Remixes and Reflections

Photograph by Michal Kawka

This is the version of “Quintessential” that was performed during the Dead Poets Society’ 2002 west coast tour. This recording was made at the Zebra Lounge in Bozeman, Montana. The set featured the following songs:

• Fire Bolt

• the Voice of Ecstasy

• the Electric Haze

• Synners

• Cars (by Gary Numan)

• I Dream of Japan (at the movies in Tokyo mix)

• Tainted Love (by Soft Cell)

• I Don’t (Andrea’s Fault mix)

• Quintessential

• Wish (by Nine Inch Nails)

Quintessential performed by:

Keyboards and Synths: Boba Fett (Eric Mason Drake)

Keyboards and Synths: Raven Nightshado

Drums and Percussion: Wa Conner

Quintessential (live)

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As many of you know the name of our band was inspired by the 1989 Peter Weir film starring Robin Williams, Ethan Hawke, and Robert Sean Leonard. One of the first songs we created was “The Powerful Play”. It is the only song to date that has been directly inspired by the film. The lyric we used was derived from the scene in which Mr. Keating explains what poetry is all about. Moreover he explains how important it is to live a creative life that is filled with romance and meaning by quoting from Walt Whitman’s poem “O me! O life!” from Whitman’s 1900 edition of Leaves of Grass.

By the way the podcast is now available on Apple Podcasts! You can also subscribe with any other RSS feed reader/pod catcher you choose.

Episode 8 - The Powerful Play

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This episode features two Dead Poets Society remixes of songs by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, our 2005 remix of “Only”, and our 2008 remix of “Survivalism”.

I also emerge from lurking and say hello.

The podcast is now available on Apple Podcasts! This episode is posted there.

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Ep 6 - DPS: remixes and reflections - the nin edition

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Enjoy our remix of Collide’s “Halo” from their 2000 album CHASING THE GHOST.  We made this remix at their request in 2003 to be considered for their remix album VORTEX but ultimately it did not end up on VORTEX. So enjoy this mix that is unavailable anywhere else.

Collide - Halo (dead poets society mix)

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We’ve all heard the cliche many times: life is full of surprises. This was never more true for us than during our experience that eventually led us to remix both versions of the track “After the Ball” and “Its Too Late” for Minefield in 2003.

When we finished recording The Electric Haze in 2001, I had decided that I would make the album available online  rather than follow the traditional music label route that many bands were still clamoring for, which was to get an A & R guy from a label to notice your band and sell their music label on offering you a deal. Raven and I both knew from experiences of friends and family who had worked in the music industry that this was really not the best way to put out an album, particularly an album that was likely to fit into such a small niche of music. So we explored online, and eventually we settled on mp3.com and CDbaby.

Mp3.com had this wonderful music community. Even cooler, they offered on-demand distribution, which would allow you to upload your songs and artwork, and they would manage the dirty details of manufacturing the CDs. In 2001 this was a novel idea that was only really beginning to pick up steam. Prior to that, it was nearly impossible for a musician (or an author for that matter) to have short runs (of fewer than 3,000 or more copies) of your work produced. Now, its just a matter of burning your own discs and/or uploading your music to any number of social networks, peer to peer, and musical services who make distribution much easier.

While mp3.com handled manufacturing, they weren’t that great at selling the music of independent artists. We had heard that there was this new site around called CDBaby. The buzz among musicians was that this venture,  created and operated by Derek Sivers in Portland, Oregon was really the next best way to have your CD online after CDnow and Amazon.com.

We setup an account and sent them a batch of CDs  to stock in their warehouse. When someone purchased our album from their site, they would go ahead and ship it out themselves and then credit our account with the sale, rather than wait for us to fill the order, as Amazon.com did at the time.

Unbeknown to us, when our albums arrived at CDBaby, they were met and handled by a volunteer named Jett Black (not the porn star, BTW). He was passionately involved in the Portland, Oregon underground gothic, electronic, and punk scene. Jett was taken with our sound and went about trying to contact us via email and phone. Initially we didn’t know what to make of his highly complimentary emails. One reason for our suspicion with Jett had to do with experiences we had heard about fromother musicians who were encouraged to send their albums to retailers in foreign countries, only to discover that the recipients were not legitimate resellers, but rather enterprising pirates who used the albums as masters for which to rip their master tracks for illegal sale in their own country.  Eventually I spoke in person with Jett by phone and realized that his motives were quite innocent. Anyone who has met Jett, will tell you that he is one of the friendlies people you’ll ever meet.  Jett was big on introducing artists to one another, and before we knew it we had been invited to a dinner at the Kennedy School that featured a bunch of people from the goth scene. Steven Holiday, publisher of Gothic Beauty was there, as well as Portland and Seattle bands Written In Ashes, Abney Park, The Sins, and Haunted House.

