This Mash Up Shit Has to Stop.
A few days ago I posted a review for the Sufjan Steven’s show at the Bowery last Friday, in said blog posting I stated that it would be cool for Kanye West to sample Sufjans, “Zombies, blah blah blah”, upon posting I received one comment from Josh at Blogs are for Dogs (which is a great blog and totally recommend) stating that someone by the name of Two Face John McCartney had already created a mash-up between Kanye’s “Jesus Walks” and “Zombies.” IMO this was a huge let down, first of all, this song sounds little more than someone taking the a capela vocal of Kanye’s tune and just merely playing it over a looped intro to Zombies. There is no attempt at matching up the BPM just seems like a straight playing two songs at once, sort of like an offices fight between an Indie fool (played by me) and a hip hop enthusiast (played by my co-worker who shall remain nameless, but its a small office so he will figure it out). The true skill to the mash up is completely lost here, and if I was say the innovative mash up king Mark Vidler of Go Home Productions , I would be pretty disappointed by the attempt. Then again I don’t really know much about Two Faced JM, for all I know he could be just some kid starting out and had a great idea for a mash-up and went with it, but as the title says this mash-up stuff has to stop.
Initially the mash-up seemed flawless, an excellent way to infuse indie music into a mainstream pop song and vice versa. It had a complete hip hop sensibility to it, considering the hip hop sample has now been around for 30 plus years the mash-up was the neo-sample. “DJ’s” no matter how small were no longer not stuck to the confines of whack MC’s from your local Junior High School, with the power of computers you were able to create backing tracks using your favorite songs, and have a superstar like Jay-Z flow over top. Back when DJ Dangermouse released the gray album, the mash up was reached its peak as a form of expression, Jay-Z was backed by the white album, but in reality it could have been anything. Most of the backing tracks contain indistinguishable snippets meticulously looped to fit the Jay-Z’s lyrics. With the popularity of that cd, and Jay-Z really unable to capitalize on it success since it was being given away for free, another project was developed between Jigga and Linkin Park, which subsequently destroyed the mash-up for all eternity, not to say that it was horrible, some of the tracks were actually likeable, but the result was now every 14 year old suburbanite was mixing everything and anything they could, with minimal results. The Beastie Boys recently decided to expedite the process for these kids by releasing a capela tracks on their web page, thus further diminishing the skill required, to strip the already present music, from the vocal. The entry level for the art form has diminished considerably, and thus this mash up shit has to stop.
Here I am posting two tracks from the before mentioned Go Home Productions, listen to what a mash up is, and hear how these songs seem as though they were always meant to be heard this way. First up we have an absolutely massive mash up of Elvis Costello, The Police, Lionel Richie, Peggy Lee, Bob Marley, The Hollies and Led Zeppelin. From GHP:
Principally Costello’s “Watching The Detectives” as the backbone, with everyone else grabbing a piece. This version is the full thing with the dubbed-up Hollies / Led Zep vocal sections weaving in and out towards the end.
Next up we have a much simpler mash up of Xtina with The Velvet Underground, like Mr. GHP himself says “one of my personal favorites.”
GHP - Girl (Wants To Say Goodbye To) Rock n’ Roll
Plenty more mp3’s available here.