Meet guitarist and producer Nile Rodgers, one of my favorite musicians in the world. He founded Chic along with the late bassist Bernard Edwards, and he’s on Twitter.
Nile Rodgers has led an action-packed life. As a teenager, he played with the Sesame Street band, and then with the Apollo Theater house band, where he backed such luminaries as Aretha Franklin and P-Funk. He was an active Black Panther. His Allmusic bio lists various NYC bands he played in before forming Chic, including a new wave rock outfit called Allah & The Knife Wielding Punks. He later went on to write most of the disco songs and eighties pop hits that I like, and helped lay the cornerstone of hip-hop. He deserves a blog post and then some.
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On the left is the record where the break first appeared, and on the right is DJ Kool Herc.
You could also call the Apache break the national anthem of drum n bass and all the other electronic microgenres based on sped up and scrambled hip-hop beats.
Couple of exciting memetic hybrids circulating around the web right now. First, here’s a techno track using samples of Pixar’s Up, which is one of the best and saddest movies ever. Thanks Mike for alerting me to the remix’s existence. Remixing songs is all well and good, but remixing movies, that’s where it’s at.(more…)
I don’t get to movie theaters much. But as part of the new family plan to enjoy ourselves on Christmas, I went to see Avatar in 3D with a bunch of relatives. I went in intending to dislike it, and came out having thoroughly enjoyed myself. So much for my hipsterish snobbery.
What’s interesting to me is how the movie is simultaneously so fresh and so derivative. Avatar’s freshness is in its breathtaking visuals, all the technogeekery of its making. It’s derivative in its plot, setting, characters, and all other non-technical content. It’s practically a mashup in movie form. In the spirit of my blog post parsing out all the sources of Halo, I figured I’d do the same for this movie. Here are some of the most obvious sources, similarities and resonances (There are some spoilers within, but the plot of this movie is totally predictable and the least interesting thing about it, so feel free to read if you’re planning to go see it.) (more…)
One of the biggest copyright failures of copyright law ever is the The Verve song “Bitter Sweet Symphony.”
The distinctive string sample comes from an orchestral arrangement of “The Last Time” by The Rolling Stones.
Doesn’t sound much like the Verve, does it? The two bands do share a taste in the I – flat VII – IV chord progression. But here’s the Andrew Oldham Orchestra’s version, the sample will jump right out at you twenty-five seconds in.
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For a long time, “Human Nature” was not my favorite song on Thriller. It took me many years to wise up to how awesome it is. Maybe it’s a gender thing. I played it for Anna last night and she swooned instantly over the delivery, arrangement, melody, the whole thing worked for her. I’m slowly opening up to it too. I was amused to learn that it was written by Steve Porcaro and John Bettis of Toto. I don’t know if they or Quincy Jones thought up the synth intro and outtro, but both are gorgeous.
Okay, so we’ve all firmly established that he’s not exactly Mr Personality. President Obama called him a jackass. Even before he disrupted the MTV awards, a lot of my friends disliked him intensely. This dislike crosses racial, class and gender boundaries.
And yet, I like Kanye’s music better than just about anything that anyone is making, and I like it up there with the best stuff ever made by anyone. (more…)
Today the Michael Jackson fan art I have on my mind (and on the ipod) is “Please Don’t Stop The Music,” sung by Rihanna and produced by a couple of Norwegian guys. It includes a samples of MJ singing “Wanna Be Startin’ Something.” The sample includes both his quasi-Swahili chant and his unearthly woo-hoo. It runs under almost the entire song after the first minute, with dramatic filter sweeping and what sounds like some vocoder.
MJ never made a video for “Wanna Be Startin’ Something,” leaving a vacuum that the fans are only too happy to fill. This video even includes footage of MJ’s video game.
This MJ song has inspired a lot of fan art, maybe because it is itself fan art. The music industry likes to send lawyers after people who make fan art, which is dumb and self-destructive on their part. No fan art, no art.
