smooth to the groove like sandwich bread
I've always wanted to start a band. I can play the keys and I've got good rhythm. I can write good lyrics and I've got a low voice that carries. It's probably not going to happen though. I don't think I have the drive for it, not to mention I'm quite a bit older now. Still, if I were to start a band, my goal would either be to create a group covering lots of different styles, or one that was into very loud music, to the point of outright noise with underlying melody. My blueprint for the latter would be Beck's early band recordings where his songwriting talents were sometimes buried behind waves of feedback and screams. If you don't know what I'm talking about, the Stereopathetic Soulmanure album will fill in the blanks, though there is a quite a bit of it on Mellow Gold too. That said, a song that gets straight to the point is his cover of Can's I'm So Green. As for where to find that, well... It was scheduled to be part of a Dust Brothers-curated tribute album to Can on their own label, Nickel Bag Records, though it was never released. The "Brothers Dust" didn't seem to have a very long run managing their own label, whereas they did quite a bit of work for Dreamworks Records, but seeing that it didn't drop there either, I guess the powers that be didn't have much faith in the commercial prospects of a Can tribute album (unlike Mute?). I'm sorry baby, them's the rules.
As for Beck's cover of I'm So Green, for the longest time a short loop of it was playing on the Dust Brothers' official website. That site is still up, though it doesn't look to be very functional. In a bizarre twist though, the full version of Beck's I'm So Green did make its way online through the most convoluted of paths. Apparently, it was played on a radio show back in the nineties, I believe on WFMU, and someone in the 2000s somehow managed to find a working RealAudio stream of the show it was broadcast on and ripped it to an mp3. There's even a comment about it in the mp3! (From a 40kbps(!) Realplayer stream) It looks like they probably did so via the analog hole, ala literally recording the playback with their computer or another device and then making the mp3 of it. And it definitely sounds like that's what they did judging by the audio quality! But don't let that dissuade you from giving it a listen, as it is still very listenable as well as utterly nuts. Seriously, I miss this side of Beck, and with all the stories about his enormous archives of unreleased recordings, I wish he'd get around to a few archival releases of his noisier years.
One more note on this track, this is the original mp3 that made the rounds of this song. I've actually did my own very amateur remaster of it which I think gives it some extra umph, but I want to share the original mp3s here whenever possible. I may eventually share that remaster as part of something else I worked on, but not today.
Beck - I'm So Green
On the mention of ripping audio via the analog hole, here's a track I did that with myself. I wasn't terribly familiar with packet sniffing online file locations or ripping streams, so I often ripped audio with my laptop which could somehow record the audio live while being streamed in a browser window. I'm sure other people did this too, though it doesn't seem like as much of an option these days, and when I tried it in the last decade I found it didn't work any longer on any devices I used. Still, it was a nice way to get otherwise unavailable music from MySpace, since there was so much stuff that popped up there and never appeared elsewhere. Which brings me back to the track in question. I put this on so many mix tapes and cds back in the day, constantly playing it. The band eventually issued an EP with versions of all the demos they'd shared online, but this one was so different, and the demo, at least in my opinion, is far superior. That band is Tigercity, and the song is the 2006 demo of Are You Sensation. I've reached out to Joel Ford, the leader of the band and a very active musician and producer in his own right, a few times asking him about these demos, maybe giving them an official release of some sort. He's said he'd look into it, though nothing has come of it to my knowledge. If he never does give the demo version an official release, at least I'll have this still rather good recording in my collection, and I'll still probably be playing it years from now.
Tigercity - Are You Sensation (2006 Demo)
I said in the last post that I had something else unreleased that was DFA-related, so I might as well put that out here. This is Tim Goldsworthy's remix of The Magic Numbers' Keep It in the Pocket done under his The Loving Hand moniker. Don't know why this never came out, though it was known about for a long time as it had been dropped into some Beats in Space sets way back when. For whatever reason, it's title was always listed as Full, which is what it was labeled when I got it. How I got it is kinda interesting though. Back on the Unheard Music blog, I had posted some rare DFA stuff including an obscure track I found on MySpace (again) when looking for hidden artist pages, in this case the aforementioned Mr. Goldsworthy. The track didn't have a proper name if I remember correctly, it might have been labeled 3. I have it somewhere but won't be re-sharing it because of what happened next. I got an email from Mr. Goldsworthy himself and he asked me where I got the track and to take it down. I told him no problem and pointed to where it came from. He thanked me by sending me the unmastered .aiff of the Magic Numbers remix. I asked him if I could share it on the blog but he never responded further. I did put it on my SoundCloud account, where it was available as a download for a long time, until SoundCloud started to suck and blocked letting people make tracks available for download unless they paid them. Not like I was trying to make any money off it, so whatever. This isn't the same file I'd uploaded, though it's not all that different. I found the original .aiff again, removed some of the excess silence at the beginning and end as well as some of the extra noise, added some light compression for volume, and made an mp3 for you to enjoy. Now go and enjoy it, damn it!
