Posts filed under ‘Dance Music’
Playlist for Friday Night House Party Mixshow #33 (6/12/2009)
Alright, just pulled together the playlist for last Friday’s DJ Wesley Friday Night House Party, and here it is! Be sure and tune-in each Friday night on iDanceRadio.fm, at 7 Pacific, 10 Eastern. Need a reminder? Follow me on Twitter; just click the Twitter logo on my web site.
- Vincent Medugno – We Are Meant to Be (Georgie Porgie Extended Mix)
- Katy Perry – Waking Up in Vegas (Jason Nevins Electrotec Club Remix)
- Wideband Network – Bad Days (Extended Mix)
- Ithaka Maria – Confession (Viani Club Mix)
- amberRose Marie – Wanna Be a DJ (Josh Harris Club Mix)
- Sunfreakz – Drive Out (Original Mix)
- Livvi Franc – Now I’m That Bitch (Mike Rizzo Funk Generation Club Mix)
- Daisy – Everytime (Buzz Junkies Club Mix)
- Jacinta – Electric Universe (Robert G Club Mix)
- Liquid Spill – In the Heat of the Night (Pop Me Extended Mix)
- Mike Bordes pres. Angela Severiano – Don’t Know What U Got (Original Extended Mix)
- Sirens – Dreams (Tony Arzadon & Nathan Scott Extended Remix)
- David Guetta feat. Kelly Rowland – When Love Takes Over (Original Extended Mix)
- A.R. Rahman feat. The Pussycat Dolls – Jai Ho (Soul Seekerz Vocal Mix)
- Steelers feat. Naomi – Time 2 Wait (Bellatrax Extended Mix)
- De-Grees vs. The Real Booty Babes – Apologize (Sunloverz vs. Michael Mind Club Remix)
- Lucardo Parena feat. Antonia Lucas – Let It Be Me (Wendel Kos First Sunlight Mix)
- Beat Thrillerz feat. Elissa – Your Love Still Haunts Me (Original Extended Mix))
- Oceana – Body Rock (Dave Aude Vocal Mix)
- Pepper MaShay – Freeway of Love (Oscar Salguero Club Mix)
- Yass – When Doves Cry (Yass Main Mix)
“See” you Friday!
It’s a novel concept, anyway…
In a recent blog posting, I mentioned that the once-underwhelming Pandora music service—still was.
Truth be told, if I’m going to listen to Internet radio, I’m apt to tune-in to iDanceRadio.fm. I’m the program director, as most readers of this blog know, and I like to make sure things are working musically, technically, and check for songs that probably are ready to be retired from rotation, played more or played less, and so on. Basically, it’s the classic eating of one’s own dog food.
The vast majority of the time, I listen to iDanceRadio.fm on my BlackBerry smartphone, using BerryTunes, an horrifically overpriced, absolutely butt-ugly, and in some ways badly implemented media player for us CrackBerry users. If there was anything better, I’d use it, but there’s not… It’s the only BlackBerry software I know of that plays streaming Internet radio. Considering there are at least half a dozen such apps for the Apple iPhone, ranging in price from free to about $5, I sense an opportunity for a CrackBerry programmer, but BerryTunes, for all its myriad faults mostly works most of the time, and it is pretty cool to take my Internet radio with me on my long (~75 minutes each way) commute. And most of the time, as long as Sprint’s network is cooperating, I tune-in at home, and there’s no interruption the entire journey. Very geek cool.
So, streaming media on the BlackBerry is, as Martha says, a Very Good Thing. (Does she still say that after spending all that time in jail?) It’s what drove me to try Pandora again (their BlackBerry app), and it’s what drove me to try out Slacker.
Slacker Personal Radio, like Pandora, offers user-customized “radio.” Unlike Pandora, they dispense with the novel “music genome” stuff, and instead take a more satellite radio like approach, with 100 or so professionally-programmed (I’ll comment on that in a moment) stations to get you started. You can make your own from scratch, or start with one of theirs, and tinker with it.
