I love derivative works! And here are some derivative works that have been created recently that are very good. All of these remixes of State Shirt songs are courtesy of the remixers on ccMixter.

Solid from first note to last. “This is on the Stairs” by Neurowaxx is chosen as ccMixter Editor’s Pick. A mashup of my song “This is Old” and “Passing on the Stairs” by The Starry Tides.
Neurowaxx – This is on the Stairs

DoKashiteru delivers yet another great remix with this lush version of Computer:
DoKashiteru – Computer

Here’s a very cool progressive house remix of This is Old by nero.
nero – This is Old (Nero mix)

Minimal and simple electronica, yet very nice remix of my song “Life Isn’t Everything”.
metallius – One of These Days

Ok, one more! Artemis Strong kicks your ears in the ass with this unconventional and challenging mix. Very cool.
Artemis Strong – Conway Station Road (North Conway Mix)

Any other new remixes that should be posted up here? Comment below and let me know!

I just finished recording a cover of Electronic’s “Disappointed”. I had never even heard the original song until about a month ago. Hell I had never even heard of the band. But there was something really good at the core of this song and I wanted to try a version of my own.

In case you also didn’t know, Electronic were an “alternative dance group formed by New Order singer and guitarist Bernard Sumner and ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr.” Thanks Wikipedia. I’m a fan of both New Order and Johnny Marr. Not sure how I missed this band? The track “Disappointed” is from 1992 and made a dent on US charts, and even features Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys on vocals. Though I guess I can see how I missed this song–terrible early 90′s bands like UB40, Snow and Color Me Badd really soured me on pop music at the time. But this Electronic song was fun to dig into.

Here’s my version of Electronic’s “Disappointed”. Click below to play. Hope you like it:

Disappointed – Lyrics

If you could cover a song, what would it be? What other songs should I cover?

And just for fun, here’s the original (and strange) video from 1992. Primitive computer graphics, Neil Tennant looking bored, some dude holding a giant gold sphere. Enjoy

The first song on my still yet to be titled Collaboration Album has been finished, and is posted below!

Thanks to the amazing audio provided by Orchestral Movement of 1932, Dave Patrikios, James Santiago and Yumenomado, I was able to cut, remix and shape their samples into the song “Cassettes” this evening. Hope you like it.

Cassettes – DOWNLOAD – Lyrics

More songs will follow in the coming weeks.

You send me audio. I remix and sing. Together we make an album.

Even though 40 people were nice enough to get involved with this collaboration project, I still don’t have enough audio samples to create an entire album of music. How about you get involved in this super-fantastic open source music project and submit some samples of your own? That would be great!

Join the likes of Tim Godwin (he played in Air Supply, for chrissakes), Dan Friel (Parts & Labor), Dave Patrikios (of the kick-ass yet now-defunct band The Realistics), Chris Fudurich (producer for Nada Surf, Sophie B Hawkins, Rx Bandits), and a bunch more talented and creative people who you don’t know but absolutely should:

* Bill Belina (a bunch of guitar parts)
* Brian Page (a ton of phat drum beats)
* DJ12XU (super noise)
* Chris Fudurich (piano, drums, loops, wurlitzer!)
* Dan Cohen (geetah)
* Dave Patrikios (guitar, piano, synths)
* Eric Pokorny (guitar, vocals, screaming kids)
* James Santiago (supah guitar parts, samples)
* Jeremy Starpoli (a ton of trombone)
* Terry Burton (guitar)
* Fluffy (synth, bass)
* Jon Eric (noises)
* Nate Quinn (drums, djembe, conga, sax)
* Jeremy Quinn (ebow guitar, noise)
* Tim Godwin (guitar)
* Brent Stansfield (songs, guitar, vocals)
* Matt Larsen (piano)
* Dan Friel (noises)
* Orchestral Movement of 1932 (drums, bass, gtr)
* Artemis Strong (noises)
* Yumenomado (synths)
* Wyatt (synths)
* Bartley Hinson (guitars)
* Steve Rydz (guitars)
* … and more

Send me drumbeats, noises, guitar parts, a cappella vocals, accordion, part of a song you never finished, spoken words, screaming, your cat. Whatever you’re inspired to send. I will merge, tweak, remix and piece together all of your samples and make an album. Be a part of open source music. Your audio submission will get used. Everything you send will be incorporated in to the album. Do it now.

