Go Home Productions retrospective
Arguably one of the finest exponents of the art of mash-up/bootleg/bastard pop - Go Home Productions - has released a 20 track retrospective 'cd' compiliation this week. "This Was Pop (2002-2007)" A 5 year bootleg retrospective.
GHP has delivered some of the most celebrated examples of the mash-up genre over the last few years including the Madonna/SexPistols fusion 'Ray of Gob' and 'Rapture Riders', the Blondie/Doors hybrid.
The mash-up phenomenon exploded around 2001/2 as bedroom mixers, enabled by the democratisation of music production allowed by software such as Acid, Ableton and later garageband fused acapella tracks with the instrumental tracks of other records to create new 'remixes’. 'Stroke of Genius' was probably the biggest of the time and that spawned an MTV slot with the video mash-ups to compliment the tracks and Mash-up club nights like ‘Bastard’.
GHP’s retrospective is a pretty decent introduction if anyone’s missed out.
GHP is also a pretty interesting case study in a couple of the basic ideas of the new marketing.
I'm thinking about, the power of free, permission and the product is the marketing.
By giving away the tracks for free via his website and mash-up community blogs like GYBO and Boomselection (early example of the long tail of distribution..?) GHP has build a fanbase and mailing list, with permission to contact the list when there’s new tracks uploaded.
With this comes reputation and with that comes dj bookings, ‘legit’ remix work etc.
From fiddling in the shed to official remixes for Bob Dylan and David Bowie is quite a ride.
Of course, it helps that his work is shit-hot. As an art form that is by nature ‘user-generated’ there are thousands of wannabe mash-up artists making pretty average at best, shoddy at worst mixes, but GHP’s ‘Purple Cow’ is the vast musical knowledge from years of fandom which allows him to introduce the little extra elements into his tracks that the less detail focussed would miss. In ‘Rock in Black’ - the Queen and AC-DC blend – the little addition of Freddie’s ‘..get on your bikes and ride’ line is that knowing final piece of polishing that gives it the extra 5% .
Anyway, the tracks are here.
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