I have an almost 1300 word post sitting in my drafts that…isn’t quite right. So instead, my wonderful readers, you get this. :)
I tweeted earlier today about needing new music, and @andrewcareaga recommended Girl Talk. I hit up his latest album on Amazon’s MP3 store (Feed the Animals) and started previewing the tracks. I got to the 3rd track, which mixed “No Diggity” with “Flashing Lights”, and then the 4th track, which mixes Busta Rhymes with The Police, and that was it. Click! Download!
I’m no stranger to mashups, but after listening to Girl Talk my first thought was this is how mashups should be done. It seems too many mashup makers match two songs purely for novelty. And while that’s cool the first couple of times, it gets very old very, very quickly. There has been many a time when I’ve browsed past my local “hit music” station on a Saturday night, heard whatever mashup they’re playing, and groaned out loud.
Not to say that Girl Talk is without novelty in his musical pairings - quite the contrary. But they go so far beyond that. He seems to have an excellent ear for melody and rhythm, so that songs are not only put together, but the vocals are in key (one of my biggest mashup/remix pet peeves) and it all fits beautifully. I don’t know how I made it through 2008 without hearing their album, but best believe they will be prominent in my 2009.
I browsed youtube to see if there were videos for any of the songs (there are, and they too are mashups), but I found something even better. I love seeing others’ creative processes, and what I found was a video of Girl Talk creating a mashup from scratch:
Now how cool is that. (Also, big shout out to CeCe Penniston - I <3 that song!)
And I’m lying - I know exactly why I ignored Girl Talk until now: he is big with hipsters, and hipsters get on my nerves. What kills me is that so many of them have no context for the samples Girl Talk uses, or many of the other “retro” 80’s and 90’s hip hop and RnB that they are “in to”. For them it’s novelty, for me it’s my childhood. And what I think I like about Girl Talk is that he seems to get it - the music he samples, whether Teddy Riley or Dusty Springfield, is real for him. And I think that’s what puts him so far ahead of the other mashup artists. < /soapbox>
I am a horrible, horrible blogger. It is time for another last.fm chart exchange, and I am LATE. In my defense, I haven’t been feeling well (hence my lack of blogs period), but at the same time that’s no excuse! So I owe humble apology to my fellow bloggers. So, without further ado…
You guys should remember softjunebreeze, who blogs at Write For Freedom from last month’s exchange. Well, besides posting a great breakdown of the source of Lil’ Wayne’s ‘A Milli’ sample’, she also guest blogs every Monday at Gangstarr Girl (yet another blog you should be reading) for Manic Music Mondays. So go check her out! Her chart for this week:
[John Legend's new album is FIRE. Go get it. Seriously. But I ain't one to gossip so you ain't heard that from me.]
Next up is a new addition to the exchange: Nukirk, who blogs @ Thought Remixer. He says he want to be a “different sort of hip hop blogger”. The post that really sold me on his blog was this one, where he posted a commercial for Guinness Stout featuring Ainsley Burrows. I’ve got quite the soft spot for poets, and his post not only introduced me to someone new, I found the poem incredibly inspiring. I feel like I should get the text and put it on my wall, so I can read anytime I start to doubt myself. But anyway, here’s his chart for the week:
And not, without further ado, my own chart:
So, I went a little game-tastic this week. The first entry comes from my listening to the Final Fantasy XII Piano Soundtrack, and the second entry is “Kow Otani” - the composer for Shadow of the Colossus (an absolutely incredible game and soundtrack). Other than that, my only other comment is that I am a strange, strange person, but then again I own it, so whatever. :D
So. Got a blog? Wanna promote it? Use last.fm? Well then get in on it! Hit me up - laya[dot]white[at]gmail[dot]com.
And now for something completely different, because it’s past 3 4 in the morning, I can’t sleep, and I have fallen down a vast well of youtube videos.
Firstly: if you did not know this about me already, I’m a huge musical nerd. I love musicals in all of their forms: movie or on stage, professionals or community theater or high school, whatever. Honestly, I love the theater period.
I think my first real encounter with musicals was the movie version of West Side Story - which is still one of my favorites. Occasionally I babysat for a friend of my mother’s who had adopted a brother and sister from China. They weren’t allowed to watch any television, but they had a massive library of VHS tapes - mostly homemade. One (or rather two) of those was West Side Story, and I remember being entranced, even though the older child fast forwarded through the “mushy parts” (such as One Hand, One Heart) because she didn’t like them (nowadays I agree - weakest part of the whole movie) and the Rumble, because it “wasn’t appropriate”. Yeah.
Then, I discovered that my Mom had the soundtrack to West Side Story on LP, so I listened to it incessantly, learning all of the songs (and all of the scratches). She heard me, so for Christmas that year, she bought me the movie on VHS, along with The Sound of Music (another favorite). And so it began. (I like dance movies too, but that’s a whole other post.)
Ah, twitter. Supreme time suck, voice of the hive mind, and sometimes the generator of truly awesome ideas.
If you’ve ever looked at any of the blogs listed in my sidebar, you’ll notice one called Write For Freedom. That is the blog of softjunebreeze - a music expert, friend, and all around cool person. We’ve been trading thoughts and comments for a while now - first through livejournal, and now on twitter and through our respective blogs. I *loved* the music-related posts she did from time to time on Lj, so I was quite happy when she announced she was taking it to the blogosphere. (Psssst. You should go check out her blog. Seriously.)
Somewhere in the twitter thoughtgasm, an idea was forged: we should trade last.fm charts! For those that don’t know, last.fm is a music sharing site. You can run a plugin to your favorite player (iTunes is my choice, natch), and it will “scrobble” all of the tracks you play. The site aggregates this date per user, and provides a widget showing your weekly or monthly “charts” by artist or track. (If you look at the very bottom of the blog page, I’ve embedded a widget with whatever I’m currently playing. As I write this, I’ve been on a Bjork kick for the last half hour or so. But I digress.)
Hopefully, this will become a regular thing. So without further ado, this is softjunebreeze’s last.fm chart for the previous week:
And, because it can’t be said enough, go check out her blog, Write For Freedom You won’t be sorry.
And just for shits and giggles, my weekly artist chart:
What’s funny is that it’s going to say one thing now, and something completely different later on when a new week in last.fm time starts. So I can’t even comment on it, lol. I’ll say this - I know there’s going to be a lot of plays of Jazmine Sullivan. If you haven’t copped that yet, what are you waiting for??
