#scott bradlee

[busterkeatonsociety]

This Day in Buster…February 20, 1924

The Kennebec Journal describes “Our Hospitality” as the greatest seven-reeler comedy ever screened.  They also misspell the names of two of the cast - “Kittry” Bradbury & Natalie “Talmandge” :D

[covers-on-spotify]

"Uptown Girl"

Original by Billy Joel

Covered by Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox feat. Stella Katherine Cole

[annlarimer]

Watch "Running Up That Hill - Kate Bush (Western Style Cover) feat. Sweet Megg" on YouTube

Found you a thing.

[appoarsin]

Dang, this is kinda funny. I didn’t even get back into Halo until, like, late March. In all fairness though, Halo music is always great.

Don’t know how Les Champs-Elysées got 4th though. Great song, but no way I listened to it more than 1484 other songs. How dare the damn French take my #4 instead of something else from ODST.

Then there’s also my top songs playlist for anyone curious

[ndb-123]

Just heard this for the first time, and it's amazing 😍

[culturevulturette]

Up and at ‘em, me hearties! 

[unbound-shade]

I don't really listen to the radio, so this is the only version of this song I've really heard. I'm ok with that.

[shakibone]

I hate AI voice replicators

See, I like musical genre remixes. Things where a popular song is done in the style of another artist, or another era. The Baseballs understood this, with their cover of Rihanna’s Umbrella:

I’m about to go off, so more under the cut!

Neil Gaiman once said (here on Tumblr, which I'll have to paraphrase due to an unfortunate inability to find the source):

“I enjoy songs. Sometimes I enjoy them too much and they grow tired. A good cover allows me to enjoy them again for the first time.” -Neil Gaiman, heavily paraphrased

Scott Bradlee understands the power of these covers, stylistic remixes, enough to launch multiple careers off of it. Such as with his own remix (featuring Casey Abrams & The Sole Sisters) of the afore-featured Umbrella by Rihanna:

Or one of my own personal favourites, Sugar, We’re Going Down originally by Fall Out Boy:

But!

These era-adjacent (or era-divorced) covers need not be wholly original performances to have value. Let’s return to Sugar, We’re Going Down by Fall Out Boy. While Scott Bradlee and singer Joey Cook reworked it in their own way, YouTube user Johann Olsson made his own era-divorced remix, this time transplanting them Boys what Fall Out to the 80′s using the original singer’s (Patrick Stump) vocal recording re-interpreted to an entirely different genre, rythm, and style:

Listen to both covers listed here and then the original and tell me they don’t each reveal something different about the subject, that they don’t highlight new facets of the same material. This is why I love covers that work on the premise of transplanting a song to a completely different style/genre. And it’s not just divided by era! Here’s what you get when you take John Denver’s classic anthem to pastoral paradise and nature’s magnificence and run it through it’s philosophical antithesis. This is Melodicka Bros rendition, which (to my reading) seeks to find that same beauty in an industrial world stripped of it:

You can hear the singers (identified only as Joe and Dave) yearning for that beauty which John Denver knew but they will never be afforded. Or at least...

That’s my interpretation.

These stylistically remixed covers afford such great exploration of the original work alongside what the covering artist bring to the material, that it inspires awe in me. I adore this genre of remixes and covers.

And now

AND NOW.

YouTube reccomends me garbage AI covers. I’m served up the digital ghost of Frank Sinatra singing Poker Face, Spongebob (which is to say Tom Kenny, the actor who gosh darn voices him) singing Gangsta’s Paradise or some nonsense, and the entire Team Fortress 2 cast (Nathan Vetterlein, Rick May, Dennis Bateman, Gary Schwartz, Grant Goodeve, Robin Atkin Downes, John Patrick Lowrie, and Ellen McLain) singing Bohemian Rhapsody or whatever. Stolen voices twisted to shallow purposes, with no regard to the artists whose voices are taken and their wishes regarding such uses:

https://catnippackets.tumblr.com/post/722596290851176448/catnippackets-listen-i-say-this-with-patience-bc

The use of these human beings voices to speak words they did not utter is horrifying, but on a personaly level it fill my algorythmically generated feed with utter tripe.

I don’t want to end on a downer, so here’s a final example of the types of stylistic remixes I adore. Presenting Brady Love with a beutiful rendition in the style of Luciano Pavarotti of Apple Bottom Jeans (Originally by Flo Rida):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIZz2PMnEDM

This one is without preview due to Tumblr’s limitations. Perhaps we can find a metaphor in that.

[no-1-rosalind-lang-apologist]

‼️‼️‼️‼️

[eldridgecandell]

11: A song that you never get tired of.

These ones don't usually end up IC answers because the music is always what inspires me to write up character's stories. Bond songs always make me think of Eld and while this isn't technically a Bond song, god it should be.

