"C-C-C-C-COOOOOVER ME" b/w "U.S.-U.S.-U.-U.-S.A."

Eagles and I had an email conversation that mostly consisted of us quoting a certain titular lyric back and forth, and although she has not yet responded to my final question ("should i post this to the blog???") I decided that sometimes you just have to act, especially when the motivating material is THIS GOOD and SLIGHTLY EMBARRASSING. The motivating material in question is at the bottom of this post: Bruce Springsteen's "Cover Me (Undercover Mix)" by Arthur Baker. The story goes that in the '80s the Boss felt that his bossiness wasn't quite reaching as large an audience as he would like; so he commissioned Arthur Baker, a DJ perhaps best known ('round these parts anyway) for his work with New Order, to remix a couple songs from said Boss' new album Born in the U.S.A. with the goal of circulating them in dance clubs. And ooooh man are they good. And I suppose that 2007 is the ideal time for these pseudo-lost remixes to be rediscovered (or reappraised, whichever) since everyone digs Springsteen these days anyway, even the Arcade Fire who toured with LCD Soundsystem, so what I'm trying to say is, yeah, sure, give me Bruce's voice overdubbed straight to hell and looping back to earth; give me that organ, but punch it up with some latin house piano, would ya; and also give me a really intense female backing chorus if you have one. And, oh, do you mind replacing the sax solo with a squiggly synthesizer? That would be great. And it is great, cos that is exactly what Arthur Baker does.

While double-tasking the writing and researching of this post, I found THREE MORE remixes by Arthur Baker, all of the glorious title song, "Born in the U.S.A.": a radio mix; a FREEDOM MIX (WTF); and a DUB MIX (HOLY FUCKING SHIT). You can also find the dub mix below, which really ups the ante in terms of SHEER AWESOMENESS mixed with a profound sense of SHAME.





I don't have much to say on the second one, except I'm convinced that there is a total psychic dissonance caused by the fact that the intro sounds almost just like New Order's "Blue Monday," except that when you know you are listening to a remix of Bruce Springsteen (I really can't stress how strange a phenomenon this is, people) there is something that appears very wrong and very right in the exact same capacity. Like, I sat in my bedroom blasting it, thinking, "YEEEEESSSSSS," (most of my thoughts boil down to this honestly), and then I remembered that my roommate went to college in Jersey, so I suddenly felt kinda bad, like I was making him re-live something he didn't want to in dub form. Let us know yr experience!