putting the j in jjosh

O.k. so granted, MIA = super over exposure on the internet…

and within the subset of MIA, Paper Planes = even more exposure…

and perhaps within Paper Planes, Paper Planes remixes = even more more exposure…

but these remixes posted below exemplify a certain type of remix that I really love and that you don’t see that much of, namely the type of remix where the remixer takes away the original music and adds a completely new track under the vocal. These all do that, to varying degrees of success…

The DFA remix doesn’t quite get the key right to fit MIA’s vocals, but kind of makes up for it by being so damn funky and cool…why is James Murphy so awesome right now? LCD Soundsystem and DFA can do no wrong, can they?

MIA – Paper Planes (DFA remix)

[audio:/paper_dfa.mp3]

Even though I want the Ad-Rock remix to be great, it doesn’t really work. the instrumental is good, but the two don’t mesh very well. Sort of like the video for Paper Planes with the Beastie Boys in a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo. It’s sort of like, "what’s the point"?

MIA – Paper Planes (Ad-Rock remix)

[audio:/paper_adrock.mp3]

You have to get to this remix by the aptly and R-rated named Holy F*ck (who are they?) to get one that works seamlessly…this track is just fantastic, and while it jettisons the cool and hip hop style of the original, it gets a sort of punk energy that just works somehow…

MIA – Paper Planes (Holy F*ck remix)

[audio:/paper_hot.mp3]

The first two will be available on a MIA remix EP coming out 3/1, but the Holy F*ck one is internet only apparently…although MIA has suppsoedly given it her approval…

For all thems what thinks Steve Earle is just an actor playing that counselor guy on The Wire, here’s a clip of him kicking it on Jools Holland…

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(p.s., the DJ guy behind him has the same kind of CDJ decks that I’m selling…if you buy them from me, you can surely do better than his shameful attempt at 2:30 in)

hey, a new Wax Tailor album came out last April, how about that? I’m gonna check it out and get back to you, but in the meantime, this video is pretty fresh.

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So after posting that bit about the CERN collider perhaps creating a black hole, I didn’t want to freak you out and let you know that when they start up that huge collider it might also create a rift in space-time and allow time travel to be possible. But hey, it might.

Instead I want to let you know (courtesy joshgranger.com science coorospondent Pat G) that some badass scientist named Scott Funkhouser (yes!) thinks he may have unearthed some kind of new cosmic constant, and it’s 10 to the 122. Nice. Good work, Funkhouser. It comes into play in trying to explain that "dark matter" we keep hearing about, and also:

"the ratio of the mass of the observable Universe to that of the smallest possible ‘quantum’ of mass is about 6×10¹²². And the number of ways in which the particles of the current Universe can be arranged throughout space (a measure of entropy) is 2.5×10¹²²."

According to Funkhouser (preach it, Funkhouser!) “It is unlikely for chance alone to be responsible for generating so many pure numbers from just several fundamental parameters.” In other words, it looks like design! I love it when science gets out in the fringes…

Meanwhile, let’s take a moment to reminisce on another, more classic cosmic number:

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Wizards, robots, math, science, hip-hop — I love this video! It’s by comedy/music duo Hard n Phirm.

They’re also known for their medley of Radiohead songs done in a bluegrass style. Of course they are. It’s called Rodeohead, check it out…according to wikipedia (can we ever believe them?!) Radiohead themselves approved the track…

Hard n Phirm – Rodeohead

[audio:Rodeohead.mp3]

Max Raabe

I was at Pasha’s apartment in Brooklyn years ago and I asked him what he was listening to that I should check out. I always respected Pasha’s taste in music, so when he told me to check out Max Raabe, I dutifully did. And discovered this strange, Germany-in-the-20’s cabaret orchestral sound, which is pretty unique.

Also around this time I saw The Comedian Harmonists with my family, and I remember liking it quite a bit, liking the old-timey feeling of the music and harmonies, and there was some great stuff in the film too about how they dealt with the war and so on…

The most interesting (or accessible) of Raabe’s stuff is the record he did called "Super Hits", which features his interpretation of the modern hits of the day. I’ll never forget being at Deep Creek with a bunch of people, DJ’ing in the lazy hours of a winter afternoon, and SK requesting some Britney Spears…so I played the Raabe version of "Oops I did it Again" and we were treated to a stunning dance interpretation of the song by the same SK, who had been an (ahem) exotic dancer…a magic moment to be sure…

I’ve always wanted to put his version of "We Are The Champions" at the end of a mix, but it’s so different from everything else that it always comes too far out of nowhere.

And who suggested that he should cover "King of Bongos"? Genius. (end of mp3 is corrupted for some reason…I’ll try to fix at some point)

Finally I’m putting the Abba cover here too because this morning I went to the dentist and they were playing Abba during my whole check-up. At first I was going to say something snarky to my dentist like "Yuck, Abba…" and then the chorus of "Fernando" kicked in and I remembered how Abba was my favorite band when I was seven. Raabe’s version of "Super Trooper" sounds like it’s an original.

