selling out. It was a tough jump to make. Many musicians said if I was using loops of otherrecordings, I was unoriginal or untalented or hiding behind technology. There was definitely a line in the sand, and when I crossed it, there was no returning to traditional rock.
Language is a city, to the building of which every human being has brought a stone, yet each of us is no more to be credited with the grand result than the acaleph which adds a cell to the coral reef that is the basis of the continent.
Just as the letters of our language are metaphors for specific sounds, and words are metaphors for specific ideas, shards of the culture itself now form a kind of language that most everyone knows how to speak. Artists don’t have to spell things out; it’s much faster to go straight to the existing material—film footage, library research, wet newspapers, vinyl records, etc. It’s the artist’s job to mix (edit) the fragments together and, if needed, generate original fragments to fill in the gaps. For example, when Danger Mouse’s
The Grey Album
was released in 2004, listeners heard the Beatles chopped up and re-presented underneath the contemporary rapper Jay-Z’s vocals. The album simultaneously reflected back to the Beatles, to Jay-Z’s 2003
The Black Album
(from which the vocals were taken), and to the artistic tastes of the professional DJ who made the new piece of art. The songs work as songs, but they also work as history lessons. Another layer was added by the fact that it’s illegal to use the Beatles for sampling. Capitol Records went to court to silence the album, but it was already too far out into the culture to be stopped. Beyond the use of old media to make a new project, there was the added benefit of a “plotline” on top of the music (underground art vs. corporate empire). This combination led to record-setting free downloads.
The DJ known as Girl Talk is taking sampling to its inevitable extreme. He runs Lil Wayne over Nirvana, Elton John over The Notorious B.I.G. Sometimes the juxtaposition is fantastic; usually it’s not. The novelty wears thin very quickly. Anyone can throw together two random things and call it collage art. When musical artists began using existing recordings as a medium of creative expression, they created a new subclass of musicians. An artist making use of samples, while going by a variety of names, is, essentially, a creative editor, presenting selections by other artists in a new context and adding notes of his own.
A literary equivalent would be along the lines of “creative translation” such as Ezra Pound’s
Homage to Sextus Propertius
, in which Pound picked through the elegies of Propertius, translated them, cut them up, and reassembled them in a fashion he deemed entertaining and relevant. Examples from other forms:
Thelonius Monk Plays Duke Ellington
, in which Monk takes great liberties with Ellington’s songbook. Lichtenstein’s appropriation of comic book art. Picasso’s use of newsprint, among other media, in, say,
Composition with Fruit, Guitar, and Glass. Paul’s Boutique:
The Beastie Boys, Dust Brothers, and Mario Caldato, Jr., sample from more than 100 sources, including Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, James Brown, and Sly & the Family Stone. Steve Reich’s “Different Trains,” which incorporates audio recordings about train travel by Holocaust survivors and a Pullman porter. Musique concrète—for instance, John Cage’s “Imaginary Landscape No. 4,” written for 12 radios, each played by 2 people (one to tune the channel and one to control volume and timbre). A conductor controls the tempo; the audience hears whatever is on the radio inthat city on that day. Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina’s “Offertium,” which mutates themes from Bach’s “Musical Offering” until they’re beyond recognition. In “Three Variations on the Canon in D Major by Johann Pachelbel,” Brian Eno bends and twists Pachelbel. The nineteenth-century
Language is a city, to the building of which every human being has brought a stone, yet each of us is no more to be credited with the grand result than the acaleph which adds a cell to the coral reef that is the basis of the continent.
Just as the letters of our language are metaphors for specific sounds, and words are metaphors for specific ideas, shards of the culture itself now form a kind of language that most everyone knows how to speak. Artists don’t have to spell things out; it’s much faster to go straight to the existing material—film footage, library research, wet newspapers, vinyl records, etc. It’s the artist’s job to mix (edit) the fragments together and, if needed, generate original fragments to fill in the gaps. For example, when Danger Mouse’s
The Grey Album
was released in 2004, listeners heard the Beatles chopped up and re-presented underneath the contemporary rapper Jay-Z’s vocals. The album simultaneously reflected back to the Beatles, to Jay-Z’s 2003
The Black Album
(from which the vocals were taken), and to the artistic tastes of the professional DJ who made the new piece of art. The songs work as songs, but they also work as history lessons. Another layer was added by the fact that it’s illegal to use the Beatles for sampling. Capitol Records went to court to silence the album, but it was already too far out into the culture to be stopped. Beyond the use of old media to make a new project, there was the added benefit of a “plotline” on top of the music (underground art vs. corporate empire). This combination led to record-setting free downloads.
The DJ known as Girl Talk is taking sampling to its inevitable extreme. He runs Lil Wayne over Nirvana, Elton John over The Notorious B.I.G. Sometimes the juxtaposition is fantastic; usually it’s not. The novelty wears thin very quickly. Anyone can throw together two random things and call it collage art. When musical artists began using existing recordings as a medium of creative expression, they created a new subclass of musicians. An artist making use of samples, while going by a variety of names, is, essentially, a creative editor, presenting selections by other artists in a new context and adding notes of his own.
A literary equivalent would be along the lines of “creative translation” such as Ezra Pound’s
Homage to Sextus Propertius
, in which Pound picked through the elegies of Propertius, translated them, cut them up, and reassembled them in a fashion he deemed entertaining and relevant. Examples from other forms:
Thelonius Monk Plays Duke Ellington
, in which Monk takes great liberties with Ellington’s songbook. Lichtenstein’s appropriation of comic book art. Picasso’s use of newsprint, among other media, in, say,
Composition with Fruit, Guitar, and Glass. Paul’s Boutique:
The Beastie Boys, Dust Brothers, and Mario Caldato, Jr., sample from more than 100 sources, including Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, James Brown, and Sly & the Family Stone. Steve Reich’s “Different Trains,” which incorporates audio recordings about train travel by Holocaust survivors and a Pullman porter. Musique concrète—for instance, John Cage’s “Imaginary Landscape No. 4,” written for 12 radios, each played by 2 people (one to tune the channel and one to control volume and timbre). A conductor controls the tempo; the audience hears whatever is on the radio inthat city on that day. Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina’s “Offertium,” which mutates themes from Bach’s “Musical Offering” until they’re beyond recognition. In “Three Variations on the Canon in D Major by Johann Pachelbel,” Brian Eno bends and twists Pachelbel. The nineteenth-century
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