M Is FOR MASHUP - November 17th, 2021
First Mashup Experience
By DJ Useo
Howdy, again, neighbors! Y’know, I’ve been through one wild ride with a career in making mashups. Lots of peaks & even a few lows over the years. It would never have happened though, if I hadn’t heard the first one I did. It was a track by Go Home Productions called “Paperback Believer” ( The Monkees vs The Beatles )
( www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4EJpUKEPYI )
I found the track posted to an early, long gone bootleg blog from Britain called “Boom Selection”. What a hoot that track was. So smooth of play with a sound that seemed like it began that way. My biggest reaction, even over the high pleasure, was “How the heck did he create this?” It seems that around the early 2000’s, DJ’s eschewed scissors & tape as the best way to create bootlegs in exchange for the updated software methods.
These new audio applications allowed bootleggers to do proper extractions that begat incredible productions that elevated the entire genre. Nowadays, I find that I can mostly do tracks from any source, & I’m already familiar with even better, not affordable apps that will bring us to another generation of even more mashups ( When we can afford them ).
So, long way around, I’m asking you now to send me a note detailing the first mashup you heard, & your response. As my way of thanking you for the effort, I’ll reward anyone who writes with a personalized mashup of your request. I’m quite interested in what you Bartcop E readers say, so please consider writing.
To show the influence of mashups on me, here’s what I just made from 2 songs I discovered in the top ten - "Fancy Like Industry Baby" ( Walker Hayes f Kesha vs Lil Nas X )
( sowndhaus.audio/track/26049/dj-useo-fancy-like-industry-baby-walker-hayes-f-kesha-vs-lil-nas-x- )
I was quite pleased to wake up this morning to see the initial response was very favorable.
Catch y’all next week when I run your responses. Send them here - useo8@yahoo.com
from Bruce
Anecdotes
Choreographers
• One must suffer to have the experience to create a credible work of art about suffering. When Gus Solomons, Jr., was a young man, he choreographed his first dance and he put a lot of pain in it. The piece used percussive music, and Mr. Solomons pounded his bare-chested body, exhausting himself in the first three minutes of the dance. When he showed the dance to Murray Louis, Mr. Louis asked, “Gus, what was all that suffering about? What do you know about suffering?”
• Early in his career, while he was still performing in 1959 with Martha Graham’s company, Paul Taylor performed a work by George Balanchine titled Episodes. Mr. Balanchine told Mr. Taylor that while he was dancing in it he should pretend to be a fly that was trapped in a glass of milk.
Christmas
• Early in life, L. Frank Baum, who later became successful as the writer of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, went bankrupt and lost his newspaper, the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer. He told his friends, “I decided the sheriff wanted the paper more than I did.” By the way, Christmas was a special time at the house of Mr. Baum. One year, his house had four Christmas trees placed in the corners of a room — one Christmas tree for each of his children.
• Comedian Jim Carrey’s family was funny. On Christmas, sometimes his father, mother, siblings, and Jim himself would go outside, put stockings over their heads, and wave axes at astonished passersby like a bunch of demented axe murderers. Even when he was a kid, Jim knew that he wanted to be a comedian. When he was 10 years old, he sent a resume — a short one — to the producers of The Carol Burnett Show. Unfortunately, he never received an answer.
• Actor Sheldon Leonard received interesting compensation for appearing as Nick the bartender in the Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life. He did the part in return for two season tickets to the Dodgers baseball games.
Clothing
• While in Monte Carlo, Ellen Graham’s sister needed a formal gown. The prices in Monte Carlo were too high, and she didn’t have time to return to her apartment in Paris to pick up one of her own gowns, so Ellen volunteered to lend her something made of shocking pink gossamer. Later, Ellen’s friend, comedian Beatrice Lillie, asked her, “Why haven’t I seen you in that before?” Ellen replied, “Because it’s my nightgown.”
• British comedian Victoria Wood says that no TV people ever tried to interfere with her comic material, but they did try to interfere with the clothing she wore — by insisting that she wear dresses, Fed up, she went to the producer and asked, “Excuse me, can I please wear trousers?” He replied, “Yes — don’t bother me now.” Problem solved.
• A young lieutenant asked General John Pershing to be excused from a parade because his clothing had not yet returned from the laundry. Discovering that the lieutenant needed a white collar and a pair of white gloves, General Pershing lent him the needed clothing, saying, “Here, take these. I washed them myself yesterday.”
Comedy and Comedians
• Back when the radio program Allen’s Alley was popular, its host, comedian Fred Allen, didn’t worry too much about ending his show exactly when it was supposed to end. If it ended 45 seconds or even two or three minutes late, that was close enough for him. (These days, when making money from commercials is paramount, the audience would not even hear the end of the show, just a commercial.) Allen’s Alley was followed by the program Take It or Leave It, and midway through the radio season, Take It or Leave It suddenly broke into Allen’s Alley, claiming that it had stolen 15 minutes away from Take It or Leave It and therefore Take It or Leave It was going to start 15 minutes early and take back all the time that Allen’s Alley had stolen from it. By the way, Mr. Allen was known for keeping his cool under pressure. On one radio show, he cracked a joke that got only one laugh. Unperturbed, he remarked, “As that one lone laugh goes ricocheting around the studio, we move to a selection by Al Goodman and his orchestra.”
