sampler of teenbeat sampler

Hey! Look at Me! I'm on Froxx and I'm blogging and a 1-2-3!

So there are a bunch of tapes and odds-n-ends that I've been plotting to post on this majestic blog, but I just have too many unfinished projects laying around to actually follow thru on anything. I'm hoping this baby step gets me rolling in a snowball's fury toward total execution. See, I'm a fatso, so I gotta get the metabolism and momentum kicking before I can blast out of any given gate.

So here's the sitch with this inaugural Froxx post: i'm hoping that this is my toe in the water before I tuck all 230 pounds of myself into a hurling, spinning mass toward a bombastic cannonball splash that soaks a lot of t-shirts. 

Well, I was working on mixing something today when I thought of that heady Tortoise remix album that came out in the summer of 1995, which took a bunch of songs off the colossal "Millions . . ." and made them virtually unrecognizable. I actually thought that was a very cool artifact at the time and when I took a very stoned two-week road trip to Vegas with many pit stops camping in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado deserts that season, this tape was on heavy repeat, seeping through the valleys as my traveling companion and I melted off to sleep in sage and sand each night. 

  

I'll categorize that one as a semi-extreme remix treatment for the style of music. But that next year, as a DJ at the University of Kansas college radio station, it seems we were bombarded with Teenbeat releases and Mark Robinson remixes. I was open to the dude as I'd seen Unrest play a few times, and reportedly, I witnessed their last show ever, which was at the Hideaway in the winter of 1994. It was good, but I wasn't crazy about it. Cute girls went to the shows. 

In 1997 we got a Teenbeat compilation delivered to the station with two great songs on it, one of which is a Robinson remix of his own song, "Dolphin Expressway," from his own band, Air   Miami. I like this remix because it highlights the finer brush strokes of the composition. Shit, it's a linear pop song -- he really just buries a few tracks, drops some percussion here and there and piles on some thick plate where it doesn't do any harm. Links to the original song and the cautiously cool remix are below. I love the background vox.

I couldn't help but also include the first track on the compilation, "White Power Porch," by Versus. Now, I've never been a huge fan of their recorded output, but I saw a mind-blowing Versus show in the upstairs bar at the old La Luna in Portland in 1998 or so. It was just amazing and unexpected for a random $5 Tuesday night show up the block from where I lived. That night, after the show, I went home and revisited this song and it has been one that I frequently go back to when I want to feel the unexpected joy of that time and place again -- the surprising ecstasy that just gets sprung on ya when all you want is to get out of your apt to escape static and boredom and the sound of Brazilian film school neighbor pricks fucking. All you expect is to maybe leer at some obnoxious hipster chix and drink away your last 10 bucks in the world. But the band that booked a last-minute Tuesday night gig in a secondary room actually pins you against a dark wall with the heavy and slow, proprietary sounds that only people who know the smell of each others' blood can make together; a special interlocking of very loud composed pieces, each capable of occupying individual real estate in your head with eyes closed, but at times it all comes together in unison to rattle everything to your elbows. And the next day you still hear it, but you don't really remember any specific song or lyric, just the feeling of the sound and how it was perfect on that one night. It sticks with you for days and months and years. So you buy a record and can't believe it's the same band. Two asian dudes on the cover: can't be too many 90s indie rock bands called "Versus" with two Asian brothers. 

Maybe they were just hot that night. Or having an allergic reaction to mold. All I can say is it's too bad that all their records don't sound as cool to me as they did that one night. But this song is close. Still looking for "Secret Swingers." I hear it is a good VERSUS LP.

Anyhoooo...I know that most Froxxx posters post whole albums, but frankly, I only like two songs on this compilation. What I really want you to check out is Mark Robinson's subtle remix skills on the 'Dolphin" tune. It's easy to go apeshit on production when you have the master tapes, but this dude knows restraint.

He's a also a pretty badass designer, so I sincerely apologize to him for shitting all over his gorgeous map artwork with my bad clip art dolphin geek and Miami hot rod. 

Here's a sampler of the Teenbeat Sampler from 1997:

Dig it.