Sweet Hereafter May 23, 2006: Covering its tracks

Hey everyone,

So the latest album to grace the turntables of my mind is Open Season, a collection of remixes of Feist songs. It's the only album full of remixes that I own because I find that these albums are usually hit and miss. Some songs are better than the original, others destroy the songs and even worse, some make you hate the songs that you loved once.

I find that covers (and remixes) fall into three categories depending on how the original was transformed:

1. Sprinkle a hearty dose of beats: This one is the standard approach. Give the song to a beatmaster and let them add some tsi, tsi, tsi...and start nodding along

2. Acoustication: Take an uptembo song with an edge or a beat, and then strip all of that away.

3. All covers that don't fall into category 1 or 2 (sorry, I'm writing this an hour before the show): This involves transforming the song into a style that is different, whether through big bandization, latinization or others

For today's show, I'll be playing examples of all three including some Ryan Adams, Feist, Gary Jules, Suzanne Vega and others.

Feel free to send some suggestions (within the next 45 minutes) and I'll try to get it on air.

See you in a bit,

Tuan