DJ’s hit spin on Tori Amos song
QUESTION Are there many remixes that became a bigger hit than the original song?
IN July 1996, the American singer-songwriter Tori Amos released the single Professional Widow, taken from the album Boys For Pele, which came out earlier that year.
The song was a harsh and abrasive rock number, featuring liberal use of harpsichord and some gritty lyricism (sample: ‘Slag pit, stag s**t/ Honey bring it close to my lips’).
Rumours abounded that it was a diss track aimed at fellow musician Courtney Love, though Amos herself played this down, saying it was about ‘my own experience’, and that she had never even met Love.
The song was popular among Amos’s devoted fan base, but achieved only modest commercial success. However, it really took off when a reworked version by the American DJ Armand van Helden was itself released as a single in late 1996.
The remix was quite a contrast with the original – changing the song from an uncompromising and challenging piece of music into a propulsive, irresistible dance-floor number. Van Helden used only snippets of the original’s dark lyricism, and added his own club-friendly beats – a move that proved wildly popular with the public. The single soared to the top of the charts in the UK in early 1997, and also hit the No.2 spot here in Ireland.
Van Helden himself was surprised at how big the track became, saying: ‘We had no idea it would happen the way it did.’
Amos, for her part, was delighted with the success of the reworked version. Van Helden said: ‘In her contract, Tori must approve all remixes of her product. When Professional Widow began to happen in Europe, she called me to say thanks, which was a really nice thing to do.’
And Amos raved about the remix, saying: ‘It did kick my ass a bit. I know what Van Helden took and what he did and I think he did some very clever things.’
Brenda Murphy, Co. Wicklow
QUESTION What is the origin of the word ‘Wow’?
WOW! is such a natural exclamation that it feels as if it must have been with us for a long time.
The first published reference is from Scotsman Gavin Douglas’s translation of the Aeneid by Virgil, completed in 1513: ‘Out on thir wanderand spiritis, wow! thow cryis.’ It’s thought ‘wow’ is a modification of the interjection ‘I vow!’ – common at the time.
The word then disappears from the written record for three centuries or more. The first modern usage is from Nada The Lily, an 1892 historical novel by H. Rider Haggard: ‘Wow! My father, of those two regiments not one escaped.’
During the 20th century, the word became popular in the US, taking on new forms. In 1920 ‘wow’ was used as a noun, as in ‘this concert is a wow!’ And four years later it could be used as a verb, so you could ‘wow’ someone with a dazzling display.
QUESTION Was Star Trek’s engineer Montgomery Scott (James Doohan) a war hero?
FURTHER to the earlier answer, James Doohan’s missing digit (following the amputation of his finger, after he sustained combat injuries) can occasionally be seen in his performances, although he often wore a skin-coloured glove to conceal the loss.
After his death in 2005, in part due to his wartime injuries and experiences, he was cremated and some of his ashes were included on suborbital rockets and allegedly on the Space Shuttle Columbia. So Doohan made it to the Final Frontier after all.
James Finnegan, by email.
QUESTION What are the most bizarre items ever sold on the internet?
IN March 2005, Terri Iligan put her identity up for auction on eBay, with the winner buying the right to legally change her name. The winning bid was $15,199 and her new name is GoldenPalace.com.
S. P. Rees, Hereford.
QUESTION I read a horror story called How Grim Was My Valley (a play on How Green Was My Valley). What other titles of novels have been twisted to similar effect?
LES DAWSON’S Come Back With The Wind, a comic novel about the North/South divide in England, always tickled me. Then there’s Stuart Maconie’s book Pies And Prejudice: In Search Of The North. Several classics have been turned into horror novels, such as Pride And Prejudice And Zombies. Dylan Thomas wrote Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Dog, an homage to James Joyce’s A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man. The Harvard Lampoon has a series of parody books – including Bored Of The Rings.
Terri Perkins, Stratford-upon-Avon.