11/24/09

No more Girl Talk PLZ

I confess: I'm pretty much a Girl Talk hater and if I came within a slapping range of this dude it'd smack the taste out of his mouth.



Hmmm, he only doesn't reap the credit for this whole "new mashup thing", he is also on all of the major remix/sample documents bitching about paying for sample use. Why the fuck people are so excited about this now, when everything he does now, was made better and more inventive by dj's in the 80's? Sampling from different sources has been the bread and butter of hiphop dj'ing, but when a white dude does it for all the frat partys in the States, it's suddenly not condemnable but creative? WTF?. Mashup is nothing new , it's just playing songs/acapellas on top of each other, but with less ambition and talent.

And yeah, I sure hate his guts for bringing the rock aesthetic back to dj gig game. Of course he's not the only one making a huge deal about pushing buttons to play other peoples music.



I'll shut my mouth when someone puts a decent mashup album/mix in front of me. Til today I haven't seen nothing as near as inventive, touching and atmosphere building as some of the dj mixes I bump into weekly. Some mashups are ok, though, but generally it's a lot of fuzz about nothing.

End note: If I did this kind of thing I'd be called dj Dick Talk. Maybe it's not too late to change my dj name...

- P-Funk

7 comments:

  1. plus one from here to dj dick talk!

    i've heard many argue about this 80's turntablism vs. 00's mashup thing.. i personally just see them as a same thing, an evolution. and i guarantee there were as many crappy turntable mixes in the 80's as there's crappy mashups in the 00's. only the good ones survive, remember?

    part of the evolution is that you can now do things with a crappy laptop and free software what were absolutely impossible with analog equipment...

    as far as mr. girltalks annoyingly high profile, i _kinda_ agree, but hey, he's an entertaining performer (what you can't really say about majority of dj's... :) and he's willing to speak about the subject. no wonder he's the poster boy of bastard pop.

    and about the racial thing, give me a break. if you think bambaata, kool herc, flash etc haven't been acknowledged you've been living in a cellar. or some western-siberia wasteland.. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. He's entertaining in a rock artist sporty kinda way. And that's one thing I don't like.

    about the racial thing: sure, they're well acknowledged. but are their names mentioned with this "new-but-not-really-new" mashup style? not that I know of. I dislike the lack of historical perspectives when it comes to talking mashups. I don't see why it is now a revolution and not when others did it before?

    still, I hope to hear good mashups that'll last a decade. DJ AM had a good mixes with all kinds of stuff. hit me with links, if there is some - i'm kinda interested.

    ReplyDelete
  3. fuck, i already wrote a long blabber and this geniusspot deleted it without warning. sigh..

    ok, fast forward...

    is chuck berry mentioned every time the r'n'r is present? i still think you get a little carried away here...

    the "revolution" of mashup/bastard pop is - biiig suprise here - internet. suddenly in the early 00's, the napsters etc were flooding with user-made mixes. true punk spirit. to me it was especially funny thinking how the petergabriels etc had tried to "interact" with the audience in the 90's. well, the "audience" did act back, but not as they would have liked.. :)

    one interesting thing was also how bastard pop crossed genre lines, not working inside hiphop/house/disco..

    some recommendations:
    - dj food: raiding the 20th century. a history lesson you can dance to. tries to draw lines from john cage to kylie boots. kinda succeeds. there's me drink? http://www.djfood.org/djfood/discography/mixes/raiding-the-20th-century-a-history-of-the-cut-up
    - cassetteboy: the parker tapes. one foor in collage, one in mashup, one on a banana peel. propably the best album ever. no shit.
    - anything by shitmat, "full english breakfast" is a favourite.
    - timelords: doctoring the tardis. propably the first "modern" mashup. not a bad start. william drummond, a genius.
    - the kleptones. night at the hip hopera. just wonderful. took a big concept and managed to chew it.

    as far as single tracks, i have to check my archives. at least osymyso, freelance hellraiser, poj masta, go home productions come to mind.. time for a compilation, i think.

    ReplyDelete
  4. definitely time for a compilation. hit me with a link, when you's done.

    cassetteboy and the night at hip hopera did pretty much nothing on me when I listened them a while back, lemme check the other ones out too.

    I think my problems with the mashups I've encountered have been: lack of surprise, lack of continuity and larger ideas, lack of musical variety. mostly the things I've come across have been a mishmash of beatmatching well-known rock song parts with rap acapellas with the overall progression of a random itunes playlist. I don't mind people putting old songs to a new context or playing with them, but so far the results have been mostly boooring. I don't wanna hear the songs I already know from Top 40 just played on top of each other with a mashup jumpin around and pushing a button.

    And I'm still not pulling away from my stance on the respecting the history side of it. sure thing, internet revolutionized the production, distribution and sharing of music, but is the idea of mashing up two or more records with each other somehow new? Naw. I'm just saying you shouldn't automatically get your cock out when you hear the surreal hype about Girl Talk and his blogged out homies. Put some perspective to it. He can't hold the candle to some of the more traditional, less hyped dj mixes I hear once in a week.

    ReplyDelete
  5. well if you have a problem with mashing top40 shit with rap accapellas, the mashup genre clearly just isn't you cup of tea. :) i personally enjoy crappy pop music so listening to 2+ crappy pop songs is x times the satisfaction.

    and i personally like how digital remixing (or digital dj'ing) has taken the unnessesary hype out of mixing. it's now more about WHAT you mix, less about HOW you mix...

    did kool herc or flash acknowledge the pierre henrys and john cages in the 80's? i don't think so.. give credit where it's due!

    hmm, great t-shirt idea: "the black boys ripped off john cage!"

    ReplyDelete
  6. Not a bad point with the EVEN earlier mashup tradition. lol.

    I do enjoy top 40's and rap - without irony - but when GT does it, it all feels like riding the dick of easy, no-challenge choices in terms of musical selection. There's no broadening of my listening tastes, no suprising selections or juxtapositions. Just surefire bits that get the lowest common nominator crowd moving.

    So I'm with you about the point on the focus on WHAT is mixed in. The problem is that he does the easiest and most obvious choices most of the time. I definitily like dj's who highlight parts of songs or lyrics I hadn't noticed before. That could well be pop songs that aren't supposed to be liked by serious music fanatics, but I'm not seeing that now. (kinda like the few mixes I heard from you)

    ReplyDelete
  7. well the question is clearly about our personal musical taste. i personally enjoy some of dic.. erm, girl talk's stuff, especially his first album what is much more hyper-edited.

    i don't personally think this kind of music should necessary be "educating". to me it's about partying and drinking cheap booze. ie. stoopid party muzick(tm) :)

    ReplyDelete