M Is FOR MASHUP - March 25th, 2009
The World's Most Beautiful Mashups
By DJ Useo
I've heard many a type of mashup in my years in the field,from hip hop to rock to glitch, & although many were quite lovely, I'd sensed the need for a compilation of tracks so lovely, they'd elicit deep emotional response. I checked around & soon found mixers with the skill to do such a type of track, but the project stalled due to the demands of style. Many people could do a fantastically great track, but not quite make the mark of a 'beautiful mashup'. When I found the ones able to manage it, though, I decided to stick with just those bootleggers, & expand the quota of tracks each would contribute. Well, it worked like a dream, & with Alpha1999, Qubic, Sfreeman & DJ Newlight by my side we set to work filling up an entire disc.
Well, it went better than I expected & the project swelled to 2 files & 1 1/2 hours of incredible tracks. You can hear for yourself by going to
groovytimewithdjuseo.blogspot.com/2009/03/beautiful-bootsthe-beautiful-mashup.html I was overwhelmed with the response from listeners when the radio premiere of the comp occurred at
www.sound-unsound.com this last monday. DJ Petrushka gave an incredible performance as host for the show, & the listeners gave incredibly positive feedback on every track. In fact, so many attended the show, it set a new record for station attendance. A rewarding feeling that. Like someone handing you money every few minutes! lol
With contributors like Qubic & Sfreeman, it was certain to be a hit, & the tunes fulfill the promise of their reputations. The album begins with Qubic's 'L'E?ternel Enfant Roi' (Noir Desir vs YELLo), a track of exsquisite beauty made much more so by the advanced arrangement & mixing of it's creator. More soul-melting music appears in the form of Alpha1999's 'In Crockett's Mekanik Tonight' (Phil Collins vs Jan Hammer vs Bass Mekanik), a track recently premiered, but not released in the
RAMDOM THOUGHTS mashup/bootleg podcast mentioned in
last week's column here. Sfreeman is widely acknowledged as the master of the 'FIDGET' bootleg, yet he exhibits the control of a master with his divine tracks, such as 'Walk This Blacker Than Planetaria Land' (4Hero vs EZ-Rollers vs Gil Scott Heron) & 'Another Day In AA With XXX' (Peaches vs Dragonette).
Alpha1999 has recently retired from bootlegging for the most part yet generously gave so many excellent tracks I had to use them all! DJ Newlight is an old hand at dj-ing (but not an old man, lol) yet new to the mashup scene, but he still dropped some incredible tones with his 'Ocean Drums Sunrise' (Jerry Ropero & Michael Simon Feat. Kathy Brown vs DJ Sledge Hammer & Chris Da House) & 'Take Me To The House Above' (LMC vs U2 vs Jürgen Dee Vs Axel S). Thanks much, all of you for caring about my little project. Also, thanks to the fantastic artists we cut up & sampled. All-Stars like Queen, Billy Idol, Prince & Abba, along with the latest crop like Hybrid, DHT & Prisma. You all retain full rights to your work, we only ask that you allow us to demonstrate our mixing ability with a small-release free compilation.
Feel free to download, listen & hopefully tell your friends. Our only reward is a modest 'thanks' from you, the intended audience. Although, I wouldn't say 'no' to tips (!) LMAO.
Mix Of The Week - DJ R-Ron Hubbard, he of
www.blentwell.com (& more), fame, has a new mix featured in Blentcast #11. N-Ron Hubbard is 23 tracks of dancefloor friendly beats, mashups, booming Baile funk and more N-Ron bizness. Get yours
here
www.blentwell.com/blentcast/blentcast11.html
or go the whole hog route & sign up for the podcast series. Blentwell! Have you been there yet?
Mashup Tip : Play your mashups for gerbils before posting, they are great at spotting a winner.
DJ Useo's Podcast
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Sara Mosle: The Educational Experiment We Really Need (slate.com)
What the Knowledge Is Power Program has yet to prove.
Scott Burns: Is Your Employer Match Being Wasted? (assetbuilder.com)
Imagine you lost as much money in your 401(k) plan as you've lost in the last year -- only it happened slowly. You'd still be unhappy, right? Well, that is happening to millions of workers. Fortunately, you can do something about it.
