Archive for the ‘Franz Ferdinand’ Category

Obscure Remixes for Social Justice

Friday, December 5th, 2014

I took a week or so off because the world was too horrible to write about music. But here we all a week later and yo shit’s still horrible so I guess I’ll just keep plugging away at this silly little site

But seriously, I’m not depressed.

The fact that I’m not depressed kind of worries me, but hey, gotta live I guess.

I also realized that I’ve posted nothing but wrestling albums, Prince and Madonna for like forever and that it’s time for me to mix that shit up a bit.

Franz Ferdinand
Take Me Out (Naum Gabo Remix)
Take Me Out (Daft Punk Remix)
One of the funniest things I’ve seen in recent history was in 2013 when several reputable news outlets reported on this Daft Punk remix like it was brand new when it was, in fact, from 2004. I love it when shit like that happens, because it shows that the majority of online “news” reporting done these days is just site after site ripping each other off in a quest for the most hits possible. Original research be damned.

Anyways, I guess I really couldn’t blame them all for covering it once they discovered it. It is a pretty solid remix after all. The “Naum Gabo” one ain’t half bad either. I got these both from a 12″ single.

Bjork
Hunter (μ-Ziq Remix)
All Is Full of Love (In Love With: Funkstorung Mix)
Apparently you can’t upload a file via FTP if it has the “μ” character in it. Things you learn.

Posted in Bjork, Franz Ferdinand, remixes | 1 Comment »

Reality vs Remixes

Wednesday, August 20th, 2014

Boy, the world is just a horrible shitty place full of horrible people that do shitty things to each other for no reason other than to be horrible and shitty. Sigh.

No. FUCK THAT. Hey overwhelming anxiety and depression, go to hell. I have obscure remixes of marginally successful songs from over a decade ago – so you can just go to hell with that bullshit.

I’m actually going to be writing something over at Mostly-Retro in the next few days about all the horribleness going on in the world (specifically Missouri, which has gotten even more horrible than it usually is), and how music is failing the world at the moment.

But until then, hey! I went to a big giant huge music festival in Japan last weekend and wrote about it! Check that out!

Franz Ferdinand
Do You Want To (Unknown Remix)
Do You Want To (Unknown Remix 2)
Mysterious remixes! Found these on a white label 12″ single that I bought for about 100 yen (a buck). Totally bootleg for sure, but definitely better than some legit remixes of Franz Ferdinand songs that I’ve heard in the past, I can tell you that much. I know nothing about these, so if anyone has any clue as to who the hell did these (probably no one of note, but you never know), please holler.

Muse
New Born (Paul Oakenfold’s Perfecto Remix)
Sunburn (Timo Maas’ Sunstroke Remix)
Sunburn (Timo Maas’ Breakz Again Mix)
Whenever I hear “New Born” I think of a murderous lesbian with a concrete saw. So when I hear this dance remix by Paul Oakenfold I just think of a murderous lesbian with a concrete saw at a rave. Thanks movies, you always ruin everything.

Posted in Franz Ferdinand, Muse, remixes | No Comments »

British Electro and Two Awesome Songs About Getting It On With Dudes

Monday, December 2nd, 2013

One month until the move. Crunch time has begun. This means another super brief post unfortunately. Hopefully I’ll have time to write more soon. I do plan on writing many vinyl reviews at Mostly-Retro in the coming week, so keep an eye out over there, especially if you like horror movie soundtracks or Nirvana.

Now some entirely random tracks.

Newtrament
London Bridge Is Falling Down (Special Vocoder Mix)
London Bridge Is Falling Down (Extended Version)
London Bridge Is Falling Down (Dub Mix)
Originally released in 1983, this  is supposedly the very first UK hip-hop release. I have no way to confirm or deny that claim, although I have no reason to doubt it.

I have no idea who Newtrament is though. This is his only release listed on Discogs, he released this one song and that was it. At least it’s a damn good tune, an excellent piece of early-80s electro. All the mixes are great, but obviously the best of the bunch is the “Special Vocoder Mix” – because everything is made better with extraneous vocoder.