Thanks and good evening.

Over the last year or so I’ve been trying to get rid of stuff. Stuff I never look at, stuff I don’t need, stuff that’s just sitting in a box. After a while it just starts to feel like extra weight, like a burden. Maybe with the exception of the instruments in my studio, I don’t really want to own much of anything at all. I’ve had weird dreams that on the day I die I won’t own anything. Just lying on an old wooden floor of an empty 2nd story apartment. Would certainly make it easier for whoever needs to take care of the situation after I’m gone, all you’d need to deal with is a body.

I have hundreds of these old cassettes just sitting in milk crates and plastic tubs, most of them contain songs I’ve finished, songs I didn’t finish, songs that my friends an I worked on, guitar ideas, horrible synth ideas, live jams, spoken words, songs I love, songs I hate, skits I did with my sister and brothers when I was a kid.

They contain a lot of memories. But they just sit in the closet. Taking up space. Taking up mental space.

I must have spend thousands of hours recording stuff to cassettes. Started with a portable Panasonic recorder, recording what I thought were awesome piano ideas, and incredibly retarded 7-second improvised a cappella songs. I moved up to my mom’s boom-box, and did some crude multi-tracking by playing one tape recorder while recording to another. Sounded amazing, as you may have guessed.

Then finally the day came and I bought a Yamaha MT120 4-track. Came straight home from school every day and sat in front of this machine for 12 hours straight. I must have at least a thousand songs in various states of completion, just sitting there as magnetic particles encased in plastic. From the looks of it, I have at least 100 tapes that I recorded on my Yamaha 4-track, and another 100 tapes that I recorded on a newer Yamaha MT8X 8-track. And at least 60 in my series of “Tune Tapes”, where I’d just record skeleton ideas, musical sketches, guitar parts, keyboard ideas.

What the hell should I do with all of this music?

Let it sit and slowly degrade and demagnetize? Or spend months and months listening through all of this stuff to find the gems? Import the cassettes to my computer? And then do what with it? Now they’ll be sitting on a hard drive instead of in a milk crate.

I could upload unfinished stuff to ccMixter and see if anyone wants to remix it. I could do some sort of strange performance art piece where I do perform the music of one tape per week in various locations around the US. I could actually finish some of these songs I never finished when I was sixteen. Or I could just throw everything away.

After all, they are just memories. Like the photos of my childhood that sit in a shoebox. I look at them every few years, and it refreshes my memory. But it’s also a time that has passed, a time that is getting less and less significant with each passing second.

So, on my last day on this earth, do I really want to still have a crate of cassettes by my side, just to remind me of my past?

Untitled Instrumental
An instrumental I wrote when I was 17 or 18

Q
Wrote this for my friend Scott in ’97

Wrong Planet
My idea of a song, in 1984-ish?

Midnight Cowboy
My friend Adam and I did a cover of Midnight Cowboy (in the style of Faith No More), sometime in high school…

Weggy Wah Solar Neutrino
I like this one. Not sure how to explain it though.

There were a ton of very well done remixes for the State Shirt “Fell Out Of The Sky” AcidPlanet.com remix contest. Thanks to everyone that entered. It was very difficult to choose a winner, but one song did bubble it’s way to the top. Jasinski gets the honors with the 1st place remix, and goes home with brand-spanking new Acid Pro software and five loop libraries.

