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More Mashups: Girls Aloud Allowed, But EMI Goes GooGoo Over Gaga

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:29:05 +0000

We’ve touched on mashups before, but hadn’t realized how deeply they’d been cross-infected with mainstream pop culture, and hadn’t considered the daunting task they bring to record labels operating with a Jurassic attitude toward media distribution and rights management. First of all, let’s look at an example of how not to do a mashup, and then take a look at an example of why issuing takedowns to mashup artists is probably not all that productive. So how not to do a mashup? Fox TV’s Glee “got hip” and jumped on the mashup train by taking the Police song “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” and Gary Puckett’s “Young Girl”, and having one of the stars of the show sing them as a mashup. The result was predictably horrifying. The problem? The music was obviously licensed, played by studio session players, and badly dubbed over by the actor. The net result is comparable to watching your friend who majored in drama but ended up being an MBA singing “Halo” at karaoke night. If anyone should get sued in the world of mashups, it’s the producers of Glee. On the other end of the spectrum, we have situations where a label like EMI issues a takedown when the repurposing of their property would probably do them more benefit than harm. The piece just linked to explains why EMI issued a takedown for NirGaga, the Lady Gaga Vs. Nirvana mashup. What’s wrong with that scenario? For me, the mashup made me remember Nirvana, who I hadn’t thought of in ages, and exposed me to Lady Gaga, who I would otherwise not go out of my way to listen to. In either case, it’s doubtful that the free distribution of the mashup would dent EMI’s profits, and in spite of EMI’s takedown, the video and song remain “in the wild”, and fairly easy to find, as evident with the YouTube link above. Another example of reaching a new and unlikely end-user (i.e.: me) is a series of mashups of Girls Aloud, the British reality TV superstar girl band that’s made millions and that I’d bet a million that – like me – you’ve never heard of before. Below are examples of Girls Aloud and a few other mashups (Devo vs Souljaboy, Lady Gaga vs Eurythmics) that – at least to my ears – make the unlistenable fairly listenable. I doubt major media companies will ever get this property management vs exposure equation, and will continue throwing the baby out with the bath water until they’re bankrupt. If you want a quick roundup of some of last year’s best mashups, check out CultureBully’s list, or Best of Bootie 2009.

Girls Aloud’s “Long Hot Summer” and Beastie Boys “Body Movin’” are both arguably fairly weak on their own, but the mashup actually kind of rocks.

I enjoyed Devo’s “Whip It” in its day, but certainly never think of listening to it now. And Soulja Boy’s “Tell`em Crank That” isn’t likely to find its way on to my play list, but mash them up, and you have an altogether new experience. A sort of “gangstas smokin’ hillbilly crank” experience, to be specific.

Somehow Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams” rescues Lady Gaga’s “Let’s Dance” from its feeble slapback-echo-driven 1986-ness by mixing it with some over-sequenced 1982-ness.

Reality meets reality: Kelly Clarkson’s “Walk Away” mashed with Girls Aloud’s “Love Machine” has a synergistic effect that works better than either tune on their own.

The one that EMI cease-and-desisted: Lady Gaga Vs. Nirvana (NirGaga)

Oye To The World

admin — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 05:36:59 +0000

We’ve all gotten so used to the fact that the first songs you hear on the radio three minutes after midnight on Halloween are either “White Christmas” or “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” that we probably don’t even think about what it’s like to be Jewish around Christmas time. Sure, there’s Hanukkah, but it’s kind of a minor holiday, and historically didn’t have too many catchy pop tunes associated with it. Which frankly is a little odd, because a surprising number of songs that are considered Christmas classics were written by Jewish songwriters. Including the two just mentioned. Expanding on the list just linked to (and offering some free downloads), you might also check out Jewish You A Merry Christmas. But we’ve come a long way since the days when the only hip Jewish holiday songs out there were Adam Sandler’s Chanukah Song and Sarah Silverman’s Give The Jew Girl Toys. We’ve mentioned dj BC’s Santastic Christmas mashups before, but this year hebrews up a new mix with Menorah Mashup, so if you are Jewish, maybe you won’t feel like such a menorah-ty this holiday season. And it has the added Jewish appeal that not only do you not pay retail, you pay nothing at all! It’s a free download. If this were a commercial release though, the obvious single would be “Challahback Girl”, a mashup of Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” and Frank Yankovick doing “Hava Nagila”. So dj BC has graciously provided an additional remix collection that includes both “Orthodox” and “Reform” mixes. That Menorah Mashup link above has the free download links, but if you want to preview the tunes, Exstatica.net has kindly provided the tunes as streams. Chappy Chanukah!