***
© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
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Presenting
Michael Egan
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Ya Make It So Hard to Sing the Blues"
Album: TAKE IT WITH YOU
Artist: Katie Knipp
Artist Location: Rocklin, California
Info:
“Two-time Top Ten Billboard Chart Topper in Blues Albums, and two-time Sacramento music award winner for Best Blues Artist, Katie is lighting the stages from solo act to full band. Katie Knipp has opened for many legends like Robert Cray, Jimmie Vaughan, Ruthie Foster, Tim Reynolds, The James Hunter Six, The Doobie Brothers, Jon Cleary, and more.”
Katie Knipp: Vocals, Piano, Dobro Guitar, Harmonica, Tambourine, Hammond Organ
Neil Campisano: Drums and Percussion
Zachary Proteau: Bass and Tuba
Brett Vaughn Rechtfertig: Electric Guitar
Chet Chwalik: Trumpet and horn arrangements on “Another Round”
Al Bent: Trombone
Scott Brill-Lehn: Harmony Vocal on “I Don’t Sing for You”
All songs written by: Katie Knipp (ASCAP), copyright 2018, all rights reserved.
Price: $1 (USD) for track; $9.99 (USD) for 10-track album
Genre: Blues. Americana.
Links:
TAKE IT WITH YOU
Katie Knipp on Bandcamp
Katie Knipp on YouTube
Other Links:
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: FREE pdfs
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
David Bruce's Blog #2
David Bruce's Blog #3
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
David E Suggests
Seventh Generation Amendment
New Venture
Michael Egan
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Coup Plotter guy
Effective and persistent, this man is amazing:
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Gas up to $4.35/gal (cash) at the no-name station - $4.45/gal for credit. $4.77/gal at the brand-name station.
Hosting ‘Trivial Pursuit’ Game Show
LeVar Burton
LeVar Burton may not be the next host of Jeopardy!, but his love for quiz shows has landed him another gig: Trivial Pursuit.
The Star Trek and Reading Rainbow favorite will host a new Trivial Pursuit TV game show that is being produced by game maker Hasbro and Entertainment One. A network is not yet attached. Burton’s involvement, however, should make the series easy to sell.
Burton will exec produce the series via his LeVar Burton Entertainment banner. Hasbro, which owns the rights to the iconic board game, will exec produce the series. EOne’s Long and Geno McDermott as well as LBE’s Sangita Patel will also be credited as exec producers.
Trivial Pursuit is available in more than 26 countries in 17 languages. More than 100 million copies of the game have been sold worldwide since it was created in 1979. Multiple TV adaptations have come before the Burton-hosted edition, including one in the early 1990s that was hosted by Wink Martindale and a syndicated version that aired in 2008-09 and was hosted by Christopher Knight.
LeVar Burton
Record $34.9M At Auction
Frida Kahlo
A painting by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo has sold at Sotheby's auction house in New York for a record $34.9m (£25m).
It is the highest price paid at auction for a Latin American artwork.
The record had previously been set by a work by Diego Rivera, with whom Kahlo had a decades-long tumultuous relationship. His piece sold for $9.76m in 2018.
Kahlo's painting "Diego y Yo" was was one of her final self-portraits.
The painting was last auctioned in 1990 for $1.4 million.
Frida Kahlo
Testifies To Congressional Committee
Eliza Dushku
Eliza Dushku testified before a congressional committee on Tuesday about being “fired in silence” from the CBS series Bull, as she detailed her sexual harassment claims against co-star Michael Weatherly and then, after she complained, being let go from the series and forced into arbitration and a non-disclosure agreement.
The actress told members of the House Judiciary Committee that she was able to “break that silence” as she was responding to a congressional subpoena to testify.
“Countless others who are bound by arbitration are not so fortunate,” said Dushku, appearing virtually. She has gone public with some of her claims before.
The committee hearing was titled Silenced: How Forced Arbitration Keeps Victims of Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment in the Shadow. It was held as lawmakers weigh new legislation to eliminate forced arbitration clauses in employment, consumer and civil rights cases. The Judiciary Committee has scheduled a vote on the bill on Wednesday.
Dushku said that as she looked into her legal options, she found that the mandatory arbitration clause in her contract “would be used to keep what had happened to me a secret and would protect CBS and the sexual harassment perpetrator who had blatantly retaliated against me for trying to stop the harassment in my workplace.”
Eliza Dushku
Salary Disparity
Kirsten Dunst
When 19-year-old Kirsten Dunst was cast as Mary Jane in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, she was featured prominently.
