Dschinghis Encore

Recommended technical reading. Not to scare anyone off, but CJ’s post goes into the nuts & bolts details of the steps likely to be taken making a professional remix of two songs from different eras in recording technology.

In my opinion this kind of remix seems more like a gag you’d hear on the radio, or download on a blog, not an official release. Working from the masters will of course produce a much better result than trying to rip elements out digitally, and my guess is the original group/label came up with this idea. There is a good amount of speculation here, so there’s mine. We can’t know for sure what is going on with this exactly, but CJ describes one possible route and it’s a good example that in the music biz, the simplest seeming thing can be incredibly complicated. (Just the label situation with this is a headache–it’s described very simply and accurately but still makes no sense because the real-life situation makes no sense. The only thing I would add is there have gotta be some more analog holdouts…CJ lists the most vocal critics of digital recording; I would say it’s less of an absolute with many people who still might use both.)

So…strap yourself in you you want to know more about all that. There’s also a decent comment about how the song (the cover and the original) might be viewed in Germany. That’s a good question and maybe this will be a new hit or be mocked mercilessly. Or both! There’s a Yiddish version that I think is actually the most known, but don’t quote me. They play it at Bar Mitzvahs.