10 Questions about Maressey · 11:49pm Sep 6th, 2014
What is Maressey?
It's a group project and ponified tribute to the music of The Smiths. Similar to the Beatles Bronies which was a ponified tribute to The Beatles we're doing the music of Morrissey and Marr and one of the best bands of the 80's in pony form.
So is this an upcoming album or not?
The goal is still a free album that will eventually come out but we're aiming to win people over with weekly tracks on the Maressey group youtube channel. We'd like to win people over vs release it all at once and frankly confuse them. We'll collect it all in a downloadable form when we're close to done for free. Could it be 2 albums? It's possible.... but we'll try to make it to one first.
How is this group project structured?
This really is a virtual band or a collective. Instead of one person filling the role for vocalist or guitarist, we have various people who can do those roles on different songs or collaborate. Having a head start with Johnny Mare (a non brony Smiths cover artist) handing us stems for 10 songs was key for getting this project rolling. It's taken really 2 years to go from lyric adaptions to the point where we had a realistic chance to really make songs in mass. We're doing a large part of the music ourselves from drums, bass, and guitar (real or via sound libraries). Having a wealth of midi files, guitar chords, and song notations drastically helps us tackle making these songs. We also made it clear that we wanted people on the team with talent that weren't necessarily well known or horse famous names but could do the job at hand well and represent that bronies can make rock music and not just EDM.
Just how many songs are you gonna make?
I've ponified around 45 songs that i think work well and looked for appropriate art from on the onset to reflect those songs. I can't think we'll get all of them done of course or that some team members might drop out but it's worth giving a wide array of song choices for people to consider. I've got actually 25 ranging in rough instrumental to published currently so we're making good progress. If people see the art, like the lyrics, and have the talent to join in we're always looking for more people to help out too. I personally love it when someone new enters the community and clearly knows how to play an instrument or sing and they just need a little help to get noticed and meet other musicians. I'd like to be able to help them out and vice versa.
How important is image in what you are doing.
I'm a huge fan of MLP art and there's such a wide array of choices that I found it was important that picking the right art for the songs was paramount to their success and getting the image across. I wanted to use the same youtube style from track to track so there's consistency there. Each image is a virtual square album cover using the same font style for each, has a record player spinning that's pointing back to the original and to it being something from the past, and doesn't use any fancy flashy visualizations. I've used pmv's most of the 3 years i've made music and I wanted the music to do the talking this time around. I'm hoping when people see a slow stream of Maressey tracks hit youtube and tumblr that they'll check them out because they'll all look like part of the same project.
In what way are Smiths covers worth making pony tracks?
TBH there's a lot of reasons why Morte and I wanted to do Maressey back in the day. First and foremost the Smiths catalog is one of the deepest wells to draw from and has some of the best lyrics and dense guitar melodies the music world has seen. It's the subject matter of the originals that really reflects well on bronies and the MLP characters. Many songs frankly didn't need a lot of changes needed. They still deal with depression, loneliness, shyness, life, death, politics, sex. Things that aren't often explored in MLP music but have been touched up on in fimfics. Like a fimfic each song will be a chapter and tell a small part of the Maressey story where each of the characters tell their pov, often pair up, and break up.
Aren't The Smiths a rather depressing band to fit a happy MLP universe?
Not really. Again sadfics may be common in fimfiction but not done as much in song form and saying The Smiths are "depressing" is not giving them the credit they deserve for actually portraying many more complex emotions then that. There's a lot of wit and humor in Maressey's lyrics and they're vitally important to it being as loved as it is. I honestly feel more that a song that connects to you emotionally, even if sad, is more important than one than gives you a quick high and is forgotten. There's more permanence there.
Aren't you worried about copyright conflicts?
Of course. Just because Hasbro is lax about MLP doesn't mean that there's a chance The Smiths current record label will see our covers/tributes/ponifications as going too far. We're trying to rectify that with plenty of indication that these are based on their works, you should go out and get familiar with them, and ours are just tributes to the. It's a murky grey area of course but we're hoping making everything free and forthright will be fair for everyone. We're hoping that it's a win-win getting people interested in a 30 year old band that many outside of the UK are not familiar with. Hopefully no C&D or pulled videos as that would be a pretty big drag at this point. There are PLENTY of covers and guitar tutorials for The Smiths on youtube and we hope we'll fit in with those. The Beatle Bronies were doing similar ponified songs back in 2011 and they were singing over FULL sampled instrumentals and we aren't sampling any of the originals so we hope to be in safer waters.
What obstacles have you encountered?