She was front-and-center in the movie’s most iconic scene: the unforgettable upside-down-in-the-rain kiss. It was a rare role where, instead of just being treated as “the girlfriend,” Mary Jane was rightfully given a personality. In fact, a scene where she stands up for herself while working as a waitress was recently meme-ified. Dunst was also featured alongside Tobey Maguire in one of the posters for the movie. But looking back, Dunst says she was paid far less than Maguire for the role—despite being a well-established actor at that point.
“The pay disparity between me and Spider-Man was very extreme,” she tells The Independent writer Alexandra Pollard in a new profile. “I didn’t even think about it. I was just like, ‘Oh yeah, Tobey is playing Spider-Man.’ But you know who was on the cover of the second Spider-Man poster? Spider-Man and ME.”
She also recalls that, for Spider-Man, a producer took her to the dentist without her consent in order to fix her teeth. He drove her there without telling her what was going on, and she realized what was happening when they arrived. “I was like, ‘Mmmmm, no, I like my teeth.” She adds, “Also, Sofia [Coppola] loved my teeth.”
Kirsten Dunst
U.S. Price Increases
Drugmakers
Drugmakers hiked U.S. prices on seven of the 10 costliest prescription drugs in 2020 without justification, increasing drug spending by $1.67 billion, a U.S. group that reviews the value of medicines said on Tuesday.
AbbVie Inc's widely used Humira rheumatoid arthritis drug accounted for the majority of the spending increase, with a net price increase of 9.6% leading to an almost $1.4 billion increase in U.S. spending.
The Boston-based Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) said in a report that after reviewing published studies and input from drug manufacturers it found no evidence of new clinical benefits to justify the price hikes.
"Several of these treatments have been on the market for many years, with scant evidence that they are any more effective than we understood them to be years ago when they cost far less," said ICER Chief Medical Officer David Rind.
"The most extreme of these is Humira, with an ever-escalating U.S. price that contrasts starkly to its falling price in every country where Humira currently faces biosimilar competition," he said in a statement. Humira received U.S. regulatory approval in 2002.
Drugmakers
Copy Of Constitution
Crypto Investors
A group of crypto investors is pooling funds to buy a rare copy of the US Constitution, which is expected to fetch up to $20m at auction.
The document, which is to be sold at Sotheby’s on Thursday is a first-edition printed copy of the US constitution, one of just 11 surviving copies from a 500-print run in 1787.
It’s the only one still in private hands, while all of the other copies are owned by institutions, reports CNN.
ConstitutionDAO, a decentralised autonomous organisation, has so far raised 830 ether worth more than $3.7m in its efforts to buy it. If the group is successful in its bid, it says it plans to preserve and protect the document, and hopes to find a home for it somewhere like the Smithsonian, according to its website.
This copy of the US Constitution was bought for $165,000 in 1988 when it was acquired by the late S Howard Goldman, a New York real estate developer. His wife, Dorothy Tapper Goldman, is now selling it and has said all proceeds will go to the charitable foundation established in her name, to further the public’s understanding of democracy according to Sotheby’s.
Crypto Investors
US Population Center
Hartville, Missouri
Some people might describe Hartville, Missouri, as being in the middle of nowhere, but the U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday announced that it’s the closest town to the middle of the nation.
The hamlet of about 600 people in the Missouri Ozarks is located about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from the center of the U.S. population distribution, according to the Census Bureau.
The town is the type of place where families have been farming for generations, everybody knows each other and people stay for the “small-town living,” said Sabrina Gilliland, 38, a paralegal for the local prosecutor, who lives on a family farm with her four children, cattle, pigs and chickens.
The nation’s population center is calculated every 10 years after the once-a-decade census shows where people are living. The heart of America has been located in Missouri since 1980. Previously located in Plato, Missouri, in the neighboring county, it moved only 11.8 miles (19 kilometers) southwest from 2010 to 2020. It is the smallest distance shift in 100 years and the second-smallest in U.S. history.
It also was the southernmost shift in history, said Deirdre Bishop, the Census Bureau’s chief of geography.
Hartville, Missouri
Ends Up In Maine
Roadrunner
A wayward roadrunner is on the mend in Maine after traveling across the country in a moving van.
The greater roadrunner, a species native to Southwestern states, hitched a ride in the storage area of a moving van from Las Vegas to Westbrook, Maine. Volunteers took the bird to Avian Haven, a bird rehabilitation facility in Maine.
Avian Haven representatives said that they took the call about the bird Nov. 13 and that it continued to rest Tuesday. They said in a Facebook post that the bird was in “remarkably good shape” for having been stuck in a van for four days but might have lost weight during the journey.
The center is looking at ways to return the roadrunner to Nevada once it is healthy enough, said Diane Winn, Avian Haven’s executive director.
The center has created a special habitat for the bird that is warmer than its typical outdoor areas while also being sufficiently roomy, the group said.
Roadrunner
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