Well, as someone who followed the incredible and driven songwriter Gregory Pepper on his mission to complete a song a week for a whole year (actually we got 53, because did I mention he's incredible?) I feel a bit of a special connection to I Know Now Why You Cry (not just because my name is on it). The hundred or so of us Patreon supporters were with Peps through a year both heartbreaking and heartwarming as he lost his father and gained a daughter, documenting the whole process through his music, drawings and associated messages to his followers. Through it all he managed to keep up with his promise of a song every Friday, and quite surprisingly not a single track was less than great. I still return to those 53 songs when I feel the need for some Peps in my life, and there's stuff to fit every possible mood, from rebellious to Common Grackle (oh yes). I've considered putting together a B-Side collection of some of my favorite tracks that didn't wind up on here, I'll see if he would mind and maybe I can share them with you.
He began talking about putting together a collection of his favorites around the end of the first 6 months, and the result is the album I have decided to promote for the week. Consisting of some lush reprises of his weekly songs, sometimes thrown together as effective medleys, this album absolutely kicks ass, and my name in the credits only adds to it's transcendent awesomeness. Despite the less than conventional writing process it seems like these songs were meant to go together, and when they seem at all out of place it feels so intentional. The weeks between the conception of these songs are erased as everything is crushed together into a collage of beauty and despair. Gregory Pepper has always worked with an ADHD style production method as his lyrics can bounce from odes to Sublime to the story of one person's guilty pleasure to Enya without being at all weirder than was intended, and the time lapse we see in the writing of these tracks only seems in character.
Here's a video for that song, entitled "Sublime Sun Tattoo" (did you think you were the only one who got that?):
Anyway, starting off with one of my personal favorites, "Good Call" has been transformed from a distortion heavy rock song to a baroque pop masterpiece, and is probably the best example of what's been done with these remakes. Where most of his tracks from that fateful year were rocked out power jams (with many exceptions, it was after all 53 tracks long), I Know Why You Cry has substituted distorted guitars for glockenspiels, vibraphones and fiddles. "Good Call" takes the guitar solo that I believe made the original an instant win and arranges it for strings. The effect is just as hard as the demo, but more interesting and with a charm that feels both Gregory Pepper & His Problems and With Trumpets Flaring.
The rest of the album does much the same, taking some of his most earwormy tracks and giving them a lush coat of paint. While all of the tracks on this new album are great, the reworkings have been more or less effective depending on the song in question. "I'm Dying" has gone from a mostly electronic effort into a very strange key driven waltz, leaving the distorted voice which seems a bit jarring over the melodic instrumentation. I found the original fit the theme of a dying computer a bit better than the remake, but the sheer catchiness of the song transcends any stylistic differences, and winds up getting stuck in your head no matter how it's presented.
Another notable entry is the remake of "Unsolved Mystery". Going for an acoustic rendition of this song has altered the tone tremendously, with the original being a post punk thrash type of deal. Lyrically references to drinking beer in the sunshine have been replaced with allusions to a somber and sad individual. No real idea where the alterations came from, but it does seem to give the track less YOLO more FML. I actually like both versions for entirely different reasons, one appeals to my middle school love of AFI and the other my current love of Radical Face.
While it's not rap, I feel like Gregory Pepper has proven both through his collaborative efforts with Madadam and Factor and his place on the Fake Four Inc. roster that he is very much hip hop. He writes lyrics (raps?), produces music (DJs?), draws (tags?) and probably dances (break?), I dunno but we can give that element a pass. I feel like his contribution to music in general makes him worthy of UGF's love (not to mention my name on his new album), and while there is so much to love going on in the rap world these days, I Know Why You Cry has dug a special place into my heart like drug related endocarditis, and I wanted to share it with you.
Get this incredible album by Gregory Pepper & His Problems here, and if it's a physical it has my name on it right there (did I mention that?)!
And just for fun, here's the music video for "I'm Going Back to the USA", Week 0's entry. See if you recognize any of the "actors"...
See ya'll on the dark side of the week!
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