Daniel Romano's Outfit Do (What Could Have Been) Infidels by Bob Dylan & The Plugz - 2020 - Canada
Punk / Post-Punk / Bob Dylan
In the late 70's Bob Dylan began his struggles with evangelical Christianity and he released a string of poorly received albums after his conversion. 1983's Infidels is regarded as his return to secular music, though a close listen to the lyrics still reveals some fairly misguided politics here and there. Best to gloss over those, taken as a whole, Infidels is reasonably decent mid-career Dylan, though it really loses steam on the second side.
In workshopping this album, Dylan called on a wide range of musicians to play with him in his Malibu home. While he eventually entrusted much of this project to Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler, he also jammed out with several members of 1st wave Chicano punk band the Plugz. Promoting this album in 1984, he appeared on David Letterman bringing on drummer Charlie Quintana and bassist Tony Marsico (without frontman Tito Larriva), as well as “Just Ingesting” aka JJ Holiday on guitar as his backing band. They played 3 songs including alternate versions of Jokerman and License to Kill from the Infidels album. It's a rousing performance that I much prefer to the somewhat staid approach he laid down on wax. Legend has it he came very close to using the Plugz as his backing band for Infidels, though I was not able to find much specific information online about this.
Daniel Romano is a musician and performance artist from Canada. During peak pandemic in 2020, he took the sound from that 1984 Letterman performance and expanded it to the entire Infidels album. Successfully channeling both Dylan and the Plugz, he does an incredibly admirable job envisioning what Infidels COULD HAVE been if Dylan had decided to go with the Plugz as his backing band in the studio. The result really cooks, this would have been a pretty radical move for Dylan at that point in his career and in my biased view, the absolutely correct one.
The Daniel Romano album, which reuses the cover of the Plugz debut Electrify Me with the faces blanked out, seems to originally have been available on Bandcamp and on streaming platforms. He must have gotten cease and desisted super hard or something as I don't see it anywhere now, though I did manage to dig up the files. KZread says it's copyrighted but the owner allows it to be used, which is a fairly common copyright result in my uploads. To the best of my knowledge this was never released in physical form and is not available to listen to anywhere else. ENJOY!
Chapters:
0:00 Jokerman
4:51 Sweetheart Like You
8:05 Neighborhood Bully
13:08 License To Kill
18:04 Man Of Peace
24:18 Union Sundown
30:00 I And I
33:58 Don't Fall Apart On Me Tonight
Informative interview from 3/22/23 with Plugz bassist Tony Marsico on the 39th anniversary of the Letterman performance. He's familiar with the Daniel Romano project and dug it!
dylanlive.substack.com/p/plug...
The Plugz final album Better Luck:
• The Plugz - Better Lu...
Boy Dylan and the Plugz on Letterman:
• BOB DYLAN: "Don't Star...
20 Minutes of rehearsal from that same day:
• Bob Dylan - March 22, ...
Discogs:
www.discogs.com/release/19092...
Пікірлер: 66
Wow, quite an undertaking here. 🎉 Congrats! 🎊 Romano’s Outfit pretty much nailed us w/my guitar scratches intact from those days. Gladly I’ve gotten a bit better since then (~ 40 years ago now) but basically have the same approach. Interesting effort man! 👏🏼 Best wishes, from the unmentioned guitarist in description in that 1984 Letterman appearance, Introduced that night as “Just Ingesting”. All word puns intended… for the record. ~ JJ Holiday (guitar player) youtube.com/@theimperialcrowns ❣️
@ya2sabesrecords
11 ай бұрын
Wow! Glad you enjoyed it. I'm just a humble youtuber uploading music that is hard to find anywhere else. Sorry for omitting you in my original description, I've added you to it now!
@theimperialcrowns
11 ай бұрын
@@ya2sabesrecords- Many thanks amigo. No harm meant earlier at all. I just like keeping the record straight, if possible. Am quite honored this fun and all too brief moment in time is even remembered by others. Whether liked or not, it definitely seems to have remained interesting and up for continued discussion inside the big world of Dylan fans, and almost garnered a life all its own. Much appreciated. 👍🏼😎 ~ JJ Holiday ✌🏼❤️
@ya2sabesrecords
11 ай бұрын
@@theimperialcrownsThat performance is legendary man! Still widely talked about by people of all ages. I've watched it like 20 times myself! Great to hear from you!
@theimperialcrowns
11 ай бұрын
Well thanks man. From that show, I personally most enjoy that taped (and later released) version of his “License to Kill”. I’ve found the random taped pre-show stuff kind of fun too. All of it has made it to KZread and been deleted off and back on, of course. 😊
@jorisvde8639
10 ай бұрын
Hello JJ, any plans of rereleases of The Plugz albums? These are impossible to find unless you wanna spend a lot.
Bonus points for keeping true to false start in license to kill and to wrong key harmonica in jokerman. true attention to detail here!
Shoutout Max Palmer for putting me on the Plugz, and my completely unrelated Dylan obsession bringing me to the Letterman performance and now this. I love when the universe does this. Something something something about every hair being numbered and every grain of sand
God damn this is like a daydream I had that came true.
Wearing your influences on your sleeve is a very good thing, if you can create a project as amazing as this! Daniel Romano delivers again.
Jokerman 0:00 Sweetheart Like You 4:51 Neighborhood Bully 8:05 License To Kill 13:08 Man Of Peace 18:04 Union Sundown 24:18 I And I 30:00 Don't Fall Apart On Me Tonight 33:58
@ya2sabesrecords
Жыл бұрын
Thanks for that. I'll update the description to include that info.
Holy shit they even put in Bob playing the wrong harmonica for a beat.
