By Tom Booker
YOU like that song? It’s a shame for you. So basic, so unenlightened. Because I, like all discerning people, vastly prefer the remix.
That Franz Ferdinand song? Sure, it’s good, but the Daft Punk remix is far superior. You like the MIA track? But not the Bun B and Rich Boy version?
And my friend, you only think you have heard Gorillaz’s DARE. Until you have heard the DFA remix, you are nothing but a pilgrim seeking truth.
There is barely a song you can name that I do not have a superior, more discerning remix of. I have journeyed deep into track seven of the CD single – part two of a two-part digipak – and returned bearing treasure.
I have delved deep into music blogs. I have scoured eBay for the white label 12-inch. I have a library of mp3s whose makers do not even know have escaped to the wild.
I do all of this not because I am some pathetic completist. Mine is not the hoarding instinct of the collector. No, I do it because it makes me better than you.
When I hear the wrong remix, the unadorned single version that was played on the radio that you believe definitive, it literally hurts me. Every note is a scar on my soul.
It burns me, like the Thin White Duke remix of Royskopp’s What Else Is There? burns up dancefloors.
You haven’t heard it? That doesn’t surprise me.
