Maxville – Los Angeles’s singer/songwriter/producer Mayer Hawthorne recently released a free EP consisting of covers, which could be found here. On this EP is a cover of one of my favorite Chromeo tracks, a stripped down lounge version of “Don’t Turn the Lights On.” This track does all the things a good interpretative cover should do, which is add elements of the current artist’s sound while retaining some essence of the original artist’s work. Check it out while drinking a rusty nail (I know its only 12:30, but it is Friday :p)
Ottawa – Sometimes, you listen to something and wonder. I don’t know why but I queued up Barenaked Ladies’ If I had a Miillion Dollars this afternoon whilst working. As I listened to it, I started thinking. This song is about twenty years old, in a different economic age. Is it still realistic? Why did I think this? I don’t know. Maybe being in Ottawa this past week has put me into a more bureaucratic mindset. Let’s assume that the setting for this song is Toronto, since the band itself is from Toronto.
If I had a million dollars / (If I had a million dollars)
I’d buy you a house
The housing market is at a high these days, but still a million dollars is quite a lot of money. I am going to assume if you are going to tell someone you are buying them a house, you aren’t going to buy them some fix me up in some crappy neighborhood. So a few searches on MLS indicates that a decent sized house in a decent neighborhood will cost around 600k. (My mls search had A/C as a requisite)
Money left: 400k
Let’s say this house will probably need some papers done on it, and let’s face it..some minor renovations
Money left: 350k
I’d buy you furniture for your house (Maybe a nice chesterfield or an ottoman)
You can’t have an empty house and you certainly aren’t going to IKEA to buy furniture after splashing down 600 thousand on your loved one.
I’ll just say that furniture for your house will most likely cost about 20,000. Including bed, bed frame, dressers, television, couches, outdoor furniture, chairs, desks, bbq’s, guest beds, cutlery, etc.
Money left: 330k
I’d buy you a K-Car (A nice Reliant automobile)
There’s no K car, but we’ll go with some random Chrysler sedan car for about 15K
Money left: 315k
If I had a million dollars I’d buy your love
Let’s say the Diamond Ring costs about 5k
Money left: 310k
I’d build a tree fort in our yard
This actually cost nothing
I’d buy you a fur coat
Let’s say this red fox coat costs around two grand
Money left: 308k
Well, I’d buy you an exotic pet, (Yep, like a llama or an emu)
A quick look on some random pet site suggests you can purchase a pair of Emus for about 500 dollars. Add in startup costs of building a fence and then an enclosure, and probably permits and we’ll have this mark as a 3000 dollar purchase.
Money left: 303k
Well, I’d buy you a green dress, (But not a real green dress, that’s cruel)
Money left: 302k
Well, I’d buy you some art,(A Picasso or a Garfunkel)
Original Picasso is expensive, this piece here is 65,000 dollars.
Money left: 237K
Well, I’d buy you a monkey, (Haven’t you always wanted a monkey)
Lemurs, tamarins, and marmosets run in the range of $1,500 to $2,500; rhesus macaques and baboons might cost $3,500; and spider monkeys tend to be around $6,000. Chimpanzees cost upward of $60,000, which is considerably more than you would pay even for a giraffe (around $45,000) and 20 or 30 times more than you’d lay out for a zebra or a lion cub.
You pretty much don’t want a chimp, since it can rip your face off quite easily, so let’s go for a pair of marmosets, who are rather cute.
That’s it! If you were to buy your love one a house, furniture, car, emu, monkey, fur coat and all of the other things, you would still have 230,000 left. Considering the yearly costs for the upkeep of all those things, you might not be rich after a year or two.
So if you have a million dollars and a fan of the Barenaked Ladies, be careful.
Ottawa – On Saturday, a good friend of mine was getting married and we were asked to dj the wedding. We had previously dj’ed a friends wedding a month and I had already dj’ed at least one or two weddings before so the process was becoming more and more familiar. So I decided to do a retroactive diary of the evening in case some random person wants to set a playlist for their wedding.
Here were some notes from this wedding
a) no children or no teenagers so the need to play Bieber or Taylor Swift or Hanna Montana was not existent
b) most of my friends at the party listen to indie or indie-ish wedding, although I had no idea what the brides friends listened to.
c) there was only one or two tracks that were considered must plays by the couple, both of which were are on my playlist already
Anyways, here we go
I am a firm believer that the first hour and a bit should be dedicated to getting all the old folks on the dance floor and giving them their time. So without doubt, a heavy dose of oldies and motown are required. This allows the older generation of parents and grand parents to dance and also gives the younger generation time to mingle, get drunk, rip off fences and throw them in a bonfire outdoors. So here’s what we played, a playlist consisting of super famous upbeat tracks. Everyone loves the Beatles, by the way.