The Magic Numbers - Keep It in the Pocket (The Loving Hand Remix)
And finally, anyone else remember Natural Selection? They had a hit in 1991 with Do Anything, their first single. They had a second single but, despite what Wikipedia says about where it charted, you never heard it. Hell, you may not have heard this one. It got to number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, only beaten by Mariah Carey's Emotions rip-off, Emotions, but I don't recall having ever heard it since outside of my own listening experiences, and I've heard Cibo Matto in grocery stores! Anyway, their album came out and it kinda sucked. All of the charm of Do Anything was missing from the rest of the album, and it sounded really generic. Too bad. But if you remember Do Anything, here's a little twist for you, as I found this mp3 of the original demo played on the radio. For a recording from the radio, probably around 1990, it sounds pretty great! Not that it's terribly different from the version that was officially released, with the biggest difference being Ingrid Chavez' sexy voice in place of Niki Harris' equally sexy voice. Apparently, Ingrid couldn't be featured on the single since she was signed to Prince's Paisley Park label despite having recorded this beforehand. Not like she had any hits for Prince either, so this could've been a bit of promotion for her album. Was it really too early for ambient vocals over mellow dance beats? I mean, this was the era of Enigma's Sadeness. (Yes, it's spelled with the extra e, like Marquis de Sade, not the Smooth Operator Sade. Though it was spelled without the extra e on some international releases.) Regardless, because of Ingrid's appearance on the demo along with the song being a blatant attempt at copying Prince's sound, it was long rumored that Prince wrote this one too. He did not. If he had, I'm sure their album wouldn't have been nearly as boring as it ended up being since he would've probably loaded it down with hits and it wouldn't have dropped on the major label wasteland that was EastWest Records. Not like Paisley Park wasn't a bit of a major label wasteland in it's own right, but that's another story. So go on with your bad self and revisit a major hit of 1991 that has been left to gather dust and moss. It's unfair, but it sounds like 1991, and that sound got dated fast with the advent of better recording equipment and hip-hop production trends. These guys deserved a better chance, but the major label system, especially in the late eighties and early nineties would chew up and spit out groups and artists no matter how deserving they were, even with a number 2 record on the charts.
Natural Selection - Do Anything (Demo feat. Ingrid Chavez)
As for Beck's cover of I'm So Green, for the longest time a short loop of it was playing on the Dust Brothers' official website. That site is still up, though it doesn't look to be very functional. In a bizarre twist though, the full version of Beck's I'm So Green did make its way online through the most convoluted of paths. Apparently, it was played on a radio show back in the nineties, I believe on WFMU, and someone in the 2000s somehow managed to find a working RealAudio stream of the show it was broadcast on and ripped it to an mp3. There's even a comment about it in the mp3! (From a 40kbps(!) Realplayer stream) It looks like they probably did so via the analog hole, ala literally recording the playback with their computer or another device and then making the mp3 of it. And it definitely sounds like that's what they did judging by the audio quality! But don't let that dissuade you from giving it a listen, as it is still very listenable as well as utterly nuts. Seriously, I miss this side of Beck, and with all the stories about his enormous archives of unreleased recordings, I wish he'd get around to a few archival releases of his noisier years.
One more note on this track, this is the original mp3 that made the rounds of this song. I've actually did my own very amateur remaster of it which I think gives it some extra umph, but I want to share the original mp3s here whenever possible. I may eventually share that remaster as part of something else I worked on, but not today.
