My two faves on the mix tape Quinn gave me were a pair of gorgeous, lyrical anthems by someone called Dean Gray, so I googled around. Turns out Dean Gray is a collaboration between San Francisco’s Party Ben and English-Australian team9, and their American Edit is a remix of Green Day’s American Idiot. Of course everyone knew this but me. Anyway I downloaded the whole thing (bite me, music industry) and listened yesterday as I ran.

The cool thing about mashups is the way they embody, as Spike said of Life on Mars, our collective dream of history. This is how I remember pop: songs merging into one another across the AM dial. Summer of ’69 is my summer of ’85 (except that these are, in fact, the best days of my life); I have loved Johnny Cash completely ever since that devastating cover of NIN’s Hurt; and so on. And it’s not exactly surprising that an English-Australian-San Franciscan collaboration would hit so many of my cultural G-spots now, is it.

Still, when I came into sight of the sun shining on San Francisco Bay and track two (Green Day’s Holiday / Theme from Dr Who) paused for a beat then launched into KLF’s Doctorin’ the Tardis…

…there was a single, perfect instant when I thought I was going take off and fly.

Thanks, Q.

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