YouTube As A Musical Instrument

admin — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:50:41 +0000

Although clearly not as epic a project as the incredible Kutiman – who remixed hundreds of YouTube music clips to create mindblowing mashups – Audiogravity is still pretty cool. It’s just a bunch of YouTube clips embedded in a single page, but you can start and stop any of them at the same time for some simple atmospheric “jazz”. Created by Darren Solomon of New York musical collaborative Science for Girls, Audiogravity is an extension of his Bb project, which (in a fashion similar to Jazzy Japanese Pop Band Sour’s fan-driven video) relies on user-submitted clips for the finished product. Solomon’s “band” Science for Girls is, in his words, “melodic electronica with roots in jazz and Brazillian music”, and their debut album features an eclectic group of guest vocalists from NYC’s indie music scene. Solomon’s blog is also pretty interesting; where else would I have learned about the Turkish instrument called a Cumbus? Which of course Solomon had to turn into a Cumbusfest. Which in turn led me in that Google-distracted, wikiphiliac fashion to discover today’s favorite waste of time: AudioPornCentral.com, where I learned that not only is YouTube a musical instrument as we’ve seen here, but Ohio is a piano.

Check out Science For Girls – Getz & Gilberto meets Martini Lounge Electronica:

Viva La Jaydiohead – Jay-Z Meets Radiohead

admin — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 04:01:13 +0000

What’s black and white and comes in rainbows? A pair of brilliant mashups of Jay Z’s Black Album. If you missed Danger Mouse’s 2004 Mashup The Grey Album, try to get a copy (Illegal-Art.org has a torrent link). It’s a masterful mashup of The Beatles’ White Album and Jay-Z’s Black Album. The legal fuss that EMI created at the time probably only served to promote the release, as did the clever Grey Video that repurposed original black-and-white footage from a 60′s Beatles concert. Since then there have been a few other attempts at mashing up Jay-Z, like OJAYZIS (Jay-Z vs Oasis) or Viva la Hova, a mash with Coldplay’s Viva la Vida. But none have been quite as listenable as this year’s Jaydiohead produced by NYC DJ Minty Fresh Beats (who’s apparently since re-branded himself as Max Tannone). Hail to the Thief!

Kutiman Remixes YouTube

admin — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 05:15:21 +0000

I secretly hold dear a belief that there’s an incredible harmony at the core of the chaos that is contemporary user-generated media. Well, an Israeli artist named Kutiman proves it with his project ThruYOU. You know all those misanthropic, socially awkward musician types you might find playing music in videos on YouTube, as if they were stars in some imaginary band? Well, even they didn’t realize it, but they WERE. Kutiman did something absolutely INCREDIBLE – and I can only imagine to be mind-numbingly tedious – by sorting through an amazingly diverse collection of YouTube tutorial and demo clips, and then assembling them into mashups and grooves that are in my opinion imminently listenable. I hope this guy gets some kind of distribution deal or financial reward for this stuff. One of my faves, I M New, is featured here. The easiest way to watch them in order is at ThruYOU, but he also of course has a YouTube page. He seems like a very cool and mellow guy; just check out his version of an “about” page. He also apparently does original work; see his MySpace page. Kind of cool dubby jazzy funky grooves, but I personally think his gift is with the mashup.

Wired’s “Rippy Awards”: Tired, Expired

admin — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:55:32 +0000

Wired.com has proven once again that having been very hip and cutting edge at one point doesn’t mean you’re very hip and cutting edge now. But I’ll give them an ‘A’ for conceptualization regarding their First Annual Rippy Music Awards. The piece suggests that someone should fill the gaping hole in music awards that programs like the Grammy Awards fail to fill. Unfortunately, Wired also fails to do so in the piece linked to, but it’s nice to see that a major media outlet has at least mentioned the problem. This has been a disappointment for me for a while; the last time I actually watched the American Music Awards for instance, was when Jamiroquai was big. Few of the people I know who love music (except the wacked out audiophiles who have $100,000.00 turntables) actually pop in physical media, listen to it, and tune into MTV to see the video. And with the plethora of music sites out there, the option to preview material by torrenting, and a wealth of YouTube content, who would? Wired is definitely onto something here, but unfortunately their coverage is a little weak. They spread about a paragraph’s worth of content over twelve pages with weirdly incongruent images, they failed to embed any music or video files, and they didn’t even mention mashups as a key category. I really don’t like writing negative pieces like this, that’s what critics are for. But please, Wired. I used to love you. Anybody have a suggestion for a more up-to-date music award? I mean, besides Pitchfork Media’s Top 50 Lists?

