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Saturday, June 5, 2010

79. "God Bless the Child" by Billie Holiday


Monkey Typing Pool is Jeff Norman, a genius of a sort whose wit and wisdom can be most frequently sampled over at his Architectural Dance Society blog. Over the years, Jeff has shown a willingness to actually create pieces of audio that most people would only think of as something that it would be cool if someone did it: an imaginary Christmas song by Wire, a combination of the Kronos Quartet's version of "Marquee Moon" with Television's original, and so forth. So I wasn't surprised he'd be one of the first to come up with a collaboration for 39-40.

What was really amazing, though, is how completely realized his basic tracks were when I received them. I can't take any credit at all for this arrangement of the Billy Holiday classic, which reminds me a bit of a collision between XTC and Guided by Voices combined with an otherworldly thing which Jeff seems to be able to tap into at will. I just added a few things to it and mixed it. Easy-peasy. If anything I may have cluttered it up a bit much. But it's really good to be able to present a straight-up collaboration, and I hope there are more in the offing.

Personnel:
Jeffrey Norman ~ Everything except:
Rex Broome ~ 12-string guitar, backing vocals, final mix

3 comments:

  1. Ooh, this looks like a treat. But wait, there is no link by the text for your cover version.

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  2. Thanks! I've put up details behind putting my together up at my blog, here, and also...after I sent Rex those parts, my brain kept working on the song, so there's an alternate mix too greasy to be let out of the garage without supervision.

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