Aloha, gzeeplets! Welcome to the post for my latest offering, The Madonna Within EP.
OK, Before we get to the story behind the project, here are the mp3s. Click HERE to download a zip file of the entire EP, encoded at 128kbps (~20Mb). Or click here to download the zip file at CD quality.
OR click below for the individual songs—click the 320kbps link to
download the high-quality file; click the 128kbps to download the
average-quality file.
1. Beautiful Stranger (320kbps) (128kbps)
2. Love Tried to Welcome Me (320kbps) (128kbps)
3. La Isla Bonita (320kbps) (128kbps)
4. I’m Not Cool Enough to Listen to the White Stripes (the Madonna within mix) (320kbps) (128kbps)
And a couple alternate mixes:
5. Love Tried to Welcome Me (Softly) (320kbps) (128kbps)
6. I’m Not Cool Enough to Listen to the White Stripes (the Madonna without mix) (320kbps) (128kbps)
There we go. Now let’s talk about the EP. Overshare time!
What’s an EP? According to Wikipedia, "An Extended play (EP) is a vinyl record or CD
which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as
an album." I grew up in the 80s, so I remember having vinyl
records–12-inch dance singles (which sparked my lerv for remixing
& glitching), a Footloose picture disc, and that David Lee Roth EP with Just a Gigolo
on it. When I bought it, I thought "extended play" meant remixes; but
no, for some reason it meant "4 songs or so." Whahappah?! At the time I
was a li’l peeved, but it must’ve stuck in my mind, because "releasing
an EP" became one of those things I always wanted to do in my imagined
popstar life, like doing a "concept album" or a spread in Playgirl or coming out with a line of vitamins or something.
Why
Madonna covers? Well, why not? I love doing cover versions–they’re
often pretty quick to put together, and you can put your own spin on
them; plus, (and this is just my theory here) people can be more easily
persuaded to actually listen to them. Not to imply that I’m p
utting myself in the same league as these people, but I heart the various versions of Smells Like Teen Spirit, Umbrella, Baby One More Time, etc. I also love the different versions of Like A Prayer, like Bigod 20’s and John Wesley Harding’s
versions. Which brings us to the other half of the question–why
Madonna? Well, again, I’m a child of the 80s. Behold me in my full 80s
horror (this picture is from a Prince-inspired idea I had of wearing
only purple, white or black. Ugh. I still remember someone making a
joke about me wearing "disposable clothing.") So anyway, yeah, I grew
up listening to Madonna songs. And I had (and still have, sigh) friends
obsessed with Madonna. (I reiterate—sigh.) Also, her music is so
ubiquitous that pretty much everyone knows or likes at least one song.
Furthermore, they’re not exactly the most difficult ones to sing–I
don’t think Madonna has ever put gwakloads of melisma into any
performance.
Moreover, I already had ideas for Madonna covers. One idea was for a version of Nobody’s Perfect. I thought that it, with its out-of-control auto-tune,
sounded something like an artificial intelligence experiment gone awry.
The song is sung from the point of view of a robot that’s just been
given emotion which it cannot control and massacres all the scientists
developing it. Of course, then the robot feels sorry and sings the song
about nobody being perfect. I thought it would be cool to remake the
song like that, with audio clips to suggest the backstory. It was
actually on the list of songs to do, but I decided eventually not to do
it, because the song (let’s face it) is pretty dull, even if it has a
backstory and all that. Another song that I wanted to do but didn’t
make the final cut was Like A Prayer–I wanted to combine the acoustic guitar sound of the John Wesley Harding version with a hard beat like the one I used in Swamp.
I ended up not doing that one because I didn’t feel as strongly about
it as the other songs. As for other songs I might have liked to do,
there’s Inside of Me and Bedtime Story,
the former because it reminds me of a few people who’ve died, the
latter because it’s just such a cool song. But since I didn’t have much
of a point of view for those songs, and not much to really add, I
decided not to do them. Oh, and I always thought it would be fun to do American Life (such a bad song–I wonder if the song she stole it from [allegedly--fascinating and bizarre link] was any better), but I sort of incorporated that into La Isla Bonita, so yeah.