Like Pandora, you listen online on your PC, or on your iPhone or BlackBerry. But what’s unusual about Slacker for BlackBerry is that their system allows “caching” of stations. When you hook-up your CrackBerry to your PC to sync, a small software shim runs that loads-up your memory card with about an hour or so of each cached station’s content. Every time you sync, it’s refreshed with more content. When you play a cached station, it pulls the content from the cache—not using any mobile data bandwidth at all. If it runs out of cached content, or the station you want to hear isn’t cached, it streams it live over your data connection.
The live streaming works quite well; they’ve obviously figured out how to make it as resilient as possible to the occasional burps that occur with mobile data (the makers of BerryTunes could learn a thing or two there). If you lose your data connection temporarily, it’ll restart by itself as soon as it has a connection again. (Of course, if cached content is playing, you don’t even need a cellular signal.)
Slacker has the technology down, to be sure. But like Pandora, the programming, while much better than Pandora, still leaves a lot to be desired for dance enthusiasts. Kudos to Slacker for creating a lot to choose from in dance/electronic (I’d have to look again, but it’s about 10 channels wide), but the most logical choice for me, their Club Hits channel, leaves much to be desired. It’s as though they play the songs you might hear in a club, but the mixes of those songs are frequently the worst sounding and least clubby of the available mixes for a song, as if they were just chosen at random.
In fairness, Slacker’s ability to ban artists or songs from a channel, and to mark favorites, allows one to customize the station to one’s liking. All those bad mix choices? I can make sure I never hear them ever, ever again. So if an interactive experience is what you want, then Slacker delivers. But I have to wonder: If you need or want to customize a “radio station” to that extent, would you not just pull out your iPod and play all your own music?
In closing, I have to say that I’ve actually thoroughly enjoyed Slacker’s Explicit Comedy channel. With a nice blend of classic material and the very latest comedy releases, if you like irreverent comedy like I do, it’s worth listening to. And with Slacker’s ban and favorite capabilities, you can always mark the crap you don’t like, and you’ll never hear it again.
But for dance music? I think I’ll stick with my iPod, or BerryTunes streaming iDanceRadio.fm.
I’m wrong. Again.
As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m either blessed or cursed (depending on your point of view) with listening to a ton of new music each week to keep current on what’s happening, decide what to play myself, and decide what to play on iDanceRadio.fm. While my long daily commute gives me 10 to 12 hours each week to do this, the amount of time I spend actually listening to each track is admittedly quite short.
amberRose Marie - Wanna Be a DJ
I can remember the morning in the car I was listening to the most recent release from amberRose Marie, Wanna Be a DJ. I popped the CD in, and almost immediately, my reaction was, “What the hell is this?” I tried; I really tried. I sampled every mix on the CD, but could stand no more. I pressed “eject” and it went into the “I don’t think so” pile, and got mentioned in a rare negative blog entry.
I heard from amberRose Marie’s record label on that one, respecting my opinion, and encouraging me to try it one more time. And I heard from Harry Towers, the promoter of the track, who also wanted me to try it again. So, I did, and I had the same rather nose-wrinkling reaction. I thought that was the end of it.
It wasn’t.
A few weeks ago, I was asked again to listen to it, and rolling my eyes, I got the CD out, again, and plugged it in, again. Only this time, my reaction was, “Hmmm… Maybe this isn’t that bad.” Then I listened again. And again. And I started to like it. It’s sorta like what I went through all those years ago with Brussels sprouts and broccoli.
As is the case with almost every dance track, I still don’t like all the mixes. And while the track still strikes me as a bit of a novelty in terms of its lyric, not every song, let alone every dance song, has to have some deep emotional meaning. It’s perfectly legitimate to have a song that’s there just for the sake of having fun, not taking itself too seriously, and Wanna Be a DJ is just such a track.
