HEADLINES

FEBRUARY 17, 2008
DAVE WAKELING LIKES "TENDER UMBRELLA" BUT ALSO MAKING UP KOOKY STORIES
Unless I have a "manager" I don't know about. I actually heard about this a while back, as a label guy for the legendary English Beat/General Public star dropped me a line to say that Wakeling had heard and enjoyed my mashup, but now it's been confirmed in a public interview setting: Lazy Lima Bean Film Magazine (?) has posted a chat with Wakeling where he gives me some quite lovely compliments but also seems to have, well, fictionalized the situation a bit:

LL: You know what would be great? To see Rihanna perform with you, live. Did you see the mashup of her song, "Umbrella," mixed with General Public’s "Tenderness" by Party Ben?

DW: I loved it. I thought it was fantastic. I couldn’t believe how the songs fit seamlessly as they did – like a hand to a glove. For somebody to mash it up with one of our songs is a great honor, I must say.

LL: Did you know that it’s on the compilation "Best of Bootie 2007" (the best mashups of 2007)?

DW: Yes! We called Party Ben’s manager to congratulate him and he supposedly was blown away. We were told that he was like, "I can’t remember the last time someone left a message that it sounded great, instead of calling to say ‘How dare you! This is the name of my lawyer!’"

I wonder what he could do with new acoustic versions of my songs? What mashups could he come up with?

LL: How does one get the rights to use your song in a mashup?

DW: I have absolutely no idea! [laughs] Nobody’s ever asked me! I supposed somebody’s asked somebody…

Okay, first of all, thanks, glad you liked it, I mean, holy crap, Dave Wakeling, right? Like, he said my name!!! But in the interest of truthiness, I should point out a few inaccuracies in the above statement, no offense. First, I do not now, nor have I ever had, a manager, so I'm not sure who they spoke to. Was Mysterious D pretending to be my agent again? If you meant that e-mail, well, that was just me. 2) I wouldn't really say that thing about not remembering the last time yada yada, since in fact, my experience has been quite the opposite: almost all the time, when I hear about an artist coming across one of my productions, they at least tell me they like it: Ian MacKaye, Lyrics Born, Hot Hot Heat, Tegan and Sara--although Sara famously [?] once expressed some reservations about the whole thing. And let's not forget Nathan Snow Patrol! But even they didn't send lawyers after me, and mostly I've been pretty lucky. Watch me get a C&D tomorrow, now that I've said that.

Again, none of this in any way should detract from my honor at even taking up space in Dave Wakeling's brain for a brief moment, and I totally get it, upping the drama a little bit, just for fun. Like I've said, most of what's good about "Tender Umbrella," I think, is rediscovering the greatness of "Tenderness," so I bow down before his genius.

They did get one thing right: yes it would be totally freakin' awesome if Rihanna and Dave performed "Tender Umbrella" sometime. Hey, she's willing to slow it way the hell down to perform with The Time, so maybe she's up for it?