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The Return of the Newsletter [Week 40]
8 years ago
Welcome to the fortieth edition of the Fortnightly Furry Musicians Newsletter! 40! I start to feel like I’m doing a ruddy greatest hit’s record. “That’s what I call below-average-but-thankfully-non-corrupt-journalism Volume 40”
Today I’d like to bring up an interesting idea, and that is the re-recording, adapting and modifying of a song by an artist later down the line in an artists career. To be clear, I don’t mean “having multiple people remix your work at the time of initial release”, I mean more along the lines of a few years or maybe a decade or more later, re-recording a piece.
This is not a particularly uncommon practice in the 80’s and 90’s. For example a-ha’s hit “Take On Me” was originally recorded in 1984 but when it flopped, the band re-recorded the thing in 1985, which is the version you’re likely somewhat familiar with. Bon Jovi decided to remake their hit “Livin’ on a Prayer” in 1994 but changed literally the entire song except for the lyrics, whereas Iron Maiden re-recorded Wrathchild in 1999 with their six-piece lineup that sounds pretty much identical (Bruce Dickinson not withstanding) to the 1981 original. And of course there was the endless, unending stream of acoustic reworkings of songs which is an idea we can blame on Bon Jovi and a success we can blame on Nirvana. The images of Metallica’s acoustic set circa 1998 with Lars on what resembled a small Fischer Price drum kit and that included an unplugged version of “The Four Horsemen” may never leave my mind.
So that’s my question to you. Do you think that once a song is recorded, put on the record and the record is released, that’s the way it should always be? Or do you think that it’s sometimes good to re-make older tracks?
And next on “The Greatest Hits of Newsletter”,
We’re fighting with the Ads of War.
--- New Releases ---
+++Singles and EP’s+++
Baumarius has released “The Meaning of Life” as a single which is now available to purchase on Bandcamp
Available Here
--- Musician Commission ---
TonyAkita is looking for vocalists for their music
Send a note for more info
--- Tutorials and Dark Arts ---
FretsMakesMusic has written up a tutorial on how to polish frets on a guitar in an FA journal. The link to that is here
--- Upcoming Events ---
4th and 11th of August 2017
Zack_Gray and 
zomgshiny will be performing at Megaplex 2017 on the 4th of August between 2:30pm and 3:30pm in the Main Ballroom and at Indy Fur Con (IFC) on the 11th of August from 4pm to 5pm in the Salon 4-5.
25th-27th August 2017
Three furry musicians will be attending FA United as guests of honour, those being 
FoxAmoore, 
PepperCoyote, and 
hali (aka Matthew Ebel). hali is performing the “Piano Dance Pop” show on Friday the 25th at 10PM, and FoxAmoore and PepperCoyote will be doing two shows on Satarday the 26th, the first being at 4PM with hali as a special guest, and then the After Dark (18+, X-Rated, Too Hot For Fur…y) show at 10:30PM the same day. There is a jam session on Sunday hosted by Etsu that people can bring instruments along to or your hands and feet.
Applications for DJ’s are still open until the 11th of August and you can apply for it here and if selected will get sponsor-level registration that’s generally worth about $75. But that is the only financial contribution you will be receiving.
More info on the con in general is here
If you'd like something featured in the newsletter, drop either me ( 
PascalFarful ) or the FA musicians page a note with details or drop a shout on the FA Musicians page! I would add that sending me notes increases your chance of me not losing your message.
Baumarius
TonyAkita
FretsMakesMusic
Zack_Gray
zomgshiny
FoxAmoore
PepperCoyote
hali
PascalFarful
The first three albums were riddled with Autotune, it was quite a relief to rerecord the vocals. I had learned to play bass (somewhat) since then which is a major improvement over the dull synth-bass on the original recordings. Finally, I now had 24 tracks to play with instead of 8, and songs which previously had no room for a drum track suddenly got one. By and large I didn't tweak them too much, except for the second track 'Return to Babel' which added a new intro, and the digital voice freeze effect which I'd always wanted to do but couldn't when the song was originally recorded.
I'd hope that the new versions are better, but I can understand if some people prefer the originals and I wouldn't want to replace the old version with the new one (cough, Threshold's second album, cough).
If anyone's curious, this is an old vs new comparison:
http://dougtheeagle.com/adatpf/adatpf02.mp3 - Return To Babel (2004)
http://dougtheeagle.com/pr/PR02-Ret.....n_to_Babel.mp3 - Return To Babel (2014)
Also, thanks for the shoutout! I would do vocals for myself but I thought I sounded laughable when I first attempted. (Also, I could use a female vocalist for some songs)