Over the past year or so I have been dinking around on the banjo. I bought a decent instrument along with a couple of books and have been watching a few youtube videos here and there. In general, along with getting some basics down, I am trying to listen to bluegrass songs to try get my ear put together. I am stuck for time – running a business, raising kids, running a tiny farm and all the rest and didn’t want any big commitment – so when I feel like playing, I play. When I don’t, I like looking at it in the corner of the room. After I get some decent basic technique put together and know basic cords, and have some extra time, probably in 2024 or so, I may start taking some lessons.
The banjo is a surprisingly fun instrument to play, and even when you miss, the mistakes aren’t really cringeworthy, like if you were playing a clarinet or trombone. Progress has been slow, but I probably have 25 or 30 years left on this mortal coil to perfect my skills – or not.
Anyways, on the way home from work, after I get the financial headlines from Bloomberg on XM, I typically flip it over to the Bluegrass channel. A few days ago I heard this remake of a (bad) familiar song. The original, from The Proclaimers:
I really have always hated that song.
This is the remake I heard, by Wayne Taylor and Apaloosa:
Obviously, this is the way this song was meant to be played.
Big improvement. But, yeah, the original feels fake. I never liked it either.
Bluegrass just makes every song better
That Wayne Taylor version rips, for sure. I was channel surfing recently, and saw the aforementioned Proclaimers, albeit a good bit heavier and older, on one of the music channels. Live show, somewhere in Europe or Great Britain I guess. Point is, they did this incredibly haunting song, really, really good. Perhaps someone else saw it as well.