The Mashup is About to Begin
I am typically not one for “mashups”. That is, the word itself. It has that reek of too-clever technological fashion, of self-styled “geeks” living in their own cuddly world of retro computers and anime-on-demand, competing in the same popularity contests that true geeks were said to have once abhorred, long ago. To become one who mashes up, one must affect the sort of tiresome giddiness about every bit of new technology whether it’s useful or not, a booster not for good technology or bad but plain ol’ technology. Podcasting! Warchalking! Mosplogging! It’s new and I love it! That kind of thing. So when you read Boing Boing and ingest precious turns of phrase like “remixing the shantytown” and “salad bar hacking” and about “grokking” various things, just remember that it’s a fashion show, and that you’re buying the same handbags as everybody else, and that most of them will end up in the bottom of your closet.
So, no, I don’t like that “mashups”, not one bit.
Mashups themselves, though? I’m all for ‘em. I’ve drunk deeply of Jay-Z and the Beatles, Notorious B.I.G. and Frank Sinatra, The Flaming Lips and Public Enemy, Franz Ferdinand and David Byrne, and I say give me more. Enough mashups have crossed my purview for me to conclude that this one experiment worked out well. Mashups are hereby permitted to stay.
The concept is nothing new. As a young gangsta, I myself used to dream up remixes of my favourite rap songs, splicing Craig Mack into Lord Finesse and KRS-ONE while I walked home from school. But the technology always seemed out of reach. I never bought records, and could never afford a drum machine or a mixer; even if I could, what the hell would I do with it? That barrier to entry no longer exists. Really, mashups are just remixes, like they’ve always been, but this is a case where the technology has spurred a do-it-yourself renaissance of the form. With a few choice pieces of software and MP3s of one’s favourite band to provide sample fodder, anyone can be Pete Rock for a day.
These mashups nowadays sure are well done. I have to admit that I wasn’t a big fan of Kanye West’s “The College Dropout” when I first heard it. The beats never grabbed me, there was a lot of filler, and it was a bit clubby for my tastes. But the Lush Life makeover using samples from Beach Boys tunes completely turns the record on its head. Listen to the improved “The New Workout Plan” and note its metamorphosis into something upbeat and listenable. There’s almost nothing left of the original, and they’ve found a complete melodic match between the singing parts, the old beat, and the new beat. This remix could only work with the perfect sample, taken from “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”. The transformation is astonishing.
Another example, DJ Food’s Raiding the 20th Century, shows the medium at its most complex, reaching across genres to pull together a rapid-fire assault of every irritating song from the last fifteen years. I could only listen to this MP3 once but I’m glad I did.
The Kleptones are also doing great work, and have lots of their stuff available for download on their web site. Most mashups are free. That makes me feel good about stealing.
I wonder how long it will last, and whether the form will improve or die off. The process of de-expertization—that is, the process by which some skill previously thought as a dark art suddenly becomes easy for the masses by way of a technological innovation—has its growing pains. We all remember what early personal sites were like when the Web was catching on. And the highway is littered with the remains of “revolutionary” tech fads that limped off and died. In a sense, seeing technology applied to popular culture has either opened up new vistas for creativity, or reduced it to a triviality, depending on your perspective. I’ve often wondered how much creativity is enough, and whether our march towards everyone inhabiting little micro-ghettoes of culture is something we all want. Culture does not need to be everywhere, and not everything born from creativity is culture.
People can still express themselves with pen and paper just like they always have, so all this solemn and serious talk by techno-pundits about saving our cultural institutions with high tech rings a bit hollow. With our society now waging a technological arms race in the domain of our collective consciousness, we are going to smack into the pop-cultural plateau with diminishing rate of returns. Bootylicious will be remixed infinitely until the end of time, and it will continue teach us nothing. Every movie ever made will be available in 32×32 animated GIF format, and we still won’t know how to love another person. In short, I don’t think pop culture scales well. It will always exist in some form, but by removing the limitations from pop culture it ceases to be a form with a centre, a custom, and a lexicon. There will never be a Mashup Guild where secrets of the craft are passed down between generations, nor will child prodigies in the field of making Super Mario Brothers theme art out of Post-It notes be put in special schools to hone their craft.
But that’s okay, because it’s all in fun, and as long as we aren’t pretending otherwise, let the mashing-up begin. And it has.
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(3 comments)
how can you be so cynical about the brave new world unfolding around us, as we type …surely even a luddite/misanthrope like you can grasp the importance of a serious art school that brings together knitting skills, film reenactment, and diorama production into one place of higher learning, a crucible, if you will, where new genius may be wrought. Before flickr and the “mash-up,” this brave new future was unimaginable. behold, nick, the glimmer of things to come:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/electricbiscuit/tags/dawnofthedead/
You have touched God, my friend.
Please tell me that you don’t think this is new? Electronic music has been doing this for years. Maybe not to this extent where the action is the revered output. None the less, this isn’t new. “Mashups or Mixes.” I guess everyone needs something that feels new to placate their muddled existences.
Not speaking of you T, of course.
- Ted