Life is Hectic

Thursdays are the days that I write record reviews.  You know this.  Last night I stumbled to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to get one done; I thought I had one paper due today, but I actually had two due.  I had a great record to write about (Castevet, which I’ll hit you with next week), but no time to get the words onto paper.  I felt bad.  I did, however, get my papers done for school, which is good.  (Not flunking out of school > Castevet (Sorry, fellas.))  Justin picked up the slack for me this morning, but I wanted to check in with you, loyal reader, to make sure that you’re good.  You good?  Good.  I miss you.

I’m waiting for the furnace repairman to get here to (obviously) fix my furnace.  Furnace repairmen appear to work on roughly the same clock that cable installers do; as in, “I’ll be there sometime between noon and four.”  Awesome.  Good to know that I have to take half a day off to sit in my house and watch the driveway, hoping the dude shows up before the sun goes down.  The bright side is that I’ve used this time to peel through my electronic mail (piling up) and goof around on the hype machine (evil, sure, but also a source for good stuff that I haven’t heard yet.)

In my hype machine-based wanderings, I stumbled across a stellar mash-up of two of my all-time favorite bands, The Who and The Wu-Tang Clan.  (It’s a fine example of cognitive dissonance, holding Wu-Tang and Pete Townshend in your head at once; I want Citizen Dick to get big enough that I can broker high level meetings between the RZA and Roger Daltrey, just to see what those cats would chat about.  My gut instinct is that they might solve global warming.)  There’s, arguably, not a better Wu-Tang song than “C.R.E.A.M” (“Da Mystery of Chessboxin’,” maybe?), just as, arguably, there’s not better Who song that “Baba O’Reilly” (“Behind Blue Eyes?” “Substitute?”)  As such, it made me incredibly happy to see those two songs paired in the unholy union below.  (Huge thanks to the folks at Cities of the Plain for getting this song on the internet.  These fellows do good work, worthy of much praise.  And.  They take their name, presumably, from classic Cormac McCarthy (not his current Oprah Book Club dreck); mildly obscure literary references always make me smile.)

Kevin’s talked recently about his disdain for the re-mix as an art form, but tracks like this, while perhaps a tad disposable (I’m not saying that the song below is “Hey Jude” or something, obviously) serve an important function, I’d argue.  They remind us that we can make birdhouses out of empty beer cans, that we can create something new out of the greatness of others.  Hearing “C.R.E.A.M.” and “Baba O’Reilly” together forces the listener to reconsider both. The original songs are better for being destroyed.  (See: “Piggies” and “Change Clothes” for the archetypical example.)

I’m also fond of the egalitarian nature of the re-mix or mash-up.  I’m never going to create something as beautiful as “Two Weeks,” for instance, but with some creativity, the relevant software and some time, I might be able to make a passable re-mix.  (Probably not, as I have no inherent musical ability (which is why I’m a critic), but you should humor me.)

As always, staying alive is my job.  Enjoy.

Whole-Z – “Teenage C.R.E.A.M. Land”