Katha Pollitt: Is It Morally Wrong Not to Send Thousands Each Year to the Developing World? (The Nation. Posted on Alternet.org)
Controversial ethicist Peter Singer says that the destitution abroad compells us to share our wealth, even in an economic crisis.
Walter Tunis: Dexter Romweber is duo-ing what he does best (McClatchy Newspapers)
The first thing you notice is the source material. Actually, that's a lie. Before anything, there are the variations of the two-member-band sound Dexter Romweber has been pioneering for the past two decades. But once they settle into your skull, you are alerted to the inspirations he digs into and the generations he unleashes them upon.
Chris Riemenschneider: Kids' music is the newest rock frontier (Star Tribune)
He once landed a major record deal at the South by Southwest Music Conference, but Honeydogs frontman Adam Levy returned to the music industry's biggest bash last week with a new goal: To get the attention of 6-year-olds instead of the six-digit deals of old.
Steve Horowitz: Review of Jorma Kaukonen's "River of Time" (popmatters.com)
Nobody does the acoustic blues better these days than the founder of Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna guitarist, Jorma Kaukonen. His warm, laidback approach soothes the troubled mind, so fittingly he covers the old blues chestnut, "Trouble in Mind". He coos the lyrics while his fingers deftly pick out the notes like a schoolchild plucking berries from a briar patch. When he sings, "But I won't be blue always", you believe him and can imagine the sun shining down on him.
David Wild: Leave that Smashing Pumpkin Alone, Bitches: In Defense of Billy Corgan (huffingtonpost.com)
If you're only going to have one original member of Smashing Pumpkins left, at least we've got the right man for the job.
"The Aeneid" by Vergil: A review by Garry Wills (powells.com)
Just two years ago, Robert Fagles, shortly before his death, set the bar very high for translating Vergil's Aeneid. Yet already the scholar-poet Sarah Ruden has soared over the bar. She does this despite submission to a trying discipline. She decides to translate one-line-per-one-line, and she uses the iambic pentameter.
Neal Justin: McKellen's 'King Lear' comes to the most convenient theater in the world: your living room (Star Tribune)
Catching Ian McKellen's tour-de-force performance at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis required connections, a small fortune or lots of luck. Now all you need is a TV set.
Interview with Zac EFRON By GUS VAN SANT (interviewmagazine.com)
EFRON: I just bought this place. It's not big or anything, but it's a pretty unique space. It's very modern, very clean, very simple. It's got concrete floors so I can't screw it up. I can skateboard inside the house . . . You know, all the essentials are there. I just don't want to buy nice furniture and then f**k it all up.
J.M. Suarez: Review of "Twilight" (popmatters.com)
While Meyers' books tend toward formulaic characterizations, Hardwicke takes the material and successfully transforms it into a subtle, layered atmospheric film.
Scott Mendelson: In Defense of Nicolas Cage (huffingtonpost.com)
As seems to happen whenever Nicolas Cage releases a commercial movie such as "Knowing," the critics and pundits are bitterly asking just what happened to this once brilliant, artistically inclined thespian and why oh why has be sold out? Guess what folks. Nicolas Cage is still Nicolas Cage and he's always been the same quirky, half-insane goofball who would eventually name his son Kal El (yeah, I love Batman, but I didn't name my daughter Selina, Pamela, or Talia). The difference is one of expectations and selective memory.
The Weekly Poll
Results Delayed
The 'Shared Sacrifice' Edition
The New York Times, in an article Sunday, Administration Is Open to Taxing Health Benefits - NYTimes.com , reports that the Obama Administration is open to the idea of taxing certain employer provided health benefits as a way to help finance health care for the uninsured. Would you support such an approach?
Send your response, and a (short) reason why, to
Stuff happened - the results will be delayed another day.
Which Gilligan's Island' regular had a Top 40 hit in 1958?
wrote:
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Nice and sunny.
US Journalists Interrogated
Current TV
Two American journalists seized by North Korean border guards are facing "intense interrogation" in Pyongyang for alleged espionage after illegally crossing into the country from China, a report said Tuesday.
Laura Ling and Euna Lee, journalists working for former Vice President Al Gore's San Francisco-based Current TV, were at a guesthouse in Pyongyang's outskirts run by North Korean military intelligence, the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said, citing an unidentified South Korean intelligence official.
