[Grandmaster Flash in the mix / 1978] Mashups Defined The foundation of musical mashups can be found in a special kind of Reflexive Remix known as the megamix, which is composed of intricate music and sound samples. The megamix is an extension of the song medley. The difference between a medley and a megamix is that the medley is performed usually by one band, meaning that a set of popular songs will be played in a sequence with the aim to excite the listeners or dancers. A popular example of a medley band is Stars on 45, a studio band put together in 1981 to create a medley of songs by the Archies, the Beatles, and Madness among others.8 A megamix is built upon the same principle of the medley but instead of having a single band playing the compositions, the DJ producer relies strictly on sampling brief sections of songs (often just a few bars enough for the song to be recognized) that are sequenced to create what is in essence an extended collage: an electronic medley consisting of samples from pre-existing sources. Unlike the Extended or the Selective Remixes, the megamix does not allegorize one particular song but many. Its purpose is to present a musical collage riding on a uniting groove to create a type of pastiche that allows the listener to recall a whole time period and not necessarily one single artist or composition. The megamix has its roots in the sampling practice of disco and hip hop. While disco in large part experimented with the Extended Remix, hip hop experimented with the Selective and Reflexive Remixes. Grandmaster Flash may be credited with having experimented in 1981 with an early form of megamix when he recorded "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel,"9 which is essentially an extended mix performed on two turntables with the help of music studio production. The recording included songs by The Sugarhill Gang, The Furious Five, Queen, Blondie and Chic. Flash's mix does not fit comfortably into any of the remix definitions I have provided above. Instead, it vacillates between all of them as a transitional song which in some ways is an Extended Remix of (the early 80's group) Chic's "Good Times" upon which sections from different songs (such as "Another One Bites the Dust" and "Rapture") are brought in for a few bars to then slip back to Chic's groove. Flash's mix is all the while also a Reflexive Remix because it pushes the overall composition to attain its own independence by the quick juxtaposition of the songs. But in the end, the slipperiness of the recording is mainly invested in exploring the creative possibilities of the DJ mixing records on two turntables as quickly as possible. The influence of the cutting and switching from one record to another found in this particular recording can be sensed in megamixes that were produced in the music studio from actual samples. Some examples from the history of electro-funk are "Tommy Boy Megamix" produced in 1984 which is a six minute remix of the most popular songs produced by the hip hop label Tommy Boy; the megamix includes compositions by Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force, as well as Planet Patrol and Jonzun Crew among others.10 The music mashups of today follow the principle of the eighties megamix, and unlike the Selective or Extended Remixes, they do not remix one particular composition but at least two or more sources. Mashups are special types of Reflexive Remixes, which at times are regressive—meaning that they simply point back to the "greatness" of the original track by celebrating it as a remix; this tendency to take the listener back to the original song logically leads us to name such remix a Regressive Mashup. Some popular music mashups are "A Stroke of Genie-us" produced in 2001 by DJ Roy Kerr, who took Christina Aguilera's lyrics from "Genie in a bottle" and mashed them with instrumental sections of "Hard to Explain" by the Strokes.11 Another example is a mega-mashup by Mark Vidler which includes, among other songs, Madonna's "Ray of Light" and the Sex Pistol's "Problems."12 But perhaps the most popular and polemical mashup up to date is a full-length album by Danger Mouse titled The Grey Album, which is a mashup of Jay-Z's special acapella version of his Black Album with carefully selected sections from the Beatles' White Album.13 The Grey Album is important because it is completely sampled. One can argue that it is one of the most important sampling experiments, along with Marrs's "Pump Up The Volume"14 which can be considered as an early mashup still relying on the concept of a uniting groove as first experimented on the turntables by Grandmaster Flash. The Grey Album goes further because it exposed the tensions of copyrights and sampling with emerging technologies: Danger Mouse deliberately used the Internet for distribution and he pushed EMI (the copyright holders of the Beatles' White Album) to take the Grey Album off line.15 The creative power of all these megamixes and mashups lies in the fact that even when they extend, select from, or reflect upon many recordings, much like the Extended, Selective and Reflexive Remixes, their authority is allegorical—their effectiveness depends on the recognition of pre-existing recordings. This becomes the norm once the concept of mashups moves to other areas of culture, supporting forms of entertainment and consumerism; however, this norm can be disrupted with Web 2.0 applications, as we will see below. |
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