Once again, it’s time again once more for a new schedule! Yes, here to help keep you warm through the coldest of nights is the WRCT Spring Schedule. We’ve got plenty of the old, the new, and the remade to keep you entertained as you wait for the winter to be over.
We have a new metal show taking over Saturday nights (with “Too Evil” moving to Sunday nights) and a handful of old DJs are making a return to the airwaves (specifically DJ Phinesse, Taste Sensation, DJ Accent, and D-RON).
If you’re looking for some of your favorite shows, check around, they probably just got moved to a different time. But fear not, because many long standing crowd favorites have stayed in place: You can still get your weekly dose of Zombo on Fridays, you can dance your couch to pieces Wednesdays, “Radio 9” and the “ReRewind” still entertain Saturday afternoons, and the Rock Blocksters maintain their hold on Thursday afternoons (though, sadly, “Bridge City Dreamer” is taking a few months off).
I personally guarantee that you will find something listen to on WRCT this semester. And be sure to check back frequently, since we’ll be adding more shows as the semester progresses!
-Ryan, Program Director
Over winter break, one of my friends downloaded a bunch of one-hit wonders. It did not take long, however, to find that someone decided that gems such as “Who Let the Dogs Out?” and “Cotton-Eyed Joe” needed remixes.
These remixes were not just bad — there was also no new perspective gained from listening to them. There was barely anything about the songs that was altered; hi-hats, bass, and synths were simply added on top of the songs with some minor equalizer manipulation. It was the musical equivalent of using Microsoft Paint to do photo manipulation.
Good remixes have a lot in common with good song covers: They maintain the most essential aspects of the song, provide a new perspective, and show an appreciation of the source material. For example, I was never a fan of Lady Gaga’s “Yoü and I.” However, after hearing Wild Beasts’ remix of it, I changed my opinion.
Wild Beasts’ remix stripped away almost every element of the song, leaving a vocal loop of Lady Gaga singing, “This time we made love / This time baby you and I,” over sampled loops taken directly from the song. The only addition the band makes is singer Hayden Thorpe moaning over parts of the song. The two layers of the song could not sound any more different. Wild Beasts stripped away the theatricality, the radio-pop polish, and the schmaltzy country-rock ballad feel. They left listeners with the soul of the song: sexual longing and the torture of being separated from a loved one.
It’s easy to discredit remixes as a legitimate art form because it’s not terribly difficult to make one. But artistic vision is necessary to make a remix worth listening to. Although there are enough mediocre dubstep remixes of pop songs to make one lose faith in remix culture, it’s important to remember that if you just keep looking hard enough, you’ll probably find a remix that will remind you why you started looking for them in the first place.
(Originally published in The Tartan)