[Harp-L] relative major/Last Dance With Mary Jane

[Jordan Feldman]

I say if you want it verbatim become a DJ.  Of course, there are settings in which verbatim is the goal.  On the other side of the coin, drastically changing a classic melody or chord progression can be awful in my opinion.  Such as that horrible Uke version of Over the Rainbow.  I'm a jazzer, so I love substitutions, embellishments and the like but give me a break.  Meanwhile, it's probably the most successful version of the song ever recorded, so what do I know?
But I digress, some of my favorite performers rearrange their most popular songs for every tour...
> On Oct 16, 2017, at 1:14 PM, bad_hat at xxxxx wrote:
> 
> The original poster was asking how to play the harmonica part in this song..  A couple of posts later the consensus answer had emerged. The thread forked, someone else enjoys covering this tune in 2nd position on a differently keyed harmonica than what had been suggested in the consensus answer.  What happened then was interesting to me. Condemnation for not playing it like Tom Petty did.  If I read it correctly one reply basically suggested that if you weren't going to play it verbatim then you should go write your own song.
> 
> Call me late to the party maybe.  I recently tripped over Scott Bradlee's musical performance project called Postmodern Jukebox.  A seemingly endless treasure trove of youtube videos almost all covers of popular songs with none of them played in the way they were originally played in their first popular versions.  Royals a song composed and performed originally by Lorde covered by a 6' 8" guy in a clown suit. Lorde says it is her favourite cover of her song, Mad World also amazing.  PMJ is an endless parade of superbly played non slavish covers of fairly iconic songs.  So sure I like the Tom Petty version of Last Dance but I'm also open to hearing other versions of it.
> 
> I also wonder about the strawman argument wherein harmonica players as a group are painted as clueless wankers unwilling to learn an instrument. I say strawman because nowhere in the thread is it shown that the person who wants to play the song in 2nd position lacks musicianship.  It's more like that argument was advanced as a way of showing that the people who play it note for note are not one of those unskilled non musical harmonica players.  In isolation it strikes me as a self serving argument.  As a trend I would agree that as a group harmonicists are not the most well trained players out there but really why does that say anything about you personally and your musicianship?