Mash-Ups (sometimes one word : "Mashups") are a new musical art-form phenomenon. In a nutshell, the artist takes tracks from two separate bands and re-mixes two songs (one from each album) together, thus "mashing them up". If you go to Amazon.com and search for "Mashup" you'll find they carry 2 or 3 CD's in this genre.
However, the most-famous mash-up is a combination of The Beatles' Sgt. Peppers and the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds. An aspiring musician / techno-geek named Clayton Counts re-mixed the songs from these two albums, and distributed a few copies among his friends. He even got a couple radio interviews and one or two mentions in music magazines, due to this new art-form.
The tracks are interesting, but unimpressive. By Clay's own admission, he did the whole job in about an hour. This isn't serious music; it's something you'll listen to for about 5 minutes when totally drunk (or otherwise) and say, "Weird. Now can we listen to actual songs?"
However, that's not the way the goons at EMI Music (Capitol Records) saw it. They have brought suit against Clayton, wanting not only mega-$$$ for "lost revenue", but also demanding the identities and IP addresses of everyone to whom Clay sent a copy.
Clay, being an aspiring musician, isn't worried about the money. EMI can take every cent he has, and it still wouldn't make it out of small-claims court. But he is refusing to turn over the names & IP addresses to the jerks at EMI.
Support Clay and his fight against the EMI bastards! Boycott EMI and Capitol Records! You can google "Beachles" and/or "Clayton Counts" to read the full story and see what else you can do in this matter. The claim of "lost revenue" is bogus. This is "art" at best; "techno-geekery" at worst and the actions by EMI are nothing more than malicious bullying for no reason.
Friday, October 27, 2006
Mash-Up Madness
Mash-Ups (sometimes one word : "Mashups") are a new musical art-form phenomenon. In a nutshell, the artist takes tracks from two separate bands and re-mixes two songs (one from each album) together, thus "mashing them up". If you go to Amazon.com and search for "Mashup" you'll find they carry 2 or 3 CD's in this genre.
However, the most-famous mash-up is a combination of The Beatles' Sgt. Peppers and the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds. An aspiring musician / techno-geek named Clayton Counts re-mixed the songs from these two albums, and distributed a few copies among his friends. He even got a couple radio interviews and one or two mentions in music magazines, due to this new art-form.
The tracks are interesting, but unimpressive. By Clay's own admission, he did the whole job in about an hour. This isn't serious music; it's something you'll listen to for about 5 minutes when totally drunk (or otherwise) and say, "Weird. Now can we listen to actual songs?"
However, that's not the way the goons at EMI Music (Capitol Records) saw it. They have brought suit against Clayton, wanting not only mega-$$$ for "lost revenue", but also demanding the identities and IP addresses of everyone to whom Clay sent a copy.
Clay, being an aspiring musician, isn't worried about the money. EMI can take every cent he has, and it still wouldn't make it out of small-claims court. But he is refusing to turn over the names & IP addresses to the jerks at EMI.
Support Clay and his fight against the EMI bastards! Boycott EMI and Capitol Records! You can google "Beachles" and/or "Clayton Counts" to read the full story and see what else you can do in this matter. The claim of "lost revenue" is bogus. This is "art" at best; "techno-geekery" at worst and the actions by EMI are nothing more than malicious bullying for no reason.
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3 comments:
A few points, because you got a lot of this wrong. This mash-up is by no means the most famous, but it is becoming one of them. It was mentioned in countless places, and not just a couple of magazines.
Clayton has done more than a dozen radio interviews, and according to at least one source he'll be speaking at several colleges next year. He said the record took him 35 hours to make, which seems about right.
Also, he's a semi-recognized composer, not an "aspiring musician." (He's 33, and has a Wikipedia entry.)
Mash-ups aren't really a new art form anymore, either, but I do support Clayton. His record is a fine experimental piece if you ask me. As someone said, vaguely awful, but an interesting listen besides.
Thanks for the info, anon! I'll have to go back and re-read the websites from which I got this data. Certainly only taking 1 hour to mix 14 tracks seems impossible. Given that Clayton's first 35-hour effort turned out to be vaguely-awful-but-interesting, I'd certainly like to see what he could do if he had, say, 6 weeks to do the mash-ups. In listening to the tracks of Sgt. Petsounds, a lot of the mixing seems a bit sloppily done, and there also seems to be a great deal of repetitiveness.
The main thing is to make people aware of EMI's pointless nastiness. Its not like Clayton's mash-up is depriving them of any $$$. You'd think they'd simply ask for a token fee for using the tracks from these two albums. But nooooo, they feel they have to make an example of Clay.
I agree totally about EMI. In an interview on his blog, Clayton says, "this record isn't just sloppy, but explicitly forbidding and intended for a fringe audience."
A listen to his original music is all the proof you need that he's being sincere, but he did have some listener-friendly mixes on his site before EMI made him take them down. I really liked his Wings vs. Ne-Yo mash-up. He's been DJing professionally for years, so he definitely knew what he was doing.
At more than an hour long, it's likely that it took him more than an hour to make it. True, it's really hard to make it all the way through the Beachles, but there are surprises that you won't get out of other mash-ups. It's very clever in some ways.
Outsider music fans are sure to appreciate this piece, if for nothing more than a laugh. Clayton's blog is a great place to find weird music. It's easy to see why he would choose to make it so difficult. He said that he wanted to create something painful as a novelty, because nobody would expect it from a marriage of the Beatles and Beach Boys.
Anyway, he made something that a lot of people paid attention to, and I'll bet some of the people who hated it feel pretty stupid for getting so worked up. This is a funny record.
Tim
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