Track(s) of the Week: Essential Offerings from Ben Harper & DJ Food

This week includes an entry from my friend Martin (The Luminarian), a fellow music fanatic currently living in Toronto. Many thanks to him for his contribution.

Evan's Track of the Week: The Beatles' classic "Michelle" covered by Ben Harper and The Innocent Criminals
Album: This Bird Has Flown: A 40th Anniversary Tribute to the Beatles' Rubber Soul
Rating: 5

Beatles tunes are rightfully the most extensively covered pop songs ever written. The melodies, from "I'm Looking Through You" to "Hey Jude" to "I Will" and on and on, speak for themselves. Just as lines of prose or poetry re-enter the arena of signification through intertextual quotation, so too can iconic melodies be newly conjured through the 'covering' quotation of musicians. As all those who have witnessed pre-pubescent talent shows or sunk low enough to actually subject themselves to the sadistic charade officially known as American Idol know well: covers are occaisionally brilliant and frequently painful/offensive.

This Bird Has Flown is intriguing listening for Beatles fans, but as Rob Mitchum notes in the Pitchfork review, "there are four or five songs worth keeping from this compilation, eight you'll never want to hear more than once, and a couple that will potentially ruin the original versions for you for a while." The various interpretations are rather hit or miss, ranging from Sufjan Stevens inventive take on the rather obscure Ringo Starr song 'What Goes On' to the Fiery Furnaces abysmal obliteration of one of the greatest songs of all time 'Norwegian Wood' (I expected better from the Friedbergers).



Thankfully, "Michelle" is handled very well. For whatever reason I didn't have any expectations of the Ben Harper cover prior to listening to the album but was very suprised with the end result. Harper and his band place one of the Beatles' most delicate love songs into their most proficient stylistic realm: exquisitely produced reggae. The track works perfectly because it's original form contains the lilting rhythmic cadence ideally suited to its reinterpretation. The overall instrumental voicing and production is flawless and Harper's voice is very smooth without sounding too pleased with itself.

I'm currently reading the Alan Moore graphic novel "V for Vendetta" which is packed with literary and pictoral references. I am fascinated by the recycled paths of knowing and reknowing created by these intertextual moments of recognition. The ergodic experience triggered by covers like Ben Harper's "Michelle" parallels that of the graphic novel. I find myself smiling at the meeting of long-lost friends, amazed that they are so much more than I ever realized.


Martin’s Track of the Week: "Raiding the 20th Century" by DJ Food
Rating: 5

Musique concrète can be defined as music that is recorded first (from natural or industrial sources) and then arranged. Opposed to the traditional or ‘abstraite’ process of creating music by composing then recording, this form of composition only began with the invention of the microphone and tape recorder. It was pioneered by early avant-garde composers such as Iannis Xenakis. Dub is a form of music, usually considered a sub-genre of Reggae, consisting of creating a reverb-heavy version of an existing song, usually omitting the lyrical track with the exception of the chorus, and adding various, often ‘concrète’, sound effects. It originated in Jamaica, gave birth to the modern DJ, is the foundation of hip-hop, and was probably invented by Lee “Scratch” Perry.

Cut-up is a surrealist art technique originally practiced on paper that consisted of cutting up several pieces of paper: newsprint, poetry, novels, etc., and rearranging the order of the pieces to form a new work. Probably originating in the riot-causing ‘random poem’ of Dadaist Tristan Tzara, this technique was eventually applied to tape recordings. Pioneered by William S. Burroughs, this technique involved recording a variety of sounds and words to tape and physically cutting and re-attaching the tape in a different order. It brought about a form of sound manipulation that influenced many electronic musicians today. Mashup, or ‘Bastard-Pop’, is a form of musical composition involving the creation of a song from already extant musical sources. The origins of this form are hard to trace. DJ Shadow’s seminal ‘Endtroducing’ was the first album to be recorded entirely from ‘samples’, but the overall effect is organic, and the origins of many of the samples are effaced. More recently, mashup artists like the brilliantly named ‘Duran Duran Duran’ and the popular ‘2 many dj’s’ have created mashup tracks involving the layering and juxtaposition of hundreds of recognizable samples from music, reorganized into one, usually cohesive ‘song’.

These techniques, and the resultant sounds, are perhaps the clearest indications of the emergence of post-modernism in music. They are also all documented, imitated and practised on one unbelievably fun track by DJ Food: ‘Raiding the 20th Century’. It’s available here, and it’s the most fun you can have while learning about the history of musical manipulation. First aired on XFM’s ‘The Remix’, then edited to include some ‘lectures’ on the topic, this hour long track never stops being shocking in its continuity, its inclusiveness, its relevance, and the fact that its one of the most fun tracks ever mashedup. Essential listening.