Franz Ferdinand
Dark Of The Matinee (Headman Remix)
This Fire (Playgroup Remix)
Michael (Thomas Eriksen Remix)
Franz Ferdinand are the secret best remix-friendly band in rock music today. All their singles have great remixes as b-sides, and I hope that one day all of these amazing mixes will see a proper release on a compilation of box set.  These excellent mixes are from the 12″ single to “Michael” – which is probably my favorite Franz Ferdinand track of all-time.

Elton Motello
Jet Boy Jet Girl (Full Seven Minute Version)
Last minute special request from the Pope.

This song is weird.

Posted in Elton Motello, Franz Ferdinand, Newtrament, remixes | 1 Comment »

A Record Record Store Day Haul, now with Toadies!

Monday, April 18th, 2011

First things first, the excellent electronic music label Kompakt has jumped on the best bandwagon possible – the benefit record for Japan bandwagon. If you like minimal techno and have 10 bucks to spare then you should get it. It’s 34 tracks and almost four hours of music!

Click here to find out more.

Now where was I? Oh yes, Saturday was Record Store Day! I hope you all got a made out with a good haul. Over the next few days I’ll be sharing a good deal of what I scored and I hope you all enjoy as I share my limited edition vinyl happiness with you all.

Tonight’s happy music share time has a little bit of vitriol though. Sorry about that.

Update 4/18/11: Most of these links were removed early for a reason. See the comments section to find out why.
Update 5/12/11: Someone Great is now available on iTunes and Amazon. Buy it.

Toadies
Someone Great (Live) (LCD Soundsystem Cover)
No Deliverance (Live)
The Toadies covering LCD Soundsystem! Crazy huh? Now, if you’re like me, then you think that’s a great idea, and really brave of the Toadies. It’s not easy to take a song that’s entirely in another genre and rework it to fit your musical style. But I think the Toadies pull it off with this cover, which re-imagines the tune as a down-home, lo-fi country jam. It’s really impressive, and the Toadies deserve credit for taking a risk and having it pay off so well.

Some LCD Soundsystem fans seem to disagree, however. Here are some snippets of comments from the Spin article that posted a sneak preview of the Toadies track:

“I just threw up in my mouth….”

“wow way to butcher an amazing song…I hope they go down in a blazing plane crash.”

“Honestly this is a bad cover, I wonder if they are aware what this song is about. I’m sorry Toadies, but you should have been a one hit wonder and stayed in the 90’s. This cover is insulting to LCD and their fans.”

“People actually listen to the toadies??? and go to their shows???? Oh joy for mainstream crap bands doing live covers of actual real musicians. Thankfully their fans are so lame, most didn’t even know it was a cover and just thought it was finally a song with depth.”

Wow. Stay classy hipsters!

I just don’t get the hate. So a band you know almost nothing about covered a song you like? Why go off on a rampage about it?I love me some Pearl Jam, but I didn’t wish Staind die a painful death when they decided to mutilate “Black.” If anything, I was happy that they were exposing a classic PJ track to a younger crowd.

I’m willing to bet that the die-hard Toadies fanbase and the die-hard LCD Soundsystem fanbase doesn’t have a big overlap. Maybe some Toadies fans will be encouraged to check out LCD after hearing this fantastic cover. As a fan, shouldn’t that make you happy? That more people might be interested the band you like? Oh, but are Toadies fans the wrong people? Is the LCD fanbase an exclusive club?

This is not my first exposure to the dickery of LCD Soundsystem fans. When I lambasted This Is Happening for being at best a collection of forgettable drivel and at worst a collection of forgettable drivel that ripped off Lou Reed, I got more than my fair share of insults from self-righteous asshats who were personally insulted that I called an album by their favorite band a pile of shit. But they seemed to be even more insulted that I called LCD Soundsystem fans a bunch of  “self-righteous musical-know-it-alls-by-way-of-Wikipedia.”

