Long time, no blog! Apologies for the absence which was mostly due to a change of job and family life but I'm back with a special single topic posting of a genre that was briefly popular almost 20 years ago but left an impression on the popular culture we know of today. Back in 2001, thanks to the advent of P2P file-sharing technologies such as Napster and Audiogalaxy, a new form of 'mash up' - that is, the laying of musical elements from one track over elements taken from another - was being created and distributed firstly online and then as bootlegs and white-label pressings. This genre was referred to as 'Bastard Pop' thanks to its DIY underground and somewhat illegal status and was popularized via websites such as Boomselection and Get Your Bootleg On. 'Bastard Pop' did have its antecedents e.g.
- Buchanan & Goodman's novelty 'The Flying Saucer' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7RXRLao17k
- DNA's remix of 'Tom's Diner' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXg5pOF2PvY
- John Oswald's Plunderphonics http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHY--X-r7To
and many other examples such as Negativland, Double Dee & Steinski, Coldcut, EBN & ECC.
Here are a few of my favourites from the early 00s:
Freelance Hellraiser - A Stroke Of Genius (Christina Aguilera - Genie In A Bottle/The Strokes - Hard To Explain)
One of the most successful 'Bastard Pop' creations, this got quite a bit of airplay at the time. Freelance Hellraiser actually did remix work of Aguilera and also wrote & produced for the likes of Little Boots and Ladyhawke.
Girls On Top - We Don't Give A Damn About Our Friends (Adina Howard - Freak Like Me/The Tubeway Army - Are 'Friends' Electric?)
Girls On Top was the alias under which Richard X produced bastard pop. Other tracks included 'Being Scrubbed' (TLC - No Scrubs/The Human League - Being Boiled) and 'I Wanna Dance With Numbers' (Whitney Houston - I Wanna Dance With Somebody/Kraftwerk - Numbers). 'We Don't Give A Damn About Our Friends' was covered by The Sugababes and Richard X went on to work with Liberty X on 'Being Nobody' their mash-up of the aforementioned 'Being Boiled' and Chaka Kahn's 'Ain't Nobody'. The link to the original is above, plus here's The Sugababes re-recording and "Being Nobody' by Liberty X.
CigarRos Vs Sealion Dion - Bium Bium Bambalo (Celine Dion - My Heart Will Go On/Sigur Ros - Bium Bium Bambalo)
An anonymous release on the Unbearable Recordings related English Muffin Records (so I would guess it was either Gamers In Exile or Goodiepal), this works far better than it should!
Kylie Minogue 'Can't Get Blue Monday Out Of My Head' (Kylie Minogue - Can't Get You Out Of My Head/New Order - Blue Monday)
This originally appeared on the 2 Many DJs (an alias for the Belgian band Soulwax who popularized Bastard Pop with their Radio Soulwax and 2 Many DJs mix sets) album as a hidden track and was then performed by Kylie live at the Brit Awards in 2002.
Bonus Tracks:
Osymyso - Intro-Inspection
One of the best UK artists who came out of the Bastard Pop scene, Osymyso put together this track that used 101 song intros.
Girl Talk - Feed The Animals
One of the few artists to actually get a fully-released album out there (instead of releasing a bootleg), Gregg Gillis' latest release is an excellent example of the plunderphonic/mash-up scene. It's pay-what-you-want to boot! http://illegal-art.net/shop#release117
DJ Danger Mouse 'The Grey Album'
In 2004 Danger Mouse (a.k.a. Brian Buton) took some Jay-Z a cappella's from The Black Album and mixed them with some unauthorized samples from The Beatles' White Album to create The Grey Album. Unsurprisingly, EMI were not too enamoured with the results and sent him a Cease & Desist letter - by then it had been downloaded over a million times! Brian went on to Gnarls Barkley and Broken Bells.
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