But enough of the songs I didn’t do; let’s talk about the ones I did…
Beautiful Stranger. [click for lyrics]
I just think this is a great song. It’s one of my favorite Madonna
songs–I love the arrangement, and if I’d not done it, I might have
thought that I had nothing to add to it, that it was absolutely perfect
the way it was. Now that I’m finished with it, of course, I’m very
pleased with how it turned out, and I think I brougth my own aesthetic
to it. Why did I choose this particular song? Well, I know that it had
become something of a ’signature song’ for me, but I can’t really
explain why. Partly because I sang it all the time at the radio station
while waiting for files to process or whatnot. Partly because I like to
change the lyrics to make them Ed-centric. Example: "To know Ed, to
know Ed is to love Ed… You’re Ed-vrywhere
I go…." In the end, the song becomes something of a song about
myself, as if I’m the beautiful stranger. Or as if there’s a part of me
that is a beautiful stranger to myself. I suppose you could read a lot
into that if you wanted to. One of things that I’m reminded of when I
think of that interpretation of the song is when my friend Mark was
learning the song Where or When for an 
audition.
("And so it seems that we have met before, and laughed before, and
loved before… but who knows where or when?") His vocal coach told him
to sing it as if he were singing to himself. I kind of like singing Beautiful Stranger
in that way–it’s an interesting interpretation. Oh, and one more
reason why I chose this song: I’ve already performed it, sort-of, live
on The Ed Shepp Radio Experiment as part of one of the fundraising shows I did.
Another reason why it’s a signature song of mine. I thought that since
I’ve performed it already, I might as well do it right and make a big
production of it. So I did. And I even name-checked my hometown at the
end. ("You came here from Florida, and brought the beep from Mount Dora…") Booyah!!
The
processing in the song: I fell in love with a lot of the instruments
that I used to create the song. I love the choir-type voices, the
celesta-type sound which I wanted to sound like a toy piano, the
brass-type sound that you sometimes hear in it, and of course the
tubular bell (one of my all-time favorite sounds; so is the "boing"
sound effect in "dancing all over the place"). I’m also very pleased
with all the beeping, and most especially with the timpani that comes
in around the "Ed-vrywhere I go" parts. Ever since I heard a timpani
used in both Bjork’s Human Behavior and the bottom heavy dub mix of Madonna’s Human Nature, I’ve always wanted to use the sound in something. I think in Beautiful Stranger
is makes the song even more fun. Oh, and the drums: these were just
drums I was using as a temporary file to check out the vocals and
stuff; I hadn’t intended to use them in the final mix. But the more I
listened to it, the more I liked it. The song is at 122bpm, so I think
a driving beat works pretty well for it. So I kept the drums mostly
simple, and I’m really pleased with how they came out.
Love Tried to Welcome Me. [click for lyrics]
OK, I must confess–I can relate to this song. Sure, maybe it’s not the
best, most moving song in the world, but in that tumultuous time when I
was dating and all, I found that the song really spoke to me. I guesss
in a way it still does, as I realize that finding a relationship and
getting married just isn’t important to me like it seems to be to other
people. To paraphrase Bjork, I definitely enjoy solitude;
perhaps I’m overly wedded to my own independence. Or perhaps I’m just
rambling. Anyway, I’ve always felt this song was under-rated, so that’s
one reason I wanted to record it. Another reason would be that I have
very little somber pieces in my repertoire, so I thought this would be
a nice addition.
As for the processing in the song, I originally
wanted it to sound very natural, but, as I am wont to do, changed my
mind as I worked on it, going with a very electro sound. I’m very
pleased with the vocoded parts. I also like the instrumentation, which
in my head started out as a very simple recorder-type instrument
playing the parts. But when I heard some of the wind instruments that I
could use for the song, I chose to use a flute and piccolo for the main
parts of the song and went with an electronic sound for the baseline,
which alone sounds very haunting (you can hear this more in the softer mix). I flattened the echoes a little too to try to give the song a more ‘blue‘ feel.
La Isla Bonita. [click for lyrics]
With this song, I wanted to re-imagine it as a tragedy. The backstory
here is that we have a transgender "woman" (male-to-female) sitting in
a run-down apartment, despondent over something we don’t know. We hear
the sound of her refrigerator humming and various household noises,
plus a television set in the background. We hear her crying, and from
the television set we hear an announcer talking about a story to air at
11 about the "new hallucinogenic drug ravaging the transgender
community." 
