"Doctor Who on Holiday" by Dean Gray.
This isn't one of my favorite songs of all time. I just heard it for the first time yesterday, on Sunday. Well, sort of. I've actually known all of it for a really long time -- I'm just not used to hearing them together.
It's a mash-up, see, and I think it's kind of beautiful. No, nix "kind of" -- it's beautiful. And the fact that it's a mash-up that's beautiful seems really interesting to me.
The Dean Gray project you might have heard of. Green Day is a famously derivative band. They're catchy as hell (my 11-year-old stepson is a HUGE fan, posters on the wall, iPod full of every song recorded), but they catch a lot of flak for, well, ripping other songs off. So, when a couple DJs/mix artists decide to take Green Day tracks from the chart-topping American Idiot album and back-engineer them to their source material and to other pop songs -- songs of unexpected similarity -- it sends a message about how these songs exist. How we hear them. How they get written. What it all means.
Here's a decent overview of the American Edit album, from a San Francisco Chronicle review:
In the spirit of DJ Danger Mouse's "Grey Album," which brilliantly mashed up the Beatles' "White" album with Jay-Z's "Black" album, "American Edit" bristles with creativity at every turn. Released free online, the set acts as both criticism and tribute, revealing the band's embarrassing source material (the Bangles and Dire Straits, who knew?) while applauding its sheer audacity. "Novocaine" is seamlessly grafted onto Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody"....
In this case, the "original" Green Day song, "Holiday," is, to my ears, actionably close to Iggy Pop's "The Passenger." Same chord progression, same arrangement, same melody in the verses. I don't think Iggy Pop's label ever pursued that, but Green Day's label sent the Dean Gray collective a cease & desist order 10 days after they stuck the American Edit album on the internet. So much for sticking it to the establishment, American Idiot. On the other hand, well, here I am, listening to the song months later. 10 days on the net is enough for music to reach a million listeners in Singapore, you silly execs! Especially when it's as good -- as catchy -- as "Doctor Who on Holiday."
This song stands out for me because it hits this very precise button somewhere in the folds of my adolescent brain (located just forward of the lizard brain). I know "The Passenger" pretty well. I've heard "Holiday" far too often lately. Never in a million years would I have thought of sticking either together with the Doctor Who theme song. Or no, not even that -- the Dean Gray mash-up artists are more meta than that. They use The Timelords' "Doctorin' the Tardis," a post-punk proto-mash-up that, if I'm remembering correctly, actually did wind up getting those KLF fellows (The Timelords) in some legal trouble with Gary Glitter's label. Amid all that cerebration, though, the music just lights up that geek center in my brain, and I just start smiling and smiling.
The Doctor Who theme is really a sublime piece of music. That's the main thing. (This song would work, I think, even if I'd never seen a Dr. Who episode or heard Green Day sing.)
But also, this is a really funny use of it. And this makes me think of mash-ups as a kind of savvy, witty permutation of novelty records. I think you can draw a line of evolution back from DJ Dangermouse through Neanderthals like The Timelords to such Australopithecine artists Weird Al Yankovic and Tom Lehrer. I also suspect, listening to this song, that that's the history of rock'n'roll -- that early rock was seen as similarly disposable, youth-oriented novelty stuff. Grew out of what, skiffle and hillbilly music, didn't it? Stuff grown-ups would laugh at if they deigned to notice it. (I'm starting to feel all "Comics are for KIDS" now, but it's true.)
Most of the mash-ups I've heard have gotten by on being clever. (I haven't heard all that many, I have to admit.) But within the last year, I've started finding ones that aren't just novelty numbers. They're funny, yes, but also imbued with a kind of strange beauty. This song has it. So does "Brazil is Full of Love" by DJ Earworm, available here. They're sublime -- there are hints of familiarity, weird juxtapositions, sudden surprises within a familiar framework.
Isn't that what makes all pop music work? |
