Tonight’s post is brought to you by the letter “A” because I’m too lazy sometimes to shift through my massive queue of future blog tracks.

The Alarm
Strength (Power Mix)
Absolute Reality ( Inpromptu Acoustic Version)
People have called The Alarm pretentious in the past, and I think that label is total bullshit. A pretentious band thinks highly of themselves while thinking less of those around them. The Alarm probably think very highly of themselves, but if the lyrics to songs like “Strength” are any indication at all, they also think very highly of their audience as well as the general population.

A better word to describe The Alarm would be “earnest.” Songs like “Strength” convey an overwhelming feeling of earnestness; they really want you to believe what they are saying because it’s some important shit! I get the feeling that The Alarm thought that songs like these were Incredibly Important and could change Things. And there’s a certain level of respect that should be given to them because of that.

“Strength” is one bad-ass song. Its the kind of song you listen to help get yourself out of a post-breakup doldrum, or possibly as the soundtrack to a really rough cardio workout. I’m sure it was a contender for a montage song in a Rocky movie at one point. The acoustic version of “Absolute Reality” is less blood-pumpingly good, but it’s still a really great tune. Both of these are from a 12″ single.

Art Of Noise
Dragnet (Arthur Baker Mix)
Acton Art
Dragnet (Art of Noise 12” Mix)
Dragnet (Art of Noise 7” Mix)
The Art of Noise have nothing in common with The Alarm, aside from the fact that both play music and start with the letter “A.” If The Alarm is earnest then these remixes of the Dragnet Theme are most certainly not. What’s the opposite of earnest? Goofy? Yeah, that sums these tracks up pretty damn well. I love the wacky lo-tech sampling of The Art Of Noise, taking a note, sampling it, and then adjusting the pitch to create different “notes” of that sound. There’s something so perfectly 80s about it, like headbands and Alf. So what I’m saying is that The Art of Noise are the Alf of music. Yeah, that makes sense. These are remixes of the theme of the 1980s Dragnet movie, meaning they are the probably the only tracks I will ever feature on this blog that will feature the vocal stylings of Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd.

Oh and that’s not a typo, that one track is called “Acton Art” not “Action Art.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 19th, 2011 at 5:56 am and is filed under B-sides, remixes, The Alarm, The Art Of Noise. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.