Musical prankster Mike Bauer recorded a hilarious cover of Rebecca Black‘s infamous pop song, “Friday.” He turned the fluffy lyrics into a bit of rock music history, calling his version “a lost recording from Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes.” The fake Dylan version is embedded above.
The video has since earned over a million views, spawning a small fiction-writing workshop in the comments section as other pranksters share memories of listening to the fake song in Vietnam, in prison, and other strange places. We’ve collected a few of our favorite comments below. What do you think about this new genre of Internet fiction–YouTube storytelling?
TheNewguitarlessons wrote: “I was a rehabilitation officer at the San Quentin Penitentiary in the summer of 1972. Bob Dylan was detained overnight following an arrest for cocaine possession. He was in bad shape. Teary-eyed, he looked at me through the holding cell bars and begged me to bring him his guitar from the property locker. Knowing he had hit rock bottom, I obliged. He then played this song with the kind of emotion one rarely sees from artists these days. In that moment, we all forgot where we were — we were happy.”
wolverineblue18 wrote: “I was there when he wrote this! My friend Chet and I were driving 2 Woodstock in August of 69 and we started smoking a little early. That was Friday morning and we got lost on a dirt road right off of Highway 212, we tried to turn around in the yard of this huge house, and ran into the mailbox outside! The house was totally Dylan’s! He was too cool about it, we shared our stuff with him and he wrote this song about how he felt declining to play Woodstock that weekend. Powerful Stuff.”
Dobermite wrote: “I completely agree that this is ‘quintessential Dylan.’ I believe that ‘Friday’ symbolizes enlightenment that everyone is ‘so excited’ about, and that ‘partying’ is a metaphor for universal spiritual connection. Dylan describes the dilemma we face between forward-thinking enlightenment and backward-thinking prejudice in the powerful metaphor about ‘front seat’ and ‘back seat’ and his indecision in the question ‘Which seat should I take?’ Definitely Dylan’s.”
fodsaks wrote: “I think a lot of this confusion comes from the fact that Dylan never actually intended to record this himself and it’s widely rumoured that the version you’re hearing was little more than a demo. It was actually a song for Jimi Hendrix, who sadly never got to record it. After Hendrix’s death, Dylan couldn’t bring himself to re-record it, but still wanted the song to stand as a tribute to his late friend. So, this demo was pressed and released. Does that clear up the confusion now?”