Panterachat

This past weekend I watched The Big Lebowski again, and the song they play during the "dream sequence" Just Dropped In by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z7nAvxF_mI

I want to try and do a "re-make" of it, but modernize it, and make it a bit heavier. Can it be done?

PFloyd, suggestions?

Seems like a horrible idea, but it's already a rock arrangement so if you did it with louder drums, high gain guitars and a hetfieldesque singer then it would sound pretty metal..

PABassPlayer wrote:This past weekend I watched The Big Lebowski again, and the song they play during the "dream sequence" Just Dropped In by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z7nAvxF_mI

I want to try and do a "re-make" of it, but modernize it, and make it a bit heavier. Can it be done?

PFloyd, suggestions?

As the PBB's resident psychedelic-metal guru, I'd say that all the elements are there already; there's a clanging guitar chord on the second beat for the verse and the drumbeat, while not "metal" certainly has a drive to it that a little excitement by approaching it with a bit of Bonzo-esque zeal (or even a Brad Wilk-ish zeal if we need a more modern point of reference) wouldn't hurt.

I'd need to know more about what and how many instruments you'd be using. As a three-piece it'd be hard to maintain any depth. Two guitars would be optimal because one high-gain guitar could be playing all the accents and a cleaner reverby-one could be playing all the lead/textual parts.

Basswise, I'd use a pick with a little bit of grit to the tone. I'd keep the tone "cold-sounding" as opposed to warm, lots of bite to the treble, not much in the lower mids. With the distorted guitar doing accents and the reverby guitar playing upper-register melody, the bass is really going to be essential to keeping the drive in place and take some of the "bounce" out of the original bass part.

Vocally, I think growling Hetfield-style vocals would be atrocious. You have to take the lyrical content into consideration: singing those lyrics with any amount of aggression is going to sound pretty fucking cheesy. I think a baritone or lower tenor vocalist would be cool: completely clean with a sort of almost gothic character to them. No, not like AFI, but like Nick Cave but without the woeful overtones or Michael Hutchance's vocal style on "Devil Inside" but without the sinister underpinning.

I like what you're saying, I did pick up on that the bass and vocals will end up being the most integral part of the "re-make".

We're a 5 piece (2 guitars) with one influenced from the classic rock/pop genre and the other the metal (metallica/pantera/slayer) genre.

I'm going to print out your suggestions for the next practice and if it should come to fruition, I'll send you a recording of it.

PABassPlayer wrote:I like what you're saying, I did pick up on that the bass and vocals will end up being the most integral part of the "re-make".

We're a 5 piece (2 guitars) with one influenced from the classic rock/pop genre and the other the metal (metallica/pantera/slayer) genre.

I'm going to print out your suggestions for the next practice and if it should come to fruition, I'll send you a recording of it.

Excellent. Actually, if you want any of my old psychedelic-metal musings from my old band, I'll send you a rapidshare link.

Alternately, during the verses you could "heavy it up" by having one of the guitars palm-muting unison riffs along with the bassline and ditching the upper register stuff completely since it's pretty transparent while the vocals are going on and not an integral part of the song, especially live.

I think it could be done, but I also believe it shouldn't be done. It's a pretty dumb song.

The Doctor wrote:I think it could be done, but I also believe it shouldn't be done. It's a pretty dumb song.

I think it's a pretty cool tune from an arrangement standpoint. It's also funny to hear Kenny Rogers who would later become a red-blooded American-values country icon singing about dropping acid.

Well when you look at it that way, I suppose. But when I think Kenny Rogers, I think of the man you just mentioned... not some fucking hippie.

I did a bit of research on the just who "The First Edition" was, I found that the drummer is this guy....Mickey Jones.


from Home Improvement, Tin Cup and Slingblade. (to name a few)

Back with Kenny Rogers he looked like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ8k6fVe ... re=related

Haha, a melting oversized bed, whirling psychedelic colors, all he needed was to be holding a sitar while sitting there and he had all the trappings of a hippy band ready to follow Timothy Leary into the third Bolgia.