You are my angel--you are the one
Jun. 27th, 2005 01:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyranoAudiography's theme this week is alternate versions--remixes, smashups, a capella, acoustic, whatever. No covers, because they did that already.
As usual I have way too much I want to say here. This is A through E by artist, and I'm already late for lunch. I don't guarantee we'll ever get any more than that except that I really want to post Falco's remix of his 'Der Kommisar'.
DJ Cheb i Sabah did a soundbit remix of Asian Dub Foundation's Colour Line. I like to play this one in the car, windows down, at high volume.
More middle eastern madness--Talvin Singh's spin on Blondie's comeback-attempt Maria. Debby Harry's straightforward rocking vocals with lots of swirly nebulous noise to wrap myself up in.
Back in the '80s (younguns, prepare for another diatribe from the geriatrics about 'When Sire was cool'....) Sire would put out a sampler of artists they wanted to push. The series was called 'Just Say Yes', a nose tweak to Nancy's Just Say No campaign which simultaneously won the War on Drugs and turned the nation's youth to Abstinence Until Marriage. These albums often had kicking remixes of stuff we'd heard before and I would eagerly await each release.
The longest and coolest of these has to be Book of Love's smashup of Pretty Boys and Pretty Girls/Tubular Bells. To this day I can't watch The Exorcist without getting my groove on.
Depeche Mode's Music for the Masses had a track called 'Behind the Wheel' which really never sounded complete until they mashed in a cover of 'Route 66'. I love the hubcap rolling across the asphalt at the beginning of this track.
This remix of Erasure's Chains of Love (Truly in Love with the Marx Brothers) is often completely unrecognizable next to the original. Which is very cool with me, given the overplay the original got.
Ofra Haza isn't technically in the A-E designation but (a) I'm a rebel and (b) she's the last artist from the Just Say Yes stuff and I want to get her down here before I forget her. More middle eastern stuff--she was a Yemeni/Israeli artist who took her native folk songs and danced them up a bit. In this case, Da'Ale Da'Ale was danced up even more, and personally I like her JSY stuff a lot more than her normal albums.
I like the live version of Billy Bragg's Help Save the Youth of America, taken from a tour of the Soviet Union, despite the goofy intro stuff. I'm not usually big on live performances, but he's got a fire on stage that doesn't always show in the studio.
Yes, it was written for a beer commercial, yes I thought it was a big sell out move, but Damn do I love the funky bluesified version of Clapton's After Midnight so much more than the original.
I loved Consolidated even though they could never decide what style they were--Dance, Industrial, Hip hop, Blues.... They just wanted a format to spin their lefty politics. I'd like to think Rage Against the Machine listened to Consolidated when they were growing up. They didn't work with guest artists much, but the Conference Mix of Crackhouse rocked my radio station for as long as they would let me keep playing it during my show.
Richard Shindell wrote The Ballad of Mary Magdalene and it apparently always weirded Dar Williams a little to hear a guy sing that he was Mary, and so when they got together for Cry Cry Cry with Lucy Kaplansky, they re-recorded it with Dar on the lead vocals.
As part of one of their several greatest hits albums, The Cure released a new single called Wrong Number. I remember hearing it on the radio at the time and saying "Damn somebody really wants to be Robert Smith" before discovering that it was Robert who wanted to be Robert. I loved the sound of that single, and still really really dig the funky sound of this Analogue Exchange Mix.
More '80s stuff because that's where I'm from baby; Devo's E-Z Listening Album was either an attempt to break out of some musical molds or just a joke the band played on anybody who bought the album. I still haven't gotten the joke, and love the sparse minimalist feel of this mix of Gates of Steel.
And wrapping up the '80s trilogy (all great works are done in trilogy--ask Mo Fuzz) is this remix of The Chauffer by Duran Duran--the Blue Silver mix from a single for Come Undone. It's even more ethereal and haunting than the original. If you disagree with me I shall have to ask you to step outside.
Having put an Erasure mix in with the JSY stuff, and sticking to my 'only one song per band' maxim, I come to Enigma. I heard the Violent US mix of Sadeness at a geek conglomeration called OryCon way way back in the early '90s. It took me years, however, to find out where the cut had come from, and finally to get my hands on a copy of the German import CD single which contained it. Harder, more dancey than the mellow ambient beats of the original album.
