Yello aspirations

(Charles)Book&Record’s Zack Wentz is stoked at the possibility of meeting Yello’s Boris Blank. Wentz describes the process of entering a contest for which the grand prize is “a trip to Zurich to hang out with Blank”:

“Shelby [Wentz, his wife] and I are longtime fans of Yello — possibly our favorite band. Although I don’t own a cell phone, I was excited to see they had created a smartphone app for making music. I let Taj and Shelby know, and they downloaded Yellofier and started playing around. We then saw that there’s a contest for tracks made with Yellofier, so we took one of the more polished jams Taj had built in Yellofier, tracked vocals over it to make it a (Charles)Book&Record song, and submitted ‘Bodies Out Back.’ It’s a surrealist nursery rhyme from the perspective of a child hitman.”

Has another entrant accused (Charles)Book&Record of breaking the Yellofier contest rules?

“The fellow with the most votes seems to be complaining that we tracked material over Yellofier-generated music, as if that shouldn’t count. But there’s no direct indication in the rules that this is the case. They basically say, ‘Make a song with Yellofier, and be sure you don’t use anything you didn’t generate yourself.’ In other words, they don’t want to get sued for promoting music that contains un-cleared samples.

“According to this perturbed fellow, who has packed the contest with multiple tracks and has the most votes, Yello wouldn’t be able to submit a song. No Dieter Meier, no diva backing vocals. Regardless, we don’t care. We had an inspiring time making a song we wouldn’t otherwise have made. It has more in common with the way Yello makes music than any other track up yet.

“I’ll just be thrilled if Boris actually listens to it. He’s one of the greatest innovators in electronic music of the past three decades.... If there were ever any rules about how a song could be made, Yello broke them.”

The Yellofier app contest closed on June 1. Along with “yellofiering the whole city” of Zurich with Blank, the winning artist’s track will be featured on an Electronic Beats compilation.