Saturday, December 4, 2004

Danger Mouse - Extra Special Bonus If you like the "Grey Album", wait 'til you see the first video.  Of course, all of the footage is completely unauthorized.  But it's hot.  Check out the action here.  5:30:06 PM     comment []

Danger Mouse - the Winna! And Still Champeen! Jay-Z has teamed up with the awful rap-metal act Linkin Park to do a bunch of "legal mashups." Some brainiac in Linkin Park thought it was a brilliant idea, and somehow they fed Jay-Z enough Kool-Aid to make him go along with it. A snotty little article on MTV.com said that the two artists would show Danger Mouse how it's done. Danger Mouse is the genius who combined Jay-Z's "Black Album" with the Beatles' "White Album" to create the "Grey Album." So, just to see what all the hubbub was about, I tried out a couple of the Linkin Park mashups. Well, here's the scoop. The songs are awful. LP isn't a pleasant band to listen to, and the combination sounds like a radio that keeps drifting from one station to another. The results are laughable, not brilliant. These songs also been tagged as "the first legal mash-ups." That isn't true either. David Bowie beat them to the punch earlier this year. Hey, speaking of sampling controversies, Negativland, the patron saints of music repackaging, showed up on my radar last week. Some wag has taken a U2 iPod and repackaged it as a U2 vs. Negativland iPod, preloaded with all of Negativland's recorded output. It's available on eBay - go make a bid, if you dare. Even if you don't want to bid, check out the packaging and the q & a. Brilliant. A long time ago, boys and girls, Negativland released a song called "U2." The song shamelessly sampled U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and a classic off-color rant by Casey Kasem. You've heard it. If you haven't, go listen here. Or here. 12:58:38 PM     comment []