I’ve touched upon the work of Fatboy Slim before. I actually don’t want to devote too many posts in this series to him (or Daft Punk or DJ Shadow for that matter), because that could go on forever. Suffice it to say, most of Norman Cook‘s work consists of copy-pasting other people’s work together to form something new, without actually adding any instruments or vocals himself. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But it can be annoying if you keep digging up the exact same originals.

Take the massive 1998 hit The Rockafella Skank. If I say “Right about now …”, you say “the funk soul brother”! Cause you know the song. Or do you know the intro Lord Finesse did in 1997 on the song Vinyl Dog Vibe by The Vinyl Dogs? Cause that’s where the lines come from.

You’ll also instantly recognise the Just Brothers’ Sliced Tomatoes from 1965 in the song.  In ’65 it was just a B-side, but it got promoted to single in 1973. And then it got sampled.

Years before that, in 1960, a film entitled Beat Girl came out.  Apart from now legendary actor Christopher Lee, it also featured opening music by the John Barry Orchestra. Which you will also recognise as part of The Rockafeller Skank. If you think that tune sounds a lot like the guitar riff on James bond, you would be right. John Barry also scored the first James Bond film Dr. No two years later in 1962, even though it is credited to Monty Norman for legal reasons.

That leaves one more sample: The Art of Noise’s version of Peter Gunn from 1986. The irony here is that The Art of Noise were pioneers in the use of samples. Not only is Peter Gunn a cover from the theme by Henry Mancini (who also did the Pink Panther theme) the late 1950′s detective series, it also uses a sample by Malcolm McLaren, though you got to listen really hard to hear that.

So as you can understand, Idon’t really like to dig too much into Norman Cook’s back catalogue, cause it just becomes a very long who’s who in sampling history. All the samples put together and you get The Rockafeller Skank:

(original video can’t be embeded sadly)

I usually say “if all else fails, you can always play in a blues cover band“. The thing is that blues isn’t very hard to play, even if you can barely hold and instrument. There are challenging, not-so-easy-to-play blues songs out there, but most of the time, for most songs, it’s pretty straight-forward. If you look up musician wanted ads on various websites, you’ll find the bulk are either rock/metal or blues cover bands. Most of these bands have no professional ambitions other than playing the local pub on Friday nights for fun. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

While I have no plan on giving up on my electronic work and the ambitions I have for it, I ironically found myself with an invitation to go play in a blues cover band for this Friday. Some people at my employer wanted something different for their weekly pub evening. And since there are plenty of guitarists working there, they figured they’d give their inner-Hendrix a platform to play on.

I figured what the hell and accepted. I’ll be alternately singing and playing the bass on a few songs. It’ll be a break from the usual and it’ll be good fun without pretensions. And without band practice. We’ll see how that works out.

Following my post earlier today, I got a reply from a reader who pointed this out to me:

Three tracks, three artists, one producer, same song.

All three tracks produced by the same producer and they line up perfectly. Of course this is nothing new, Linkin Park has gotten spanked for making the same song over and over again. Can you call it a clone song if it’s the same artist?

My father’s father often commented on my dad’s music that it was all ‘the same beat’. My dad has commented today’s music is all the same beat. Maybe it’s a sign I’m getting old that I’m noticing this too. But then again, when had pop music ever not been about recycling the same ideas over and over again? Right, Warhol?

When you hear about artists sampling other artists, one often thinks about producers who discover an old vinyl record at least 20 years old who use a bit for a new track. You don’t think of people sampling a song that’s only a year old and without credit.

Katy Perry’s 2010 collaboration with Snoop Dogg California Gurls has been getting an overkill of airplay lately. The sunny summer hit about California is intended to rival Jay-Z’s Empire State. But the main theme from California Gurls appears to be lifted from a song by Scottish musician/producer Calvin Harris.

This is sort of odd. There is a link between Katy Perry and Calvin Harris; Calvin Harris remixed the song Waking up in Vegas. Ironically, Calvin Harris made a song titled Vegas as well, but there’s no connection between both. But nowhere on California Gurls is Calvin Harris credited. And that’s odd, cause if you listen to the Calin Harris song I’m not Alone from 2009, you can hear something you might recognise around 0:45 :

If you ever wanted to get into making atmospheric, ambient mood music that will blow even the most pretentious Coldplay out of the water, there’s a really simple trick to do that. The last few days on  SoundCloud, users having been posting songs that were time-stretched by 800% and the result is a beautiful soundscape you can listen to for hours. The interesting bit  though is that the songs they used for it are by Justin Bieber and Frank Sinatra. Listen to them and be amazed:

J. BIEBZ – U SMILE 800% SLOWER by Shamantis

Frank Sinatra – It Was A Very Good Year TIMESTRETCHED by unsignedhypenl

Update: Make your own!