(I’m amused by the idea of snorting Calgon), and it’s supposed to make
those who use it, at least the MTF transgender ones, feel "like The
drug is called Calgonreal girls." Then the announce says, "And now back
to Tyra" and we hear The Trya Banks Show
(a show which arguably epitomizes depressing, brain-dead daytime TV,
and one which presumably would appeal to the transgendered, since Tyra
Banks, with her wigs and
being 9 feet tall and all, is practically a drag queen herself).
Interestingly, I think in the clip she’s talking about one of her
biggest beauty secrets, which is, go figure, Vaseline.
Anyway, the woman in the song mutters (of course), "Calgon, take me
away" (I couldn’t resist that one) and snorts it. Quickly thereafter
the music from the song fades in and she starts singing.
I meant
it to be evident that this girl isn’t relating to this song because
she’s actually been to any sort of tropical island, so I mangled the
Spanish wherever I could. Except, of course, for the title, which
pretty much everyone knows. I want to convey there that she’s clinging
to a corny Madonna song to escape her reality, but she’s also
conflating the song’s content with her reality. Under the influence of
this new drug, she believes that she’s been to this island. At least,
until, she gets to the bridge of the song, where we hear the song start
to collapse (the vocoded background vocals flatten, etc.) as she gets
to the line "…a boy loves a girl." Here she crashes down from her
high, from two factors: 1) the high doesn’t last very long, which I
guess in a sense would make it like hallucinogenic crack and 2) the
realization that she is not, in fact, a girl at all, which is a
buzzkill. At this point you hear her break down again (and you hear
Tyra talking aboug Spanx) and she snorts more of the drug. Then the
music fades back in and she resumes singing.
I tried to make her
sound as if she were breaking further with reality as the song
continued, but that she was also connected to her sadness. So she’s not
"high" in a traditional sense; she’s more in a "mixed state," some
combination of despair, euphoria and agitation. Anyway, at the very
end, I thought that nothing (nothing but nothing) could convey her
despair more than a rendition of the rap from American Life.
Cuz really, is there any lower point than that? And the last line about
nothing being what it seems helps illuminate her experience; but mostly
I liked the idea of adding that because in a pop music sense it’s
almost the very essence of tragedy. Can we agree that the rap in American Life is the worst thing Madonna has ever done (musically, at least), tongue-in-cheek or not? (I would even include "Wild Dancing" here.) Discuss.
A
note about processing: You’ll notice that the vocals in the song are
not pitch-corrected within an inch of their life. This is intentional.
The singer is not supposed to sound good. So I just sung the song in in
one take, with no practice. Not that I had to worry about sounding bad
enough–I’m far from a good singer. But I definitely did NOT want
the song to sound like a good singer trying to sound bad. I’ve heard
that so many times before, and it’s tiring. I like the way my version
came out–I’m sure it’s cringeworthy to someone with good ears, but
it’s not supposed to sound good. As for the instrumentation, I wanted
it to sound lush, and even disorganized toward the end. I also wanted
it to build every time it began, since the music isn’t real per se, but
only part of the singer’s hallucination. I did a lot of doubling of
instruments to try to get the right sound, and for the most part I’m
pleased with it, especially the part where the full drums come in–the
effect I was going for there was this: when the bass and the drums
first come in, they’re supposed to sound puny, so I gutted a lot of low
frequencies from the bass guitar and kept the drums low in the mix. So
the listener is supposed to think it sounds crappy, but then be
surprised when the full drums and bass come in. I hope I achieved that.
Unfortunately, I don’t feel like I really achieved the full effect on
some of the vocals–I wanted there to be more echo in the end, to
really give an impression of ‘otherworldliness,’ so to speak, but I
just didn’t have the time to delve enough into that, and I feared it
would muddy the mix beyond recognition. Alas! Maybe with the next song
of this sort….
I’m Not Cool Enough to Listen to the White Stripes (the Madonna within mix). [click for lyrics] I’m not sure that you can really call this a cover version. It’s inspired by the beast within mix of Justify My Love, (hence my "Madonna within" mix and EP title), in which Madonna basically read excerpts from the Book of Revelation
and interspersed them with some lyrics from JML. The music in the mix
is actually pretty boring–some sitars I think, the sample of Madonna
wailing from Erotica (although it sounds awfully good to be Madonna; kind of like the wailing in Paula Abdul’s My Love is for Real, which is actually not Paula Abdul but Ofra Haza.
