So Kasey was talking about how certain songs pass from freshness to familiarity through an “imprinting process” involving a certain intimacy between him and his iPod. Then he applied this to poems, which was over my head. I was reminded of this today when I was talking to my friend, Satanslim, about Bonnie “Prince” Billie’s “Greatest Palace Music,” an album that Palace fans almost universally deride as a travesty, a mockery, a sham—a butchering of classic songs. I happen to love “Greatest Palace Music.” I’m also not a Palace fan from way back, and this is the problem. Satan made me a mixed CD recently, containing the original Palace versions of some of these songs, and to my ear, they sound like what they are: lo-fi versions of the same songs. So I prefer the remakes. Satan and I were imprinted differently, however. On the same CD, Satan includes a cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil” by Lyle Lovett from the 1991 compilation “Deadicated,” which featured then-popular artists playing Garcia-Hunter-Weir classics. I was 18 years old when that album came out, and for the life of me I have no idea why I bought it. I had never even heard the Grateful Dead before. All I knew about them was that my 11th grade high school English teacher loved them, especially the song “Ripple,” (covered here by Jane’s Addiction). Anyway, I bought the CD and instantly fell in love with several songs: “Truckin’” (Dwight Yoakam), “Uncle John’s Band” (Indigo Girls), “Bertha” (Los Lobos), and the aforementioned “Friend of the Devil.” It wasn’t until a few years later that I heard the originals, and I was neither impressed or disappointed by them—same songs, different sounds. However, as the years wore on, I began to regard the Dead songs as Dead songs. The original version of “Friend of the Devil” appeals to me more now than Lovett’s version, which now sounds wan and lifeless, slowed down. It’s still a good song, but I like the Dead’s performance much better. And I think that’s the point—what we fall in love with (or what I fall in love with) is a SONG, not the production or the performer, though I will prefer one version over another. The thing about “Greatest Palace Music” is this: it’s a collection of gorgeous songs. Whether I’ll come to prefer the Palace originals remains to be seen, but in the meantime, I’m going to enjoy the music.

I suggested to Satan that the disappointment he feels when listening to GPM may be something akin to the way an old school metal fan (like myself) felt when Metallica released “The Black Album.” It was a complete betrayal to fans who enjoyed “Kill
‘Em All,” and “Master of Puppets.” Besides, I secretly always preferred “Garage Days Re-revisited,” a sloppily recorded selection of covers—I suspect it wasn’t the raw production that I loved, but the songs themselves, the Misfits’ “Last Caress,” for one. And yes, the original (even more unproduced, like all classic Misfits recordings) is much better.