A while back I was going to do a post about this, but there were so many links to other songs, I had to split it in three parts. Today part 1.

In 1985 Jocelyn Brown released Love’s Gonna Get You, after being the backup singer for many other artists. The single itself went to the top of the dance tracks at the time (#1 in the US dance chart). Now as you may have noted from the YouTube video, this is the dance mix, but the same single also had an A Capella mix. This makes it ideal for sampling.

In 1990, Boogie Down Productions used the chorus in the hiphop song after Love’s Gonna Get’cha. With the dance scene taking off, Jocelyn Brown’s voice became a popular source for sampling. Off Shore used a different bit from the same track in their 1991 track I can’t Take the Power. The sample ‘Deputy of Love‘in the track with the same name by the Deputies of Love from 1991 is again Jocelyn Brown. The yeaaah-sample in Moby’s track Go! from 1991 is Jocelyn Brown. Bizarre Inc.’s 1992 track I’m Gonna Get You partly samples and works around the original. Apart from bursting from cliché dance samples of the time, the 1992 track Running So Hard by Sophia also puts a sample in there, including the yeaaah that Moby used.

Suddenly, when the whole ‘diva dance’-genre sort of died out and people started simply hiring Jocelyn Brown to sing lyrics for them, the usage of samples from that track died out too and was pushed to less mainstream genres. It only popped up twice again in 1994: in DJ Dano’s hardcore track I’m gonna get you and the drum ‘n bass track You Got Me by Alex Reece   and Wax Doctor. It wasn’t till 2008 it popped up in I Got The Power by Ya Boy from 2008.

You’ll notice however I left out the biggest hit based on Love’s Gonna Get You. That track is The Power by Snap! which I’ll discuss next week.

Jim Morrison in 1970:

“One person with a lot of machines, tapes and electronics”

I could say he was talking about me, but really he’s talking about a LOT of people who make music these days.

Yet another pointless controversy surrounding Lady Gaga. You can say a lot about her, but her listing on WhoSampled.com is relatively modest compared to other artists. Still, Dutch punk band The Heideroosjes took note on their website after a fan pointed out that the intro to their song We All Share The Same Sun from 2004 sounded a lot like Lady Gaga’s Electric Chapel from 2011. The Heideroosjes honestly said they wouldn’t sue (cause they hate it too when little artists go after big ones like greedy bastards, which they are not) and weren’t doing it for attention (even though it did caught the attention of the national press).

As some people pointed out in the responses to the news, Lady Gaga did not steal anything from the Heideroosjes at all. In fact, both of then used the same over-used metal riff that has been around for some 30+ years. Curt King wrote a brilliantly detailed article about this including some audio-samples. Listen to those and you’ll note that with only slight variations, they all sound ‘the same’. So no, Lady Gaga didn’t steal from anyone specifically, just rehashed yet another bit of pop-culture.

And just to be obstinate,here’s one of my favourite versions of the riff:

Gary Moore – Hiroshima

Stadiums? Concert Halls? No, you don’t need a whole lot of space to play one of the most epic songs in history. A car is just big enough:

Porkka Playboys – Bohemian Rhapsody

Last week there was some controversy concerning Eminem and sampling. While you expect the rap artist was being sued for lifting a sample and using it in his own song, it’s actually the other way round. He got cloned.

In 2002 Eminem released the song Lose Yourself as part of the soundtrack  from the film 8 Mile in which he plays the lead character. Contrary to a lot of his other songs, the song uses no discernible samples from other music and is what is called ‘an original work’ under copyright laws.

In 2011, car company Chrystler licensed the song and used a reworked version of the song and got Eminem himself to act in an ad for their Chrystler 200 campaign. The slogan was ‘Imported from Detroit” and hints both on the origins of the car company and Eminem.

But then also in 2011, German car company Audi rolls out this ad for the Audi A6 Avant. Yep, they completely cloned Lose Yourself and used it in their ad. Notes were changed, arrangement were changed, but every one will recognise it as the same song. When I was writing this, the company that holds the copyrights to the song has decided to sue Audi. Chrystler was yet undecided.

It’s clear that Audi’s use of the song is intentional, though the launch of their ad while the one for Chrystler is out may be just a poor coincidence. Regardless, in the end this will probably produce more attention for both their products. There’s no such thing as bad publicity.

Going to do an easy one this week, since I got lost in a swamp of sample connections yesterday.

In 1991 Massive Attack was temporarily named just ‘Massive‘ due to the outbreak of the Gulf War. Under that name they released Unfinished Sympathy. While a lot of the budget of the album went into the string arrangements of that song, it still leans on two samples as well.

The hey-hey comes from the 1976 track Planetary Citizen by Mahavishnu Orchestra and John McLaughlin. It blends in quite nicely with the vocals by Shara Nelson in Unfinished Sympathy. The beats from the song are hidden between the drum rolls in the opening of the song Parade Strut (instrumental) by J.J. Johnson for the soundtrack of Willie Dynamite (1974).

Interestingly, I had to correct the Wikipedia page for Unfinished Sympathy, because it stated that the bells in the song are from the famous (and often used) Take Me to the Mardi Gras by Bob James. Not only is the ring of the bells different, Unfinished Sympathy has the bells in 4 keys and the original Bob James sample only 2. Seriously, play them next to each other and tell the difference.

