Tag: links

  • Thievery Corporation – Resolution

    Here’s a really quick one I submitted to whosampled.com recently:

    In 2002 American lounge/triphop-duo Thievery Corporation released their album The Richest Man in Babylon. On it is the instrumental track Resolution. Around the same time another American triphop band named Etro Anime is making a small name for itself, though their effort seems to mainly spark interest in the Netherlands. One of its members, Liset Alea (who doesn’t even have a wiki-page), left the group to go solo.

    When finally she releases an album in 2005, it’s on the Dutch branch of EMI music. It’s titled No Sleep after the title track and first single No Sleep. It’s produced by Yoad Nova, who also did work for the likes of the Sugababes (among others involved on Freak Like Me, which has been mentioned here before), Bryan Adams and Sophe Ellis-Bextor. Right from the beginning of the song, what do we hear? Thievery Corperation – Resolution:

  • Classics IV – Spooky

    In 1966 saxophone Mike Sharpe and his band recorded an instrumental song titled Spooky. About a year later, the track found its way into the charts and got noticed. A band that mainly played covers named the Classics IV, decided to record a cover of the song also titled Spooky which was released in 1967 and became a huge hit in 1968. The Classics IV added something to their cover that wasn’t on the original, apart from their own instrumentation: lyrics.

    The Classics IV track spawned a number of covers. In 1969 Carl Tjader recorded an again instrumental xylophone cover of which you can wonder whether it was based on the Sharpe or the Classics IV version.  In 1970 Dusty Springfield recorded a cover of Spooky with the lyrics of the Classics IV version. In 1980 Lydia Lunch did her take on Spooky. Several other bands have played or recorded a cover like REM, Imogen  Heap, the Puppini Sisters and many others. The most intriguing ‘cover’ of Spooky is by a band named the Atlanta Rhythm Section in 1979. The band consisted of former members of the Classics IV and another band, the Candymen.

    The song didn’t go unnoticed when sampling started. When former model Naomi Campbell released an album, Spooky was used in the track Looks Swank (which I can’t listen to thanks to Sony being a dick on YouTube).  Barry Adamson used a clearly recognisable sample of Spooky on his 1996 track Something Wicked This Way Comes. The track found its way onto the soundtrack of the bizarre David Lynch film Lost Highway in 1997. Also in 1996, The Bloodhound Gang used Spooky in their song Why is Everybody Always Pickin’ on Me?

    Though technically speaking the Classics IV version of Spooky isn’t the original, it did birth a lot of versions and samples:

  • Rita Marley – One Draw

    I frequently use whosampled.com as a source, but I also try to give back finds not listed on the site. When I submitted the fact that 2 Hi use a sample from the Jungle Brothers in the 1992 track Jump a Little Hi-er, one of the moderators wondered out loud where another sample in that track with the lyrics “I wanna get high” at the beginning came from. Turns out a simple Google query for the lyrics gave a result: Rita Marley (the widow of Bob) put out the track One Draw in 1981 and that’s where the sample is from.

    Oddly enough, the track has also been sampled by Cypress Hill. While you’d expect them to take a literal sample of the track, they actually rapped the lyrics themselves in I Wanna Get High from 1993. Sizzla sampled the song too in 2005, but his track Smoke Di Herb, but his track only features the music, not the lyrics.

    So the track Jump a Little Hi-er is not just the only track to sample the vocals of Rita Marley, it’s the only one which is (arguably) the only one not about smoking marijuana. For as far as dance songs are about any thing but dancing, that is.

  • Movie Sequel Clones

    A special brand of clones are movie theme songs. Or more precisely sequel theme songs. Often film studios exploit a sequel as “the same film but with more explosions”, likewise they give the soundtrack the same treatment for a quick cash in. And like you try to keep the characters the same, you want to keep the audio backdrop the same and recognisable. Sampling, covering, a tribute and some times blatantly stealing become justified.

    The most famous and often cloned song are obviously the James Bond opening songs. Don’t confuse these with John Barry’s James Bond theme song however, since this usually precedes the opening credits. No, the big epic songs by famous musicians usually have a distinct style that not only use the same instrumentation but often roughly the same build-up. Compare You Only Live Twice (1967) by Nancy Sinatra and The World Is Not Enough (1999) by Garbage for instance. It should be noted that, though performed by a wide range of artists, all of the recent themes are the work of composer David Arnold and the Bond films are heavily formula driven.

    While the first Rocky film from 1976 has a signature theme song by Bill Conti (Gonna Fly Now), the band Survivor did the theme song for Rocky III in 1982; Eye of the Tiger. When Survivor got asked to also do the music to Rocky IV in 1985, the composed a similar song in composition and feel: Burning Heart. When the job of composing the soundtrack for Rocky V in 1990 came to some one else, the first thing you notice in the track by Joey B. Ellis is the fact that it indirectly samples Eye of the Tiger again in Go For It while the style of the track is very similar to The Power also from 1990 by Snap. Snap was also on the full soundtrack of Rocky V.

