Michael Jackson fan art

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 sample 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.

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Rhymefest is looking at the man in the mirror

Rhymefest is best known for co-writing “Jesus Walks” with Kanye West. He did this incredible Michael Jackson mixtape with Mark Ronson and a slew of A-list guest stars, a whole year before MJ died while the rest of the world was sleeping on him. Click for the free download:

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Lil Wayne’s productivity secrets

See a followup post about female remixes of “A Milli”

Lil Wayne and I have some differences of style and taste: about facial tattoos, about drinking cough syrup recreationally, about jewelry on one’s teeth. But we agree about music. He brags constantly that he’s the best rapper alive. I think he makes a pretty good case.

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Björk thought she could organize freedom, how Scandinavian of her

I revere Björk above most other musicians. She knows how to balance the coldness of electronic production with hotly unpredictable vocals and instrumental textures. Not everybody loves Björk as much as I do; her approach is eccentric and her sound gets on some people’s nerves. It took me a couple years to be convinced by her. I’m glad I hung in there, because she’s been one of my best teachers in the art of making music with computers.

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The Beatles were an electronica band

Update: hear my 5.1 surround remix of “Here Comes The Sun.”

Why are the Beatles still so cool? By which I mean the late Beatles, Revolver onwards. I like Please Please Me as much as the next guy, but it isn’t why the Beatles are cool now. No, I mean the last few records, especially Sgt Pepper, the White Album and Abbey Road. If any of these albums were released next week, Pitchfork would go ballistic over them. Three quarters of the indie rock of the past ten years descends directly from Abbey Road. Why do we all still care so much?

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Game controllers as musical instruments

This is a picture of my electronic funk-soul-R&B band doing a show. From left to right, it’s Nicole Bishop, me and Barbara Singer. We were the whole band for that show. I did all the beats, samples and keyboards from my computer using a video game controller.

Here’s a screenshot of the program that the game controller is connected to.

The outer space background is my desktop image and isn’t part of the program itself. But maybe it should be.

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His name is Prince, and he is funky

Hip-hop artists love Prince. Like them, he blends drum machines, live jazz-funk musicians and samples of other songs.

Prince sample map
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Music at my house

My parents and stepparents loved music when I was growing up, more as spectators than participants.

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Real guitars are for old people

Here’s one of my favorite bits of South Park.

 

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Can robots DJ?

Now that I have an office job, I’m spending a lot of time under headphones while I correct people’s grammar. It’s a good opportunity to explore the outer reaches of my music tastes. The office has some networked iTunes libraries heavy on the Pitchfork 500, and I have whatever I’m bringing from home. I’ve also been making my first serious adventure with internet radio. I arbitrarily picked Pandora because they have a free iPhone app. The web version is nothing to write home about design-wise, but the iPhone version is fun, and over wi-fi there are none of the buffering delays that have kept me from enjoying internet radio in the past.

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