This is hardly the first time I’ve been wrong about songs. The one example I keep citing to people is Tod Miner’s Luv N Music. I just could not even stand the song the first 10, or 20, or 30 times I heard it. Then magically, “OK, this is sorta cool!” And I still use that one in sets pretty regularly.
Anyway, some songs wow you the moment you hear them (like the lastest David Guetta track), and some just take some time (sometimes a lot of time) to sink-in. It’s unfortunate, but I just don’t have time to listen to songs 20 or 30 times a piece just to “make sure” my negative reaction is “real.” (And I’m not about to subject myself to that for the truly bad songs, of which there are many.) But I am glad that some people bang on me a little when they’re passionate about a track, vested interests aside.
Because, sometimes… I’m… Wrong. 
Dualing “Clothes Off” follow-up
Last week, I blogged about the song We Don’t Have to Take Our Clothes Off, which has been recently released by both Miami Starfish and Chocolate Party.
One of the commenters of the entry was Billy Mead, and I thought I’d follow-up the post with some revisions.
First, I was pleased to hear that Mead and Simon Langford were still collaborating:
For the record, Simon and I are still *brothers* in almost every sense of the word, and he did a mix of ‘our’ version as the Soul Seekerz.
Great to hear, and I’d missed the Soul Seekerz remix when I was listening to these dualing releases before. As a big fan of Soul Seekerz, I did of course like it, and I’m reconsidering my selection of which version of Clothes Off to play.
As for replacing the MySpace presence of Avalon Superstar with Miami Starfish? Well, that’s simple enough too:
I’m getting lazy in my old age and since I am producing music less than part-time i just couldn’t be bothered to build a new MS page, promote it and find new ‘friends’.
Admittedly, that is a great big “PITA” and understandable. And easy enough to change back when Avalon Superstar have another release.
As for how the track came about:
I really did this as a laugh for my wife who has always loved the original track. I gave it to a few DJs, and got good reactions… so had a few mixes done and are just now getting promos out. I had no idea there was even another version out and really like what they have done. But yeah, you pick one or the other.. not both.
Interesting background, and funny how projects end-up coming together sometimes.
Thanks to Billy Mead for setting the record straight.
More country crossover
On the heels of country artist Taylor Swift’s recent success with Love Story, and the release from Plasco of a nice remake of the Sugarland hit Stay, Wynonna finds her way to the dance music scene with some nice remixes of her new single, Sing.
As I’ve written before, at least some people who manage these country artists understand that one way to expand awareness and the potential market for the material is to commission a few dance remixes and get them out there.
Curb Records, Wynonna’s label, seems to understand this better than some. In addition to Wynonna, they’ve ensured that every pop-friendly song from LeAnn Rimes has been accompanied by a suite of remixes as well. Perhaps it’s because, oddly, in addition to all the country artists on the label, they also are home to the decidedly dancey Kaci Battaglia, Nemesis Rising, and Kimberley Locke.
In any case, Wynonna’s Sing makes for a nice, pleasant, mainstream-friendly dance track. The Jody den Broeder mix is predictable but good, as is the treatment from the UK’s Almighty. The duo Digital Dog (UK producers Stephen Cornish and Nick Mace) give it what I think it my favorite take, but then, I’m a real fan of these guys of late.
As always, give it a listen and see what you think.
Dualing “Clothes Off”
Yes, this is another post about cover songs, I’ll forewarn you.
Back in 1986, the late Jermaine Stewart released his second hit and what would ultimately become his most recognizable song: We Don’t Have to Take Our Clothes Off. With a nice groove and some lyrical innuendo, it was no doubt ripe for a dance cover treatment (and I vaguely recall it was already done at one point).
I’ve seen it happen a few times before, but once again, we’re presented with a pair of dance covers of the same song that appear on the landscape at roughly the same time. Released under the full title, anonymous producers Chocolate Party have one version, a true cover, and released under the shortened Clothes Off, Miami Starfish give us a remake with Stewart’s own vocals (somewhat creepily to me) used posthumously.
