Quick PS
A PS to a previous post... plus a great song
This is a quick postscript (with a PS to the PS at the bottom) to the post on Rap Re-imaginings, spurred by something a commenter reminded me of. She pointed me to this song by Ren — a beat combo previously unknown to me — self-evidently a rap re-imagining of…
… this Brit Pop classic, from 1997:
But you might not be aware that Bittersweet Symphony itself sampled and reimagined four bars of this rather bizarre project, from 1965…
… a side-gig created by Andrew Oldham, one of the Rolling Stones’ early producers (strings written and arranged by David Whitaker), itself a re-imagining of:
As a result of a lawsuit filed by one of the Stones’ former managers, Jagger and Richards spent a long time co-credited as writers of Bittersweet Symphony — though they chose of their own volition to cede the claim in 2019 and so the rights are now with Richard Ashcroft of The Verve, along with the royalties.
How’s that for musical Chinese whispers?
And, irrelevantly…
Re-discovered this song on an old playlist recently and it’s getting constant rotation since. It’s pretty great, and almost makes me feel nostalgic for that unsettling period in your mid-twenties when you start to think: Wait, what’s going on, and is it working?
It's always made me laugh, this tale, albeit in a bittersweet way (see what I did there! How clever am I?)
The impression I got was that the Stones were pressured into relinquishing their rights because of a certain amount of public backlash.
I did a little bit of work for Ashcroft and he always gave that impression, as well as being rather pissed off that they'd lost over 20yrs of royalties!
As you would be!
Ties into your last post in an interesting way. Reimagining something is far different than simply remaking it - because it ADDS relevance rather than leeches it. An AI attempt to rewrite EE Soc Smith in the style of Gene Wolfe may be fascinating for the first 10 or 50 or 500 pages, but the lack of any intention beyond mimicry and capitalizing on someone else's talent and accomplishments would ultimately render it vapid and meaningless.
All the versions of Bittersweet Symphony resonate because of their relevance to their time, audience and milieu.
Ren is a talent with a capital T. I shared his piece (it's much more than a song), "Hi Ren" with most of my friends when I first heard it a few years ago. His work has heart - and much of it has insight that no AI could duplicate.