Real Love Instrumental

Got a really cool request for a repost of the Real Love Instrumental, so here it is. Now why is it cool you may ask? It's because the person who requested it, posting as Art Challuunge, used "Real Love" as their wedding song and he wants to use it as part of an anniversary gift for his wife.

So, very cool.

This instrumental was actually ripped from a vinyl release by my buddy Christian, who then uploaded them to share. Not sure I ever saw this blog as being able to have an impact on cool moments like this before. I love it.

As far as Arrested Development and Speech, I am simply waiting for the official release of Splash to hit, as well as a One Love solo album which I know a lot of AD fans are excited about. Hopefully we will hear more on those projects soon!

I'm Just an MC

Apparently the link to "I'm Just an MC" from the the Japanese version of Hoopla was broken in an earlier post, so here it is again. As always, please let me know if there are any broken links and I will get them updated. Thanks!

Answering a Request

Had a request the other day for a couple of songs that had fallen off of the mystical world of the Internets, so I'd like to fill that today.  As a reminder, if you find any links that aren't working and you'd like the songs that formerly pointed to, just let me know and I will try to get them up again.  As a further reminder I do not share anything that is still available for sell in the USA because I kind of like having a balance in my checking account- as small as it may be!

Without further adieu, here are a couple of cuts from the Japanese release of Hoopla that didn't make it over the ocean to the US.  Damn that TSA!

I'm Just an M.C.  
It Takes a Village to Raise a Child

Clocks In Sync With Mine Video

For some reason this video is not on youtube, so I likely would not have found it if Christian hadn't pointed it out to me. It's a great video too, and since this is the unofficial official song of the blog, then that would make this the unofficial official video for Highway 85. Without further adieu, here is "Clocks In Sync With Mine" from Hoopla.

Hoopla - Speech

Welcome to part 2 of 3 of the Speech Japan vs. US series. We've already covered the debut album, of which the differences were pretty easy to identify: the import version had two bonus tracks. It gets just slightly more complicated here, and in this case, the US made out with the better deal as there are 19 tracks on the US release as opposed to 14 on the Japanese version (which is called 1998 Hoopla). If I had to guess why there are such big differences, this is because the US version was released a year after the import However, there are two tracks on the import version that didn't make it to the US release: "I'm Just an MC" and "It Takes a Village to Raise a Child."

The US version has 7 tracks not on the import: "Our Image," "Which Radio Station Has the Guts" (a skit), ""Are You Still With Me" (another skit), "Yeah Yeah," "Shut Down Our Mind Machine, (another skit)" "Redemption Song," and "If Life is a River." There are some fantastic songs in there and three skits, so it was worth waiting a year or so.

For the US fans, here are the songs we didn't get. I particularly like "I'm Just an MC" which samples an old Schoolhouse Rock song if my ears are not deceiving me (which could also explain why we didn't see it here):

I'm Just an MC

It Takes a Village to Raise a Child

I'll have to listen to see if there are any differences between the songs as I don't recall- I know on "Spiritual People" there are some different mixes of songs on each album, so that one is a bit more complicated to figure out the differences. Eyeballing things it looks like "Mountain of Lonely" is longer by a minute or so on the import version.