ben e king – stand by me
temptations – my girl
diana ross – baby love
chubby checker – the twist
jackson 5 – abc
beatles – can’t buy me love
isley brothers – shout
roy orbison – oh pretty women
neil diamond – sweet caroline
lynyrd skynyrd – sweet home alabama
ccr – bad moon rising
marvin gaye – ain’t no mountain high enough
aretha – respect
beatles – twist and shout
elvis – hound dog
At some point of the night, you will want to move the generation level up a notch, but not necessarily move it straight to Taio Cruz or something. So we went with some famous 80s tracks. I decided to forgo the cheesy eighties songs this time (Boney M, Village People, etc). I also love Kokomo.
beach boys – kokomo
violent femmes – blister in the sun
clash – train in vain
Be careful when you decide to play Queen – Under Pressure, because all the young kids will think it’s Vanilla Ice and then you get that awkward moment when they have no idea what’s going on.
queen – under pressure
Micheal Jackson can be played anytime at a wedding and it’ll always fill or refill the dance floor. Use him wisely
michael jackson – billie jean
madonna – holiday
At some point, you should probably move to a more up to date playlist so that your friends can make it to the dance floor. By this time, they are fairly liquored up. We wanted to start off that portion of the night with a bang. Black Eyed Peas, for all their general crappiness, gave us I Gotta Feeling, which for all intents and purposes, is a song that will always get everyone going and also be played at weddings thirty years from now.
black eyed peas – i gotta feeling
and then you have to follow that up with a really good track, so you do it with a recent song-du-jour
cee lo – forget you
Sometimes it’s nice to play a pg version of a song. Then at some point one of the Dj’s will want to play a song he loves, because he’s the dj. Also, the song is pretty good.
cardigans – lovefool
Around this time, some people are really liquored up. Like someone who buys six shots of scotch. They will invariably want to give a rousing tribute to a fallen rock star.
mark ronson/amy winehouse – valerie
then you play a madonna song
madonna – like a virgin
At some point of the night, you’ll want to have a slow song for the couple.
cindy lauper – time after time
You usually need something really popular to fill up the dance floor after a slow song. You will also need to play Journey at some point because someone will always request it. So you might as well play at least one or two songs people might request/are awesome sing a longs so that you don’t get requests.
journey – dont stop believin
bryan adams – summer of 69
After a few singalongs, everyone is usually juiced, so it’s now to investigate what will work. I tried to go the 80s dancey route, so I started with the obvious.
new order – bizarre love triangle
While New Order worked really well at the previous wedding, wasn’t such a hit here. Time to switch it up
notorious big – hypnotize
beyonce – crazy in love
For the record, you can always play Florence and the Machine and girls will go bat crazy over it. Has worked everytime, I don’t know why.
florence – dog days are over
At this point of the night, most of the parents/grandparents are done and then you can just hit the crowd with some modern era hits. While it might be tempting to go with more super indie obscure songs, it’s probably safer to go with the standards. You can be hip while djing some divey bar in Parkdale.
kings of leon – sex on fire
metric – gimme sympathy
outkast – hey ya
the strokes – last night
the killers – somebody told me
Blink 182 seems to always be popular as well. Kudos to the DJ’s at the Propaganda night in London, England for reminding me how much this song kicks ass.
blink 182 – all the small things
Request time. bon jovi – livin on a prayer
Back to regular scheduled programming. I had previously avoided Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance at the last wedding because of the title of the song, but let’s face it, no one cares at this point and it’s her best dance track.
rihanna – only girl in the world
lady gaga – bad romance
micheal jackson – thriller
At some point of the night, you’ll want to throw in some tracks you think will work, just for fun robyn – dancing on my own
edward sharpe – home
temper trap – sweet disposition
Then near the end, you’ll just want to play songs you want to listen to. The official last song of the night was The Flaming Lips, which I wanted to play because well, it’s freakin awesome and makes me think of Primavera.
flaming lips – do you realize?
Take down equipment random song that I’ve now decided will end all my sets. belle and sebastian – sleep the clock around
There you go, a retroactive diary for a wedding playlist. Do with it what you will
Toronto – I first heard this cover of Men Without Hat’s The Safety Dance on an episode of Gossip Girl a few months ago. I made a mental note and now in the middle of July, that mental note has now manifested itself in the form of this post. The cover of this classic 80s synth pop song is done by Danish band The Asteroids Galaxy Tour, an up and coming band that just released an EP called The Golden Age. This cover replaces the synthesizers of the original with horns and brass. Throw in Mette Lindberg’s unique helium balloonesque voice and you have a totally unique take on the original that still retains the quality that made the first song so famous. Check it out.
The Asteroids Galaxy Tour Live dates:
9/23: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil @ Rock in Rio
10/01: Albany, NY @ Jillian’s
10/04: New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
10/05: Chicago, IL @ Schubas Tavern
10/07: Los Angeles, CA @ Echoplex (Filter Culture Collide Festival)
10/09: Los Angeles, CA @ Block Party (Filter Culture Collide Festival)
