art is the new religion

Bet You Got It All Planned Right

Yet another perfect use for my Rhapsody subscription: listening to the remixes of Spoon's "Don't You Evah".

The tracklist:

• Don't You Evah
• All I Got Is Me
• Don't You Evah (Ted Leo's I Want It Hotter Mix)
• Don't You Evah (Diplo Mix)
• Don't You Evah (Matthew Dear Mix)
• Don't You Evah (DJ Amaze & Alan Astor Mix)
• Don't You Evah (Doc Delay Fixerupper)
• Don't You Ever (The Natural History Original Version)

The new B-side is pretty cool, but...I don't need to own six new versions of a song I already really like a lot.  Full disclosure: I don't really get the point of remixes.*  Too often they sound like someone created some beat or riff or ambient noise and then graffiti'ed them over the structural beauty of an original song.  Sometimes I can recognize parts of the song that was remixed, sometimes I can't, but rarely does the remix do anything to improve upon the original version.

Speaking of the original, here's the video for "Don't You Evah" by Peter Simonite:

Back to the remixes.  Ted Leo's "I Want It Hotter Mix" made it the kind of hot that's too humid and all you want to do is lay on the couch and not move.  Diplo made some interesting sounds and then mixed in Britt's vocals like he's a noisy nextdoor neighbor echoing in like a non-sequitur.  My vision of a remix is actually re-mixing the tracks of the song, pointing out some interesting parts the listener might not have heard before -- say, drop out the bass and isolate the handclaps, maybe add in some sounds here and there.  Not create a whole new song and paste in some of the vocal track every once in awhile.  In this batch, the version that comes closest to what I envision as a remix is the one by DJ Amaze & Alan Astor.

The Natural History's original version of "Don't You Ever" is great, and an awesome addition to this release.  Apparently The Natural History recorded "Don't You Ever" in 2004 for their second full-length album People That I Meet.  The record was due to be released in 2005, but then the band split from their label and the record wasn't available to the public until they self-released it in 2007.  Spoon obviously heard the song in the meantime and covered it on Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.  Spoon is one of the few bands that chooses cover songs in a way that I never would know they didn't write them. 

*I know there are really great remixes, and really talented remixers, out there.  But none of the outfits that "Don't You Evah" has tried on here are very flattering.  My advice: skip the remixes and just get the B-side and The Natural History's original. 

And if you can point me to some great remixes and talented remixers, by all means do. 

• Buy Spoon's "All I Got Is Me" mp3 and The Natural History's "Don't You Ever" mp3 from Amazon.

Don't look down, just look up

Phil Collins: Singer, songwriter, drummer, actor.

I started my day by opening up Rhapsody, searching on Phil Collins, and clicking on their "Top Tracks" for him which queued up 25 songs in my player. 

Phil Collins has sooo many great songs:  "Easy Lover", "In the Air Tonight", "One More Night", "Against All Odds" - the list goes on.  When I mentioned on Twitter that I was listening to Phil, a few of my friends piped up with love for him, so I thought I'd share with you the most Phil Collins you could possibly experience in four minutes:

Listening to "Separate Lives" from the White Knights soundtrack (mmmBaryshnikov), I realized I've never known who the female singer is in the duet.  Turns out her name is Marilyn Martin and according to Wikipedia she was involved in several cool projects in the 80's (singing & touring with Stevie Nicks!!), and though she's still singing it appears she's also a realtor now in Tennessee.  Marilyn, if you see this post, we salute you.

Phil's receding-hairline mullet in this video sure is a lot to take in.  It's bold like Dale's receding-hairline fauxhawk.

• Buy Phil Collins' Hits from Amazon.com.

Valentunes

I'm addicted to the Rhapsody service, because for $9.95 a month I have access to stream all sorts of music at any time.  Although no online catalog is perfect, theirs is pretty thorough;  8 times out of 10 they have what I'm looking for, from indie rock to rock classics and beyond. 

(Since I'm already hawking it, click here to get a free 14-day  trial of Rhapsody)

A few weeks ago I used their search function to search for tracks with a specific word in them.  From that single search was born the idea for countless themed mixes!

Here is the first of more to come:  KT's Valentunes
(I didn't have time to play with the track order, so hopefully it's alright)

1. Happy Valentine's Day - Outkast
2. Valentine - Willie Nelson
3. Blue Valentines - Tom Waits
4. Valentine's Day - Bruce Springsteen
5. Valentine - Merrick
6. Valentine - Old 97's
7. My Funny Valentine - Chet Baker
8. Valentine - Barbara Lea
9. Saint Valentine - Joe Ely
10. Two Sides/Monsieur Valentine - Spoon
11. Valentine - John Waite
12. Valentine's Day - Steve Earle
13. Valentine's Day - The Kids of Widney High
14. No Valentines - Elton John
15. Valentine Melody - Tim Buckley