Beck - I'm So Green
On the mention of ripping audio via the analog hole, here's a track I did that with myself. I wasn't terribly familiar with packet sniffing online file locations or ripping streams, so I often ripped audio with my laptop which could somehow record the audio live while being streamed in a browser window. I'm sure other people did this too, though it doesn't seem like as much of an option these days, and when I tried it in the last decade I found it didn't work any longer on any devices I used. Still, it was a nice way to get otherwise unavailable music from MySpace, since there was so much stuff that popped up there and never appeared elsewhere. Which brings me back to the track in question. I put this on so many mix tapes and cds back in the day, constantly playing it. The band eventually issued an EP with versions of all the demos they'd shared online, but this one was so different, and the demo, at least in my opinion, is far superior. That band is Tigercity, and the song is the 2006 demo of Are You Sensation. I've reached out to Joel Ford, the leader of the band and a very active musician and producer in his own right, a few times asking him about these demos, maybe giving them an official release of some sort. He's said he'd look into it, though nothing has come of it to my knowledge. If he never does give the demo version an official release, at least I'll have this still rather good recording in my collection, and I'll still probably be playing it years from now.
Tigercity - Are You Sensation (2006 Demo)
I said in the last post that I had something else unreleased that was DFA-related, so I might as well put that out here. This is Tim Goldsworthy's remix of The Magic Numbers' Keep It in the Pocket done under his The Loving Hand moniker. Don't know why this never came out, though it was known about for a long time as it had been dropped into some Beats in Space sets way back when. For whatever reason, it's title was always listed as Full, which is what it was labeled when I got it. How I got it is kinda interesting though. Back on the Unheard Music blog, I had posted some rare DFA stuff including an obscure track I found on MySpace (again) when looking for hidden artist pages, in this case the aforementioned Mr. Goldsworthy. The track didn't have a proper name if I remember correctly, it might have been labeled 3. I have it somewhere but won't be re-sharing it because of what happened next. I got an email from Mr. Goldsworthy himself and he asked me where I got the track and to take it down. I told him no problem and pointed to where it came from. He thanked me by sending me the unmastered .aiff of the Magic Numbers remix. I asked him if I could share it on the blog but he never responded further. I did put it on my SoundCloud account, where it was available as a download for a long time, until SoundCloud started to suck and blocked letting people make tracks available for download unless they paid them. Not like I was trying to make any money off it, so whatever. This isn't the same file I'd uploaded, though it's not all that different. I found the original .aiff again, removed some of the excess silence at the beginning and end as well as some of the extra noise, added some light compression for volume, and made an mp3 for you to enjoy. Now go and enjoy it, damn it!
The Magic Numbers - Keep It in the Pocket (The Loving Hand Remix)
And finally, anyone else remember Natural Selection? They had a hit in 1991 with Do Anything, their first single. They had a second single but, despite what Wikipedia says about where it charted, you never heard it. Hell, you may not have heard this one. It got to number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, only beaten by Mariah Carey's Emotions rip-off, Emotions, but I don't recall having ever heard it since outside of my own listening experiences, and I've heard Cibo Matto in grocery stores! Anyway, their album came out and it kinda sucked. All of the charm of Do Anything was missing from the rest of the album, and it sounded really generic. Too bad. But if you remember Do Anything, here's a little twist for you, as I found this mp3 of the original demo played on the radio. For a recording from the radio, probably around 1990, it sounds pretty great! Not that it's terribly different from the version that was officially released, with the biggest difference being Ingrid Chavez' sexy voice in place of Niki Harris' equally sexy voice. Apparently, Ingrid couldn't be featured on the single since she was signed to Prince's Paisley Park label despite having recorded this beforehand. Not like she had any hits for Prince either, so this could've been a bit of promotion for her album. Was it really too early for ambient vocals over mellow dance beats? I mean, this was the era of Enigma's Sadeness. (Yes, it's spelled with the extra e, like Marquis de Sade, not the Smooth Operator Sade. Though it was spelled without the extra e on some international releases.) Regardless, because of Ingrid's appearance on the demo along with the song being a blatant attempt at copying Prince's sound, it was long rumored that Prince wrote this one too. He did not. If he had, I'm sure their album wouldn't have been nearly as boring as it ended up being since he would've probably loaded it down with hits and it wouldn't have dropped on the major label wasteland that was EastWest Records. Not like Paisley Park wasn't a bit of a major label wasteland in it's own right, but that's another story. So go on with your bad self and revisit a major hit of 1991 that has been left to gather dust and moss. It's unfair, but it sounds like 1991, and that sound got dated fast with the advent of better recording equipment and hip-hop production trends. These guys deserved a better chance, but the major label system, especially in the late eighties and early nineties would chew up and spit out groups and artists no matter how deserving they were, even with a number 2 record on the charts.
Natural Selection - Do Anything (Demo feat. Ingrid Chavez)
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