The report provided first word of the women's whereabouts since they disappeared March 17 during a trip to the border near North Korea's far northwest. A colleague detained on the Chinese side left China on Tuesday.
South Korea's main spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, and the Unification Ministry said they could not confirm the details, reportedly obtained using "human intelligence" - sources on the ground.
Current TV
Memorial Award for Literature
Astrid Lindgren
A Palestinian organization that promotes children's reading on Tuesday was named the winner of the 2009 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for Literature by the Swedish Arts Council.
The annual award, named after late Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren, is the world's largest children's book award and includes a cash prize of 5 million kronor ($620,000).
The Palestinian Tamer Institute For Community Education received the award for its work to promote reading in the West Bank and Gaza.
The award was established by the Swedish government in 2002 to commemorate Lindgren, whose characters such as Pippi Longstocking and Karlsson on the Roof have captivated generations of children around the world.
Astrid Lindgren
Hosting TBS Late-Night Talk Show
George Lopez
TBS says George Lopez will start a new talk show in November. It will air Monday through Thursday at 11 p.m., and Lopez promises an outdoor street-party atmosphere.
Lopez starred for six seasons in an ABC sitcom. He's getting into late-night at a time of change, with Conan O'Brien taking over NBC's "Tonight" show in June and Jimmy Fallon now hosting NBC's "Late Night."
Lopez's show, which will be based in Los Angeles, will feature celebrity guests, comedy and music.
George Lopez
Auctions Font-Row Tickets
The Dead
The Dead are looking to jump-start their charities while aiming a swift kick at ticket scalpers.
Band members announced Tuesday that people who want to sit in the first few rows at their spring tour concerts can bypass scalpers by bidding for tickets the group held back and is now putting up for auction online.
Guitarist Bob Weir says people who bid through charityfolks.com must collect their tickets the day of the show, decreasing the possibility of scalping.
Proceeds will benefit a number of charities the group has supported for years, including its Rex Foundation, which was established by the Grateful Dead in 1983.
The Dead
"Made-To-Order" DVD Service
Warner Bros
Warner Bros on Monday became the first studio to open its film vault to "made-to-order" DVDs, as it sought new revenues in a slumping DVD market by making it possible for fans to buy decades-old films.
Warner Bros, owned by Time Warner Inc, made an initial batch of 150 titles available for purchase online at www.WarnerArchive.com , including 1943 comedy-romance "Mr. Lucky" starring Cary Grant and the 1962 release "All Fall Down" with Warren Beatty and Eva Marie Saint.
Sales are not expected to approach those of new releases on DVD, but the service gives Warner Bros another way to make money from a film archive it already exploits by selling titles for broadcast in the United States and internationally.
Warner Bros. said that each month it will make about 20 films and television programs from its archive available for purchase through this DVD-on-demand program.
Warner Bros
Mass Grave
Duffy's Cut
Researchers may have discovered a mass grave for nearly five dozen 19th-century Irish immigrants who died of cholera weeks after traveling to Pennsylvania to build a railroad. Historians at Immaculata University have known for years about the 57 immigrants who died in August 1832 but could not find the grave.
Human bones discovered last week near the suburban Philadelphia university may at last reveal their final resting place - and possibly allow researchers to identify the remains and repatriate them.
The woodsy site where the bones were found is known as Duffy's Cut. It is named after Philip Duffy, who hired the immigrants from Donegal, Tyrone and Derry to help build the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad.
Research led history professor William Watson to conclude many of the Irish workers died of cholera, an acute intestinal infection caused by contaminated food or water that typically had a mortality rate of 40 percent to 60 percent.
Watson believes some of the workers may have been murdered because of their illness or ethnicity. There was general prejudice against Irish Catholics, tension between residents and the transient workers, and a great fear of cholera - especially among the affluent classes, Watson said.
Duffy's Cut
Blocking The YouTubes
China
China is not afraid of the Internet, its Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday, even as access to the popular video sharing site YouTube appeared to be blocked.
YouTube has been unavailable for users in China, which filters the Internet for content critical of Communist Party rule, since late on Monday.
"Many people have a false impression that the Chinese government fears the Internet. In fact it is just the opposite," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters.
Qin said China's 300 million Internet users and 100 million blogs showed that "China's internet is open enough, but also needs to be regulated by law in order to prevent the spread of harmful information and for national security."
