Good music and samples
Hi. My name is Corey, and I'm a music addict. Anyone that knows me is already aware of this, but a good chunk of my life revolves around music - programming, teaching, playing, and just listening. I gotta say that I love discovering things about music through the web, and the iTunes Music Store rules for anyone that enjoys music. Here's what I went through today.
I read Macsurfer daily - for some reason I don't think it's as good as it was a few years back, but I still get this weird feeling inside if I don't check it every day. It had a link to a Slate article "Beyoncé, Your Mix Tape Sucks" which, in addition to supporting the title, also mentioned that there is a great iMix from the Thievery Corporation. Track #17 from their list is a cool old track from the Jungle Brothers (circa 1988). Their name sounded familiar, so I listened to a bunch of their other stuff and found samples that Fatboy Slim has used - most obviously "Because I Got It Like That", which is track #4 from On the Floor at the Boutique (which is a great album that isn't on iTMS - check Amazon).
I got hooked on FBS back in college, before everyone else in the world heard of him (well, in Iowa at least - ha!). I was amazed that I could find an artist that had so many great tracks that all sounded so different - most electronic/dj groups I had heard at that point would only have a couple of songs that I enjoyed. But FBS was the exception, having only a couple of songs that I DIDN'T like ("Praise You", and others I can't think of at the moment). I grew tired of the direction he was going as time went on, but that seems to be the way things work when some obscure thing that I really like goes mainstream. Songs also started to have a single sampled lyric that was played over and over, and I really hate that ("Praise You", "Fatboy Slim is F*ing in Heaven", and "Bird of Prey" - to a certain extent). In some later post I'll probably talk about what makes a piece of music interesting to me (if anyone cares), but I'm straying far off the topic at this point.
Anyway, lets just say that FBS does a great job of sampling from really great music. And I LOVE that stuff. I've always loved hearing a piece of music and figuring out where it came from: the Beastie Boys song that sampled from Sgt. Pepper, another from Tower of Power's "In the Slot", the old surf versions of "Apache" (redone by FBS later), and on and on.
And these days we can easily search, preview, and individually purchase them - things that couldn't have been done a few years back. Hrm... the direction of this paragraph was sounding too much like a marketing note, which is not what I originally intended. I think I should go to bed before it gets any worse.
My main point is that all of this stuff is really cool and really exciting for music addicts! And I did it without an exclamation point in the title! :) The double-edged sword to this means that I end up spending more time looking around for this stuff (and later much more time for the blog entry), and then spending more money on music. Worse things could happen, I guess.
Also, Blogger's great and all, but I'm getting sick of manually typing in (or copying, usually) the html tags for links. Bleh.
3 Comments:
At 1:01 AM, May 28, 2004, Anonymous said…
I've always loved every track on "You've Come A Long Way" except for "Praise You." That song irks me. So does "Bird of Prey." I love "Weapon of Choice," though, and the rest of that album is just a vague blur in my head. I have a fondness for "In Heaven," and I have no idea why.
No real point. Just wanted to comment.
Daisie
At 8:49 AM, May 28, 2004, Anonymous said…
Its a little known fact that Fatboy Slim is the bastard love child of Little Richard and Twila Paris.
At 11:18 AM, May 28, 2004, cflake said…
I agree that "Weapon of Choice" is a great song, but with that there are still things I don't like about it. The intro is great - I really like the first two musical themes of the song, but they're too short. The main groove that is used for the majority of the song is actually my least favorite, but it's ok. The thing I really dislike is the slow stretched lyrics - the Dune quotes ("if you walk without rhythm, you won't attract the worm"), etc. I used to have nightmares where people would talk with slow, stretched voices; and they still kinda creep me out to this day.
I didn't notice those the first time I saw the video, or the few times I heard the song. I start listening to different things each time I hear a familiar song, and finding that stuff actually changed "Weapon of Choice" from one of my favorites to one I just like.
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