I'm a big fan of video games. I'm also a huge music fan, especially of the electronic variety. When I combine the two like some deliciously perverted concoction, I get video game music remixes! Occasionally I take a short and sexy look at a fine video game remixes, hand-plucked from the cruft .

This week's remix: Meathead - Closer to Mario

This mix falls outside the normal range of this column in that it's more of a mashup than an actual remix, notable to most only as a novelty, inspired more at the juxtaposition of the stern, impassioned musings of Trent Reznor with the playful, jovial childhood resonance of the Super Mario Bros. theme song than say, any concrete desire to remix the Super Mario Bros. theme. I certainly wouldn't argue with that. Regardless, it is a deftly assembled composition and a song that I recently rediscovered on an old practice dj tape I dug up. Every time I hear Closer to Mario I'll always remember the following story, a story that I just can't help but share with you all:

Around the time I stumbled upon this mix of Meathead's, I was still occasionally dj'ing around Chicago but progressively spinning more and more gaming and electronic novelty tracks, as opposed to the previous blend of hard & fast electro and powernoise mixes I previously served up. For a laugh, I decided to close out one of my sets with Closer to Mario, going out on a joke track like I often did. Unfortunately I hadn't really counted on the fact that the mixing in the song isn't of the highest calibur, and that the PA we were using wasn't exactly finely tuned. Most of the high-end was lost unless you were really expecting to hear something odd, and by the time I had cranked up the treble and mid-range it was already too late, and I was stuck trying to defend the verbage barrage of insults and boos raining down on the dj booth, including one well-known Chicago promoter jeering "You're fired!". Because you see, there's nothing less an electronically oriented crowd of urban hipsters wants to hear than a song that received regular radio airplay.

So the moral of the story is that there's always some wiseass dj willing to ruin your night for a cheap laugh. And with those words, I leave you with the sonic interlude Closer to Mario.

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