The fact that their debut full-length album was a smash with critics and record buyers on both sides of the Atlantic apparently wasn’t enough for Bloc Party. That’s why they’re re-releasing it as a track-for-track version of remixes titled, oddly enough, Silent Alarm: Remixed.

A few of these had already been kicking around as b-sides and the like, although the rest are completely new mixes. The previously released tracks are Whitey’s remix of ‘Helicopter’, which appeared as a b-side to “So Here We Are”, and the versions of ‘Positive Tension’ and ‘Price of Gas’ done by Pretty Girls Make Graves’ Jason Clark and Automato, respectively, which both appeared on a bonus LP issued with the American vinyl release on Dim Mak Records. The Phones Disco Edit remix of ‘Banquet’ which appears on this release is the most familiar, having previously been released on the self-titled EP, as a b-side to ‘Little Thoughts’, and as a b-side to the ‘Banquet’ maxi-single, in addition to being available for free download on the band’s website. It’s also one of the best tracks.

Of the new remixes, quite a few are really good, particularly the Dave P and Adam Sparkles Making Time remix of ‘This Modern Love’ and the M83 version of ‘Pioneers’. However, Ladytron’s reworking of ‘Like Eating Glass’ stripped down anything interesting about the song in the first place, and the Engineers’ take on ‘Blue Light’ turned it into a boring muddle of shoegaze. American labelmates Death From Above 1979 turned in not a remix, but an actual cover of ‘Luno’ that was actually not bad, considering I’m not really a huge DFA fan.

So, is it worth buying? Probably only if you really like remixes, really like Bloc Party, or some combination thereof and you don’t already have the singles with the b-sides already. Quite a few are very good, like the aforementioned ‘Banquet’, ‘Positive Tension’, and ‘This Modern Love’ mixes. Otherwise, you might prefer to buy only the new remixes you like off of iTunes, unless you just really want to wait for the extra disc of bonus tracks that will be released with the first 15,000 copies of the American version in September. But before you go rushing off to be first in line for that: they’re all old b-sides, too.

Silent Alarm: Remixed is released 29 August 2005 on Wichita Records, and 13 September 2005 in the U.S. on Vice Records.

Links:

• Bloc Party
• Wichita Records
• Vice Records

“When you have to choose between truth and legend… print the legend.” - Steve Coogan as promoter and Factory Records boss Tony Wilson, in Michael Winterbottom’s Twenty-four Hour Party People

A series of early morning emails between Kim and myself brought to my attention that I am apparently famous this week, having appeared in the NME, of all places.

An MiD girl has made the pages of NME. There’s irony for you.

As you probably well know, I was in San Francisco to see the Kaiser Chiefs gig, and decided since I was going all the way out to California, I’d catch the two Cribs gigs in Los Angeles as well, since they’re one of the best live bands going right now, and I figured Stateside dates would be few and far between. If you’ve bothered to read the reports, the week didn’t go off quite how I thought it would (camera malfunctions, bitchy Angelenos, loads of free alcohol too easily available…), but if you read this week’s NME it would seem much crazier than it really was.

Gary: “These girls came all the way from Texas to see us! I remember them saying ‘We drove across the country to see y’alls’ and it making me laugh. The girl in the middle - with the camera - took us to all these places in LA, places with actors and models and that. She was insanely pissed all the time. She had to get carried into this cab and fell out of it twice! Last I saw of her she was falling on her arse outside the venue! Did we get many groupies in America? Nah, I’ve actually taken a vow of celibacy now! It makes my life so much easier. Besides, groupies are different in America. They really corner you. It’s a bit frightening. This one girl was waiting for Ry to get offstage and as soon as he came off she demanded a kiss.”
Ryan: “I kissed her but then she was like ‘That’s not a proper kiss!’ I just thought ‘This girl’s a proper psycho!”

