New album in ‘JEM Records Celebrates …’ series, featuring Dylan songs, takes some surprising turns

The cover of “JEM Records Celebrates Bob Dylan.”

Since 2020, the Jersey-based JEM Records label has set the artists on its roster loose on songs written by various classic-rock artists in a series of annual tribute albums, and you can usually count on some big surprises. That goes for the new 12-track Bob Dylan tribute, JEM Records Celebrates Bob Dylan, too, which is definitely one of the best in the series.

Dylan’s songs have always been ripe for reinterpretation, and — as is to be expected in a collection such as this one — the standout tracks are the ones that take the biggest chances.

The Philadelphia-based group The Jive make the most surprising song choice: “I Ain’t Gonna Go to Hell for Anybody,” which is not on any of Dylan’s studio albums, but was performed by him at many of his 1980 concerts (live recordings of it appear on his 2017 boxed set, The Bootleg Series Vol. 13: Trouble No More 1979–1981). It’s an earnest, sermon-like song in which Dylan admits his capacity for sin (“I can twist the truth as well as anybody”) but pledges he’s not going to “gain the whole world but give up my soul.” The Jive’s version does not represent a radical departure from the way Dylan performed it, but this is, nevertheless, the kind of clean, crisp studio version of the song that simply did not previously exist.

Then there is “Meet Me in the Morning,” by The On and Ons, the scruffy blues song from Blood on the Tracks that the band performs with a galloping arrangement reminiscent of “Outlaw Blues” (from Bringing It All Back Home). One imagines that if Dylan had come up with these lyrics a decade earlier, this is more or less how the song would have sounded.

The general approach here is to treat Dylan’s songs with a mix of power-pop buoyancy and garage-rock attitude, and that works fine for the hypnotic stream-of-consciousness lyrics Dylan wrote for songs like “Queen Jane Approximately” and “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again” (performed by The Anderson Council and Paul Collins, respectively).

The Weeklings thoroughly reinvent“Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” with a new intro; a new, propulsive beat; biting new guitar riffs; and even a bit of another Dylan song, “Highway 61 Revisited.” The most audacious reinterpretation, though, is The Airports 77s’ fast-and-snarling “It Ain’t Me Babe.” Dylan’s original sounded apologetic and mournful; this is a bold confrontation.

The Cynz also sound more pugnacious than Dylan did on “Neighborhood Bully,” while The Grip Weeds and Nick Piunti add lush harmonies to “This Wheel’s on Fire” and “Mr. Tambourine Man,” respectively, and The High Frequencies deliver “Subterranean Homesick Blues” in even more of a dizzying blur than Dylan managed.

Previous editions in this series have celebrated the songwriting of John Lennon, Brian Wilson, Pete Townshend, Ray Davies, Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, and David Bowie, respectively.

Here is the album’s track listing, with some videos under it.

“It Ain’t Me Babe,” The Airport 77s
“Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn),” The Half/Cubes
“Queen Jane Approximately,” The Anderson Council
“This Wheel’s on Fire,” The Grip Weeds
“Ain’t Gonna Go to Hell for Anybody,” The Jive
“Neighborhood Bully,” The Cynz
“Rainy Day Women #12 and 35,” The Weeklings
“Subterranean Homesick Blues,” The High Frequencies
“Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again,” Paul Collins
“It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” The Midnight Callers
“Meet Me in the Morning,” The On and Ons
“Mr. Tambourine Man,” Nick Piunti

For information, visit jemrecordings.com.

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