    Like with Rocky, theme songs often get updated to fit the current popular style of music. When the original Ghostbusters film from 1984 got a sequel in 1989 with Ghostbusters II, the theme song from the original, Ray Parker jr.’s Ghostbusters, got a hiphop treatment by Run DMC also titled simply Ghostbusters. The original Mission: Impossible theme song to the 1960’s tv-show fitted perfectly in its time with the James Bond-style spy tune. When it got made into a film in the 1996, the Mission: Impossible theme was quickly adapted by U2’s Adam Clayton & Larry Mullen to a more electronic version. When Limp Bizkit got to do it in 2000 their song Take a Look Around again borrows from the original but with a totally different spin.

    The list of example is endless. Feel free to comment about the ones you know, love or despise.

  • Bob James – Sign of the Times

    A particular song by Bob James, Nautilus, has been sampled by dozens of hiphop (and other) artists. Since this post would be too long if I went into the entire list, there’s another song I want to focus on: Sing of the Times from 1981.

    It first re-appeared as a sampled in the 1991 De La Soul track Keepin’ the Faith. A few years after in 1994 it probably made it’s most famous appearance in Regulate by Warren G. and Nate Dogg. That track also samples Michael McDonald’s 1982 track I keep forgetting and borrows the ‘Let Me Ride‘ lyric from Parliament’s Mothership Connection (1975).

    In 1995 the sample pops up again in Menelik & No Sé’s track Quelle Aventure, which also uses a sample from Pino D’Angio’s 1980 track Ma Quale Idea (did I hear anyone say Don’t call me baby?).

    Finally in 1998 Buzzy Bus also takes on Bob James and puts it in their track Jump. This tracks also samples the Jungle Brother’s I’ll House You with it’s lyric “jump, jump, a little higher” (and I may need to devote a post to that track as well some time in the future). You may know the Buzzy Bus guys (Koen Groeneveld & Addy van der Zwan) under their various release names: The Klubbheads, The Ultimate Seduction, their remixes for the Turn Up The Bass compilations and a dozen more names.

    But forget about G-Funk and Club House for now, here’s Bob James – Sign of the Times:

  • Nighttrain – Hallo Bimmelbahn

    The song Barbra Streisand by Duck Sauce has been taking the world by storm for weeks. The video is loaded with tons of artists including Pharell and Kanye West. Duck Sauce is DJ’s Armand van Helden and A-trak and like the title DJ suggests, apart from making records themselves, they like to spin other people’s tunes too.

    So it should come as no surprise that Barbra Streisand is literally sampled from Boney M’s 1979 disco hit Gotta go Home with a few added beats, scratches, sounds and of course the ‘Barbra Streisand’ sample. You’d think that was the end of it, but no.

    Gotta go home is in fact a cover of a German song Hallo Bimmelbahn from 1973 by a band called Nighttrain. The original song already includes the ‘woohoohoo’ and same notes as the Boney M. version minus some steel drums and vocals. The same elements Barbra Streisand leans on.

    But how did some German song about a train who took some guy’s love away end up as a disco song about going to a sunny beach? Simple; Boney M., despite being headed by Caribbean singers, was in fact based in Germany and the product of German producer  Frank Farian who undoubtedly figured a more internationalised cover of Hallo Bimmelbahn would be more successful. Frank Farian was also responsible for the ill-fated band Milli Vanilli, by the way.

    So, a German song about a train, became an English song about heading for Caribbean islands and that in turn became a dance song with a video celebrating the diversity New York. Here’s Hallo Bimmelbahn by Nighttrain (though I dare you not to say “Barbra Streisand” throughout the song):

  • Quit MySpace Day – the Aftermath

    It is interesting to see what happened after Quit MySpace Day. From the looks of it on Twitter, a lot of people either quit MySpace or had something to say about it. I think that’s more important than people just leaving their accounts dormant or taking it for granted. Perhaps MySpace will notice, though I doubt it. Let’s see what people said.

    Steve Lawson explains why he quit MySpace and mentions something a lot of people we’re saying: “Oh you’re just doing it to be cool”. He rightfully point out it’s not about being cool but re-evaluating whether the site has any added benefit or is just a waste of time.

    Mr. Tunes is one of the people who thought about it and said “no, I’m not quitting“. Oddly though he lists all the reasons why you should quit, even mentions he hasn’t used the site in two years and continues to say the one reason he keeps his accounts is for the contacts. Honestly, if I wanted to keep a list of contacts, I would not rely on MySpace to maintain that list for me. I’d make one myself. He points out that indeed a lot of promoters and such still ask for people’s MySpace, but that’s a sstupid reason to keep MySpace, if you can just as easily send then to BandCamp or SoundCloud or better yet: your own site.