Here is his winning remix:

Jasinski – Fell Out Of The Sky

And here are the runner up remixes:

S:t Vital – Fell Out Of The Sky (Analog Overdose Remix)
Yumenomado – Coming Down
Vynil Rob – Out Of State
700P3D – Fell Out Of The Sky (700P3D.de Remix)
Silenx – Fell Out Of The Sky (Silenx Renaissance Mix)

And, here are a couple more really sweet remixes that have been added to ccMixter.

Here’s a crazy mashup of This is Old — DJ Vadim vs. State Shirt:
Caujito Ben – Saturday Is Old

And a kick ass trance-y version of Fell Out Of the Sky by Khaustic:
Khaustic – Fell Out Of The Sky

StrangerOnEarth put together a nice flowing Don’t Die remix:
StangerOnEarth – Don’t Die

Cool 1980′s/DrumNBass/Synth Pop version of This Is Old:
Sloan – This Is Old (Hartkern Reassembly)

And you can find a ton more here… I’ll be updating the remix page soon with all of the new remixes that have been made.

Which one is your favorite? Is there a State Shirt remix you’ve found that isn’t posted on my site? Comment here!

Long story short:
- I was inspired by Steve Porter’s Slap Chop infomercial remix featuring Vince Offer of ShamWow! fame.
- Decided it was necessary to create a State Shirt Slap Chop remix. And submit it to SongFight. And create a music video. In 7 days. Here are the results.

MP3 of the song “I Am A Target”

Here’s the music video/remix video. Click here to watch in HD!

Long story long:

The last week was a unique learning experience for me. I had just heard Steve Porter’s remix of the Slap Chop infomercial. It’s pretty great. That got me thinking, how do you even create a youtube video remix? It took a few minutes playing around to realize that Ableton Live is a great place to start.

So I just kinda started piecing together parts of the original Slap Chop commercial, and found that some of the voice samples were downright somber when taken out of context. Started to write a song around the samples and quickly realized that this track could work out well as a SongFight entry. After some guitar, piano, synths, drums and vocals, the song was finished in a few hours.

Then some weird-ass crazy shit happened. I must have gone to sleep and had a crazy dream about being an infomercial salesman or something, because I woke up knowing that I needed to buy a blue apron and a shitty 13″ television in order to build a music video for the song. Total budget = $26! I borrowed a sweet Panasonic HVX200 and started shooting. Angela Heine shot some of the outdoor footage. Editing was done in Final Cut.

Overall it was a pretty fun experience to put together a song and accompanying video in just one week. Weird thing is I didn’t set out to do any of this, it just sorta happened. I need a beer (or four) now.

The new State Shirt album This is Old is finally released. I hope you like it. It’s available as a CD, MP3 files and FLAC files. And I’d be glad if you shared it with your friends (and enemies). And I’d be just as glad if you purchased a copy. Each CD comes with a neato State Shirt bumper sticker and instant MP3 downloads. Thanks to everyone for their support, I promise the next album won’t take four years.

Buy the CD or MP3s

It’s also available at Amazon, CDBaby, eMusic and will soon be on iTunes. The album is also up at last.fm and it looks like it will be on Jamendo any day now.

Less than a week until This Is Old is released. Pre-order sales of the new album have been great, they’re really piling up. Thanks so much everyone!

• Attention valued listeners: If you ordered a CD, it will be sent out soon, I’m just waiting for the bumper stickers to arrive so I can send those out too! In the meantime, anyone who has pre-ordered the CD can download MP3s of all the songs! Check the email I sent you when you ordered, the download link there is now activated.
• If you haven’t already ordered and you’re not into the whole PayPal thing, on 11.11.08 the album will be available on Amazon and CDBaby. It’s been sent off to iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody and eMusic, and will show up whenever they get around to putting it up. (And, next week I will be offering MP3 and FLAC downloads right here on my site).
• Had some CDs sent out to college radio and press, hope someone likes it enough to play it or write about it. Also sent off CDs to Pandora and Jango, maybe they’ll put this album up there?

Thanks everyone for the support.