Max Raabe – Oops I Did It Again

[audio:Oops.mp3]

Max Raabe – We Are The Champions

Max Raabe – Bongo Bong (King of Bongos)

[audio:Bongo_Bong.mp3]

Max Raabe – Super Trooper

[audio:Super_trouper.mp3]

I heard this great podcast this morning from WNYC public radio’s Radiolab, which seems to be a sort of hodge-podge, documentary-style radio show that airs intermittently. Their main page is here, and their blog post that I got this mp3 from is here. I’ve taken the mp3 and trimmed it down to just the content and end credit so it doesn’t have any of the radio show bits at the beginning…

It’s by Sherre DeLys, an Australian artist and sound designer, and it’s called "If". I found it weirdly compelling, very moving, sort of like a hypnotic lyrical story. Joshgranger.com is the perfect place for me to be able to post this kind of stuff, because this isn’t anything I’d put on a mix for anyone, and it’s too involved to be the kind of link I’d e-mail around…but it’s definitely a fascinating piece and worth hearing…

It’s about 7 minutes long, so if you want to listen to it later I’m adding a download link under the player…

[audio:IF.mp3]

right-click to download

According to my calendar, it’s Valenmatines Day!

Where does Valentine’s Day come from anyway? Who was St. Valentine? Is this another case of the Church co-opting a big pagan day and making it their own (see Christmas, Easter, Halloween)? The BBC has a great little history of Valentine’s Day that’s pretty interesting. Turns out, no pagan stuff here, though the time is noted as traditionally being the fertility celebration time for the Greeks and Romans…the Greeks celebrating the marriage of Zeus and Hera, the Romans celebrating Lupercus, the god of fertility (also known as the "protector of flocks against wolves").

Who? Lupercus?! Well that’s right, and according to the BBC, Lupercus’s festival was traditionally celebrated with your standard goat-slaughtering, wine-drinking and dead-goat-skin-touching by fertile young girls. Now that’s a Valentine’s Day I can get behind! How did this devolve into chocolates and cards!?

There’s more info here. My favorite bit:

One of [the rituals of Lupercus] was a lottery where the names of available maidens were placed in a box and drawn out by the young men. Each man accepted the girl whose name he drew as his love – for the duration of the festival, or sometimes longer.

Roman key party!

To get to the official Valentine’s Day of Feb 14th, we get to turn instead a heart-warming story of a martyred Bishop who conducted illicit marriages in Rome in 270 AD. The Emperor at the time thought that married men made poor soldiers so he outlawed marriages for young soldiers. But feisty Bishop Valentine (it’s a Roman name?) thought marriage was part of God’s plan and married young people anyway. Nice one!

Meanwhile, back here in 2008 AD, Kanye West celebrates Valentine’s Day by posting a short, Spike Jonze-directed video for "Flashing Lights". It’s kind of great. A bit gratuitous maybe, but isn’t that what Kanye (and Valentine’s Day) is all about?

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When I first started reading about Kanye, I kept calling him Kayne. I bet that happened with a lot of people.

if you listen carefully, at one point the computer/witch doctor says "when you come to church on palm sunday, come in your birthday suit."

video for kid 606 – the illness

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Over the spring of 2007 I did a bunch of promos for a movie night at Sundance Channel called Sonic Screen. It was pretty fun, the films were mostly great (Gimme Shelter, the Flaming Lips doc) and there was a really interesting one on Femi Kuti called Femi Kuti Live at The Shrine.

Femi Kuti is a mega mega star in his home of Nigeria, and he has a small concert venue there called The Shrine which he plays frequently to packed sweaty crowds. He’s also extremely political, and his songs are often about social issues or Nigerian policies that need to change.

I admit, his music doesn’t really do it for me, although it was amazing to see how much he practiced, what a talent he is (singing, guitar, keyboards, sax), how lithe and pumped he is, and how much energy he has. He’s also totally adored. This is a clip from the film that I pulled out because it was so amazing. For the first minute he’s explaining how he’s letting people vote on the best songs for him to perform, and then a devotee walks by. Kuti’s face is great, and the devotee is so full-on. Amazing.

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So fierce.

I have this hazy memory of New Year’s Day 2008 and it’s about 3 in the morning and we stumble back to 1806 Lamont St, and Gillanders asks me if I’ve heard of Li’l Wayne. And I have, but just what I’ve been reading online about how he puts out a ton of material, and people like Sasha Frere Jones are geeking out over him. I haven’t actually heard any of his stuff.

Gillanders plays me some tracks, and some are just o.k., but some are mind-buggling.

li’l wayne – la la la

[audio:lil_wayne-lalala.mp3]

So basically Li’l Wayne is a kid rapper, and then gets mad skills, gets pumped, grows dreadlocks and starts dropping masses of tracks on the internet, do I have the story right? He has some quote somewhere about how "they’re always leaked anyway so I figure I’d do the leaking"…kind of like Radiohead with In Rainbows. He hasn’t released an official album in 2 years, but he’s flooded the net with tracks to download. And I guess if you’re just giving the tracks away for free (and aren’t Danger Mouse making some kind of Grey Album) no one minds who you sample?

li’l wayne – help

[audio:lil_wayne-help.mp3]

I’ve been downloading his stuff, and there’s so much! I need someone to go through it all and pick out the really great tracks for me, but I realize that the only person who can find the Li’l Wayne that I like is me. But there’s so much…Vulture tries to help, but I don’t know if I agree with them…even if they do contribute the best description of his voice, saying he sounds like he "just crawled out of a bong"…