Chocolate Party have so far defied all my efforts to find out more about who they are. As I blogged just last week, all the secrecy boggles my mind. I’m wagering they’re from the UK (empirically, it seems UK producers are the most famous for this “pick a name for each release” nonsense), and I’m further wagering I’ll never find out because they’re more interested in the keyword cashout than lasting recognition, charting, or anything else.
Miami Starfish is Boston’s Billy Mead, one half of Avalon Superstar, who have released a pair of great tracks. Considering that the Avalon Superstar MySpace page has been taken over and reconstituted as Miami Starfish, I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps Mead had a falling-out with his Avalon Superstar partner, Simon Langford.
In any case, while the Miami Starfish version of the song uses the original vocal, I frankly liked Chocolate Party’s treatment of the song over theirs.
Regardless, I suspect like most DJs, program directors, etc., I only have room for one of each song. Multiple mixes? Maybe. Multiple artists doing the same song? Not so much.
All the other arguments for or against dance covers aside, this scenario is clearly one of the risks of doing covers at all.
A unique sound returns
One of the more unique sounding dance songs of recent years was You Promised Me (Tu Es Foutu) from Italy’s In-Grid (Ingrid Alberini). While it didn’t become a dance hit in the U.S. until 2004, it was recorded two years prior, and cut through the musical noise at the time with its interesting use of the accordian… A sound you certainly don’t hear every day in contemporary music, let alone dance music.
One has to look no farther than In-Grid’s own web site to know her body of work is far more extensive than we’ve seen here, but I’ve certainly not seen anything new from her here since Foutu. Hence my sense of pleasant surprise when I got the new In-Grid release, Le Dragueur.
Like her smash hit, the bi-lingual Dragueur is peppered liberally with the trademark accordian sound that feels like something more out of the stereotypical French café than something from Alberini’s native Italy. But be that as it may, it gives the song a fun twist that as before makes it stand out from the pack in serious way.
It’s a fun song, that I think due to the accordian, doesn’t seem to take itself too seriously. I’ve not paid too much attention to the lyrics yet (I don’t understand half of them since they’re not in English), but it’s just a bouncy sort of track that puts a smile on your face and makes you want to head to the dance floor. (I hope I don’t find out later that it’s got downer lyrics that prove all that wrong.)
In any event, give it a listen at her web site (link above) and see what you think.
Why so secret?
I was originally planning to write a blog entry today about a great track that I’ve had for awhile, but only recently started taking to. It’s from a producer out of the UK that goes by the name The One Hundred, and the track is Still & Fine. It’s a sweet track, especially the Bellatrax remix.
I was going to write about it—until I could find absolutely nothing about the producer, the song, or the vocalist who sings on it.
So instead, and not to pick on The One Hundred specifically by any means, this is now going to be a mini-rant about some issues I see in the dance music industry that are among many that prevent it from commercializing much of anywhere, especially in the U.S.
The Web (it’s about the brand)
You really can’t do much of anything these days that involves reaching consumers of any kind without having a web presence. When someone wants to find you, or learn about you, or buy your product, where do they go? The web. And usually Google on the web. It’s literally the first look many people have of “an entity” (company, artist, individual, product, service, etc.).
It seems a lot of artists and producers (heck, even “record labels”) are content with their only web presence being a garish page on MySpace, with a crappy looking template generated by one of the hundreds of “crappy looking MySpace template” sources that are a mere Google search away. (And yes, my own MySpace page uses one of those crappy templates because it’s such a pain to customize MySpace otherwise.)
The web is hard for a lot of people, so fair enough. But if you can register a domain name and point it at a MySpace page, you probably have enough sense and skill to do better than letting your “brand” be represented by the ugliest web site on the planet (MySpace, in case you’re not following along here).