I’d always thought as much, but I figured that it was so drowned in
reverb that it could’ve been Abdul’s crap voice. Anyway, as far as I
know this remix pre-dates auto-tune, so I have my doubts as to whether
Madonna herself sung that part). And the beat was from another rather
uninspired remix of JML. So I redid the music with loops, rather than try to re-create any of it. Also, I didn’t use any of the JML parts, but instead used my song I’m Not Cool Enough to Listen to the White Stripes (Vote for Angelyne) from my CD Superpowerpusssy.
It’s a song which is absolutely self-explanatory, as it simply states
that I’m not cool enough to listen to the White Stripes and exhorts the
listener to vote for Angelyne to be the governor of California. If you
look at its success as an Angelyne campaign anthem, it’s a total
failure, but that’s fine. It was a song I created while I was just
learning how to use Cubase on a friend’s laptop, and it served as part
of 
the inspiration for a ditty that I made for WFMU’s Pseu Braun called The P is for PsuperpowerPseu Too (which also combines elements from The P Is for Pussy and Superpowerpusssy.)
So anyway, since the music is very different and the "remixed" song is
as well, I wouldn’t call this a cover version in the strict sense. But
I will say that I made most of the same choices in interpreting the
text as Madonna (or whoever coached Madonna) did, with a few
differences, some of which work well, some not so well. One example of
something we did differently is that I like to pronounce the word
"blasphemous" as [blass-FEE-muss]. I just think it’s funny; it might be
hard to hear in the song, though.
One thing that I really like about the song is the way the ending of JML and InCEtLttWS parallel each other. In JML,
it ends with the quote "What’re you gonna do?" from the song. Mine ends
with "Are you cool enough?" which actually ended the original version
as well. I like how that turned out.
But since this isn’t a
cover version in the strict sense (since Madonna certainly cannot be
credited with writing the Book of Revelation, although I’m SURE she
tried to change a few words or something to get a co-writing credit! 
), why did I choose it? Well, ever since I first heard it, I thought it
was one of the coolest ideas ever. And I always wanted to do something
similar, or maybe even copy it outright for an episode of The Ed Shepp Radio Experiment or
something, but I never had time to do the latter, and I couldn’t think
of any way to do the former which would come out as well as JML. I also have a fun memory of the song from college, when my friend Tavares and
I, who were the only people who knew the words by heart, walked through
campus speaking them in unison, looking like lunatics. So anyway, since
I couldn’t think of a way to make the idea myne own, I thought, "I’ll
just do a cover of it!" And so I did. I have to admit: I had a concern
about omitting the line that says "the slander of those who say that
they are Jews, but they are not…"; but I chose to leave it in. After
all, it’s not my words–I’m covering Madonna, who was covering the Book
of Revelation. And frankly, I don’t know that the phrase is explicitly
anti-semitic. It seems to me that the author, John, was saying that
Jews who’d rejected Jesus constituted a "synagogue of Satan,"
not Jews or Semites in general. I can see how some people might find
the wording offensive, but let’s face it, people, the text is thousands
of years old and has been translated a zillion times by people with
almost as many agendas. Who knows what was said back then? So today we
end up with a potentially incendiary line in a song that no one will
really take seriously, but creates some juicy controversy (at least it did for Madonna–obviously an intentional move on her part, and more savvy than Michael Jackson’s pathetic "kick me, kike me" lyric intended to stir up a ruckus).
A
note about lyrics: Basically, I just said what Madonna said. Or,
rather, what I thought she said, because I already knew the song by
heart and didn’t feel like checking them. Yeah, I can be lazy. So I
probably got some of it wrong. I guess that would put me in the grand
tradition of people passing down holy books, then.
And now the
processing: This was a fun song to do, because I like working with
loops. The biggest challenge was to give them variation. While I think
everything’s in the same key, there is a bit of variation there. I
think the song is listenable without being too boring. Another
challenge was making the spoken parts loud enough to discern. I put a
LOT of compression, probably too much, on them, and maybe forgot to
apply a de-esser. But I really shouldn’t talk about processing so
specifically, because I’m sure the whole EP, and maybe everything I’ve
done myself, is littered with technical errors. So to any engineers
reading this and thinking about how to express your criticisms, suck
it. Another vocal note: Everyone will notice that the chorus is not
pitch-corrected. In fact, it was a "scratch vocal," something I just
put in as a placeholder and meant to redo later. But when I heard it
with the spoken parts, I really liked how it sounded. I think there was
a bit of distortion in some parts of it, but that’s minor. Also, the
way I did it, off pitch and all, reflects almost identically the way I
did the original song–basically, I sung it before I had any music done
and hoped for the best. Interestingly, though, if you compare this song
and the original back-to-back, you do hear a slight improvement in my
vocal control, because in the original the last time I say "I’m not
cool enough to listen to the White Stripes" I flatten to some strange
place, which sounds pretty cool to me but almost certainly dastardly
out of tune. My voice also cracks a little. I’m a bit more consistent
here, although I would have liked to replicate the cracking and
flattening more. Alas.
