The Witzard

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Bad Finger Boogie: Mumform & Sons with Vampire Weekend and Friends - "With a Little Help from My Friends" (Glastonbury)


Well, this is quite easily the coolest impromptu event I've seen or heard happen in mainstream music in quite some time; Dusting off any pre-concieved notions of banjo-aided Bluegrass or College Rock labeling, frontman Marcus Mumford recruited a couple of friends to help his band, Mumford & Sons, perform a spirited cover of The Beatles/Joe Cocker's two-headed hit, "With a Little Help from My Friends" at Glastonbury last night. Mumford's posse was effectively joined on stage by Ezra Koenig and 2 additional members of Vampire Weekend, The Vaccines, First Aid Kit, Staves, and a few more musically-inclined buddies. Mumford & Sons seem to have modeled their call-and-response cover after Cocker's Soul-drenched 1968 rendition, which I first heard on The Wonders Years as a kid... not even knowing it was a Beatles song 'til years later! The original "With a Little Help from My Friends" is of course, comfortably nestled within The Beatles' magnum opus (and arguably the first album packaged with liner notes, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. But for the Indie Rock purists out there, Mumford & Sons' and Vampire Weekends' most recent albums, Babel (2012) and Modern Vampires of The City respectively, are currently available and seem to be fairly well-received and acclaimed by both fans and critics alike.