New Monday #82
Happy Monday, kiddos!
The world continues to go around and wobble like a damaged Leslie cabinet.
A Killer Mashup
Pull the vocals off this, put them on that—digital and DAWs have taken mashups to another level. Some are fun, some are funny, a few are transcendent.
DJ Cummerbund makes transcendent mashups. From Long Island (shout out to the hometown), he’s made hundreds of mashups and has won awards. He produces, he tours. He's like the Elvis, The Beatles, the Bowie of mashups. And I just discovered him. And now you get to discover him, if you haven’t already.
This came across my feed a few days ago and I’ve been listening to it on loop, as well as exploring his other offerings. It won a Webby for best mashup in 2020.
https://youtu.be/tcUB-3lud60?si=c0cRkRsgTUGCBer7
The legal machinations behind these I’ve not looked into. I suppose much of the appropriation of music and images is covered by Fair Use. But some of these seem to go beyond into something else. Hmmmm... Check out this one:
https://youtu.be/c8Upzye9Ctw?si=8_ds4uZrh46vwseK
A look at the credits on YouTube reveals links to the source recordings as well as a link for a streaming version. Interesting. But a search on Spotify of the title reveals links to the Rob Zombie source song, while searching DJ Cummerbund turns up a 'Love Shack' remix.
Clearly, deals were signed and handshakes made. But this strange stretching of Fair Use and the depositing of Streaming Royalties all over the place makes what’s happening to Rick Beato even harder to understand.
Beating Down Rick Beato
We all know Rick Beato for his wonderful interviews and videos on music. He has 5 million followers and rightly so. He asks great questions. He gets artists to open up. He knows his music theory, his audio engineering and his history. He has a kid-in-a-candy-store enthusiasm for what he does. There’s a reason he’s the top online music journalist. And he liked my sweater at NAMM last year.
But Universal Music Group isn’t happy with him and appears to have declared war on him, issuing a Copyright Strike against him on YouTube. Three strikes and his channel is shut down forever.
This is the kind of thing you need to know about, as it will become more of a problem in all our lives as AI muddies the line between creation and theft, record companies search for cigarette butts of revenue as they lose their empires to small creatives, everyone sues everyone else and no one makes money.
A good overview of Mr Beato’s situation, by Ted Gioia, is here. A quick read.
Ted Gioia, by the way, is a great guy to follow.
The Death of a Turtle
Mark Volman died on Sept. 5th. He was a member of The Turtles, was the "Flo" in "Flo and Eddie," sang on countless records. He was a big guy with frizzy hair and irresistible energy. Later in his life, he earned a degree in screenwriting and taught music business at Belmont College. By all accounts, he was a wonderful fellow.
How did he get the name Flo?
He and his partner in The Turtles, and friend/comrade for life, Howard Kaylan (Eddie), were signed as The Turtles to White Whale Records. It was such an utterly shitty record deal that when The Turtles broke up, Volman and Kaylan couldn't even use their real names commercially. Ya gotta love record companies.
The Turtles made a clutch of great records for White Whale, including perhaps the ultimate pop tune, 'Happy Together'.
More interesting to me, for New Monday purposes, is this: She's My Girl, from their 1968 The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands album.
Listen for spectacular vocals from Howard Kaylan, and listen for the compression kicking in on his vocals when he gets louder. Also dig the insane production on this: pianos, reverb, vocals, congas, a break with an orchestra! Mariachi trumpets! Tons of saturation as they overload the tape and the console! Utterly incredible.
The Turtles were innovative. The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands, a concept album, is a loopy piece of psychedelia that's really worth a listen. These guys are way way underrated. One of the most innovative pop bands of the 60s.
Also this is worth a listen, not just for the production, which has heavily overdubbed drums and an out-of-nowhere ending, but again for the vocals, and really, just the quality of the song: We Ain't Gonna Party No More. What a fabulous song.
The Turtles eventually got the last laugh. White Whale went bankrupt—The Turtles were their only act that made money and the label couldn't milk them forever.
Flo and Eddie bought the rights to all of their own music.
Rest in peace, Flo.
A Reverb Lesson
The Turtles records used reverb and ambience very thoughtfully. Not everything was wet. There was space not only from left to right but from front to back.
Back in those days, a studio might only have one reverb to use, a vastly different situation than we have now, where you can slap a different reverb on every channel.
I used to use three reverbs when mixing, and I wrote about how to do that. It leads to an overall cleaner recording, and if you're new to mixing, this will give you a foundation for your thinking and process.
A Listening Session
Last week I tossed a recording of 'Lips Like Sugar' by Echo and the Bunnymen to listen to and ponder. It fits into the loose theme of, “Show us where the record company hurt you on the doll.” This week: an extended look and listen. You’ll never hear this recording the same way again.
And that is it for today, Monday September 8th. The magic of the fall is upon us.
Warm regards,
Luke