China
WLS Radio Host
Blagojevich
Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has a new gig - as a radio talk show host.
WLS-AM program director Bob Shomper says Blagojevich will be on the air on the Chicago station Wednesday morning, taking calls from listeners, telling stories and talking with guests.
Shomper says it's a one-time deal in a slot normally filled by hosts who are off this week.
In January, WLS offered Blagojevich his own weekend radio show if he agreed to resign as governor.
Blagojevich
Auction Squabble
Michael Jackson
When troubled pop king Michael Jackson is involved, even a yard sale can become an epic struggle.
A Hollywood auction house hired by Jackson to sell off the contents of his shuttered Neverland Ranch said it is pressing ahead with plans to put some 2,000 items on the block in April, despite the pop legend's surprise bid this month to halt the sale.
Jackson filed a lawsuit in early March, claiming that he had never given permission for the sale of many "priceless and irreplaceable" items.
Julien estimated that the sale could bring in $10 million to $20 million - money that Jackson could desperately use. He reportedly has been experiencing financial problems for several years, and has not performed a major concert since 2001 - four years before his acquittal on child molestation charges. He recently announced a series of concerts in London that sold out in hours.
Michael Jackson
Fights To Keep Van Gogh
Yale
Yale University is suing to assert its rights to keep a renowned Vincent van Gogh painting and to block a descendant of the original owner from claiming the work.
Yale filed the lawsuit in New Haven against Pierre Konowaloff, who says he is the great-grandson of Ivan Morozov, a Russian industrialist and aristocrat. Morozov owned "The Night Cafe."
Morozov's paintings and other property were nationalized by the Russian government during the Communist revolution.
Yale says it wants to remove any cloud over its ownership of the painting.
Yale
Pilot Convicted
Prayer Kills
A Tunisian pilot who paused to pray instead of taking emergency measures before crash-landing his plane, killing 16 people, has been sentenced to 10 years in jail by an Italian court along with his co-pilot.
The 2005 crash at sea off Sicily left survivors swimming for their lives, some clinging to a piece of the fuselage that remained floating after the ATR turbo-prop aircraft splintered upon impact.
A fuel-gauge malfunction was partly to blame but prosecutors also said the pilot succumbed to panic, praying out loud instead of following emergency procedures and then opting to crash-land the plane instead trying to reach a nearby airport.
Another five employees of Tuninter, a subsidiary of Tunisair, were sentenced to between eight and nine years in jail by the court, in a verdict handed down Monday.
Prayer Kills
Prime-Time Nielsens
Ratings
Prime-time viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen Media Research for March 16-22. Listings include the week's ranking, with viewership for the week and season-to-date rankings in parentheses. An "X" in parentheses denotes a one-time-only presentation.
1. (1) "American Idol" (Wednesday), Fox, 23.71 million viewers.
2. (2) "American Idol" (Tuesday), Fox, 21.89 million viewers.
3. (3) "Dancing With The Stars" (Monday), ABC, 21.22 million viewers.
4. (10) "60 Minutes," CBS, 17.04 million viewers.
5. (5) "NCIS," CBS, 15.84 million viewers.
6. (8) "The Mentalist," CBS, 15.49 million viewers.
7. (9) "Desperate Housewives," ABC, 14.75 million viewers.
8. (13) "Grey's Anatomy," ABC, 14.61 million viewers.
9. (11) "Two and a Half Men," CBS, 14.12 million viewers.
10. (11) "Criminal Minds," CBS, 13.74 million viewers.
11. (14) "CSI: Miami," CBS, 13.61 million viewers.
12. (18) "House," Fox, 13.13 million viewers.
13. (16) "CSI: NY," CBS, 12.79 million viewers.
14. (5) "Dancing With The Stars" (Tuesday), ABC, 12.74 million viewers.
15. (31) "Amazing Race 14," CBS, 12.42 million viewers.
16. (19) "Without a Trace," CBS, 11.87 million viewers.
17. (25) "Rules Of Engagement," CBS, 11.42 million viewers.
18. (21) "Cold Case," CBS, 11.41 million viewers.
19. (19) "24," Fox, 11.36 million viewers.
20. (28) "Castle," ABC, 10.96 million viewers.
Ratings
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