Kid, You Are Going Places

I got my passport in the mail today! The process was bizarre - go to AAA to take stone-faced photo, write an expensive check, hand over my birth certificate to a post office clerk, wait, wait, wait, wait some more. Ta-da! Little navy book that lets you go places. The visa pages of my passport are intense and wrought with raw USA pride. Each has a quote from an American monument or influential person - Lynden B. Johnson, Abraham Lincoln, Flavor Flave. No, actually, I am kidding. Abraham Lincoln is not one of the individuals cited. That would be a bit of a stretch.

Additionally, the pages have muted illustrations of our great nation. I recognized a couple - Mount Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty. However, there are some vague references that I am less familiar with. One page has cowboys herding steers through a craggy meadow. Another has a photo of a space shuttle orbiting the moon. Yet another has a picture of a bear eating a juicy-looking salmon. I can't help but think that these images might fall into two categories upon being viewed by foreign security personnel: dishonest and confusing. When you open up a US passport, you are getting a glimpse of America from a far-away land. If you've never been here and were using a passport as a point of reference, you might expect our rivers to be chock full o' obese bears and our valleys overrun by men in stirrup pants. Also, you might believe we own the moon...

Name That Tune

For music purists, sampling is weird. Usually it is experienced while mingling at a party or busting a move on the dance floor. A song fades out and is replaced by a fresh beat, one that is strikingly familiar yet purposefully distorted. No one else seems perturbed. Even if they were, they probably wouldn’t show it. The practice is as common now as it was fifty years ago, the sound already lying dormant in our ears.

By definition, sampling is when an artist takes a portion of a previously recorded song and reuses it within the context of a new track. The sample can be purely instrumental (like a guitar solo) or actual lyrics. Musicians such as Girl Talk have built their entire careers on the foundation of recycled tunes, transforming the act of sampling into a post-modern, ‘nothing is original, nothing is individually owned’ philosophy. Frequently, this mindset has lead to bouts over copywriting infringements. While the legal implications of sampling remain debatable, one thing is for sure: no song is immune. The fact was recently reaffirmed to me at a friend’s open house. While chatting with other guests, I heard strands of Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” issuing from a nearby speaker. The line, “Johnny’s in the basement mixing up the medicine” was on repeat, laid over a rap solo.

Later when I got home, I Googled and found out that the artist was Juelz Santana. The title of his mix was appropriately named, “Mixing Up The Medicine.” I loved the original Bob Dylan song and therefore felt a bit bothered by Juelz Santana’s take. However, my righteous indignation dried upon discovering another resource – Whosampled.com. Who Sampled seeks to “explore and discussing the DNA of music.” The site allows you to search a directory of over 80,000 sampled songs and 31,000 artists who have utilized sampling or covers during the duration of their careers. Even better, there is an audio feature that allows users to compare sampled songs with their originals.

I typed ‘Bob Dylan’ into the search engine. Dylan himself is cited as only using two song samples (“Seven Minutes of Funk” by Tyron Thomas and The Whole Darn Family and “Change The Beat” by Fab Five Freddy featuring Beeside). Nevertheless, his ‘Covers’ tab is significant, listing a variety of blues and folk references (my favorite being “House of the Rising Sun”).

Whosampled.com is music under a microscope with content that illustrates connecting points and heralds founding beat-makers. I’d highly recommend taking a look, if only to jog your memory. As for me, in the future I plan on being more forgiving. Afterall, imitation is the highest form of flattery.

MM Removed From Fall AMC Lineup? What the What?

I know this is old news (and the second time I've written about the topic) but the wound is still fresh...

“Mad Men” fans have been loosening their neckties, readjusting their cone-shaped Maiden Form braziers, patiently waiting for the return of Donald Draper and his Sterling Cooper crew. Season four wrapped up on October 16. Almost immediately following Mad Men’s finale, AMC premiered a new, surprisingly lively series – “The Walking Dead.”

“The Walking Dead” is a post-apocalyptic gore fest that follows a small group of citizens bent on evading a Zombie infestation. The survivors are led by Rick Grimes, a former small-town Georgian Sheriff. Shotgun in hand, Grimes splatters Undead brains with purpose, propelled forward by the idea of an obscure, corpse-free land that exists just over the ravaged horizon. “The Walking Dead” did more than keep eyes on AMC – it broke records. The show took on multiple rating titles, the most impressive being “Most-Watch Drama in Basic Cable” for the 18-49 year old age bracket. (The Futon Critic) No doubt the Executives at AMC were thrilled by the show’s success. With the addition of “The Walking Dead,” the network inadvertently secured the missing piece necessary to form an unstoppable entertainment triune - the other two components being “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad,” another popular drama centered on a High School science teacher-turned-drug dealer. But, as many know, three is often a crowd. Television series are no exception. AMC now faces a hard decision – how to fit each into their overcrowded lineup. According to Hitfix.com, “ AMC (will not air) ‘Breaking Bad’ season 4 until summer, and will likely try to launch ‘The Walking Dead’ season 2 around Halloween again. (‘Mad Men’) may not have a Sunday window in which to air a fifth season until perhaps early 2012.”

2021?! A whole year is far too long to wait. Hopefully AMC will come to a better solution by Fall. If not, in order to maintain “The Walking Dead,” “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” ’s audiences, I proposed a splicing. My series would be titled “The Bad, Mad Dead.” Examples of episode summaries would be as follows:

Episode 13: “While developing a campaign for Lucky Strike, Don discovers that the company’s manufacturers have secretly been lacing their tobacco with Meth, thereby making their product more addictive. Don is unsure of whether to report his findings. Later, he arrives home to find Betty furiously scratching herself with a spatula from the kitchen. When he questions her behavior, she throws a meatloaf against the wall and shrieks, ‘I am out of cigarettes and the grocery store is closed, okay?’ ”

Episode 20: “Peggy is finally ready to date again. She is excited when David, a pale, slobbering man from Accounting, asks her to dinner. The evening progresses well until David takes a bite out of Peggy’s shoulder. Humiliated, Peggy flees from the restaurant. The next morning she wakes to find a cardigan soaked in blood and is disturbed by her sudden appetite for human flesh.”