CD Compilation Liner Notes

I’ve compiled a themed album. This is primarily intended for my older brother (who is the king of CD compilations). He'll be getting his copy of the CDR soon. But I’m posting the liner notes here because this is something that has been taking up my free time (as if I had any to spare). If any of my friends would like a copy of this, let me know and I'll burn off a disc for you.

Album Title: “One More Time”

One of my favorite albums when I was ten or so was an audiocassette of about a dozen variations of the song “Louie, Louie.” I think it belonged to my older brother (whose taste in music I have always deferred to… until I fell in love with Pearl Jam). The variations ranged from the Kingsmen to Black Flag to high school marching band. I don’t know exactly why, but such a gimmick album (variations on a shallow song) has always appealed to me. Years later, when I heard a friend play a rocking acoustic cover of “…Baby, One More Time” in a Liverpool music club, I remember thinking something like, “I’m witnessing the redemption of Britney Spears.” Several months ago, I began collecting the different variations listed below. I consciously did not include variations that were close to versions below or really close to the Britney Spears version (like the one on Barbie and Friends or the one by The Starlite Singers) or dance remixes (although a dance remix in Russian or Mandarin WOULD be included below if I could find one). I still reel at times when I think on the diversity of countries and music genres represented. Versions or languages I would still love to find (they just gotta be out there – I know it): muzak, string quartet, Mandarin, Japanese, gangsta rap, Russian, and more. One version I would have liked to have included is the early cover by Ahmet and Dweezil Zappa. But I didn’t want to buy the CD and iTunes didn’t have it. Oh well. A compilation like this is nothing more nor less than a study of the border and bridges between the ridiculous and the sublime. Enjoy.

Song: “…Baby, One More Time”

Music and lyrics by Martin Karl “Max Martin” Sandberg.

Performed by:

1. Britney Spears. I like to think of this version as the “original cover” version. In the pop music industry, performers rarely write their own songs. This song is no exception. This song has never had an “original” version in the sense that the original was performed by the person who wrote it. Conversely, until Max Martin performs this song, all versions of it will be covers in the sense that nobody who performs it wrote it.

2. Travis. That’s the name of the band – not an individual. Scottish folk/rock group. Pretty straight forward. They were among the first to cover this song. Marty Casey does a version that is, in a lot of ways, indistinguishable from this version. So, of course, Marty’s is more famous…

3. Fire 99. Small time techno industrial band from Olympia, WA. They also have a song named after the old arcade game Sinistar.

4. Midi version. That’s not the name of a band or group. I actually don’t know who put this midi together. I like to think of this playing in the background of Metroid or The Legend of Zelda.

5. Joy Bellis. My older brother calls this kind of music JGB – Jazz Gone Bad. I think he’s referring more specifically to the kind of solo the piano does 2/3 the way through. But it does have a certain post-WWII-disillusioned-pre-rock-and-roll sort of charm…

6. Hog Hoggidy Hog. Get this: South African Punk/Ska. You can get all their music for free on some artist-supported music sites. Gotta love the muted trumpet solo near the end. Another notable punk performance of this song is the one performed by Nicotine on “Punk goes Pop” – but the Bowling for Soup version (see below) takes care of the American sellout variety of punk while this one by Hog Hoggidy Hog delivers a more in-your-face flavor of punk.

7. Crapman Sacramento. That’s his stage name, I shiz you not. His youtube profile says his real name is David Dufresne and that he’s from Canada. Beyond that I can only suppose he’s some flavor of Quebecois. You’ve already noticed this variation is in French (Frappe moi bebe encore plus). I can’t decide which version I hate worse: Crapman’s or Britney’s. How to even categorize this guy’s music – “consciously-horrible-Frenchy techno-junk”?

8. Fountains of Wayne. Pretty straightforward rock n roll. These guys got me started on collecting versions of this song. I heard them interviewed on NPR a few years ago and they played this version of this song. It reminded me of the version my friend played in that music club in Liverpool.

9. The Pigs. One of my favorite finds. These guys are Australian musicians based out of New South Wales. They play a raucous mix of country, bluegrass, and rockabilly. I like to think of the lead singer as a hillbilly from the film Deliverance singing this to Britney after she gets lost on a river-rafting trip.

10. Ten Masked Men. Like the Black Ingvars, these guys are another gimmick group – they do almost completely covers of songs from other genres. Unlike Black Ingvars, these guys are British (out of London and southwest England) and they play death metal. This is my favorite death metal version of this song. That’s right, at least one other death metal band has covered this song – Kevorkian – but honestly TMM’s version sounds creepier.

11. Bowling for Soup. Yet another example of punk sold out. This is from Disney’s “Freaky Friday” soundtrack. Catchy and safely edgy, this version exemplifies Disney’s recent ironic self-consciousness (i.e. embrace edginess because society at large embraces it – this is the same rationale behind selling t-shirts and coffee mugs proudly exclaiming “I’m Grumpy”). Nicotine also has a punk version on the multi-artist album Punk goes Pop (which after the late 80s is an ad absurdum).

12. This particular track has a spotty history on the internet. For a while, many sites that hosted it presented it as a cover performed by the doom metal band Type O Negative (one of those slow, heavy, mega-goth groups with an almost seven foot tall bass singer with fang implants who sings almost exclusively about blood… you know, one of those). But Type O Negative has denied doing this. Rightly so. This is the Britney Spears version slowed from a 3:32 song to a 5:00 song. But thinking about a chorus of bass-singing, fang-implanted, goth giants while listening to this makes it deliciously disturbing.

13. Trombo Combo. Smooth jazz. Actually quite fun. If this song had been written in the early to mid-70s, I’d like to think this is what the “original cover” would have sounded like.

14. Brad Roberts. You know… of Crash Test Dummies fame. This is from a live album probably intended as some sort of come back. But the acoustic guitars are a bit too clangy for my liking, and really this guy singing any song other than “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” just doesn’t cut it.

15. Black Ingvars. Swedish techno metal group. Self-styled humorists, they make a living out of covering songs from divergent genres (pop to children’s songs to Christmas ditties to gospel tunes).

16. Wise Guys. Geeky German A Cappella. It’s actually a pretty good translation (Schlag mich Baby noch einmal). Fast forward when the audience starts applauding at the end – it goes on for thirty seconds. I mean, they’re good, but not THAT good… Toxic Audio also does an A Cappella version (in English with male and female singers).

17. Chad Michael Murray. This is dialogue from the movie “Freaky Friday.” I couldn’t think of a perfecter end to this study of cultural vapidity.