    Andy Derrick seems most fervently opposed to the idea of quitting MySpace. While he seems greatly offended by Andrew Dubber’s idea, he also doesn’t have seem to have read what Dubber has posted.  Apart from the fore-mentioned argument that promoters seem to love MySpace, his argument mostly revolves around “don’t do what some bloke tells you to”. He mentions he has a wide web-presence and I agree, but that doesn’t mean you can be selective about which sites you do and don’t want to be on. Personally I think it’s clever to discover your own place and decide not to invest time in a site that costs you more than it gives back.

    Of course you could also go the clever route like Little Things That Kill did. They didn’t delete their MySpace, they simply put up a big warning saying MySpace is dead and you should go look them up elsewhere.

    Musformation.com comes with a potentially good reason  to keep your MySpace: Google ratings. For most bands their MySpace will either come in first or second when you look them up on Google. Still that seems like an odd argument, because if you have a good band name and you don’t have a MySpace, wouldn’t your own site make it to the top automatically. Unless you call your band “The Paris Hilton’s” of course, good luck staying on top.

    Other site’s mentioning the Quit MySpace Day are DIYMusician (also mentioning the Google & promoter argument), Eerste Hulp bij Plaatopnamen (in Dutch),  Jeroen Mirck (in Dutch), Hypebot, Netwaves and Wayne Meyer (who has written a good piece about it too;  “I can quit any time I like. Honest.”)

    I think as far as starting the discussion about the use of MySpace, Quit MySpace Day was a great success and remains to be. The ultimate irony is that a few days after, MySpace announces it’s rolling out an overhaul of the entire website. Not a coincidence I’m sure, but makes you wonder.

  • It’s Quit MySpace Day

    Quit MySpaceToday you will quit MySpace. Whether you’re a band, musician or just a fan with a (forgotten) account there, you have to go delete it now.

    Why?

    Exactly a year ago Andrew Dubber posted his idea of Quit MySpace Day. I posted about it too in May. His statement was simple: MySpace is very crappy as a social website as well as a band platform: it’s ugly & cumbersome (always has been), the music-interface is awful, people overload them with pictures & videos and the only messages we get are friends-invites and messages of unknown, crappy bands who are spamming the whole world about their new tour or album. Not to mention it’s owned by a big corporate news media company that stopped caring about MySpace too. When is the last time you logged in or thought MySpace had really helped you achieve something as a band? I bet you can list more reasons why MySpace sucks and you’re welcome to list them.

    Andrew Dubber gave MySpace a year to improve and guess what? They didn’t. So as a signal to MySpace that they have failed us for the last time, it’s time to leave. Not just log off, but delete all our accounts starting today to make sure they understand we have left for good.

    But I need MySpace!

    No. You. Don’t. And you know it. There’s tons of better ways as a musician to spread your music and connect with your fans or for you as a fan to connect to bands:

    Just to name a few. I hear you say: “But MySpace is my band’s website!” For the last frigging time:  MySpace should never be your ‘band website’. Unless you really don’t want the world to take your band seriously.

    Ok, I’m in. what do I do?

    1. Follow the step-by-step manual to delete your account.
    2. Spread the word (Twitter #quitmyspaceday , Facebook or your blog).
    3. Enjoy your freedom.

    Good luck and thanks for joining in!

  • The Roof Is On Fire

    Usually a famous sample gets used over and over again by a range of artists, but occasionally, multiple samples from the same track find their way into very different tracks by other people. Take Rock Master Scott & The Dynamic Three’s classic hip hop track from 1984: The Roof is on Fire.

    If I say “the roof is on fire” you’ll either chant along with the original, sing the mopey version in Fire Water Burn by the Bloodhound Gang from 1997, bounce to the 1998 song “Follow the Leader” by the Soca Boys, remember you danced to the 1989 dance track The roof is on fire by Westbam (which features a ton of other samples too), you may have headbanged to Sway by Coal Chamber from 1997 or if you’re really hardcore you remember Atari Teenage Riot using the lyrics in their 1999 track Anarchy 999. That or you heard the lines “the roof is on fire, we don’t need the water, let the motherfucker burn” in any other song that the Wiki article on the song mentions.

    And that’s kinda ironic, since The Roof Is On Fire was actually the B-side of the single that was intended as a hit song: Request Line. You may recognise the intro to that track as the same as that to Missy Elliot’s Work It from 2002. Somehow the simple but effective lyrics of the B-side found its way into pop culture and became just as standard for MC’s as “put your hands up for Detroit“.

    Even more ironic is the odd’s you will know yet another sample from The Roof is on Fire even though it completely ignores the famous lyrics involving lack of a fire department. Hey Girl Hey Boy by the Chemical Brothers from 1999 directly samples the opening of this original version of The Roof is on Fire.
    So hey girls and hey boys, we don’t need no water despite that The Roof is on Fire:

  • Sigur Rós – Homage or Fromage

    Sigur Rós get their fair share of requests for lending their musical for commercials, but they always say no. Yet, their music always pops up in these ads anyhow … as clone songs.

    Read what they have to say about it plus some video examples.

    (Thanks Ditte for pointed that link out to me)