Group projects are always difficult because everyone is different; so between different personalities, work habits, different schedules, talents, and getting different results it requires a bit of juggling. I'm also the one organizing, managing, and likely mixing each track so that they sound like they are from the same project. The amazing thing is how quickly everyone stepped up and joined in. The interesting thing is how little we've talked about the project and socialized. We may be some of the more introverted bronies out there or that may be just the internal dynamic. It's been much more about people agreeing to do songs and doing their parts independently and then working with them in side chats. The toughest part about Maressey is getting the word out or getting people interested. This isn't EDM or dubstep it's the complete opposite of it and it's also on it's own youtube channel which had to start from ground zero. So we need to go through all the steps of getting the word out, getting EQD to assist, and finding the audience for mature and introspective indie rock that we know is out there. That may be a small audience in an already shrinking music community, but I'm hoping it means we stand out, and for good reasons.
What are the overall symbolism's at play in Maressey?
There's several really. First, I think it's important that if you have intelligent equines who are just people except in their final appearance that they have a lot of the same issues as the rest of us. I know I deal with shyness, confidence, and loneliness, I know many of the characters do in cannon and fannon as well. So a lot of this will be examining our characters deeper and also our fandom as well. Second, I think shipping is a huge part of our fandom and its a big part of the song themes. These characters just want to connect with others on a level that's deeper then just friendship and that's key to being a young adult and finding your way. So several songs will deal with particular ships; Rarijack, Flutterdash, Twiluna over the course of several songs. Just like chapters in a fimfic. They might not end happily either but when you're young you're often trying on relationships to see if they are good fits. You give them a shot and hope for the best and sometimes they don't turn out that way. Third, The Smiths came out in the 80's as a reaction away from vapid pop music and synth heavy gloss. I have to think that we're coming in as enemies of emotionless dubstep and EDM. Because the music they constantly play says nothing to me about my life (or the show for that matter too). Fourth, I think we represent a lot of brony musicians that have had some level of success but far less then many of the brand names of the brony scene. So I think banding together and representing the independent musicians of our scene is ambitious, important, and frankly gives a lot of synergy where most event albums are forgettable and disjointed. I think we have to get people in love with lyrics and rock music again because that's just not happening in our scene for the most part. I think people are losing the plot and not feeling it anymore and i think we want to do something different then what the rest of the herd is doing currently.
Encountered any angry Smiths fans yet?
Not yet, but it will be unavoidable at some point i think. The Smiths fanbase is quite large and is very devout. I can see that mucking around with their songs and adding ponies might horrify some (I haven't even told my wife yet) but I think we're trying to be respectful of both audiences. i love MLP, I love The Smiths, I think we've found a way to pay tribute to both of these fanbases. And is that really so strange?
https://www.youtube.com/user/Maressey
http://maressey.tumblr.com/
http://mylittleremix.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5182
Oh boy, a target. I have wanted to ask this of someone for the longest time, so you have my advance apologies.
What's the point of just changing a few words in an original song to "make it pony"? I've never understood ponified music -- "filk", I think it's called in a broader Fandom sense -- and it just seems horribly unoriginal to me. It's the equivalent of folks around here taking an existing IP, changing the characters so their names are Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, etc., and telling the same story. It's not a new crossover, it's all but plagiarism.
The one exception of course is parody, but that's meant to be funny, and the first Maressey track I heard the other day definitely wasn't funny. In fact, on cursory inspection, it didn't seem to be any different from the original (but I will admit, identifying song lyrics on the fly is not one of my strengths).
2433566
Well I'm a brony musician first and foremost. I'm also a Smiths fan, so the idea of exposing a lot of bronies to The Smiths (who 97% of the fandom won't know) is appealing to me. If it's new to you then you're hearing it for the first time. The fact that changing a few things in the original song can mirror cannon or fit my head cannon and work WELL i think is worth doing because its a type of a crossover. Do bronies go on EQD and brony musician channels to see songs about MLP? Yes and really that's the only reason. If it didn't tie into MLP I wouldn't do it or want to see it. Just like I wouldn't expect stories with no relevance to MLP on fimfiction. I love these songs and I love these characters. Poniphonication (ie a ponfied cover) always has been a grey area as its mix of a cover, tribute, and a parody but with some changes. But musicians do covers, remixes, and parodies all the time and yeah that's still making music and learning how to do that. As long as I honor both The Smiths and MLP its a effective combo and hopefully has some synergy.
2434268
I'd rather just hear a cover by a brony artist I already like, but I have a feeling I'm alone in that regard. :/ You're right about the "if it's not pony, they won't come" thing. I guess that makes sense to do, even if I disagree with the practice. Many thanks for your response.
2434537
Not a problem. i appreciate the straight forward questions.
LATE RESPONSE : In some ways ponfied covers are truly a way of doing almost straight forward covers with a few changes (ones that hopefully make sense). However, a few lyric changes and bam you have have a great song that bridges the traditional track and to the new pony audience. Saying that ponified covers have to to be parody might make the recording companies happy but as always we do things are own way and I'd rather make a tribute to our fandom AND the original song at the same time. If you can't make a song about several things at once then you're doing it wrong.