Best of Bootie 2008

admin — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 04:01:03 +0000

With a title like Best of Bootie 2008, you might think I’m promoting some kind of rapper chick porn, but the fact is that after hours of (sometimes excruciating) listening, I can comfortably say that this is the absolute best selection of mashups (which we’ve previously discussed here) of 2008. There are a LOT of people doing mashups these days, and many of them, though conceptually clever, are almost unlistenable (like Eminelton, for instance), or in other cases they’ll be alright except for the fact that the “mashup artist” gets a little lazy with polishing up the final product to make sure that things are rhythmically tight and not harmonically incongruent. Not a problem with Best of Bootie’s selection – not only are all the tracks exceptionally well-remixed, they’ve even put them in a very listenable sequence. You could pretty much toss this on at any party and not have to think about it again. Some faves of mine include (all direct mp3 links): Overdub’s mix Come As The Starlight (Nirvana vs. The Supermen Lovers) manages to make Kurt Cobain sound like a motown classic; Totom’s track Every Kind Of Creep (Radiohead vs. Robert Palmer) turns “Creep” into the jazz song it always secretly was anyway, and DJ Y Alias JY’s Duffy Train Running (Duffy vs. Doobie Brothers) somehow actually makes both artists sound better. Here’s a little preview of “Come As The Starlight” for you:

Generation X-Mas

admin — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 13:04:31 +0000

There’s so much weird Christmas music out there that I wouldn’t begin to try to do a thorough roundup. Besides, they’re working pretty hard on doing that over at MistleTunes, where I ran across such classics-to-be as Pull My Finger by Jingle Smells. That Amazon link has plenty of audio previews to confirm that even though it’s only $3.98, you don’t need to buy it (though it’s tempting, if only to have a CD laying around that has the title “We Wish You A Smelly Xmas – Unplugged” printed on it). If Christmas mashups are more your thing, djBC and friends now have six years of mashups in their Santastic collections. A lot of it is a little less than well-conceived, but the price is right (free) and where else would you find things like Voicedude’s “It’s The Little Things” (YouTube clip) , which somehow manages to mash Blink 182′s “All the Small Things” with Pachelbel’s Canon, and end up with something listenable? And make sure you have a firm grip on reality before listening to Corporal Blossom’s “White Christmas” Mashup (lo-fi mp3 link), featuring Elvis, Louis Armstrong, Diana Ross, and others surreally dubbed over a downtempo triphop beat. One of my favorite holiday songs ever remains Lenlow’s “¿Dónde Está Santa Claus?” mashup from Santastic II (preview below). And proving that Nine Inch Nails’ lyrics benefit a lot from the production, we have Nine Inch Noëls, a mashup of NIN’s “Head Like Hole” and “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town”. And in honor of Santa coming (heh, I said “coming”) we have the hard-to-find Horny Christmas (lo-fi mp3) by Loo and Placido. Here’s the “¿Dónde Está Santa Claus?” preview mentioned above:

Mommy, What’s a Mashup?

admin — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:28:31 +0000

I was surprised recently to find out how few of the young hipsters in my social circle seem to know about Mashups. For the uninitiated, read the overblown, self-important Wikipedia definition here. The concept is simple. Take two or more familiar pop media elements (from virtually any media), and mash them together to pleasing or amusing effect (I’ve never adequately defined for myself how they differ from “remixes”; they just do). The YouTube clip at left is a great example: George Bush covers U2′s Sunday Bloody Sunday, from RX’s “Party Party” mashup. Since mashups involve using large recognizable pieces of intellectual property, they’re often subject to takedown notices by the RIAA or MPAA as soon as they become popular. For that reason it’s often easiest to BitTorrent them. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but some faves of mine include Party Ben and Team9′s Dean Gray -American Edit (Green Day – American Idiot); Danger Mouse’s Grey Album (Jay-Z’s “The Black Album” mashed with The Beatles’ “White Album”) The Ciccones – The Immaculate Concoction (Madonna mixed with just about everything); The Beastles (Beastie Boys with the Beatles) and RX’s PartyParty (George Bush with a variety of artists, the highlights being Sunday Bloody Sunday, Dick is a Killer, and Who’s tha Nigga). For an amusing RIAA-endorsed (and seriously plagiaristic) mashup check out Lily Allen’s Alright Still. Although an official commercial release, it happily repurposes (without acknowledgment) an entire CD of music by other people. Check out “Alright, Steal” to see where Lily gets her, ahem, “inspiration”.

Yoda Was a Boogie Knight

admin — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:31:58 +0000

I’m a big fan of a good mashup (I loved the re-cut of The Shining trailer), but I was never too taken with the Star Wars lightsaber genre, until this one. Check out the Boogie Nights Star Wars Lightsaber Mashup below. Starring Mark Wahlberg’s thingy in an encore performance. If you’re not familiar with the genre, just search YouTube for “lightsaber”, or check out VideoGum’s 10 best Lightsaber Mashups.