ANd obviously there’s a rickroll version too:

Update2:

Slipknot turns into drone music:
Wait and bleeeeeeeeeeed (800% pitchshift, Slipknot) by The Nevis DJ

In 2006 the duo Gnarls Barkley (DJ Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo) released their first and biggest hit single: Crazy. Due to the immense popularity of the song, it soon got covered by countless artists (even a lovely theremin version). Most notable of the covers however is the version by The Violent Femmes in 2008. Notable because Gnarls Barkley covered the song Gone Daddy Gone by the Violent Femmes also in 2006. So they covered each other’s songs!

DJ Danger Mouse got a lot of attention in 2004 when he released the Grey Album, a mashup between the Beatles album nicknamed’ ‘the White Album‘ and Jay-Z’s Black Album. So it comes as no surprise that even though the lyrics on Crazy are original, the music is sampled.

In 1968 the film Django, Prepare a Coffin aka Preparati La Bara! aka Viva Django (not to be confused  with the rip-off Viva! Django from 1971) was released as a unofficial rip-off sequel to the film Django (1966). It was not uncommon in spaghetti western days to release a film that ripped title and main characters from other popular films as a cash in. The score however is original and written by brothers Gianfranco & Gian Piero Reverberi. You can hear a hint of the sample in the opening credits (which visually and musically are a rip-off from the style of James Bond opening credits), but if you fast forward to 2:30, you can hear Crazy in the original song titled Nel Cimitero Di Tucson (click here for just the song):

I talked about clone songs a while back. There is yet another example from Dutch pop music that illustrates this point well.

Around 1998/1999 car-brand Mitsubishi aired a TV-commercial that featured music by a temporarily formed duo called City to City. The band name references to the fact that both band members (Maarten van Praag and Sandro van Breemen) have a city in their last name. Not only is their band name quite appropriate for a car commercial, so is their first and only hit single: The Road Ahead (Miles of the Unknown).

But if you listen to the song, the feeling creeps up on you, that you’ve heard this music before. Even the references to roads and cars somehow strike familiar. And you would be right. You might remember a video that (ironically) does not have a wide open road, but a traffic jam as its setting: R.E.M.‘s Everybody Hurts from 1993. Listen to both songs and you’ll notice: same instruments (especially the use of strings and percussion on the opening), same build-up, same mood, even almost the same melodies.

The single The Road Ahead topped the Dutch charts for 4 weeks and was #4 of best sold singles in 1999. The band City to City won the Edison (Dutch equivalent of a Grammy) for Best National Newcomer for that year. They released two more singles which failed to achieve any similar result, before City to City effectively split in 2002 when one of the two members left the band. The song The Road Ahead still shows up in the annual Top 2000 (best songs of all time list, compiled with votes from the listeners of Radio 2), usually somewhere between #500 and #900.

Here’s City to City – The Road Ahead:

And just for comparison, here’s R.E.M. – Everybody Hurts:

In honour of the EP-release, this week a real simple Origin of Samples-post. The track So Much To Do uses samples from the band Toontje Lager. They were active in the early Eighties and score a few hits in The Netherlands. After they split up, their lead-singer went solo for a while, but eventually disappeared from public view. Apparently according to the Dutch wiki, he’s a music teacher now.

The bits from one of their hits Zoveel te doen (which literally means So Much To Do) I used are a fairly small part of the song, but are locked into the Dutch collective memory for another reasons. The exact same bit was used a Dutch television program about cars in the Eighties: De Heilige Koe (The Holy Cow, aka: cars).

Here’s the original Zoveel te Doen by Toontje Lager that reached #19 in the Dutch charts in 1983:

The EP If You Want Some Thing Done is out, get it here:

music.b-sting.com

You can determine the price for it yourself. Yes, that means you can get it for free, but contributions are welcome.

If you like it, tell me! Or better yet, tell your friends. Review it, blog about it, drop the link on Facebook or Twitter, talk about it.

Many thanks to Divadrummer for providing the opening track. If you would like to contribute something to the next release (opening track, remix, cover art, etc.) Let me know!

The EP is done. The music is done. The artwork is done. The download page is done. Scheduled released date: this Saturday 31st of July 2010. People who subscribed for the free digital EP will be notified Saturday. The rest will just have to keep a close eye on B-sting.com .