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hey, remember Overclocked Remix? aka, THE website for listening to video game music remixes back in the 00s? i loved that place, man. it's where i got into my first adolescent arguments about philosophy and politics with the rando college students hanging out on its forums, it's where i did a very terrible arrangement of "star-stealing girl" from chrono cross that i was much too embarrassed to ever post there but i definitely thought mightily about it, it's where i learned a sort of crazy amount about Music Genres That Were Not Solely Video Games Or Electronica, etc
ANYWAY. i was relistening to "at first innocence" by zykO the other day, which was one of my fave remixes on the website ever, right?
and a quirky thing about ocremix is, there's a judges' panel. and that panel is basically a committee of Remixers Respected Within The Community who vote yes/no on whether any given remix is "good enough" to be posted on the website. this was 00's era, you understand; you couldn't just post shit to youtube, web hosting was expensive, and OCRemix very explicitly wanted to have some level of curation and/or minimum quality bar for stuff posted there.
mostly this system worked at well—at least, from my adolescent point of view, because whenever a new mix went up on the front page, i could assume it would be novel in some way & well-produced & fun to listen to.
but, of course, you know, it also suffers from the failure modes you'd expect: Snobby In-Group-y Opinions about what "quality" is, mods going on power trips, etc
so it's fun and tbh kind of nostalgic to look at the thread where the judges evaluated this song (cw: period-typical language, Forum Nerds Being Testy). multiple people on the panel bitch that the guitar is out of tune (which (1) seems like obviously the point!!! just like a honky tonk piano is a particular aesthetic choice!!! and (2) who cares, that out-of-tune guitar sound RAD, i love that kind of bullshit lol), so the guy who made the remix swings in with like "yeah, you're right, you guys don't get what i'm doing, fuck it i'm taking my remix elsewhere," it all devolves into squabbling and...
...i mean, i think OP was right. he was clearly doing something kinda unique that did not adhere to the panel's groupthink. and the panel comes across as a little annoyingly paternalistic ("oh, don't throw this away, it could be really good!" and OP is just like "actually it's already good and it's not going anywhere" lmao). i don't really care for how personal everyone gets about it downthread, haha, but. it's a specific kind of time/culture that i remember well, yaknow?
also it's just kind of nice to read internet arguments where people clearly know the personalities involved and are like, engaging with each other, rather than going for a retweetable dunk. truly the internet really was Built Different etc etc
ANYWAY. i was relistening to "at first innocence" by zykO the other day, which was one of my fave remixes on the website ever, right?
and a quirky thing about ocremix is, there's a judges' panel. and that panel is basically a committee of Remixers Respected Within The Community who vote yes/no on whether any given remix is "good enough" to be posted on the website. this was 00's era, you understand; you couldn't just post shit to youtube, web hosting was expensive, and OCRemix very explicitly wanted to have some level of curation and/or minimum quality bar for stuff posted there.
mostly this system worked at well—at least, from my adolescent point of view, because whenever a new mix went up on the front page, i could assume it would be novel in some way & well-produced & fun to listen to.
but, of course, you know, it also suffers from the failure modes you'd expect: Snobby In-Group-y Opinions about what "quality" is, mods going on power trips, etc
so it's fun and tbh kind of nostalgic to look at the thread where the judges evaluated this song (cw: period-typical language, Forum Nerds Being Testy). multiple people on the panel bitch that the guitar is out of tune (which (1) seems like obviously the point!!! just like a honky tonk piano is a particular aesthetic choice!!! and (2) who cares, that out-of-tune guitar sound RAD, i love that kind of bullshit lol), so the guy who made the remix swings in with like "yeah, you're right, you guys don't get what i'm doing, fuck it i'm taking my remix elsewhere," it all devolves into squabbling and...
...i mean, i think OP was right. he was clearly doing something kinda unique that did not adhere to the panel's groupthink. and the panel comes across as a little annoyingly paternalistic ("oh, don't throw this away, it could be really good!" and OP is just like "actually it's already good and it's not going anywhere" lmao). i don't really care for how personal everyone gets about it downthread, haha, but. it's a specific kind of time/culture that i remember well, yaknow?
also it's just kind of nice to read internet arguments where people clearly know the personalities involved and are like, engaging with each other, rather than going for a retweetable dunk. truly the internet really was Built Different etc etc
