Halfway through the Seventies, Gary Numan formed the band Tubeway Army, which would later change its name to simply Gary Numan. In 1979 a track they released as a single would become a massive hit: Are Friends Electric? As a result, the track has later been covered by countless bands who were inspired by the synhtpop track, such as Republica (which features Gary Numan’s vocals), Moloko, Information Society and even Weezer. There is however also a track that takes its cues from the original in a rather bizarre history. To track that back we need to jump back a bit.

In 1995 Adina Howard released the song Freak Like Me. That song itself is almost worth an entry since it leans heavily on Bootsy Collins 1976 song I’d Rather Be With You, without actually directly sampling it. What the Adina Howard song did sample was a drumloop from Sly and the Family Stone’s 1968 song Sing A Simple Song.

In the early years of the 21st century, producer/remixer Richard X made a mashup of Are Friends Electric by Tubeway Army and Freak Like Me by Adina Howard. The song circled the underground bootleg scene for a while. At some point either cause Richard X wanted to release the song officially but couldn’t get the sample from Adina Howard cleared or cause Island Records requested it (history is not clear on this one), Richard X got involved in something that can only be described as a mashup-sample-cover-remix. Richard X produced a song for the Sugababes in 2002. The then popular girl-group recorded the vocals of Freak Like Me, but on top of a remix with samples of Are Friends Electric. The result is amazing: Sugababes – Freak Like Me.

Though arguably there are ton of tracks that deserve mention here as ‘the original’, I’m gonna go with my personal favourite: Tubeway Army – Are Friends Electric? (And there’s an interesting live version here.)

A week ago I posted about making an EP. As promised, I’m going to keep updates on the progress. First of all, thanks to the people who have sent a mail so far. I love you guys. Spread the word. Secondly, I decided to make this update after I got some progress done, instead of blogging and then complaining I have no time to make music. ;)

So what am I doing for this EP? Basically I’ve been writing songs the last months, which are in various states of completion. Some are just a few sketchy loops & ideas, others are fully written out and even recorded already. I keep track of the progress and assigned all the tracks a number as working title based on the chronological order. Three tracks, code-named 000001, 000004 and 000005 are already done and recorded.I just need to check them for minor flaws before publishing.

I really want to put a half-recorded song 000009 on the EP also. So my effort right now is in completing that. Mainly it’s figuring out where all the parts go and stretching up to something a bit longer than the 2 minutes it is now.Today I managed to stretch it up to 3 minutes, but it sounds rudely bashed together. So I might be able to stretch it up a bit further if I smooth out the transitions and give it a head and tail. Plus I need to re-record some keyboard and vocal tracks. That’s doable in the next week or so.

One other thing is that 000004 might not fit too well between the rest. There is still a song 000002 (no, not a Blur cover) lying about which can replace it, but basically needs a lot of lyric writing and some love & attention. So depending on how long I’m busy with 000009 will determine if I can finish up 000002 in time or just need to go with 000004 and leave 000002 for a later release.

Once all that is out of the way, there’s the artwork. The EP itself needs artwork and the nifty bit is that each track can get artwork too. I think the best choice is to make the EP artwork the ‘parent’ and the track artworks the obvious ‘children’. I plan on making it myself, but if anyone with sufficient graphical skills and time to kill before the end of July wants to throw themselves at it, you can send me a mail or leave a reply. My primary motto on this is “If you want something done, do it yourself”, but help is always appreciated.

Last but not least is obviously the uploading and basically publishing and promoting the EP. But that’s still in a few weeks. Let’s make some music first. :)

The Simple Minds released their album New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) in 1982. Apart from a few successful singles, there have also been two songs that over the years been sampled and used in dance tracks. The title track New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) has been sampled in 1992 by the Italian one hit wonder (at least outside Italy) U.S.U.R.A. in their track Open your Mind. It received the usual 90’s cgi video and voilá: a dance hit. Interestingly, the ’97 remix of Open your Mind tossed the Simple Minds sample out the window completely. The intro from another track from the Simple Minds album, Someone, Somewhere In Summertime, popped up as a sample in 2004 in David Guetta’s The World is Mine.

Here’s the title track New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84):

I need your help. I’m, considering putting extra time into making a digital download EP with a few of my songs to be released this month. But if I’m going to do that, I’d like to know I’m doing it for someone besides myself. Please send me a mail at b-sting at b-sting dot com and put in the subject “I’m waiting” to let me know you’re waiting for the EP. I’ll put you on the B-sting mailing list and let you know when it is done.

As thanks, when it does come out, I’ll also send you a download code that will let you download it in the highest quality for free. Oh and about the mailing list, don’t worry, I won’t spam you daily or weekly with useless crap, promise. And obviously you’ll be able to unsubscribe at any time.

I’ll keep the blog posted about the progress. Oh and Ineke, you were right. I need to make more time to make music. But I still love blogging, so I’m gonna keep doing that as well. I just a goal and deadlines for my music. And this, this is a deadline.

In 1976 reggae stars Max Romeo & the Upsetters released the album War ina Babylon. On it is a song entitled I Chase the Devil, which was penned by Max Romeo and legendary dub/reggae artist & producer Lee “Scratch” Perry. The fact that The Upsetters are on the album with Max Romeo isn’t surprising, since they are Lee “Scratch” Perry’s backing band (and Perry himself is also know under the pseudonym The Upsetter).

