Anyone who attended the recent GQ LIVE event in Los Angeles was in for a pleasant surprise. After Vampire Weekend’s frontman Ezra Koenig did an interview with the influential magazine, he decided to round up the rest of the band and throw a surprise live gig.
During the set, the New York City rock trio decided to do a cover of Bob Dylan’s 1983 hit “Jokerman,” which turned out to be a popular decision among the audience. They topped this exciting performance by playing a cover of Honeycombs’ “Have I The Right,” and their “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa,” hit from their self-titled album from 2008.
You can hear Vampire Weekend’s cover of “Jokerman,” as well as the performance of the other two songs, in the videos below.
“Jokerman” was featured as the single and opening track for Bob Dylan’s 1983 album Infidels. Although it failed to chart and wasn’t a success early on, the track ended up being one of Dylan’s most appreciated tracks in retrospective.
Ezra Koenig seems to be especially fond of this song since he did not only cover it with Vampire Weekend but also interviewed the creator of the ’90s Jokerman font Andrew Smith for his Apple Music show, Time Crisis. As you can guess, the title of this episode was Jokerman.
