I Owe You An Explanation!

Indeed I do, since I started the Secret Santa's mystery song thing, and two and a half are possibly waiting for the solution. And I admit it upfront, the game was kind of rigged. It was almost impossible for you to find song and artist in question, unless you were really motivated, fired up Audacity and sped that sucker up, cranked to eleven). Either way, I hope you enjoyed the little (ahem) piece of music either way. The friends we made along the way etc. 

So this super secret surprise song came about like Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin - a total accident. I was working on my Fully Automated Version of Trans, mucking around with "Hold On To Your Love" on Audacity, trying out different filters and effects to make the song more, uh, Trans-ier. Results proved inconclusive to unsatisfying. Just before giving up I clicked on something called 'Paulstretch' - as Marc Cohn put it once in one of his great song intros 'life is pressing a button you never pressed before' - and immeditaley went 'uh oh', when the program announced it needed about 25 minutes to finish the task (though it probably ended up finishing earlier). Being in a 'let's see what it does when it wakes up' kind of mood, I wandered off, probably for something glamorous like loading the dishwasher, and color me surprised when I came back to my PC and Paulstretch had really stretched things. "Hold On To Your Love" went from going about three and a half minutes or so to lasting more than thirty! 

Yes, the ambient piece hiding in the Secret Santa's Mystery Box is nothing other than an extremely slowed down  - er, I mean paulstretched - version of Neil Young's "Hold On To Your Love". Well at least now I know how folks on Youtube create 'ambient' or 'meditation' versions of songs - a simple press of a button will do. Lazy bastards, the dirty lot of ya! Interesting though, how in one touch you can bring out your inner Vangelis...

As a prize for everyone playing along you'll get Johnny's Island, the kinda-sorta (mini) album Young recorded in Hawaii with a band dubbed - with usual Young-ish style - The Royal Pineapples, from which "Hold On To Your Love" originated, before it got mashed up with the Trans material. The sorta title song "Johnny" is the only one not with the band, a DIY home recording with Neil on synclavier and synthesizers, still somewhat in Trans mode before sliding into a mellower mood for the Island material. Includes the original version of "Silver & Gold".