Sampling often leads to lawsuits and thus controversies. Usually it’s an open-and-shut case (for the court any how) when some sampled a bit of music directly and they didn’t get permission to use it from the owners of the rights to the original (which mind you isn’t necessarily the person performing the song or even the person who wrote it). But it becomes harder to do so when the original isn’t directly sampled but re-played.

In 1977 R&B group The Emotions released the song Best of My Love which became a huge success. Like many songs by The Emotions and other R&B and funk artists, Best of My Love has been sampled a lot in in hiphop and dance music.

Some simply sampled parts that make it clearly distinguishable, like 3rd Bass in Brooklyn-Queens (1989), King Bee in a Must Be the Music remix (1990), Full Force in Ain’t my Type of Hype (1990), Positive K’s Car Hoppers (1992), C.J. Lewis in Best of My Love (1994), Tamia’s Falling For You (1997), B-Rock & the Bizz in My Baby Daddy (1997), Cut Copy in Lights & Music. There’s even a rendition in a Sonic the Hedgehog game.

More often though samplers focus on the “oww”-shout from that song. De La Soul did it in Say No Go (1989), Armand van Helden in Alright (1994), Nine in Whutcha Want (1995) and Deavid Soul in Miller Ball Breakers (2000).

But the most interesting case comes from Mariah Carey who released the song Emotions in 1991. The song, though it doesn’t use any direct sample, is obviously inspired by and a tribute to Best of My Love. The title of the song Emotions is a bluntly obvious direct reference to the original artists The Emotions. Despite this, the original songwriter of Best of My Love, Maurice White, decided to sue the producers of Emotions, David Cole and Robert Clivilles otherwise known as C+C Music Factory. The matter was settled out of court and Mariah Carey would later sample another song by The Emotions, Blind Alley (1972), directly in Dreamlover (1993). I assume the rights to that one were nicely cleared beforehand.

I just did a practice run for a live gig. It lasted 45 minutes and as to be expect it did not so go as well as I hoped. But hey it was a first run. I took notes and now have something to work on.

So does this mean I have a live gig lined up? Not yet! But I do have plans. I’ll be submerged in my headphones the next few months and see if I can start doing some live gigs maybe after the summer. We’ll see. Gotta get better first.

Meanwhile, you may remember this entry I did which included SL2? Richard Russell of XL Recordings mentioned the whosampled.com entry I made following that post on Twitter. Sweet.

One of the biggest hits in the US by a Dutch artist is still Venus by Shocking Blue in 1969. It got re-popularized by the English girl-group Banarama when they covered it in 1986. In 1990 a ridiculous remix of Venus was released. The remix itself featured a few overused samples like Get up, Get Into It, Get Involved (1970) from James Brown, Think (1972) by Lynn Collins and Bring the Noise by Public Enemy (1987).

Besides Bananarama it was also covered by Kirka in Finnish (1970), over-dramatically by Mina (1986), as a song about Jesus by ApologetiX (1998), by Singaporean singer Stefanie Sun (2002), by another Dutch band Krezip (2005) and even Jennifer Lopez did it for a razor blade commercial in 2010.

But is Venus by Shocking Blue this week’s original? Nope, the song’s music is largely based on The Banjo Song by The Big 3 which included ‘Mama’ Cass Elliot who would later play in the Mama’s & the Pappa’s. But it goes even deeper. The Banjo Song itself is a very different musical arrangement around the lyrics of Oh! Susana by Stephen Foster which was originally released in 1848.  So in the end, Venus was based on the music from The Banjo Song which was based on the lyrics of Oh! Susana.

Classical composer Edvar Grieg wrote In the Hall of the Mountain King for the play Peer Gynt which premiered in 1876. As such, it had a cinematic soundtrack quality to it, long before cinema became a broad popular pastime. Because of this it has long been a favorite background music for television and film. Most recently a rendition by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross popped up on the award-winning soundtrack of The Social Network.

A lot of musicians covered or sampled it, without it being specifically intended to accompany moving images. Notable covers are the versions by The Lancasters (titled Satan’s Holiday in 1965) ELO (1973), Apollo 100 as Mad Mountain King (1972) The Who (recorded in 1967, released in 1995), metal cello-quartet Apocalyptica (2000) and Epica (2009).

But sampling it has been done quite a lot too. Whistle used the melody as a short hook in Just Buggin’ (1986). Master-sampler Coldcut featured a sample in Stop This Crazy Thing (1988) from (I think) the jazz-cover by Hugo Montenegro. Tango used it in the acid-track Can’t Stop the Rush. The song is among the classical tunes used in the title theme for the Sonic the Hedgehog-cartoon (1993). Vibes & Wishdokta used it in Motorway Madness (1996). A personal hardcore favorite: Juggernaut’s Ruffneck Rules da Artcore Scene (1996) Eurodance-artists Captain Jack used it in Dream a Dream (1999 and the 2009 version too). Delinquent Habits used it impressively in The Kind (1999). Most recently parts of it were used by Votchi in Unicorn (2004).

As a bit of trivia, according to the Wikipedia-article the tune also served as the basis for the Inspector Gadget theme.