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Wired’s “Rippy Awards”: Tired, Expired

[ 3 Comments ]Posted on January 28, 2009 by admin in Music

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

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 [...]

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

[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 11, 2009 by admin in Music

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

You need no other mashup collection

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:

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Generation X-Mas

[ 3 Comments ]Posted on December 24, 2008 by admin in Holidays

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

More Collections of Holiday Mashups & Remixes

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:

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Mommy, What’s a Mashup?

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on July 30, 2008 by admin in Music

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

What do you get when you cross the Black Album with the White Album?

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 Read the rest of this entry »

Yoda Was a Boogie Knight

[ Comments Off ]Posted on June 20, 2008 by admin in Popular Media

Friday, June 20th, 2008

Mark Wahlberg’s thingy really shines in this Boogie Nights/Star Wars Lightsaber Mashup

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.

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