Heaneyland!

Scary Mash-Ups

Lots of people have been pointing out the new David Bowie commercial (and its associated contest) to me lately. The commercial features an excerpt from a mash-up by Mark Vidler, aka Go Home Productions, which, as previously reported here, is about to be released as the new Bowie single.

I've actually known about this contest for a while and been a little underexcited by it. Partly because the contest terms are draconian as usual: By sending in a remix, you give up all rights to it, so even if you don't win, should they -- and this is unlikely, I admit, but still -- decide to include a mix from the contest on a compilation of some sort, they would owe no royalties to the actual remixer. The thing that makes that qualifier easier to take, but simultaneously makes the contest less appealing to me, is that while the contest website provides some short song samples with which to make mash-ups, it doesn't provide any acapella Bowie vocals! This makes it very difficult to make a decent mash-up (although I have tried it before -- go here and download the Anne Murray/Elvis Costello mash-up to hear the result). So since the mash-ups are more likely to be a bit subpar given their limitations, the likelihood of their being commercially released is a bit low. But this fact also makes me pretty unexcited about trying to make one. Still, I might try to do it, since Rose would kinda like a car (first place), and I would kinda like a laptop (third place).

And, you know, even with the obstacle of the lack of acapella tracks to work with, I do kinda like "Boys Keep Looking for Water" from this week's entries.

Posted by Francis at 01:32 PM