Mashed Up Brain

(Let's see, one year before previous post, 3 years before this post...I'm not even going to bother commenting on it. What could I really say?)

I've had mash-ups in the back of my head ever since Sunday when Grace and I were at Word in Greenpoint and somehow the subject came up. Specifically, Grace said to me "You used to listen to a lot of mash-ups, didn't you?"

It's funny how memory works. I wouldn't say I ever listened to a LOT of mash-ups, but I definitely went through a phase where I was relatively fascinated by them.

The very first time I heard anything like a mash-up was the opening scene of the movie "Blue Crush" and they had juxtaposed some hip hop song I was unfamiliar with with "Cruel Summer" by Bananarama. I wasn't a huge fan of either song, but it was easily the most memorable part of the movie as far as I was concerned.

I sat there in disbelief, thinking "wow, they just combined those two songs and it totally works!" I wanted more - but there wasn't anything more that I could find. The term "mash-up" wasn't in my vocabulary yet.

It didn't get there until 2003, when Grace and I started dating. One thing we were both really into was music, and we began exchanging a lot of it. I made her a CD which had a mash up of "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor, and "Work It" by Missy Elliot. That track was amazing!

I think I maybe found one or two others at the time, but nothing that I liked as much as that one. Probably because the combination of the songs was so original and they way they were woven together made each song seem that much better.

All in all, I can remember only finding a few mash ups that I really liked during that time period, and then they quickly began to seem gimmicky and boring. In my memory, it was a super-brief phase where I listened to just a few songs. In Grace's, it was me listening to a LOT of mash-ups.

----

I know there are now a bunch of tools that will let you make your own mash-ups, but I haven't really looked into them. If I did, I think one of the first songs I would try to combine would be "Power of Love" by Huey Lewis...

...with "Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson

Mostly it's the bass-line that I think would hook the songs together - they both have such solid bass-lines. I grant it's not the most original or interesting combination of songs. It's certainly no "Thunder Busters":

Nor is it Wugazi.

But what is?