What's he on about now?

In case the articles, essays and opinions throughtout this site just weren't enough for you, here's my online diary (a.k.a. 'blog'). It's as close as you'll come to the inside of my head, so don't say I didn't warn you
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   Tuesday, February 06, 2007

   "IT'S ALIVE! ALIIIIIIIVE!!!"

Now that cheap editing software has made it simple for even Luddites like me to tinker with songs and movies, while the Internet has made it simple to broadcast the results, the "mash-up" is becoming a great source of fun and fascination. There are legal issues, financial issues, ethical issues and artistic issues, all wrapped up in one clever little mp3 or YouTube.

As always, first comes the silly: I once heard a track that put Tom Jones' vocals from "Kiss" over "Funkytown" by Lipps Inc. It was literally better than both songs put together. Then the track that used the Dandy Warhols' guitar riffs to turn the cheesy dance song "Horny" into something joyous. Then the mash-ups got smarter. In 2004, The Grey Album's controversial-but-brilliant blend of the Beatles' White Album and Jay-Z's The Black Album (duh!) by DJ Danger Mouse was banned, while American Edit from 'Dean Gray' performed a public service by revealing exactly where the chord changes in Green Day's American Idiot came from (Oasis, the Doctor Who theme and, whoa, Glen Campbell -- who knew?).

A San Francisco DJ calling himself Earworm has practically conquered the bastard genre, with songs comprised of over a dozen others. My favourite is "Stairway to Bootleg Heaven" which puts (get ready) Laurie Anderson, the Art of Noise, Eurythmics, the Beatles, Pet Benatar, the Beastie Boys and Dolly Parton(!) through the wringer. As Truman Capote famously said of Jack Kerouac, "That's not writing, that's typing." In true open-source tradition, Earworm has published a mash-up how-to guide so others can play in the sandbox as well. But will he share the profits from his book? That's what artists and the record companies would like to know.

Assuming their opposition is more than merely financial (I'm generous that way), I assume record companies are upset at how easily these kind of remixes reveal the limitations of pop music. Let's face it -- most rock and pop tracks really DO sound the same and are easily blended. But didn't the mighty Ramones teach us that back in the late '70s? They took their parents' classic pop-rock style, sped it up and spit it back at them. They recorded an album with girl-group guru Phil Spector, for Joey's sake! Mash-ups are just the latest way of showing that pop culture is just a stack of Lego bricks. There's lot of colours and shapes but they can all fit together. Every kid has played with Lego, I think every kid should play with Lego, and some of them turn out to be architects because of it.

And if not? Well at least they're having fun. There's a UK outfit called Thriftshop XL that does great tweaks of music videos. They've sent Justin Timberlake back to 1992 and made a strong case for the Knack suing Franz Ferdinand, with Run-DMC as the lawyers. And then there's this -- a track so gloriously silly, I can't get enough of it:



Is a track like this an act of destruction or creation? Perhaps the best recent example was the now-legendary re-edited trailer for The Shining that stripped away the horror elements and added happy audio to make Stanley Kubrick's film seem like a family comedy. I discovered a pair of YouTube bits that hilariously pit Doctor Who against his most terrifying foe -- the French -- and make the high-seas hero Horatio Hornblower campier than Liberace. What was once some of my favourite TV is now something I'll have a hard time watching without snickering. Again, are these edits acts of vandalism -- or creativity?

I ask these questions because I'm now as guilty as anyone. Since discovering video editing software, I've been playing with the Lego bricks, too. The results have been quite cute (a jolly tribute to the original and still best Queer as Folk), rather peculiar (a Cyberman video for the Pet Shop Boys' sinister track "Integral") and now somewhat unsettling. Where the notion came from, I simply have no idea, but I felt compelled to combine Terry Gilliam's dark masterpiece on bureaucracy and terrorism with the bombastic giddiness of (God help and forgive me) the Electric Light Orchestra -- it's "Mr. Blue Sky Goes To Brazil":



And this is where the debates came in. Did I just ruin a brilliant film with musical cheese? Or did I taint a beloved '70s pop tune with creepy imagery? Or both? Could I be sued for this? Don't I deserve to be? Or will anyone just appreciate it for the peculiar and silly trifle it is?
Questions, questions...

Labels: MeTube, music, technology