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Texas Music

Krayolas Score Surprise Hit With Bob Dylan Cover

If you follow these pages you may have noticed that Rocks Off recently tabbed Tipsy Topsy Turvy by veteran San Antonio rockers The Krayolas as our choice for best Texas album of the year so far. Yes, we understand that this may be running counter to the other members of the local media and even our own staff, most of whom have already anointed Robert Ellis' Photographs the musical event of the year.

Well, we're still jamming Tipsy Topsy Turvy frequently, so we'll stick with that choice.

Rocks Off recently got an email from Krayolas leader Hector Saldana alerting us to a one-off track the band recently recorded of Bob Dylan's "All I Really Want To Do." The band learned the song for its segment in a Bob Dylan 70th birthday tribute event, and afterward decided to record it.

"I came up with the arrangement for our appearance at the annual Bob Dylan Birthday Bash, where we debuted it and got a huge response," says Saldana. "So we recorded it Sunday afternoon.

"It took about an hour. I played bass; my brother played drums and sings lead; Van [Baines] played guitar. I was just playing around on bass one day and came up with the Eddie Cochran "Summertime Blues" inspired attack."

Recorded two weeks ago this past Sunday, the track is already getting radio play and Saldana has more plans.

"The response has been so good, we're going to release it as a single. We got national satellite radio airplay on it yesterday [by Dave Marsh ], and we're getting spins on it on KUT-FM in Austin and on KSYM-FM in San Antonio. We also got lots of requests to play it at our Gruene Hall gig last week.

"And it's fun to play, too."

Longtime rock critic Marsh describes the track: "As close as you get to [hearing] The Who sing Bob Dylan." It sounds like the Byrds too, to Rocks Off's ears anyway.

Dylan wrote and recorded the song in 1964 for his album Another Side of Bob Dylan, when he had only recently abandoned topical songwriting. The Byrds cut the song in 1965, and it became their second hit single from their debut album Mr. Tambourine Man.

Cher released a version of the song also in 1965 on the Imperial label, and her version would actually chart higher than the Byrds cut.

Come on, Houston, listen to the track on the Krayolas' Web site and tell Rocks Off Sir Doug isn't grinning from ear to ear.


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William Michael Smith