But be that as it may, let’s accept for the moment that MySpace actually makes sense, and that it’s a good thing, etc. Then why would you set-up your MySpace page, and then do nothing with it other than drop your music into the player and start making and accepting friends? MySpace has space for a bio. Pictures. It even has a blog feature (the world’s crappiest blog, but it’s there). But these things are hard too, I guess, and allowing other MySpace users to spam your comments with their new release banners and YouTube videos is easy, so there you go. But I wouldn’t call it “putting your best foot forward.”
Hiding the Details (it’s still about the brand)
It is truly beyond me why so many producers and artists (and DJs too for that matter) go completely out of their way to hide their own identities and/or the identities of those they work with:
- Pictures taken with strong backlighting so all you see is a silhouette; oddly-cropped pictures where you see nothing clearly; pictures taken from the back; or no pictures at all.
- Missing or first-name-only vocalist credits. (What, you want to make sure nobody else records with him or her? Give me a break.)
- Missing or first-name-only producer credits.
- No information of any kind about where to purchase the music, or which label(s) a song or artist has been signed to. (If this isn’t an invitation to piracy, I don’t know what is.)
This is, frankly, nuts. Promoting music is little different than promoting anything else, and that’s why people like Coca-Cola and Nike spend so much time and money building and protecting their “brand.” I think it’s even more important with music than shoes and soda, because there’s so much music out there, when a fan finds something they like, they probably would like more from the people who made the track they liked.
When you hide the vocalist’s name, it becomes impossible to find more music he or she has sung. When you hide the producer’s name, likewise on production. When you hide pictures, there’s nothing for a fan to relate to other than the music.
Part of this, I believe, is because in many cases, popular producers work under multiple names for record deal purposes. One producer I’m thinking of in the UK who’s a favorite of mine works under around 12 different names, and the explanation he gave at one point was just that… Some track under some name gets signed for release, and he picks a new one. Sounds like a weird set of contract terms to me, but whatever. It’s not a great way to build a reputation in my view, at least not among consumers. (If people in the industry know who you are, I guess that’s all that matters to some.)
Missed Opportunities
I think the bottom line here is that this is all about missed opportunities. To pick on The One Hundred a little bit here, whoever they are, is that I would have loved to write a blog piece about the song. Talk about what I like, and why I like it. Who’s behind the song. What other work they’ve done. Essentially, help spread the word and promote the track. But I didn’t, because there’s nothing to say. And there’s nothing to say because the artist hasn’t chosen to say anything; at least not anywhere Google can seem to find it.
Music, to me, is more than the music itself. It’s interesting people, with interesting backgrounds, from interesting places, with personal stories. Not unlike the way we feed off of Britney’s dysfunction, but hopefully in a more positive way, many people (myself included) like hearing about all that when we bond with a song’s great production, or insightful lyric, or smooth vocal. It’s part of the experience, frankly. So why deprive an audience of that? It makes no sense.
But then, many things don’t make sense. But I still like Still & Fine from The One Hundred. Whoever they are.
Amazing new Guetta track
I’ll start by saying that I’m not really a huge fan of producer and DJ David Guetta. Don’t get me wrong, I like a lot of his work, but he’s just not one of those artists whose every release I hotly anticipate. But when he gets it right, he gets it really right. Take Delirious for example, a song he did with Tara McDonald. It’s just massive.
So is When Love Takes Over, his new track with the vocals of Kelly Rowland.
David Guetta feat. Kelly Rowland - When Love Takes Over
Truly, I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s one of the best dance tracks I’ve heard in a long time. Guetta got it right on every level. The songwriting is solid. Rowland’s vocals are amazing, energetic, well-engineered and very crisp. The energy builds and decays are perfect. And the arrangement is equally crisp, deliberate and polished.
(I’m referring to the original extended mix in these comments, for the record.)
There’s a lot of good dance music out there, no question. There’s a lot of dance music that’s well put together. But it’s not every day you get a track that’s so well balanced, so perfected, as When Love Takes Over.
Enough superlatives; just check it out and see if you agree.
