Review: Green Oasis and Jay Park
Two interesting mash-ups have strayed across my radar screen recently. I like them both, but they also reveal some interesting things about the bands involved and the whole genre itself.
"Boulevard of Broken Songs" is in heavy rotation on the San Francisco-Bay Area alt-rock station Live 105. Mixed by Live 105 creative director Party Ben, the work mashes Green Day’s "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" with Oasis’s "Wonderwall" ( listen to it ).
If you don’t like Green Day, you are going to hate this remix. That may seem self-evident, but what I mean is that all of Green Day’s weaknesses — Billy Joe’s whiny faux-Brit vocals, the derivative pop-not-very-punk tunes — are magnified by the juxtaposition with an unabashedly pop, inescapably British band (to be fair — a band that also flagrantly ripped off the Beatles).
I like Green Day, and although I’m not much of an Oasis fan, "Wonderwall" is a great pop song so I think the mashup works. It’s catchy and the two songs meld well.
On the other hand, this one was almost too easy. The two songs are incredibly similar.
One of the exciting thing about re-mixes of any sort is when new elements are introduced that readically reinterpret the song — whether in the form of a mash-up where two very different songs are brought together [the most famous example of this is DJ Danger Mouse's "The Grey Album" which mashes The Beatles' "The White Album" with Jay-Z's "The Black Album"*] or simply a good dance mix where some of the production is stripped away, the vocals are messed with and new sounds and samples are introduced.
MTV has seized on the mash-up phenomenon although it’s doing it by pairing the actual artists up and having them perform together [have to keep the record labels happy]. It’s first effort features rap megastar Jay-Z performing "Encore" with rap-rock group Linkin Park backing up his vocals using sounds and vocals from their single "Numb" ( view it here ).
Granted, once MTV institutionalizes the form (and overexposes it to death as it did with the "Unplugged" series), it means it has totally jumped the shark [just kidding -- rock on you mad DJs!]. But still, I like it.
It busts what seems to be the standard rap hit formual these days — pairing a hot young female R&B vocalist with a rap artist. The rapper vocalizes the verse; the singer sings the chorus, etc. etc. I don’t listen to that much rap so I realize that I’m speaking from ignorance, but it seems like the formula of the songs I’ve heard.
The performance does suffer from a problem that plagues most live rap performances I’ve heard — the rap vocals aren’t as clear and strong as the mix and the backing vocals, but it’s still a compelling result.
This mash-up, however, does forcefully make hit home the fact that the raps in most rap-rock songs suck. Listening to Jay-Z in this context, hearing him flow with the rhymes, confirms why I never hopped on the rap-rock bandwagon in the first place. Rap-rockers can make lines rhyme, but they still end up coming out like the type of angst-ridden poetry I wrote as 17-year-old. They sound, well, written. Rap is an oral form and in the hands of someone like Jay-Z, it sounds that way.
Still, even if this is no groundbreaking Run DMC/Aerosmith collaboration, the guitar sounds, male vocals and electronic phrases make a great background and counterpoint to the rapping. More rappers should use rock elements to back their work.
Of course, having the artists do the mash-up themselves sort of misses the point. My guess is that MTV Ultimate Mash-Ups is going to be most entertaining behind the scenes. What machinations will the producers and record labels create to get REM to agree to do a mash-up with Ashlee Simpson? Will Michael Stipe and Ashlee wear matching eyeliner? I forsee some strange courtships taking place.
*Note: I’m not cool enough to have heard this album yet. I read about it either on Slate or in The New Yorker.
I like. I feel like drinking some funky flavor of Jamba Juice while I listen to this.
Comment by Bob Caswell — November 30, 2004 @ 11:42 pm
Is mash-up a legitimate form of art? It’s debatable. This mix, while entertaining, doesn’t really seem to do too much that the originals didn’t already do. Remixing can bring out a whole new aspect of a song, but straight-up mashes don’t really seem to push the envelope as much. Or maybe I’m on crack again.
Comment by Steve Evans — December 1, 2004 @ 11:38 am
Maybe you are. Maybe you aren’t. It’s difficult to judge based on the two examples above for the reasons I list above. But, in general, I agree — remixing seems less gimmicky and more fruitful than mashing.
Incidentally, I don’t encourage downloading illegal music [I'm serious -- you won't find me on Bitorrent, Grokster, etc.], but The Grey Album can be found here.
Comment by William Morris — December 1, 2004 @ 12:21 pm
Nice commentary. I totally get what you’re saying and agree that the most exciting mashups for me have been ones that surprise me with unexpected juxtapositions, or that create new harmonies with two different melody lines. If you head over to my website you’ll see that I make a lot of different kinds of mashups/remixes/whatever, and I hope that you don’t judge my work, or the idea of “bastard pop,” by this one alone.
But, a quick rebuttal. One of the easiest fallacies for critics to fall into is to criticize an artwork for not doing what’s expected, or what other artworks do. “Boulevard of Broken Songs” was originally part of my mix show, and I look at it as very different from a traditional mashup - you’ll notice there are no a capellas used in the whole song, and is more like a mini-mix show, esp. with the final Aerosmith segue. My intentions were to poke a little fun at Green Day for ripping off a whole bunch of riffs, but at the same time to point out the grand tradition of riff-borrowing that’s the basis of rock and roll. “Broken Songs” is a version of a song, in my opinion, that is _about_ the original - the other songs come in and out like voices in the head of the narrator, like responses.
So, while I agree that this is not a wild, cross-genre, unbelievable discovery of a mashup, it was in fact much harder to produce than many of my other more surprising mixes (like Fugazi vs. Destiny’s Child, which came together very easily), and I hope you don’t judge it by unfair standards.
Cheers,
PB
Comment by Party Ben — December 8, 2004 @ 11:53 pm
Wow! Party Ben! Thanks for the response. Tell me, typically how time-intensive are these remixes mashups for you to produce? Days? Hours? Just curious.
Comment by Steve Evans — December 9, 2004 @ 9:06 am
I’ve never really looked into mash-ups, but I bet they’re a lot of fun to do. And challenging.
I’m not familiar with either of the originals on this–the Green Day song or the Oasis song. (I know Ryan Adams’ version of “Wonderwall,” though, and I have to say he made it his own.)
Comment by Susan Malmrose — December 9, 2004 @ 11:07 am
Thanks for the perspective, Party Ben.
And that is totally missing from my post — that like pastiche, the mash up form is part of that postmodern stance of both poking fun at and in some ways honoring tradition. I wonder (and seriously doubt) if the MTV version is going to preserve that element. I suppose that inevitable when marketers glom onto the form and DJs aren’t involved.
And if I may indulge in a bit of Bay Area-centric, un-hip fandom: Live 105 rocks! (although I do miss the days of Roland West, Steve Masters, AudioVidea, Big Rick, etc.).
Comment by William Morris — December 9, 2004 @ 1:23 pm
Try out Beatallica. That’s right, the mixed sounds of the Beatles and Metallica. Un-freakin-believable:
http://music.metafilter.com/index.php?q=f&f=%2FBeatallica
Sony is going after these guys with cease-and-desist letters … so download these files while you can. Just right click on the listed links and save them as you will.
Comment by danithew — February 25, 2005 @ 1:34 am