, Jokerman has become top level Dylan, a song that features in all the lists, with multiple verses of dense Dylan lines, with finger pointing as relevant to 2025 as it was in 1983- 

'Freedom just around the corner for you/ But with the truth so far off, what good will it do?' 

'You're a man of the mountains, you can walk on the clouds/ Manipulator of crowds, you're a dream twister'

'It's a shadowy world, skies are slippery grey'

The rock reggae rhythm and slick production jar at first but Jokerman settles into its groove, the song creating it's own sense of time, understated guitar lines peeling off against each other and supported by an organ. Jokerman grows as it goes, riding the reggae bass and drums, Dylan delivering mystic wisdom and barbs into the supposed perpetual sunshine of Reagan's America. 

Jokerman

The Letterman performance of Jokerman is something else, a true one off, Dylan and Plugz all in slim cut black and pointy boots, the reggae replaced by a driving urgency, the clipped guitars and thudding bass matched by Bob's vocal delivery. Dylan's harmonica solo that takes them all through to the song's end is priceless. For me this is the definitive version of Jokerman, and it provokes questions, a whole load of what if? type questions. If you're interested there's a free download of all three songs Dylan and Plugz played on Letterman, an entirely unofficial bootleg at Bandcamp. 

In true Dylan style, Plugz only heard from the man once again- Bob turned up at the studio Plugz (by then renamed Cruzados) were recording in, blew some harmonica for them, and disappeared into the night. 

You Never Called, I Waited For You, But These Rivers Of Suggestion Keep Dragging Me Away

It's something like that. One of the joys of early R.E.M. is that everyone hears what they think they can hear.

Michael Stipe has just announced that he's releasing his first post- R.E.M. music, a soundtrack to a friend's film. Most of the world will probably do little more than shrug. They carried on far too long, almost nothing after New Adventures In Hi-Fi sticks in the memory and they began to have an air of pomposity which became offputting. So it's funny to watch a clip like this one, live on the David Letterman show in 1983 playing Radio Free Europe and So Central Rain, when they were a frenetic, Wire-y, mumbling, American post-punk band dressed in second hand clothes. And then to shed a little tear.