Now, I wondered to myself just how much of the mythology the boys created I ought to debunk, if any at all, since I actually had quite a laugh over the unlikeliness of the whole thing. I finally decided to take the middle road between naked truth and Tony Wilson-esque rockstar legend. I’ll only go so far as to say that there was only one sentence in the entire fish tale about me that wasn’t either greatly exaggerated or completely fabricated, and from what I could tell, despite the fact that I wasn’t around half so much as the article made it sound like I was, a great deal of liberties were also taken with the truth in the rest of the article. Well, unless there’s some trend I’m not aware of among pimps and hos these days to all dress like indie-yuppies. I will also point out lest there is any confusion that I was not psycho-kiss-girl, although I do think I overheard that story being told the last night in L.A.

But none of those are mine, so I’ll let them stand, inaccurate though they may be. Besides, they’re quite funny. Although I would also just like to point out right here, since this involves someone I know, the other person who was tagged as a groupie by the NME wasn’t even there that night to see the band. People-watching’s more her thing. Unfortunately, such is the way females at rock shows are all classed together.

What I do take issue with are the utterly unfunny captions and headers no doubt added by the editorial staff at the NME. In typical fashion, they choose to paint all girls who go to gigs with the same groupie brush. Maybe if the fanboy hacks who write for that tabloid passing itself off as a proper music rag would put down the crackpipes for once* they’d figure out that just because they all want to suck off the bands they write about**, a girl who goes to the shows and doesn’t have a problem talking to the bands doesn’t necessarily want to.

But then I guess they can’t see beyond their own rockstar crushes and fawning adulation to be able to comprehend how that could be.

*Standard cover-your-ass disclaimer: I am not implying or intimating in any way that the NME fanboys actually smoke crack, no matter how much they tend to write as if they do. Unlike the NME, which apparently prints pictures without bothering to get a release signed by the parties photographed, we at MiD do not actively court lawsuits.
** See *, but replace “smoke crack” with “suck off rockstars”.

For more on the phenomenon of the mainstream music press boys’ club pigeonholing female music fans, check out my friend Shannon’s post at depravedfangirls.org.

In which Manda Does Hollywood — and kinda hates it. [ed. note: Photos of this gig are available in the gallery.]

They say Los Angeles is the kind of city you either love or loathe. Although there were a few lovely people there, if I’m honest, I’d have to say I wasn’t too impressed with it as a whole and wasn’t at all sad to leave it. The entire week I spent in California was a bit jinxed from beginning to end and by the time we came to our final night in L.A. I’d decided it was time to just cut loose and let the chips fall where they may.

Famous last words.
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The Los Angeles venue where this gig was held was more in keeping with the sort I like than any other we went to that week: a small, dimly lit space with a bunch of people crammed in. For some reason, the friend who took care of our tickets that night thought the show was meant to start later than it actually did, so by the time we realised our mistake and procured a taxi to take us to the club the first band, Manchester’s Nine Black Alps, were already halfway through their set.
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Welcome to the first of what we hope shall become a regular feature here at MiD, our monthly newsstand roundup where we take an often irreverent look at what’s going on in the world of music-related print media, so you don’t have to. We haven’t covered every music rag out there, just the highlights of what you may want to run out and buy, or if you’re cheap, check out at the newsstand and read. Some are US only, some UK only, and some of them you can get pretty much anywhere without having to hit up the special newsstands with all the shiny imports. Yeah, yeah, we’ll work out a code system of sorts for next time. Promise.

We were a little behind cranking this one out, but most of these should still be available on the newsstand, especially the bi-monthlies. We’ll try to be a little more timely with the next one.
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When I first had the chance to see the Kaiser Chiefs at this year’s South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, they were virtually unknown outside the UK. Their debut album, Employment, had only been released two days prior to their festival showcase gig at Austin’s La Zona Rosa. I’d been hearing for months from friends in England about what a fantastic show the five-piece band from Leeds put on, and was sufficiently convinced by the album’s Britpop-tinged infectiousness that they were definitely worth checking out. I wasn’t disappointed by their energetic festival set, and neither were the rest of that audience, many of whom had trekked out from the UK to see their boys take on America. So it was with a great deal of anticipation that I went to see them play again, this time a full headlining gig at San Francisco’s renowned Fillmore auditorium.
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We’ve got yet another gallery update, pictures of The Cribs at the Forbidden City nightclub in Hollywood, California.