Since The Beatles, any rock band that doesn't write its own material could be considered somehow unworthy of the title. The current era's pathological lust for "genuineness" spelled doom for the golden age of the professional songwriter, the semi-anonymous tin-pan-alley dweller who banged out ditties on cheap pianos for the stars of his day. Rock snobs have to see "written and performed by" creds in the liner notes or the magic was just so much fake-book sleight-of-hand.

One result of this sea change is that a lot of the great rock records of the past 30 years are essentially uncoverable. They were barfed up from the collective unconscious of the bands that wrote and made them famous, and as such, are all but unusable by others. That barfing has produced some of the greatest art in history. Drive Like Jehu did not write "Rome Plows" to see what other artists could do with it; it's an insane, amazing projectile vomit, but utterly singular to lead barfers Reis and Froberg. A re-rendering by another rock band would be no more than a cheap knockoff, no matter how sincere the flattery.

The Dismemberment Plan was a future-happy band, but we also knew our history. You could find bios of James Brown, Duke Ellington, Led Zeppelin, and many others among the candy wrappers and broken picks on the floor of our van. This awareness of the tradition of pre-rock songwriting is something we definitely value and respect: there would be no Lennon/McCartney without Dozier-Holland-Dozier. No Carole King without Leiber and Stoller. No Brian Wilson without Bacharach-David, without Sammy Cahn, without Rodgers and Hammerstein.

We think remixes make possible a high-tech update of that tradition. They allow you to take someone else's raw material and quite possibly make something better of it, as Aretha Franklin did to Otis Redding's "Respect." With the thrill of that possibility in mind, we posted the raw tracks from our entire songbook online, free to download and remix. The twelve tracks on A People's History of the Dismemberment Plan were mixed by friends, fans, and in some cases, folks who were just too intrigued by the idea of a band inviting such chaos to resist the remix temptation. The rules were simple: use what you find, embellish, edit, and rematerialize as you see fit, and if we like it, we'll put it on the record.

So if someone told us they preferred one of these remixes to our original song, we would be psyched. It would mean that our songs claim a life beyond us, with no strings attached to our faces, our explanations, our excuses.

We want to thank everyone that has turned in a remix. It's been awesome doing this, and hopefully, these ideas will spread. I know I'll be the first in line to remix "Rome Plows" when the tracks are finally posted.