WHEW!!!!!!!!!!!!! That’s a helluva lotta
yakkin! I hope I covered everything; if not, maybe I’ll come back and
add more. Or ask me questions if you want, or leave a comment. I’d
expect that if any hardcore Madonna fans actually listen to the songs,
I’ll probably get some mean, evil comments! Hell, that comes with
the territory. In the end, though, I hope someone out there likes what
I did. It was a fun project–more time-consuming than I thought, but
also more fulfilling than I thought it would be, considering the songs
are Madonna covers. I guess I should also note that I finished the
project (actually was forced to finish it before I’d have liked to)
because of sad events, so to some this may seem like an odd time to be
dropping a CD (of sorts). But it really has to be done before I get
down to apartment-hunting and all that. Thanks to everyone for your
kind words, incidentally.
And since I’m thanking peops, I just want to give a shout-out to
everyone who gave me feedback or acknowledged the project. Thanks!
That means a lot. I’d also like to thank all the peops who did NOT
acknowledge the project–that says a
lot. Thanks to Andy for asking me how it was going, even though he
couldn’t care less about Madonna covers. :P And thanks to Craig at Little Pioneer Cider House studio for those great sounds.
In
closing, I hope you like the songs. No, I hope you LOVE the songs. Or
HATE them, and send them to everyone you know raging about how you hate
them. And that’s that. And that’s the beep for now.
Beep!
Ed Shepp
radio show + mp3s + CDs + myspace + article + all the other links
What a weekend. While the grönt is pretty much gone from mitt hår, and the mold in the bathroom is as under control as it will get (I suppose), my computer died. I MIGHT be able to grab some of the files from it to restore, but I’m not at all hopeful. The lesson: NEVER ever ever ever ever buy a Dell. I reiterate: Never buy a Dell. I reiterate once again for the search engines: Dells are crap—NEVER buy one. I’ll extend that to all PCs, as a matter of fact, since I’m sure that the computer died solely because it was perhaps 1 hour over warranty (which means it lasted probably 50 minutes longer than it usually would have). So now I’m planning to replace it with a Mac. (Did I mention never buy a Dell? Because if you’re googling Dell and see this, take heed. DO. NOT. BUY.) Olyckligtvis, shelling out all the money for a Mac will obliterate any plans I had of visiting the land not of my ancestors: Scandinavia, specifically Stockholm or Copenhagen. Sigh. 
So I’ve created, “Save Karen”-style, a donation link where anyone can plop in donations for me to buy a plane ticket. If not in November, then in February, as a birthday present. If everyone just puts 10 cents into the fund, I’ll have enough to buy half a donut. But if everyone puts in 20 dollars, or 100 dollars, or 800 dollars, then I’ll have my flight. And if everyone puts in $60,000, I could actually fly first-class. Anyway, here’s the button link. Go on, click it! Go on, click it! And if you donate a goodly amount, you can receive one of the following gifts: $50: a copy of my CD Five, since I have about a jillion left over, and a DVD with all the Ed Shepp mp3s I can scrounge up, including all the separate mixes from The Madonna Within EP and my cover of Umbrella. $100: The same discs, with a small home perfume oil sample with notes of caramel and spiced pear. $200: The CDs/DVDs, the home fragrance, and Ed Shepp T-shirt, and I’ll hang out with you for 3 hours and inspire you with zillions of ideas and bombast you with personality. (This is really only available to people in the New York area, but it’s transferable and won’t expire for a long time. Of course, said hanging out must occur in a public place, and not one of those crowded bars that I hate. And you can video/audtiotape it, but you cannot use the footage commercially.) $600: Everything mentioned before, and I’ll put you in an Ed Shepp Radio Experiment podcast. $900: Everything mentioned before, and I’ll record a song about you. So there we have them. Donate now! Donate now!! Click the button below:
