DJ Shadow: This Time (I’m Gonna Try It My Way)
From The Outsider (Universal, 2006)
Joe: Untitled (This Time)
From studio tape (Music City, 197?)
Fans of DJ Shadow will likely remember this great single he put out in 2006 (also on his Outsider CD) called “This TIme” which features a male vocalist knocking out a soulful tune about self-realization.
There’s a larger backstory to that song, beginning with a friend of mine in S.F., Justin Torres, who has been a serious record digger in his time and he found a series of enigmatic studio tapes from the vaults of Music City, an old Bay Area studio that had liquidated much of its holdings. On one of those tapes was an untitled song, attributed only to “Joe” and as you can hear above, it’s a near-acapella, except for the light acoustic guitar accompaniment that went with the song.
I’m not quite clear on the process through which that original song made its way over to Shadow (though Justin and Josh are friends so that helps, I’m sure) but the good Mr. Davis took that studio tape and added a full musical arrangement.
The folks over at Solesides.com (our brothers from another mother) are “sponsoring” an informal remix contest to flip some new tracks to go with the original acapella. I thought that was a great idea and I knew a few of our readers hear at Soul Sides make beats and this could be a fun way for them to do some of that “added value” thing we hear so much about with the Web 2.0. A favor though? Just to save me some bandwidth, if you want to download the original song, do it from here. Danke!
Email me your finished remixes and I’ll try to do a post down the line that has all the best ones include.
By the way, I was totally derelict in bringing people’s attention to this sooner but Justin put together a killer mix called The Break-Up Letters, hosted by Good Records NYC. If you don’t love it, there’s something wrong with you; I’m just saying.
Also, the graphic above is taken from the “This Time” video contest winner, aka “Big Pixel.”
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