As usual I have way too much I want to say here. This is A through E by artist, and I'm already late for lunch. I don't guarantee we'll ever get any more than that except that I really want to post Falco's remix of his 'Der Kommisar'.
DJ Cheb i Sabah did a soundbit remix of Asian Dub Foundation's Colour Line. I like to play this one in the car, windows down, at high volume.
More middle eastern madness--Talvin Singh's spin on Blondie's comeback-attempt Maria. Debby Harry's straightforward rocking vocals with lots of swirly nebulous noise to wrap myself up in.
Back in the '80s (younguns, prepare for another diatribe from the geriatrics about 'When Sire was cool'....) Sire would put out a sampler of artists they wanted to push. The series was called 'Just Say Yes', a nose tweak to Nancy's Just Say No campaign which simultaneously won the War on Drugs and turned the nation's youth to Abstinence Until Marriage. These albums often had kicking remixes of stuff we'd heard before and I would eagerly await each release.
The longest and coolest of these has to be Book of Love's smashup of Pretty Boys and Pretty Girls/Tubular Bells. To this day I can't watch The Exorcist without getting my groove on.
Depeche Mode's Music for the Masses had a track called 'Behind the Wheel' which really never sounded complete until they mashed in a cover of 'Route 66'. I love the hubcap rolling across the asphalt at the beginning of this track.
This remix of Erasure's Chains of Love (Truly in Love with the Marx Brothers) is often completely unrecognizable next to the original. Which is very cool with me, given the overplay the original got.
Ofra Haza isn't technically in the A-E designation but (a) I'm a rebel and (b) she's the last artist from the Just Say Yes stuff and I want to get her down here before I forget her. More middle eastern stuff--she was a Yemeni/Israeli artist who took her native folk songs and danced them up a bit. In this case, Da'Ale Da'Ale was danced up even more, and personally I like her JSY stuff a lot more than her normal albums.
I like the live version of Billy Bragg's Help Save the Youth of America, taken from a tour of the Soviet Union, despite the goofy intro stuff. I'm not usually big on live performances, but he's got a fire on stage that doesn't always show in the studio.
Yes, it was written for a beer commercial, yes I thought it was a big sell out move, but Damn do I love the funky bluesified version of Clapton's After Midnight so much more than the original.
I loved Consolidated even though they could never decide what style they were--Dance, Industrial, Hip hop, Blues.... They just wanted a format to spin their lefty politics. I'd like to think Rage Against the Machine listened to Consolidated when they were growing up. They didn't work with guest artists much, but the Conference Mix of Crackhouse rocked my radio station for as long as they would let me keep playing it during my show.
Richard Shindell wrote The Ballad of Mary Magdalene and it apparently always weirded Dar Williams a little to hear a guy sing that he was Mary, and so when they got together for Cry Cry Cry with Lucy Kaplansky, they re-recorded it with Dar on the lead vocals.
As part of one of their several greatest hits albums, The Cure released a new single called Wrong Number. I remember hearing it on the radio at the time and saying "Damn somebody really wants to be Robert Smith" before discovering that it was Robert who wanted to be Robert. I loved the sound of that single, and still really really dig the funky sound of this Analogue Exchange Mix.
More '80s stuff because that's where I'm from baby; Devo's E-Z Listening Album was either an attempt to break out of some musical molds or just a joke the band played on anybody who bought the album. I still haven't gotten the joke, and love the sparse minimalist feel of this mix of Gates of Steel.
And wrapping up the '80s trilogy (all great works are done in trilogy--ask Mo Fuzz) is this remix of The Chauffer by Duran Duran--the Blue Silver mix from a single for Come Undone. It's even more ethereal and haunting than the original. If you disagree with me I shall have to ask you to step outside.
Having put an Erasure mix in with the JSY stuff, and sticking to my 'only one song per band' maxim, I come to Enigma. I heard the Violent US mix of Sadeness at a geek conglomeration called OryCon way way back in the early '90s. It took me years, however, to find out where the cut had come from, and finally to get my hands on a copy of the German import CD single which contained it. Harder, more dancey than the mellow ambient beats of the original album.