from: nacho
date: tue mar 4, 2003 3:22 pm
subject: far too much info about my mix
sorry this is so long ... but it's so fascinating! really! har har.
f
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i thought i'd fill you in on some of the reasons behind some of the
choices i made in case you were wondering ...
so the mix overall was an exploration of the ways people reinterpret their
own and other's works. (it should come as no surprise from people who know
me that many of my fav people made it on this mix. one of the reasons i'm
drawn to the people i like is b/c of the ways they reinterpret their own
songs, o/w i wouldn't want to hear the same song year after year after year)
my orig idea was to take a tori album and find an alternate version of
every song on the album, but i thought that even though tori is known
for doing some radically diff. versions (like versions on harmonium
organ or harpsichord w/ or w/out a band) that idea didn't last for
very long b/c only a rabid fan like myself would prob. be at all
interested.
after broadening the idea to diff people i orig thought i'd be able to
include a lot of good cover versions, but when i got down to it i
realized that actually there aren't that many really good cover
versions -- ones which really add to the orig. i mean, counting crows
covering "big yellow taxi" or puff daddy covering the police?
puh-lease. i'm def interested to hear what pairs of songs you would
have put on a mix like this. anyway, here's the diff ways that i came
up w/ that people rethink songs ...
blue skies -- "remix" --> this song might be a little of a puzzling
inclusion since there isn't a complementary song for it. the reason is
b/c there never really was an original, so this technically isn't a
"remix" ... below is some info about the origins. ... if you listen to
some of the other "remixes" of this song you'll hear more of the orig
(which was really unremarkable), and appreciate even more how bt took
the raw materials to shape a great track.
http://www.thedent.com/djtimes.html
DJ Times: How did she go about writing the lyrics?
BT: Tori put the CD on, and sang for 15 minutes over an unreleased version
of "Divinity" at a soundcheck for a show, and sent me the DAT without ever
even listening to it. There was a note attached that said, "Brian, listen to
this," and I took it and took literally every phrase and every breath and cut
it into pieces to make a song out of it. She sang the words "blue" and "sky"
next to each other one time in the whole thing, and I cut, glued, pasted, and
made this thing that ebbed and flowed like a song.
DJ Times: Was the end product anything that Tori had imagined it would be?
BT: I think it was absolutely nothing that she'd expected. In fact, when I
sent her the DAT, she called me immediately and was like, "Did I sing this
shit?" Then she hung up and called back five minutes later saying, "This shit
is bad-ass!" She was tripping out, because [her voice] was so edited up.
That's what I'm talking about -- that was a dope-ass performance, but taking
technology and manipulating it like clay.
juarez, unplugged
dead man walking, unplugged
--> i've always been fascinated by hearing songs stripped down to
their core. tori does this a lot, and i really like looking at the
"essence" of a song. this wasn't quite the case w/ juarez, as that was
more of a reinterpretation i think, but the bowie track is nice and
unplugged. i esp liked how since both of the orig tracks were heavily
electronic, the unplugged version had to be quite different, in a
contrasting way you wouldn't have gotten from hearing, say, a smashing
pumpkins track unplugged.
shameless, live version --> i usu get bored if an artist performs a
song w/ the same arrangement live as on the orig cd, but ani tends to
be an exception. this arrangement is pretty much the same, but the
orig is characterized by what i think of as more of a "growl" sound,
while the live version is more "yip"-y or yowl-y. only slightly
different characterizations, but both worth hearing i think.
symphony, diff. version --> p5 does this every once in a while where
they completely reinterpret a song, usu w/ quite good results.
girl/boy from, parody --> i hate most parodies a la weird al, but i
think this was a case where the parody was fantastic.
ah vous dirai-je maman, variations --> something more closely related
w/ classical. i love how the whole piece is based on such a simple and
familiar tune. so much better than the mozart piano variations on the
same theme. this set of variations doesn't stray that far from the
orig, but it's a fun little show off-y coloratura piece.
some people, 2 interpreters --> orig i was going to look at some
reinterpretation of something like a bach cello suite, but i thought
that would be rather boring. i was interested in interpretations of
what is essentially the same song, but in a way that is worthwhile. i
think in this case it's worth hearing both versions b/c of the strong,
distinctive personalities of the two singers. unfortunately the
leading ladies of broadway these days lack personality and clearly
recognizable voices and styles. boo. give me a distinctive but weird
voice i hate versus a nice one but that's utterly bland any day.
atlantic, live reinterp and remix --> took me forever to find a bjork
track. she gen doesn't do a much diff in her live versions, but this
track is an exception. also, i had used all the best bjork remixes on
a semi recent mix, so i thought i'd throw this one in although i'm not
totally crazy about it. thought it'd be nice to have a 3 song set to
balance the one song of blue skies.
rattlesnakes, cover --> as w/ a lot of the songs tori covers, i didn't
know the orig but sought it out after hearing her cover, both of which
i quite like (esp the pulsing rhodes on the tori version -- like a
rattlesnake's tail she says -- ha ha)