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Underground > Radio & Music >

Redd Blood Cells (and customized pop)

Matthew Fluxington

00:30 / 28.06.02

For the past few weeks, Steven McDonald from the band Redd Kross has been recording his own version of the White Stripes' White Blood Cells LP with his bass playing transposed over the band's music. He's been putting up MP3s of each completed song on Redd Kross' official website, and now has the blessing of the White Stripes themselves.

Here are some excerpts of what McDonald has to say about this project:

I hope that anybody involved with the White Stripes will see this as the tribute I have intended it to be. I am in no way trying to suggest that their music is not complete or unfinished, in fact I'm sure that some could use my interpretations as the perfect argument against the use of bass guitar in their music. If that is it's true validity, then so be it...

That is what this performance is for me, an opportunity to be a part of someone else's group identity ... in this case family even ... It's beyond fan ... I'm joining the band! This is still very much the White Stripes ... same band just a new take on their latest record ... rather my take on their latest record...

It's a pretty interesting and bold project, and I think that this is sort of the next logical progression from the bootleg phenomenon - I think things like this will become increasingly common as it becomes more clear to people that audio recordings don't ever have to be considered finished, that the audience can now 'improve' and alter the songs to meet their specifications.

Anyway, if you want to jump in on this, now is the time. Starting on Monday, McDonald will be reposting one song per day to catch people up to where he is on the record. So Monday, it's "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground", Tuesday it's "Hotel Yorba", and so on.

My verdict on what I've heard thus far - the two songs currently online, "The Union Forever" and "The Same Boy You've Always Known" are improved by the addition of bass/keyboards in my mind, but "Little Room" (which was posted last week) was fucking DESTROYED by the bassline that McDonald added. He should give that one another shot, maybe...

04:16 / 07.07.02

I really hope this isnt the wave of the future.

I think its swell for people to make their own remixes/versions of songs and put them up on their websites and trade them or whatever. What bothers me is the thought of musicians/record labels/whoever endlessly tweaking/updating songs to fit the current marketplace. This kind of shit is already happening in film with movies like Star Wars and E.T. And it sucks.

07:57 / 07.07.02

well all i wanna say is:
thanks for the tip off! i've been enjoying this! yr the man Flux!

09:23 / 07.07.02

I hope I don't sound closed minded or conservative, but my first thought is - hasn't this guy got anything better to do? like maybe making his own records?

Matthew Fluxington

11:58 / 07.07.02

Well, in Steve's defense, he HAS been very busy working on his own records - if you look at the site, he's got his own solo project, a new Red Kross LP, and was involved with his wife Anna Woronker's new record.

Bio, don't you think there's a difference between a fan tweaking someone else's songs in their bedroom studio and an artist/label re-releasing an old product significantly altered? (The Stooges' Raw Power and Peter Gabriel's So immediately spring to mind...)

I think that this sort of thing has a lot of promise - I can imagine sometime in the future when a fan-modified version of an album becomes far more popular than the version the artist/label released, perhaps enough so that the label may decide to release the modified version through conventional channels. (Think about Richard X, and him being signed to Virgin after the Sugababes Vs. Gary Numan song took off) It might deflate the ego of the artist and the label a bit, but that might not be a bad thing either.

Having heard all of the Redd Blood Cells tracks to date, I've got to say that I think that more than half of them are a lot better than the originals - namely, "I'm Finding It Harder To Be A Gentleman", "Dead Leaves...", "The Same Boy You've Always Known", "Fell In Love With A Girl", and "The Union Forever". I've got them all on SoulSeek if you don't have them yet - look up 'redd blood cells', and you'll surely get my results if I'm online.

18:36 / 07.07.02

I do think theres a difference and I dont mind the fans making and trading their own versions. Im just afraid of record companies deciding that all Suicide needed was a kickass guitar player and throwing Slash into the mix.

To me, remastering Raw Power (or anyother album) is a different thing since no new parts were added or rerecorded. They just cleaned up the sound, really.

Matthew Fluxington

19:53 / 07.07.02

Hmm. I don't know if the Suicide scenario is something would happen without the consent of the songwriter... Still, what you are imagining has already happened. A few years ago, Kenny G had a big hit by transposing his dreadful lite FM sax playing over Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World", and there's always the example of the Natalie/Nat King Cole version of "Unforgettable"...

14:37 / 08.07.02

Ooo - and Willie Nelson did a similar (much better) duet with Hank Williams Sr. on his "Half Nelson" duets album. I think it was a song that never got released, but I'm not sure - "I Told a Lie to My Heart". Hank on vocals and rhythm guitar, Willie added a Western-style guitar solo part and may or may not have added a harmony vocal (thinking of the song, I hear a harmony in my head, but I think that's from me, not Willie).

I believe Syd Barrett's second album was basically recorded the same way, with members of Soft Machine brought in to put a "band" behind Barrett's guitar and vocal tracks.

And one of the first things I did when I got a 4track was to put a harmony vocal behind Barrett's song "Opel" (off that 80s release of unreleased tapes and whatnot).

I'm really surprised nobody has done this with box sets like Beatles' "Anthology" or Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" - where they have individual tracks for songs and various studio outtakes. Pieces of the puzzle that a studio song is.

Matthew Fluxington

15:01 / 08.07.02

From Irwin Chusid's book, Song In The Key of Z:

The standard practice for multi-track recording is to tape bass and drum tracks - to lay a foundation - before overdubbing vocals and lead instruments. Barrett's producers reversed this process. They first captured Syd's vocals and guitar parts, then added the rhythm section. They probably feared that the Madcap would waste valuable studio time trying to synchronize with a live band. Barrett had difficulty staying in beat, resulting in all manner of odd, haphazard meters. "If the song "Love You" was a little irregular - Syd went into the next verse, occasionally, after six-and-a-half or seven bars instead of eight" observed Jones - "then "It's No Good Trying" was positively impossible!...it's very hard for a musician other than the composer to follow."

In Redd Blood Cells news - "We're Going To Be Friends" and "Offend In Every Way" are up today. "We're Going To Be Friends" is pretty daring, as it not only adds bass, but also a non-Meg female vocalist (very likely Anna Waronker) singing harmony vocals at just about the same volume in the mix as Jack White's vocal track.