@kingswayguitar
2 ай бұрын
jeepers that explains it. genius
Even did the wrong harmonica moment
Amazing job, Daniel Romano. Now please do Empire Burlesque 🙏
Sweetheart Like You, such a tearjerker
The Outfit are one of the great rock n roll bands in the world atm....and this proves it....was lucky to catch them three times at SXSW...they rocked! Thanks for posting!
Thank you for uploading this the plugz are my all time favorite punk band when I saw Dylan playing with them on letterman I thought even Bob dylan knew what a treasure this band was. Thanks again!!!
thanks for sharing this
This is crazy good.
Love this. It might be the best album Dylan never made. Sadly.
I believe Daniel Romano is planning to release the album on vinyl very soon, as he’s been doing with the other 9 records he released during lockdown, in a pretty amazing splurge of creativity. He’s great.
@ya2sabesrecords
Жыл бұрын
I hope so! It disappeared online. Would def buy this if that became possible!
@bretthowser6777
Жыл бұрын
Please do!!
@mdunn6900
Жыл бұрын
I hope this gets released on vinyl. So f-ing good!
@telephono007
Жыл бұрын
Ermagawd can't wait. I'd buy the vinyl and CD (for zee car) and a tshirt too. And I'm frugal AF. 😂
@coljimusic
Жыл бұрын
I can confirm this; I talked to his bassist at their show and it should be out in a few months on vinyl!
I don't play horn, but I have one. Thanks Ya 2 baby.
Just wonderful. I came upon the Letterman performance quite randomly this morning and wished there had been documentation of the wonderful arrangement of "Jokerman" I heard. And then I was guided here. These chord shapes melt my heart. Gorgeous stuff.
@ya2sabesrecords
Жыл бұрын
Glad you enjoyed it! Daniel Romano did such a great job with this, this album just works even without the fun backstory.
@ioncewasmikey
Жыл бұрын
Oh wow, the YT algorithm must be pushing that Letterman performance, as I just saw it minutes ago! Maybe because the anniversary is approaching? So this Daniel fella redid all the instrumental sound beds but used Dylan's vocals? Or did he redo those himself as well? The way he recreated the instrumentals is spot on when compared to those live Letterman videos. He even came in early with the offkey harmonica in Jokerman haha. 😮
@ya2sabesrecords
Жыл бұрын
I'm pretty sure he redid the vocals, I think it would be hard to re-use the vocals since many of the songs are in very different tempos. Good impersonation.
@ioncewasmikey
Жыл бұрын
@Ya 2 Sabes Records I checked some other videos of him out in the meantime, and I think you're right. Fantastic impersonation though, wow.
@ya2sabesrecords
Жыл бұрын
@@ioncewasmikey I was so enamored with this one, I hadn't gotten to checking anything else out. Thanks for reminding. Now that I checked out some other albums, this is definitely Daniel, his normal style isn't too far off from this.
love the energy of this and the mark knopfler/dylan style. i also get some pretenders vibes from this too.
Amazing! Thank you for putting this out
Thanks a lot for uploading, had been looking for it a couple of months ago and was sad to see it seemed to have been so scrubbed from the internet. Much appreciated 😊
Top notch upload.
This is so fucking cool....
Before he ended up working with Mark Knopfler, Dylan approached Frank Zappa, Elvis Costello and David Bowie as potential producers. Seems like Dylan was creatively all over the place at the time. I wonder if he phoned up Phil Spector...
Have you heard of Jonathan Rado from Foxygen’s full album cover of Born to Run? It’s very good
Discussed in the EDLIS Café. EDLIS Café Press
Thanks for posting, incredible album. Hanging out for DR to put it out on vinyl. BD definitely had a three-piece backing him on Letterman though?
@ya2sabesrecords
Жыл бұрын
Yes, the other guitarist they brought on was JJ Holiday who I don't believe was a member of the Plugz exactly, but a friend of theirs. A cool interview came out with their bassist Tony Marsico that gives a lot of background on the jam sessions and Letterman performance. dylanlive.substack.com/p/plugz-bassist-talks-backing-bob-dylan?publication_id=24981&post_id=109411976&isFreemail=false&fbclid=IwAR1oMpzkCg44K2gKC9Mz40FIKxM2V7ZJSxDGREgCuaWKZTd1YeFeruwu27g
@jmax9
Жыл бұрын
@@ya2sabesrecords Oh brilliant! Great info and an intriguing interview that I hadn’t read: thanks man.
Tight
Not sure if Slow Train Coming was "poorly received". That album is maybe one of Bob's best.
Does anyone have the mp3 version of this?? Pretty please.
This rules. Although more realistically the album should have been Empire Burlesque.
Are these the guys from the Letterman show?
@ya2sabesrecords
4 ай бұрын
No, this is a band called Daniel Romano's Outfit trying their best to imagine what the Infidels album might have sounded like if Bob Dylan had been backed by the 1st wave L.A. punk band, the Plugz. I think they do a great job capturing the essence of that Letterman performance!
@cavewaller
4 ай бұрын
ah! thanks for that info; think it sounds good; agree it sounds very much like the letterman one. thanks again@@ya2sabesrecords
Fuck yeah!!!
This is great!
Questionable politics?
@mtroy0620
Ай бұрын
tell-tale comment right?
There is much in his 3x Christian albums. Every phase of his has a beautiful gold strike thru the quartz. There is no artist with the heft and history of Dylan. None.
Misguided politics depends on your view point
Kinda cringe 😬
@JDrevolver66
Жыл бұрын
Nah!
@_fabio1978
6 ай бұрын
Not at all
@PeterByker
Ай бұрын
Are you the Infidel Dylan was writing about?