Some decades later around 1992 a young Liam Howlett picked up the album and added a sample of the Max Romeo track to the first album Experience by his own band The Prodigy. While a string of singles was released from this album in the middle of the rave explosion, there was one that became the defining single for the Prodigy that blew them into international fame. That track, which hinges on the Max Romeo sample, is Out of Space. And it’s safe to say that it became famous despite of it’s low budget video, which was only slightly less seizure inducing as Stakker Humanoid (but I’m getting off-topic now).

For completeness sake, Jay-Z has also sampled the Max Romeo track in the crappy track Lucifer and Madness has made a cover of I Chase the Devil. But let’s listen to where it all began: the original Max Romeo and the Upsetters – I Chase the Devil:

Many radio stations play compulsory playlists of the same repetitive pop crap. The alternative is listening to your own custom playlist on your computer or mp3-player or if you want to be suprised, use shuffle. There are however still radio independent DJ’s that pride themselves in making perfect playlists for you to listen to. But are they better than the shuffle button, because they introduce you to new things?

Music Machinery is having a semi-scientific study as to whether a radio DJ, a shuffled playlist or an algorithmically composed playlist is better, according to listeners. You can read more about it and participate here. Their study results so far: the algorithmic DJ is best, the human worst. The study is far from over, so please participate.

The interesting notion of this Turing test is that maybe computers, machines, AI, call it what you like, can make music just a well as humans can. This scares many people. They believe it will put them out of business. But that inevitably pops up the question: are you in it for the money or for the love of music? Humans will keep making music for the love of music, even if machines make better/different music. In then end machines are an extension of ourselves, so I’d rather have a machine help me make better music, then me by myself making shitty music.

It’s like complaining about people using electric guitars and effects to make impossible music. It’s like people complaining about synthesisers , arpeggiators and all sorts of electronic aids to make impossible sounds and music. In the end, it’s tools to make better music. And if even human creativity can be emulated, why not? Ask Emmy and Emily Howell

So far I’ve talked about covers, songs that have lifted parts of the lyrics or tune from other songs or songs that literally sampled a bit from another song. There is however another category of song: the clone. The clone is an almost literal, purposely made imitation of the original, to feel and sound the same as the original, but without using the exact same notes and lyrics to prevent copyright infringement.

Meet the song Save my Soul by a band called Superglue from 2000. You probably never heard of them, mainly because this was their only hit and only in the Netherlands. And even here it’s forgotten. It was used in an advertisement, for what, no one even remembers. Clones are often made especially for advertisements. All I can tell you it was sung by a guy called Edwin Meijster (who?) and it was written by him and a guy called Frank Pels in affiliation with EMI Music.

By now I hope you’ve listened to the link above (if not: do so) and recognised this song sounds a suspicious lot like a song from another band that used to be signed to EMI: Radiohead. In fact, if you put Karma Police (1997) next to it, the likeness is uncanny. And that was exactly the intention of Save my Soul. Less royalties to pay, same song. Even the band’s name might fool you into thinking it was Supergrass if you hadn’t paid attention.

By the way, if you want to hear a truly magnificent, but honest cover of Karma Police, I must again recommend The Easy Star All-Stars version of Karma Police from their Radiodread album. Besides making a full album of reggae Radiohead covers, they’ve also tackled Pink Floyd’s Dark side of the Moon and The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. But that’s another story.

Since EMI has disallowed embedding of the YouTube video for Radiohead’s Karma Police, instead I give you the Superglue song:

Some people mistake musical perfection for having musically perfect instruments, perfect arrangements and perfect recordings. Despite all that, it’s usually the imperfections, the grainy, the raw sound that stands out. At the end of the day it’s about the sound that is created, not how it is created.

A perfect example of imperfect instruments creating something marvellous is Diego Stocco’s Bassoforte. Take an old piano, a guitar neck, some DIY and wood and record samples from this bizarre instrument and you end up with something like this:

Diego Stocco – Bassoforte from Diego Stocco on Vimeo.

Read the whole article on createdigitalmusic.com . Buy the track at Bandcamp.

I have mentioned Aviary and their tool Myna before, but a few days ago they launched a new online tool: Roc

Where as Myna is an Audio Editor and a simple composer, Roc is intended as a ‘music creator’. The idea is that you make loops with real sounding instruments and then import those into Myna to make songs. This is easier said than done. Even though the interface of Roc is quite simple, so is the result.

There is a nice selection of instruments to play with, but obviously a bit limited selection. For people who need to quickly make a few loops to play with in Myna, it’s fine. Any semi-professional musician will cringe at the fact that if you insert too many notes, things start sounding choppy and unnatural. Not to mention the instruments selected are rather traditional and fit for making world music, rather than ‘Roc’ (look I made a pun on the name of the tool).

Like Myna, nice to play with for the enthusiast with just a browser and no money, but nothing groundbreaking or shocking for a musician.

In 1964 Gloria Jones released a single My Bad Boy’s Coming Home. Since the single was not a commercial success, it’s B-side Tainted Love went unnoticed too. That song got a rematch in 1976 went it was re-recorded and re-released as a single of its own, but again failed to gain any commercial success.

Soft Cell made their own version of Tainted Love. When it was released in 1981 it became a huge international hit This is the reason why a lot of people still think the Soft Cell-version is the original, even when they hear the Gloria Jones version, which is not locked into the collective memory of the general public.

Over the years there have been dozens of covers (mostly of the Soft Cell version), the most popular being the Marilyn Manson’s version. Eventually the Soft Cell version itself got sampled for a track by Rihanna, which effectively destroys the connection the song had to its original.

That original is the 1964 Gloria Jones version of Tainted Love: