Dance Dance Dance To The Radio

OK, this is what 6 Shiner Bock's and watching 24 Hour Party People gets ya, it gets ya a random list of covers, songs and remixes that are never to be. Here we go in no particular order:

Joy Division's cover of the Doors "Rider on the Storm" - Done in 1981 after Joy Division returns from their American tour. Rumor has it that Ian Curtis was inspired after hanging out with Ray Manzarek and doing some peyote at the Whisky A-Go-Go. Truth is much simpler. There's something about Jim Morrison's death that makes Ian scared and sad, the contrast between the LA sun and the Mancunian grayness, that makes Ian want to record it, to make "Rider" in the Mancunian image. NME labels Joy Division a sell-out, Rolling Stone savages the "Blue Monday" album from which the single comes. The single makes Joy Division an international hit and Ian a sex symbol. He is assasinated in Paris in 1992 by a crazed Morrison fan from Seattle.

Massive Attack's remix of Radiohead's "OK Computer" - Although making an album together nearly drives 3D, Mushroom and Daddy G apart, working on a full album of songs not of their creation brings them back together. Working with a full album that's already there and exploring the variations of the themes waiting to be discovered, it reinvigorates Massive Attack. A year later, Massive Attack releases "Memory and Dream Storage" - lush orchestral arrangements filled with dark dread and hope, Shirley Manson, Horace Andy and Beth Gibbons on vocals.

Garbage's first album "Dirty" - Although Butch Vig asked Shirley Manson to be the lead, she decided to stay with her little known band Angelfish. Luckily, Toni Halliday of Curve, of which Butch Vig is a huge fan and a major inspiration for Vig to cross the window from producer to band member, decides to give up on Dean Garcia as a musical collaborator. The ability of Toni to switch from a child-like breathy petulance to a sexy panther-like growl in the space of three heartbeats propels the first single, "As Heaven Is Wide," up the alternative charts. Portions of five tracks from "Dirty" make it on to Nike and Victoria's Secrets commercials. Garbage is able to get Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys to do guest vocals on "Push It" from Garbage's second album, "Cherry." Garbage does the them to the James Bond flick "Die Another Day," with Toni in a minor role as a villainess. Toni is listed at People's 50 Most Beautiful People in 1999.

Jeff Buckley's second album "New Year's Prayer" - In a 1999 EW interview after Jeff won his first Grammy and the week before his first movie role (about a singer trying to leave the shadow of his deceased folk-singer father -- film directed by Curtis Hanson entitled "Mystery White Boy"), Jeff chuckles about the panic he created after he waded into the Memphis river, and dismisses any idea that Tom Verlaine and he hate each other after Jeff decided to scrap the material he recorded with Tom. In a sidebar article, Tom agrees that, after listening to "New Year's Prayer," Jeff was right.

My Bloody Valentine's second album "Want More, Need Less."