Rant number 25
Now before I begin. I would like to say that I grew up watching the Wombles and captain planet and the raccoons and various other self richeous preachy kids shows.
As such, I understand that recycling is probably a very good idea. In fact its kind of a necessity, lest we end up with no resources, knee deep in our own waste products.
I also - as a composer of music & writer of grumpy blog entries, realise that original concepts and ideas can be hard to pick out of the ether.
The thing is, great creatives have never been famed for the ease of their creativity. Which is why it annoys me so much when people simply 'augment' (and I use the term, very very loosely (and I mean really loosely, like a knot tied by an arthritic grandma in spiders web in pitch darkness on the moon loosely))
Old people have been throwing accusations of unoriginally at our generation for years. 'You just take old songs and rap over the top of them' is what they say - and sadly its coming true.
Hip-hop particularly - a genre that takes a 4 bar loop and drags it out over 4 minutes whilst they rap over the top are real sods for taking soul tunes by the bucketload and - well lets be frank here - ruining them.
On the way home today (not surprisingly the springing point for this rant) was a song called Ray Charles by - and I feel ashamed to speak his name - an artist called 'Chiddy Bang'
A song both formulaic repetitive and dull, I feel that nothing this idiot could ever do could possibly get close to anything by the artist sampled (Ray Charles is - lets face it - a legend)
Another example would be Queens fantastic 'Under Pressure,' sampled in Vanilla Ice's 'Ice Ice Baby.'
Though Queens talent shines through in this pointless waffle - the song shows none of the originality of the instant classic at the hand of Mercury and his compadres.
Outside of Hip-Hop, the same tricks go on - but to better effect. A bitter sweet symphony for instance sampled the Rolling Stones 'The last time' (causing much legal kerfuffle.) This song is great, but the credit goes to the Stones, not the verve once again.
Why can't people just create, instead of trying to improve what they cannot exceed!
Rant over.
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