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Wednesday 2 July 2003

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Pop eats
itself
(Filed: 25/04/2002)

'Bastard pop' yokes together songs by odd -
and unwitting - musical bedfellows. The results are startling,
says Neil McCormick

I WAS flicking through 12-inch singles in an
independent record shop the other day, idly perusing the
ever-proliferating multitude of genres and sub-groupings (from
"broken beat" to "electroclash") that constitute the dance section,
when I was struck by a particularly enticing new category: "bastard
pop".

Sugababes are set for the number one spot with a cover
version of the bootleg that combined Freak Like Me with Are
Friends Electric?

This, it transpired, did not represent the latest
sonic assault on the unsuspecting public by Pop
Idol's "Mr Nasty", Simon Cowell. Bastard pop is actually the
rather clever name being given to a new form of bootlegging, where
two or more wildly different tracks are combined to (it is hoped)
original effect, usually without worrying too much about who
actually owns the rights. Among bootlegs currently doing the rounds
is Oops!... The Real Slim Shady Did It Again, which could be
described as the illegitimate offspring of Eminem and Britney
Spears, a union masterminded by a DJ who has chosen to remain
anonymous, probably for fear of prosecution for copyright theft.

Illicit and unlicensed recordings have long been a
thorn in the side of the music business, but, whereas in the past
bootlegs tended to feature live concerts and other hard-to-obtain
material only of interest to the most dedicated collectors, bastard
pop has taken it into a new and arguably more creative realm.

Certainly, it is throwing up some interesting if
unwitting collaborations between artists who would superficially
appear to have little in common. Urban girl group Destiny's Child
get it together with grunge legends Nirvana on Smells Like
Bootylicious; big-voiced, big-haired pop babe Christina Aguilera
finds herself backed by scruffy garage rock band the Strokes on A
Stroke of Genius; and R&B diva Whitney Houston is spliced with
robotic German electro-pioneers Kraftwerk on I Wanna Dance With
Numbers.

Cynics given to muttering that all pop music is the
same may seize on bastard pop as final proof. Here is a genre to
erase all genres, existing in a kind of alternative musical
universe, where fashion distinctions are blurred and every musical
style is interconnected. "No one in their right mind would put
Christina Aguilera in a studio with the Strokes," says James Hyman,
co-host of Xfm's The Remix show and something of a champion of the
new bootleggers. "Yet it may be the best record she never made. It's
the work of a real musician's mind, someone with an ear for
detail."

Aguilera's record company, Warner Brothers, evidently
feel differently about it, having issued Xfm with a "cease and
desist" order regarding airing the bootleg. Bastard pop cuts to the
core of what the music business considers the major threat to its
future profitability: internet piracy.

Cut-and-paste montage techniques allowing the
creation of something ostensibly new out of old source material has
been an essential part of pop culture since the birth of hip hop,
the invention of the twin record deck and the proliferation of
sampling technology in the late Seventies. Grandmaster Flash's
pioneering Wheels of Steel single in 1981 could be said to be a
prime example of bastard pop, combining elements from recordings by
Chic, Blondie, the Sugar Hill Gang and Queen. As for merging two
different records to artful effect, DJ duo DNA had a number one hit
in 1990 by mixing one of their dance tracks with Suzanne Vega's a
cappella Tom's Diner, a recording that was made illegally but, after
threats of legal action, was subsequently licensed to Vega's record
company.

In general, after an anarchic beginning, the
recording industry has managed to get a handle on sampling, so that
officially released tracks utilising samples tend to credit
accordingly and pay royalties. However, the explosion of illicit
sampling on the internet in the past two years has put the industry
on the defensive.

In this digital era, no expensive studio hardware is
required by would-be bootleggers. Tracks are manipulated by easily
accessible software programmes, such as Acid, which enable pitch and
speed to be adjusted and new beats to be added, the results then
being distributed across the same internet from which original
samples are gleaned.

"We get sent hundreds and hundreds of the things at
Xfm," says Hyman. "Most of them are absolutely shocking, just put
together by schoolkids. But I've got a musical Darwinist view:
everyone can do it, so you've got to do that little bit better to
survive. Things could start getting really boring now, but it's
bound to throw up some really interesting new mutations."

The industry's response at the moment seems to be, if
you can't beat 'em, join 'em. This week, girl group the Sugababes
release Freak Like Me (on London records), which - pay close
attention now - is a newly recorded cover version of a popular
illegal bootleg known as We Don't Give a Damn About Friends, which
combined R&B singer Adina Howard's Freak Like Me with Tubeway
Army's Are Friends Electric? Sugababes version has been re-produced
by the original bootlegger, Richard X, with properly licensed
samples. It is likely to enter the charts on Sunday at number
one.

If you thought pop couldn't get any more confusing,
some enterprising criminal has been bootlegging the bootleggers by
selling a bootleg album entitled The Best Bootlegs in the World.
According to leading bootleg internet site boomselection.com: "Some
people are not very happy with it. Permissions from the bootleggers
were not asked and we assume the person behind it is making quite a
bit."

Haven't the bastards ever heard of irony?

External links

James Hyman - Xfm

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