One of the perks at these dinners were the goodie bags that Jett and his wife Sonya would assemble. In each goodie bag were tons of stickers, free CDs, usb keys, marketing materials, and show flyers for everyone involved in the Portland and Seattle music scene, as well as a few other bands that were well known across the U.S.  (The Strand, Razed in Black, and The Cruxshadows were among those). In our goodie bag was “After the Ball” , a debut EP album by a budding young artist, Tamara Kent, who hailed from Canada.

About a year later, Jett, who had heard our Depeche Mode and Madonna remixes, informed us that he had recommended our services to Tamara, who really wanted to hear what other people could create with her material. We accepted, and before we knew it we’d received these very nice and organized discs that contained all of the master tracks from the After the Ball EP (what people in the industry call stems).

The remixes were due in short order, so Raven and I broke up the work among us. She took on “After the Ball” and I ended up with “Its Too Late”.

I hoped with my version to capture the frustration, despair, and the resignation of the character in the song with the distorted vocals, and the vamping bass line was to symbolize the painful yearning heartbeat of a lost relationship.

Wa

Dead Poets Society

Minefield - "Its Too Late (dead poets society)"

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View from the stage as Hotboxed opens for Korn in Portland, Oregon

Before I officially began recording and identifying myself as Dead Poets Society, I was producing and promoting concerts in the scenic Columbia River Gorge, which is located between Oregon and Washington. Roughly, every couple months in 1998 I would scrape together enough money to rent our local armory. I’d provide our sound system, create the posters, and  write the promotional copy for the press releases. In short, I would do all of the work behind the scenes that is necessary to make a concert flourish. Most of these concerts were performed by and for  young adults, who had few, if any, outlets to hear and experience live performances. 

There were so many bands who wanted to perform at these shows that I had to make the rounds to various rehearsal spaces to check out each band’s set list, and try to gauge their performance skill. In the end, three to five bands would get a chance to perform in front of an audience, with all expenses paid. One of these bands was HOTBOXED.

At the time that I met them, the lineup was comprised of Ryan Mann on vocals, Dustin Williams on bass guitar, Joe Aguirre on lead/rhythm guitar, and Jason Lincoln on drums. I was told the group had formed spontaneously one day during lunch break at the local high school. Informal jam sessions performing mostly Rage Against the Machine and Korn covers led  the band to more serious rehearsals at Jason Lincoln’s parents house. There, they began the arduous task of learning to  write and perform their original songs.

Ryan Mann (airborne) and Joseph Aguirre on guitar.

One of the first songs they created was the disenfranchised teenage anthem, “Mohawk”. The title was chosen for its double meaning that made use of their high school mascot , The Indians, while also throwing a nod to the punk and hard rock music that they, and their newly acquired fan base enjoyed.  The song quickly became a fan favorite at concerts. Eventually the band put out their own four song EP, which strangely enough did not feature the song. I was fortunate to receive an MP3 copy of the song that had been recorded during the session that recorded the EP had been made. For years it was a fixture in my Winamp playlist.

In late 2001 Ryan Mann had been kind enough to put down a scathing vocal track for our song “Synners”, which appeared on our second album, Deprogramming. He was intrigued by our eclectic sound, particularly the electronic, and industrial elements, and we both wondered if it would be possible to merge our sounds together. In the meantime, we were working with both Ryan and Sara (his wife to be) on a music video idea for Synners, so we put the musical collaboration on hold.

Eventually, one night in 2003 after all the video work and touring had been completed for Deprogramming, I sat down by candlelight, fueled by a Caramel Mocha espresso and imagination, and cut together this remix that explores the sonic compostional differences between our two bands. 

The remix was debuted by Hotboxed to the public on an August evening in 2003 at a packed Civic Auditorium before the opening band went on.  I was tickled by the favorable response it received.

That summer in 2003 Hotboxed would realize a dream of theirs and play an opening set for Korn at the Portland, Oregon stop on Korn’s tour.

I hope you enjoy this remix!

Wa

Dead Poets Society

Hotboxed - "Mohawk (dead poets society mix)"

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Our remix of Madonna’s “Deeper and Deeper (dead poets society mix)” was originally made available to the public in December of 2001.  Enjoy this funky dance mix.

Madonna - "Deeper and Deeper (dead poets society mix)"

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Wa completed the “I Feel Loved (dead poets society mix)”  remix in August of 2001. It quickly became and has continued to be the most popular remix we’ve ever done. Its popularity was such that it appeared on more than a few over the air radio stations around the country, as well as internet radio.

Some folks have told us that they prefer this version of the song to the original that appeared on Depeche Mode’s Exciter album. 

You be the judge.

Depeche Mode - "I Feel Loved (dead poets society mix)"

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