They then proceeded to explain to me all the obvious Brian Eno, Bowie and Talking Heads references I “missed” because I didn’t mention them in my review.

Maybe they were just being ironic? Do hipsters still do stuff to be ironic? I’ve been out of that scene for a while, it’s hard to keep up.

Even when I liked LCD Soundsystem (and I still think their first two albums are incredible), I thought that a significant portion of the group’s fanbase represented the absolute worst of hipster culture – mean-spirited pricks who are still stuck in that late-90s “my forgettable bullshit music is better than your forgettable bullshit music because its less popular” mode – and it seems  that I was probably right.

Also, I’m sure that there are thousands of LCD Soundsystem fans who are not complete dicks – unfortunately nice people are usually quieter than assholes.

Anyways, these two tracks are from a Toadies 7″ that was part of Record Store Day. Enjoy.

Franz Ferdinand Covers
Debbie Harry & Franz Ferdinand – Live Alone
Stephen Merritt – Dream Again
LCD Soundsystem – Live Alone
ESG – What She Came For
Peaches – Turn It On
And look an LCD Soundsystem track!  It’s a great cover too, even though its a little overlong at 7 and a half minutes. It’s better than Stephen Merritt’s take on “Dream Again” though, which is just a little too mellow for my tastes. ESG’s interpretation of “What She Came For” is great though, as is Peaches’ surprisingly low-key turn on “Turn It On.” However, Debbie Harry kicks everyone’s ass with her amazing version on “Live Alone,” and proves that at 65-years-old she still rocks harder than any other motherfucker on Earth.

All these tracks are from the Franz Ferdinand Covers E.P.

Posted in covers, ESG, Franz Ferdinand, LCD Soundsystem, live, Peaches, Stephen Merritt, Toadies | 6 Comments »

Furries, eMusic and Def Leppard (in that order)

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

Okay, tonight I have a very schizophrenic post for you all.

First things first, I went to AnthroCon this weekend, the largest furry convention in the world. Now, I am not a furry, but the con was literally 10 minutes from my house and since one of my best friends from college (who is a furry) was coming in for it I thought I’d go with to see what all the furry fuss was about.

It was…weird. I don’t get it and I don’t think I ever will. However, they night they had a rave, and I love me some techno. I also figured this would be a great chance to get some amazingly bizarre video and I was right, so check out my YouTube channel for furry insanity on the dance floor.

On the completely other end of the spectrum, I’m pissed off about something. Shocker I know.

I don’t buy a lot of music online, I prefer to own a physical copy of my tunes, primarily because I don’t trust my hard drive but also because I think not having a physical copy devalues the music experience (it’s complicated and not the point of tonight’s rant). When I do buy music online I generally buy it from eMusic. I’ve been a subscriber to eMusic for years now and have always found their monthly subscription plan options to be a great deal. For years I on a $19.99 monthly plan that gave me 75 tracks. That’s a partly 26 cents a track. Bitchin’.

I love eMusic not only because of how cheap the music is, but because of the music they have available. It’s a great place to pick up electronic music, I found a ton of excellent and hard to find drum ‘n’ bass, experimental electronica and other odd shit that sure as hell wouldn’t be on iTunes.

But things on eMusic are changing. This month they added Sony’s back catalog to their service. So now in addition to downloading the latest tracks by Venetian Snares, Ed Rush and Dan Deacon, I can get vintage Bruce Springsteen, The Clash and even Pearl Jam. Sounds awesome right? Oh hell no.

First of all in order to do this they had to change their pricing. My $19.99 a month plan no longer exists, it was replaced by a $20.79 plan. That doesn’t sound to bad right? Well, they also cut 25 tracks out of that deal. Now I only get 50. Although it’s not 50 tracks, it’s 50 “credits.”

Before this every track cost the same, and everything was priced per track. So if you bought a 5-track EP it took five download off your limit, if you bought an album that had 30 tracks, it cost you 30 downloads. There were problems with that system to be sure (you wouldn’t buy classical music or a mix CD with that set up) but it allowed me to score a shitload of EPs dirt-cheap, and you would occasionally find an epic one-track CD, netting you an hour or so of music for the cost of a single download.

Now its by credits, individual songs still cost one credit, but if you elect to buy by the album your pricing will vary. Sometimes its good, most regular length albums cost 12 credits, even if they have upwards of 18 songs. That’s like getting six songs for free. However, there are some massive fuckups with this system. Want this 3 Song Sampler by Foo Fighters, that’ll be 12 credits. Why? Who knows . What about the two track Springsteen single for “My Hometown“? That’ll set you back 12 credits as well. Ditto goes for the Franz Ferdinand remix EP, four tracks – 12 credits.

You may be thinking “well, I’ll just download the one song I like off the album then.” Well…fuck you that’s not going to happen. Many (so very many) of the albums feature “album only” tracks. So if you want “Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town” off of My Hometown, you have to spend 12 credits. On my plan that’s about $4.92. On iTunes you can buy that song for 99 cents.

Then there’s the labeling of the songs themselves, check out that Franz Ferdinand EPs again, notice anything odd about them? There’s no remix information! So if I want to know who did the remix of “Do You Want To” I have to go to iTunes. And not only does iTunes have that information, you can also buy each track individually there! And don’t even get me started on the problems with the Michael Jackson singles, holy shit what a mess.

The reasoning behind the “album only” downloads is complete bullshit as well. As expected many long tracks are unavailable without buying the whole album. This is not unique to eMusic, iTunes does the same thing. In both cases it’s total bullshit but whatever. But check this out. “Sweet Dreams” is an album only download. Why? Because they know that everyone wants that track the most, so they make it impossible to download separately.

Then there’s the mess all these additions has made to the category system. I mentioned before that I go to eMusic to pick up new electronic music, now when I browse that section I have to wade through new “electronic” acts like Mariah Carey, C&C Music Factory and Bette fucking Midler. Who the fuck goes to eMusic to buy Mariah Carey?

To me this is a legendary example of not knowing your customer base. When eMusic started they were they only online music store that offered DRM-free MP3s. Because of this many major labels wouldn’t deal with them. They adapted, branding themselves as the online store for independent music. In doing so they built up quite a user base of discerning music fans, people who seek out hard-to-find or under-the-radar acts. The people who buy music at eMusic buy Dinosaur Jr., Spoon and Cat Power, they do not buy shit like The Fray, Chevelle, Ted Nugent or Mariah Fucking Carey.

And there’s more bullshit too, how about removing unlimited redownloading, not allowing some albums to be downloaded with free trial credits and not allowing most of the new expanded catalog to be available in countries other than the US (they still get the fucked up new pricing scheme though).

I understand that I’m still getting a deal most of the time when compared to the prices of other services like Amazon or iTunes, but for every dealI can find there’s usually at least one gigantic rip-off. eMusic used to be the place to find hard to find and niche music at a fair price. It is no longer that place and now there’s no need for eMusic.

Franz Ferdinand
Take Me Out (Morgan Geist Remix)
Take Me Out (Naum Gabo Remix)
These remixes aren’t on that previously mentioned EP that eMusic is gauging its users over. They were taken off of a strange white label promo I picked up last week. This promo was scratched to holy hell so the beginning of each is a little damaged, but after the first 30 seconds or so both sound fine.

Serart
Narnia (Bill Laswell Remix)
Facing The Plastic (Mindless Self Indulgence Remix)
Serart was a musical collaboration between Serj Tankian of System of a Down and folk musician Arto Tunçboyacıyan. They teamed up to explore experimental combinations of folk, rock, spoken word and world music to create an album that sounds unlike anything you’ve really heard before. It’s intelligent, unique and an altogether magical listening experience. So when it came time to release remix promos they called Mindless Self Indulgence’s Jimmy Urine. Makes sense to me.

Def Leppard
Nine Lives (Def Leppard Version)
Finally. After begging months ago I was able to track down the Tim McGraw-less version of this Def Leppard song, which was on the Japanese version of their latest album, Songs from The Sparkle Lounge. Still not a great song, but with 100% less country twang it sure is a fuckload better.

Posted in Def Leppard, Franz Ferdinand, furries, Mindless Self Indulgence, rant, remixes, Serart | 6 Comments »

My Ulysseses (Ulyssi?) and other remixes by moderately hip bands

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

With less than 30 records in my to-be-recorded queue, my computer area is reaching a level of non-clutter that it has not seen in years. If I somehow manage to become totally caught up in my record recording I’m kind of scared as to what might happen. It could be crazy, dogs and cats living together mass hysteria. Or maybe I’ll just finally find that copy of the Metropolis soundtrack again, who knows.

Franz Ferdinand
Ulysses (Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve Remix)
Ulysses (Mr. Dan Remix)
Ulysses (Mickey Moonlight Remix)
Ulysses (Disco Bloodbath Remix)
I’m seeing these guys next month in a small club outside of Detroit, somehow that show hasn’t sold out yet, proving that not only does Detroit suck, but the people who live there suck because they have shitty taste in music. I am beyond stoked for this show, as Franz Ferdinand is one of the only bands I love that I haven’t managed to see yet. Stupid Scots and their lack of US touring. These remixes are from a special 12” single that can with the record when you bought it at certain indie stores. Shop independent motherfuckers.

Ian Dury & The Blockheads
Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick ’91 (The Flying Remix)
Really Glad You Came (Love Version)
Inspiration (Love Version)
“Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick” is the greatest song ever written. There I said it. Now that I got that off my chest I should say that “Really Glad You Came” and “Inspiration” aren’t half bad either and that all three of these excellent Ian Dury tunes came from 12” singles.

Against Me!
From Her Lips To God’s Ears (Energize-O-Tron) Remix by Adrock
Of all the bands I expected to find a 12” dance remix of Against Me! was pretty fucking low on the list, right next to…oh let’s say Dead Kennedys and Bebop Deluxe (how’s that for random?). Their “fans” are always going off on how the band keeps selling out, and a dance remix of a song about Condoleezza Rice probably didn’t help to prove the detractors wrong. But you know what? Fuck those assholes who think that the second a punk rock group signs to a major label they’ve “sold out.” What’s so damn wrong about wanting your music to be heard? Here’s a little tip for you all, whenever some twatty little shit is whining about their favorite band “selling out” 9 times out of 10 they’re just upset that the band in question isn’t still living up to their own fucked up little ideals, or they’re pissy because the band that they always considered as “their own” is now popular. Sellig out is when a band compromises their own ideals to sell records, changing their sound, personal beliefs or even their line-up just to make it big. Who’s done this? Well, Aerosmith is always a good example to bring up, as are Metallica, Yes, Weezer and the greatest example of all; Liz Phair. Against Me! never rallied against decent distribution or quality production values (something their early records sure as hell don’t have) so the fact that they signed to Sire and hired a real producer to record their shit doesn’t make them sell-outs. Another thing that bugs me about people using the term “sell out” is that they always apply it to bands that have never even come close to selling out, and only label an artist as a sell out because they don’t like them to begin with. I always hate it when people bring up bands like Nickleback, Fall Out Boy and Panic At The Disco when tallking about “sell outs.” Bands like those have no illusions about who they are or what they are doing, they’re in it to be as popular as possible and make a shitload of money from the day they decided to create a pop-friendly version of whatever genre they are in. It’s not selling out if that’s what you wanted to accomplish in the first place.

So the next time you say a band has “sold out” try to keep this shit in mind. (Cue “The more you know” music).

Posted in Against Me, Franz Ferdinand, Ian Dury, remixes | 3 Comments »