20120716

Deconstruct This - Spin Down My Mash-Up




Trouble with the audio (above)? Get it here: http://snd.sc/PSqlN3


Last year, right around this time, I was hanging with the guys from Archbishops of Blount Street, kicking around ideas for songs to remake in our own reggae/ska image - "You may have heard it before, but you never heard it like this..." It's what we do... We stumbled upon a KISS song; as I recall, feeling kind of punchy, we thought to shoehorn the lyrics from "Beth" into "I Shot the Sheriff" (a song we were already regularly performing) to make "I Shot Beth". That lead to suggestions of a few more KISS titles that seemed to lend themselves to our thang. Then: "What if we did a whole set like that?... Or a whole *show*, even?" After *lot* of work, and even more make-up - enough for 10 guys, in fact -

Dreads To Kill - the music of KISS inna Ska stylee... a performance art/meta-tribute band was born.

It's notoriety has grew almost as quickly. So, for the first time in a decade or so, I found myself composing and arranging for a full, live horn section. Alas, Dreads To Kill already booked and performed a bunch of Halloween-related shows before we were able to work up my arrangement of this certain KISS song into the set. I was disappointed, but it also provided an opportunity to expound and improve upon a neat idea. Over the past year, I've since discovered Reaper, helping me to further hone my composition chops. I started with this Dance Hall-style mash-up that I look to drop (live!) into the middle of that certain song, for the latest iteration of the Dreads To Kill project.

So, what's the title of that song? You tell me. What about those other elements forming the mash-up section? Take you best guesses... Post them on Soundcloud (above), which provides a near-perfect platform for this kind of thing. Look at it like an updated, interactive version of "Name That Tune".



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