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Underground > Radio & Music >

Barbe-Mix Tape: Two Up

04:21 / 05.03.02

So, I was working for ages on making a tape where the names of the songs on each side would be the same, but they would be different songs by different artists - does that make sense? Not covers, just different songs with the same names. Finally I did it, and the tape ended up being pretty unlistenable, but it was fun - the contrasts between the songs, etc. So I'm going to kick off with:

One In A Million

by Aaliyah and Guns n Roses.

Timbaland's first hit, ultra-slinky chopped up beats and gorgeous vocals, meets the then-still-credible Gunners grunty semiglam metal.

So the rules are clear? Who's next?

[ 05-03-2002: Message edited by: Dread Pirate Crunchy ]

04:21 / 05.03.02

Huey Lewis And The News/ Jennifer Rush. "The Power Of Love"

do the songs have to be good?

that makes it trickier.

sorry.

04:21 / 05.03.02

Ideally they should both be good, and they should make an interesting contrast - comment on each other, kind of? - like the way the feminised rhythms of the aaliyah track and the masculine gunners growl work off each other. When I was doing it I found that a lot of the time, one track would be relatively 'serious' and the other more poppy, which made it kind of an interesting angle on the way seriousness is constructed in pop music - that is wanky but maybe gives some idea where I was coming from. Anyway.

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:08 / 05.03.02

Eve - 'Cowboy'
Kenickie - 'Cowboy'

Both these songs kinda play with the idea of women taking on the 'cowboy' persona, ie sexually aggressive, taking no shit, etc... But whereas the Eve track is a storming piece of shouty call-and-response hip-hop (and for maximum results, I'd put the Fatboy Slim remix on there - no really), the Kenickie one, a deceptively jaunty jangly guitar tune, is much sadder, suggesting that the cost of doing the above may be more than its worth. "Pills control her health / She can't respect herself / At least it makes her interesting..." Could almost be Kenickie's epitaph, actually, although listening to it again now, it's more determined and optimistic by the end than I remembered. Which is nice.

No star here laces

14:09 / 05.03.02

If you're gonna do that, can we please break the rules for the sake o' humour and follow 'em with:
Kid Rock - 'Cowboy'
A paean to patriarchal materialistic values and cheap sex. Constructed out of nonsensical rhymes and featuring a tragic dwarf for comedy value.

Oh, and jews harps too...

14:49 / 05.03.02

Come Together

The Beatles / Spiritualised

Two bands I normally can't stick, but the combination of nonsensical hippster bollocks and drugged out, misanthropic cynicism would be rather a pleasant one I think. (Plus the Spiritualised track is a mighty, mighty tune - Jason P's best by about a million, trillion miles, IMHO).

(Oh, and 'Come Together' by the MC5 could also be included if tapes had three sides .. which they don't)

[ 05-03-2002: Message edited by: Rizla Year Zero ]

19:33 / 05.03.02

Gloria
by U2 and Laura Branigan.

I've been wanting to do this since the 80s.

I once did a cover tape based on the same thing, but had to break pattern once.

Anyway, one is sort of pre-riot-grrl dance-pop, the other is kind of a prayer.

You could also throw in that "G-L-O-R-I-A" Gloria that the Doors covered. For side three.

>>>
Eat the Rich - Morbid Opera/Motorhed
The first is an old punk band with a 12-year-old lead singer (voice had yet to change, you can't understand any of the words besides the chorus), the second gravelly anthem rhymes "rich" with "bitch" if memory serves. Crazy kids vs. bitter old men.

Side three: Aerosmith.

Is the fact that both of these from the 80s or earlier sad?

Did Joy Division do a song called Feeling? Cuz I did. And I think that might be close enough to Barbra Streisand's signature tune to fly.

Mr insensitive

20:34 / 05.03.02

If anyone's up for it I'd love to swap mix tapes. I'm into hip hop, jazz and r&b, but I'll listen to anything!

09:13 / 06.03.02

"Head On"

Jesus & Mary Chain/Marah/The Stooges--The JAMC tune is droning shoegazer tune (until The Pixies revved it up with their version) while the Marah is a sloppy, Faces-style rocker with horns & harmonica. I've never heard The Stooges song, so I can't really comment.

"Nobody"

Johnny Cash/The Replacements--Johnny's is a turn-of-the-century tune about a drifter & the Replacements tune is a song about a young girl getting married who's still in love with "nobody".

"Dead"

The Pixies/They Might Be Giants--The Pixies song is about, er, something (who knows?--It's a Pixies song after all) & TMBG's is a joke song about some guy biting it in a grocery store & never apologizing to his brother for making him his personal slave.

*Edited to add*

Thirteen

Danzig/Big Star--Never hear the Danzig origional (only heard the Johnny Cash cover). As far as the Big Star number (pun unintended), "Thirteen" is about being (surprise!) 13 & all of the pre-teen angst that goes with it.

Yeah, I know it's lame, but that's all I could come up with.

[ 06-03-2002: Message edited by: Margin Walker ]

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:19 / 06.03.02

The Coup featuring Dead Prez - 'Get Up'
Sleater-Kinney - 'Get Up'

The first one is edgy, urgent, fast-paced political hip-hop about the need to fuck the police, overthrow the government, etc. The second is excellent wailing grrl rock and I don't know what it's about, but it has an ace spoken bit at the beginning about letting go of/throwing away your body (dying? or something else?), and then about three killer hooks, culminating in the moment where it goes "ahhhhh.... get UP!".

09:19 / 06.03.02

C.R.E.A.M. by the Wu Tang Clan.
Cream by Prince.

Sad but shouty anthemic rap tune about how 'cash rules everything around me' vs a lesser - but still good - pre-Love-Symbol Prince tune about slinky sex.

Breakaway by Basement Jaxx.
Breakway by Big Pig.

The first is catchy house, the second is a very cool 80s Australian indie pop crossover hit - Big Pig had something like ten drummers playing crazy polyrhythms (I think this got used in the soundtrack to a Bill n Ted movie, so maybe overseas kids will know it...) Basement Jaxx's playfulness neatly undercuts the excessive seriousness of Big Pig's angst...

09:19 / 06.03.02

Metropolis: the Pogues' instrumental tribute to Irish New York, spy jazz bassline giving way to a manic reel, then the horns come in imitating a traffic jam—or the Church as abstruse sci-fi lounge lizards.

Superman: The Clique (later covered by REM) are jealous again, with a lyrical conceit a little too obviously borrowed from The Who's "I Can See For Miles." Or is it Ray Davies having another crisis of confidence, looking in the mirror at his pigeon chest and having to pout his clothes on cos it makes him depressed, with the Kinks crunching away behind him? Whatever it is, it's definitely not that pussy from Five For Fighting moping that "even heroes have the right to bleed." That'd be for Side Three.

I've got a million of these...

09:19 / 06.03.02

Elevation: U2 selling out big-time, attempting to write a frat-rock anthem (for the Tomb Raider soundtrack, no less!), or Television doing something altogether more shivery and angular... don't go to my head.