Why? Well a recent mashup went viral dredging up an old combination and didn’t credit the original – it does now after I complained – but this isn’t about my beef with him, cos this isn’t a new phenomenon.
People have been remaking, remodelling and remixing our history for a long time, erasing what went before. Constantly stuck in the moment, rebooting the same old thing every few years, like some mashup Groundhog Day – and making out they invented this shit.
It’s hard to develop as a community and culture when stuck in this perpetual loop where people don’t know their history and are doomed to repeat it, like some Sampling Sisyphus . And yes, the younger crowd might kvetch but credit is all we have, it’s important. As you invest more into mashups you’ll change your mind, it’s not ‘unoriginal’ or throwaway at all.
And Illegal or not, we have to respect those who went before, from the hiphop blenders, the disco medleys and the experimental copyright liberation artists . Y’all have to give dues and respect for the past, for we/they made all of this possible with our endless legal fights and building places to share mashups new and old, spreading the word of mashups and it’s history – we built this city with Biggie Pelaz and Rock and Roll ! YA RLY!
There is a pushback against this – from the Masters of Mash interviews mentioned in the podcast to the Bootleg Archive which I run. But it’s a bit lonely out here? Join us! Come back and fight this tide of endless memes with mashups, history and reclaim our culture. Well it’s everyone’s culture, but it seems that a few think they have the total run of the place. Kids: get off our lawn! :-p
So I bring out the battle weapons for a Mashbusters Mash Battle, great mashups from the old bootleg/bastard pop school, the new mashup school, the even newer soundclowns and crumplebangers and the latest meme mashers, it’s all here. Also a long-forgotten mashup of mine from 2010 from an alias that partly lends this podcast it’s name.
And this zombie-like revival – it’s already happening, Aggro1, Solcofn, Dan Mei, Marcjohnce, ToTom (although he was away for such a short time I didn’t notice!), Wax Audio and others featured here are recently back in the game. What have the meme-mashing kids done? They might just regret it
