Dec 2, 2008 Posted by Herko on Dec 2, 2008 in Personal notes | 1 comment

What does it all mean?

Today I bought the Stein­ski album ‘What does it all mean? 1983 – 2006 ret­ro­spec­tive’ (itunes link). This is an album by hip-hop leg­end Steve Stein, on which he col­lected some of the mixes he and Dou­glas DiFranco (also known as Dou­ble Dee) made back in the early days of hip-hop.

In fact, it was back in 1983 that Stein and DiFranco, at the time work­ing as an ad writer and a stu­dio engi­neer respec­tively, learned about a nation­wide remix con­test called “Hey Mr. DJ Play That Beat Down by Law Switch the Licks Mas­ter­mix Con­test” spon­sored by Tommy Boy Records. Goal was to remix G.L.O.B.E. & Whiz Kid’s “Play That Beat Mr. DJ”. A panel includ­ing Afrika Bam­baataa, Arthur Baker, and Shep Pet­ti­bone awarded it first prize after one lis­ten, and the remix gained even more air­play than the orig­i­nal. Their mix was called “Les­son One: The Pay­off Mix,” a track that sprin­kled the usual funk break­beats with a parade of sam­ples from fea­ture films and car­toons, includ­ing all man­ner of pop-culture references.

Stein­ski & Dou­ble Dee cre­ated more Les­son tracks, with the fourth Les­son track only pre­formed live once. I learned about the duo from the  Solid Steel pod­cast, the Cold­cut and Ninja Tunes record­la­bel affil­i­ated radio sta­tion slash pod­cast sta­tion. In pod­cast ep 81 Solid­Steel fea­tures an inter­view from 2002 with the duo, in which they talk to us about their expe­ri­ences in the Way Back Days, at the start of mod­ern hip-hop.

They later became great inspi­ra­tors for artists like DJ Shadow, Cut Chemist, the DJ Food col­lec­tive, some of the worlds very best turntab­lists. A few months ago my brother and I went to the The Hard Sell show by DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist. There they per­formed a whole show remix­ing 45rpm records live on 4 decks, using only gui­tar ped­als to cre­ate loops. The result was both very impres­sive and cre­ative. It’s a mix of skill and cre­ativ­ity you don’t see all that often in hip-hop music nowa­days. Take a look at this video of them per­form­ing here:

The inter­st­ing thing about this (orig­i­nal?) sub­cul­ture of hip-hop is the basic premisi that you can decon­struct and cre­atively recom­bine any cre­ative expres­sion into some­thing new. Orig­i­nal­ity doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily stem from cre­at­ing some­thing new from scratch (no pun intended). And this basic premi­sis is at the core of the hip-hop cul­ture, which makes it one of the biggest influ­ences on mod­ern day media and cre­ativ­ity inductry.

I’m defi­nately not a big hip-hop fan –I lean more towards the turn­ab­lism part then towards the slap-yo-bitch-an-look-at-my-bling-bling style R&B that is branded as hip-hop nowa­days. But remix­ing cre­ative expres­sions is what the mod­ern inter­net is mostly about. Not just musi­cal sam­ples, but your per­sonal thoughts and ideas (using twit­ter, for exam­ple), text, film, just about any­thing and every­thing can be recom­bined into some­thing fun­da­men­tally new. The whole copy­right move­ment doesn’t realise this –yet, but the Cre­ative Com­mons does, and sup­ports and pro­motes use of exist­ing cre­ative work for other uses.

So, Stein­ski and Dou­ble Dee show me that remix­ing is what is is all about.

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One Response to “What does it all mean?”

1. Marco van Hurne says:

   2 December 2008 at 10:10

   @Herko. Zeer leuke metafoor voor cre­ative engi­neer­ing ! Ik ben een believer. Een jaartje gele­den heb ik daar nog een artikel over geschreven op Sync: http://sync.nl/op-zoek-naar-de-moderne-ziener/
   Ik geloof sowieso dat jon­geren die nu op de arbei­ds­markt komen een heel andere kijk hebben op leren (van lin­eair naar lat­er­aal) en infor­matiev­er­w­erken (dis­con­tinue) en de hip-hop scene, cre­ative com­mons etc. zijn hier voor­beelden van dat cre­ative engi­neer­ing overal aan­wezig is.

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