It's a cover of the Weeknd, but god damn she belts it out.

I listen to it every time I start to write for Eld or play as him in-game with a Bond like intro for him. It just works for his return to Azeroth and his battle with the forces of darkness.

@safrona-shadowsun

[because-im-a-mirrorball]

Hi so tonight I got to see Postmodern Jukebox for the second time. The first time was 3 years ago, fall of my freshman year and they were only the second artists I saw perform in our brand new performing arts center. Tonight I got to see them as a senior in college, about to student teach then graduate. I sat in the same exact spot and everything, and even some of the same performers (including the pianist Logan Evan Thomas) were also at the performance in 2019. Tonight felt like so many little full circle moments clicking into place and it was such a fantastic end to the last week of classes for this semester.

Also, while I was talking to Logan after the show, a gentleman walked up to let us know that he actually spent most of the show watching me because I was having so much fun and knew all the songs, which was the cherry on top of the icing on top of the cake of a perfect evening.

If you ever have the chance to see PMJ, you absolutely must do it. Absolute must-see, must listen to.

[that-thing-in-the-closet]

Spotify wrapped but i stopped listening to spotify in like June so heres my Deezer stats too, in no particular order.

[covers-on-spotify]

“Love Story”

Original by Taylor Swift

Covered by Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox feat. Caity Gyorgy

[concubuck]

A delivery for Alastor that somehow made it to him in rehab.

It's several albums from Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox. A note provided with it reads, "Thought you might appreciate these while you're going through all this. Welcome to the Black Parade made me think of you.

-C.C."

((Due to the mun being busy, this wasn't answered when it was sent on August 30 and Alastor was still in alcohol detox. Pretend it got lost in the mail for a month. We'll overlook the fact that he only told two people privately that he was in detox.))

I take it you're the same person who sent me this!

Now, I've never been terribly fond of this group's gimmick. "Rewrite a recent song in an 'old' genre"—swing or jazz or doo-wop or what have you. Because it acts like nobody else is playing in old styles. Like the swing revival of the nineties never happened, or like jazz clubs don't still host jam sessions, or like there isn't a successful Satanic doo-wop group touring right now.

Anyway, it's all too clean, too over-produced for the sounds they're trying so hard to replicate. Tell me their "New Orleans marching band" cover sounds anything—like—this. Sure, over the decades, the genre's drifted a bit from the style they're trying to replicate. But let me assure you—because I was there—that the energy in modern second line bands has more in common with what I heard than Mr. Bradlee's self-controlled little dirge.

The difference between Joey Cook singing so perfectly over a sedately improvisational wind section and a real second line marching band is like the difference between a Broadway soprano singing about dying, and a raw howl of pain.

If you want to hear Top 40 pop and rock in "New Orleans" style, don't ask a rotating band of genre-dabblers headed by a New Jersey pianist to attempt to sound New Orleanian. Ask a New Orleans band to play the song.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you—

Hot 8 Brass Band performing Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing"

The Soul Rebels performing Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams"

New Creations Brass Band performing the Beatles' "Come Together"

Sunshine Brass Band performing Blondie's "Heart of Glass"

The Original Pinettes Brass Band performing Katy Perry's "Roar"

Blown Away Brass Band performing OutKast's "Spread"

Where Ya At Brass Band performing Bruno Mars's "Treasure"—for half a minute, at least

—or, if you want to hear a real New Orleans band play a song about funeral parades, pick one that already fits the genre.

Or hell—if you can't get a genuine "second line" band, at least get a real brass band:

The Cincy Brass from Ohio performing Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance"

No BS! Brass from Virginia performing Michael Jackson's "Thriller"

Dirty Catfish Brass Band from Canada performing Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off"

Broken Brass from the Netherlands performing Macklemore's "Thrift Shop"

Brass Délirium from France performing The Offspring's "The Kids Aren't Alright"

Hit Brass from Colombia performing Reel 2 Real's "I Like to Move It" and Lipps Inc.'s "Funkytown"

Bieranjas from Switzerland performing Adele's "Rolling in the Deep"

And that's just the ones I could find before I got bored. I'm not even touching on artists like Lucky Chops or Brass Against, they're popular enough.

Now, I have nothing against Mr. Bradlee personally. His arrangements sounds fine. But the trouble with the glorification of this one artist for dressing up in a genre for a song or two is that it treats him like a unique novelty. As if he's the only man in the market who's ever set a Top 40 pop hit to jazz.

Meanwhile there are living, performing, struggling bands who dedicate their entire careers to playing these genres. Notice how many of the recordings I offered come from cell phone cameras rather than nice, professional music videos! If you adore it so much when the novelty act pretends to play in those styles for five minutes, why don't you show any of that adoration to the bands playing those styles every day?

Listen to some bands that really perform those styles—not just the band that plays at those styles.