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Underground > Radio & Music >

Skits

14:59 / 01.11.03

ten seconds of tuning a shortwave radio before...

...OPB my own dear self in the Basement Jaxx thread:

There's still a load of those fucking Jaxxaludes though - oooh, ten seconds of a weird sample before the song starts! Great! Or, to put it another way, fucking pointless....

So, I think that states my case fairly clearly. I hate skits. I just don't see the point to most of these pieces of music (or words, or both) on records. I know what they are meant to do, usually - create an 'atmosphere', set out a stall, or show that the performer has a sense of humour. But they get right on my tits.

Hey, welcome to NMAFM, the station that likes to interrupt posts with pointless rambling. Man, I smoke loads of blunts and I'm about to drink a forty. Oh, I've got a coughing fit...

I like the music on the new Outkast album, but I don't need a two-minute skit about 'the morning after... where are my panties?' It just pisses me off, to tell you the truth. Likewise the ten second Jaxxaludes and any number of other examples of ten-second fun.

ten seconds of computerised punky thrashing

Does anyone agree with me, or am I talking shite? What is the worst example of a skit you've heard? Do they serve their intended purpose?

19:38 / 01.11.03

Skits can be ok when making comps. I used to love putting the Mad Rapper skits on punk comps, cuz while he's a joke on the rap cd (was it the B.I.G.'s cd's he always appeared on?) he is a hero on a punk cd. Cuz he's all like "Man I still live in my parent's basement, I'm tryin' to release this cd, I got mad flow, somebody put me on a record."

Skits are fine if they are relatively short, and have their own track number on the cd, so when you skip to a certain song you dont have to listen to the skit.

All Acting Regiment

21:15 / 01.11.03

Yeah, setting an atmosphere- the thing is, when a certain band does something like that really well, every other band tries to copy them.

I mean I dunno Manson's "weird noises" openings were to my ear effectively disturbing BUT now everyone has to have some shite version of it, i.e. baboon rape party (or the whole of the drippy new album).

Vocal samples are always in danger of saying "look at us. cool, we are. this is proper bo."

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:26 / 03.11.03

I generally agree that they are an annoying and inexplicably popular piece of pointlessness, especially on hip-hop records, but dude - how can you not like the skits on The Love Below? Title aside, 'Where Are My Panties?' is particularly great: the guy shouting "ICE COLD!" in the street outside, the way Dre hopefully muses "hmmm, maybe she'll give me some breakfast", and especially the way it actually serves a purpose - it's a bridge between a song that's just about wanting to fuck ('Spread') and one about falling in love ('Prototype'), and it traces how quickly the transition can happen:

"...but what if she's -
What if she's -
What if. She's. The one?"

The ones on Speakerboxxx are much worse, apart from the one with Big Boi's kid.