Two posts in two days is what happens when you’re trying to stay (sane) inside your home. Remember when this blog was just as much me ranting and raving about random shit that pissed me off as it was dance remixes of popular music from the 80s and 90s? Well hey, consider this post retro.
Not much has changed since yesterday, at least as far as the public knows and/or cares. There were fifty new confirmed cases in Japan, I don’t know how many in Tokyo. Fifty is a big jump, the biggest in a few days. It just goes to show that Japan has not dodged any bullet and that we are still teetering on the edge of a full-blown outbreak.
You would not know that if you went outside today though.
Hanami (cherry blossom viewing) was in full effect today. The government asked people not to go out. Some of the major viewing spots were partially closed so people could not set up picnics. Neither of these things seemed be much of a deterrent. While crowds were smaller than usual, they were still large and packed enough to make any kind of efficient social distancing impossible. Masses of people everywhere.
Many travel sites and twitter accounts were tweeting out photos of cherry blossoms as well as guides to the best (and most crowded) places. One such account is Japan Travel Advice.
Yes, this person may live in a safe, rural area, but most people in Japan do not. It is irresponsible for them to tweet out guides on cherry blossom viewing without mentioning the virus or that people should maybe just sit this year’s hanami out. I countered their advice with my own.
They blocked me.
It’s also worth mentioning that on their website they say the following.
Fucking irresponsible assholes. Is it safe to travel to Japan? ABSOLUTELY NOT. NO. NOT AT ALL. And even if it was (and it’s not) it wouldn’t be safe for the people of Japan for someone from another infected country to come visit them on a damn vacation. There is absolutely zero reason for anyone to come to Japan right now. And there is zero reason for anyone to go out for hanami.
Tomorrow is Sunday. The weather will be perfect. The cherry blossoms of death will be in near full bloom. I expect an entire other group of selfish pricks to go out on picnics in large groups, share drinks, share food, and share a crowded train home with hundreds of others who will do the same.
It’s too bad the people who they’re helping kill aren’t themselves.
Aaliyah
The One I Gave My Heart To (Soul Solution Club Mix)
The One I Gave My Heart To (Soul Solution Dub)
The One I Gave My Heart To (Bonus Beats)
One In A Million (Nitebreed Mongolodic Mix)
One In A Million (Armand’s Drum ‘n’ Bass Mix)
One In A Million (Geoffrey’s House Mix)
One In A Million (Wolf-D’s Big Bass Mix)
Long time back, I would always check the US iTunes store before I shared something here. I try to stick pretty hard to my “nothing in print” rule. I’ve only purposely broken it a handful of times. More recently though, I’ve also gotten in the habit of checking streaming services, since that’s how most people consume music in the year of our apocalypse, 2020.
It turns out that there’s not much of any Aaliyah on Spotify, or any streaming service, or even the US iTunes store for that matter. You can get Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number (ew) but not much else. Wonder why that is? Is there some clusterfuck regarding Aaliyah’s estate that I’m not aware of? Is this R. Kelly’s fault? Can we just blame R. Kelly regardless?
I’ll be real and say that I wasn’t a big of Aaliyah when she first burst on the scene. I was never into R. Kelly’s production style, even as a teenager. Although as a white boy teenage grunge fan in the suburbs, I really wasn’t their target audience.
I did, however, get more into her music once she split from pissface and started working with Missy and Timbaland. “One In a Million” is an classic of the era. No doubt. And it has aged very well, just like a lot of the prime R&B from that era has. While the unfortunately named “Nitebreed Mongolodic” mix of the track ain’t all that hot, “Armand’s Drum ‘n’ Bass Mix” is rad. I like it more than the original. I’m not always big on Armand Van Helden’s work, but he really nailed it out of the park here. Other mixes are tight too.
While I’ve always dug “One In A Million,” I was definitely not a fan of “The One I Gave My Heart To” when it came out. It sounds like wannabe Whitney Houston to me. I looked it up today and found out that it was written by Diane Warren because of course it was. The original version of this track screams “should be on the soundtrack to a forgettable romantic comedy.” It’s so bland.
The “Soul Solution Club Mix” fixes all the problems of the original. It opens with a fade in of Aaliyah howling, it lets you know right up front that she’s in actual, physical pain over her break-up. It takes the original version three minutes to get to that point. I’m sure the intent was to have a build-up, but by then it’s too late. The overarching blandness of the production has created a vacuum of suck that make any sort of build-up impossible.
The beat of the remix fixes this problem. Gone is the literally identical to every other mid-tempo easy-listening ballad beat that was on the radio in the mid-90s. In its place is a standard, yet effective, high-energy beat that makes the song more urgent and emotional. And yeah, the house piano chords aren’t exactly breaking new ground, even for 1998, but they certainly create a better sense of desperation and heartache than the click track beat of the original version.
And the remix has a hell of a build-up and drop that just annihilates the original. Damn.
Good remixes for bad times, enjoy.