James Brown died. So did Gerald Ford. As a culture, we seem to organize these things into threes. People -- even famous people -- die all the time; but we tend to lump three people together and decide that there is some point or pattern to it, and the point I want to make here is that there might not be two more different celebrated cultural signifiers than The Godfather of Soul and President Klutz. What third person could possibly end up complimenting or supplementing these people's seperate and unequal symbolic properties?
I have no idea.
The man in his prime.
I wish I could post a clip of Chevy Chase doing Gerald Ford (I even had a good lead-in: "The, err, man, not ready for prime time.") but of course NBC won't let YouTube carry that stuff. But I did find a clip of the Simpsons episode where he makes an "appearance". It's actually one of the kinder, gentler moments I can remember ever being on the Simpsons.
So you can take my quiz if you would like, but I'm mosty letting people know about this because coming up with the test was a lot of fun. Also, sorry about number nine, it's a little T.M.I. but I was running out of ideas.
Okay, actually I've just gone and tried to edit it and it keeps making weird changes to my quiz, so if something looks like it doesn't make sense, it's probably a problem on their end. But it really was fun to make it up.
Short because I don't think I have that much to say and half-hearted because I'm not going to waste too much time defending a practice that is, often -- or at least often seems to be -- indefensible.
Most mash-ups are just two different tracks (one of which is pretty likely to be "London Calling," I guess because it's by The Clash. Get it?) pretty carelessly thrown together but that work well enough to generate a sort of recognition-of-novelty response. And even when this is done really, really well I like it about as much as I would a mediocre conventional song. In fact, outside of The Kleptones' more ambitious undertakings (of which 24 Hours is the latest, from earlier this year) there are only a handful of mash-ups I've encountered that could really hold their own against the mainstream(s).
There's also a new DJ who goes by the name Girl Talk who has an album out which has made some waves. Thegeneralconsesus seems to be that it's pretty stupid but really fun -- and if you act quickly, you can get a track and see for yourself from Fluxblog. (It includes a great Biggie sample, if that's any motivation.)
What's strange to me is that the more ambitious projects always end up sounding like turntablism or even straight hip-hop, but still get stuck with the "mash-up" label, presumably because of their origins, or maybe the label is self-applied.
I even kind of agree with these guys in my own, secular, goyim way, but: "In what many other Jews would consider the height of naivety, he commended Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for wanting 'a secured future for innocent Jewish people in Europe and elsewhere'." Yeah, that seems like a bit of a stretch, Rabbi. Also not sure about the entiredisintegration of the Israeli state, but sincerest kudos for reaching across the aisle and also for calling Israel out on a little B.S.
Or atleast I kinda hope so, since I created an iTunes store account and then plunked down a digi-Hamilton for the track. [An aside directed toward Apple and its iTunes store: "Screw 128 kbps, even if AAC is supposedly better quality than MP3. Also, screw AAC."] All those "shame on you"'s are a little disconcerting, but some of the points he made about the music not being 110% aggressive seemed to make sense to me, especially since it was fashioned for jogging and not, like, gladitorial combat. I think I'll get a shuffle and some track clothes and start jogging again; I mean, how can I not after my ten dollar investment?
An oft-cited aspect of the blogosphere is its ability to create instant hype. I most commonly come across this sort of thing in regards to music -- up-and-coming (actually, "up-and-coming" though I have a feeling a lot of what I'm about to say might rest a little easier in ironic quotation marks; but I don't think I'll always feel like supplying them; anyways, fill them in as you see fit) indie rock bands that get a few MP3s floating around, maybe an album leak, and then get panned by Pitchfork and then that's that.
As common (or "common," see what I mean?) as these bands may be, the biggest example of the phenomena probably came from film: Snakes On A Plane. Its presence as a meme/joke/whatever was huge. Even before Samuel Jackson started making personal phonecalls to people there were internet contests and script rewrites and general gossip mongering all over the internet about the movie. Mongering to such a ridiculous extent, in fact, that plenty of people thought the whole thing was a put on, which might partially explain why it released to entirely unextraordinary numbers. It didn't flop, but it wasn't the huge hit the studio was expecting it to be, either. No wonder Big Media hates the internet.
ANYWAYS, one of the most talked about & hyped blogo-bands from the past couple of years is an outfit named Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. So I'm a fan of this band, which I bring up rather bluntly because a lot of the blogs I visit, both MP3 and otherwise, not only think that this band is bad but that the band is bad for music, and the scene, or whatever. It's not backlash either -- at least not in the typical sense -- because these are the same blogs that enthusiastically endorse all kinds of stuff before it really hits. I remember hearing about CYHSY through our (sadly, now defunct) local record store's email newsletter, which made sure to point out the fact that these guys had self-released and -distributed their debut album and that Oxford, MS, was pretty damned lucky to be getting any. I think I rounded up a few MP3s from somewhere and as soon as I heard "Over And Over Again"'s David Byrne jitter, I was pretty much sold. They get compared to The Talking Heads more than they should, but it would be even more ridiculous to avoid the obvious, especially on this song. His voice may drift from Byrne to Gordon Gano to elsewhere in the surprising-melodic-yelp-verse, but the music only rarely sounds this Heads-ish.
ANYWAYS AGAIN, the only negative thing I've heard about them that stuck to me is from this past summer's Bonnaroo, where they were apparently the only holdouts in what was otherwise some kind of Hippie/Hipster peace accord. On the other hand, we probably need a couple of hardliners around, so maybe that's a good thing. They're like the Sharons of Brooklyn. This might be why they aren't liked [note to reader: most of the blogs I read are NYC based] as a band -- for purely personal reasons rather than their music. I don't have to worry about that in regards to them, but Lord knows there're plenty of local acts I would not give a fair shot based entirely on the personnel involved.
ANYWAYS AGAIN AGAIN, they have a new album coming out in January, supposedly, which will also be available for download in user-friendly MP3 format from Insound.com, after which purchase the band will eventually send you the actual CD in the mail. I've listened to a couple of tracks and currently have "Satan Said Dance" as my MySpace profile's song. It's pretty tight.
p.s. This blog would be more official if there were hyperlinks but ya ain't gettin em.
I know some of you guys must really be chomping at the bit for a new Wilco record, so I thought I'd share this post that I discovered via Pitchfork.
Of course, we all know how much Wilco likes to alter songs, so who knows how much the final album will sound like what they've been playing live. So far, though, a lot of the songs sound a little throwback-y and somewhat somber.
