This is another installment of LIAR (Life Is A Remix). This, 'remix', I stumbled onto today and I do think is something of beauty.  There is isn't much to say here, from the first few notes of Nas' track, Bridiging The Gap, you can hear that it was taken fro Muddy Waters', Mannish Boy.

© Nas - Bridging the Gap ft. Olu Dara.

So, why these two songs. Well Nas' track samples Muddy Waters' melody (or should that be, guita riff? or chord?), but more to that Muddy Waters speaks about himself, a man-ish boy from the perspective of his mother, but on Nas' version it is Nas' father, Olu Dara, who introduces nas with the same type words but from his perpective.

© Muddy Waters plays "Manish Boy"

Now, here is the kicker part — Bo Diddley wrote the origins of this, Muddy Waters' track was a response to this track — Bo's version also has the same similar opening lyrics, but his track is tittled, I'm a Man.

© BO DIDDLEY - I'M A MAN!

So from,

I'm a Man, to a Mannish Boy then, Bridging The Gap. That's poetic movement.

Word.

I am all talk no action, huh? Well I decided, yes again, I am going to put some words at random times. I am not going to take as long as did to put a story together as I have been, not doing anyway. So, with that lame excuse out of the way, here we go with the first instalment of Life Is A Remix (LIAR)

I stumble into this track (plugged below) by Adam Port called Sally. The 'hook go me digging the track and thus, I had to find out where it got sampled from if it was.

And this is where it came from Dyke and the Blazers called, "Let a Woman Be a Woman and a Man Be a Man" — if all you want to do is hear the sampled part, then try it on youtube or skip to 1 minute and 41 seconds.

© DJAmericas ( Dyke & The Blazers - Let a Woman Be a Woman and a Man Be a Man )

What amazes is that, only one line of the song, that never gets repeated was sampled. That is what blows my mind away about dance music. There is few other tracks that do the same, I'll plug 'em in good time.

'njoy— till the next time, it won't be long, I promise.

Anybody here? Anybody? Alas, we seem to have found time to pen a few words down. There has been this idea in my mind to share a few thoughts on "remixing" which is inspired by the following project: Everything Is a Remix.

© Kirby Ferguson ( Everything is a Remix Part 1 )

I have decided to extend that metaphor further:

if we look at ourselves, we are a remix. A mixture of our mother and father; and they too are a mixture of their parents; and their parents-parents, and so and so it goes … our lives are nothing but a remix of all lives before us.

Before I get oh-so-philosophical, the point is:

I want to share musical remixes worth noting and discussing, and that is what I will be doing at the very least, once a week.

I will run with this until-until.

Word.

— Amu / Zula, Cape Town / 2010

Anybody here? Happy new year.

Yes, I am fully aware that we haven't done anything on the site in the last 6 months or so. There is a good reason, I am in the process of redesigning the site; and adding a bit more meat to what we can do to music.

It is a brand new version (code named: b-sharp) with brand new ways to play, music, around.

But, I am a man trying to keep my bread-buttered so my energy and time are currently owned by clients who will grease the wheels. Be that as it may, I think we should keep plugging some stuff here on the regular. I have a musical theme I want to explore.

/word

Marquese Scott (NONSTOP) does some modern physical theatre to Pumped up Kicks, a dub-step remix by Butch Clancy. The song was originally composed by Foster the People.

Nuff said.

© Slow Club – Two Cousins

Al Minns and Leon James on DuPont Show of the Week

I have been silient which is not a good start for launching a site, but, in my defence there was nothing to say. I was silently pushing up new changes, fixing this and that, hey a lot a things went crazy off kilter in the last 3 weeks. So I had to meticulously comb the ticks off.

© Star Slinger * ( Star Slinger - Mornin' Directed by Alan Jensen )

With, that said — BARS is complete (which means I need to change the copy in broadcast, see another thing to fix when I wake up). Try it out let me know what you think.  If you do use soundcloud, please do not hesitate to recommend music you think we should share here — better yet, tweet it and hash-tag it with #ttby and it will show up in the stream.

I am hoping as time moves along and as I adapt the project, you are getting a clearer and clear idea of what this project is about: music, period.

… that song by Star Slinger took me through the roughest times of recompiling — ./configure && make && sudo make install (for the geeks) — the server to work with this project.

There is still a lot to be done, for example this 'WORDS' section will change, I have a different idea of how music should be narrated on a web platform. I won't explain it, I will show you, when it's done.

/word.

I had to take the site down, this morning, when I noticed that the tweets where not linking to the equivalent tweets on twitter — it turns out, the way php + mysql work to store very large numbers is not consistent. I had to hack through the entire database to remove and update references of those tweet-status-id. It's all geeky, I know, but that's what it was.

© FaithlessVEVO ( Faithless - Music Matters )

I think the problem is solved — it took this song, on repeat to get me through it — I'll return in a few days with a continuation of explaining what is what, but for now, I am told people can't make sense of the site, I have one  word you:

more (yep, that's the thing that does all the magic on a tweet)

Word—

If you are reading this before the 8th of July you are one of the few pioneers, left, out there — I had intention of not mentioning the launch of this project on social media. Alas, thank you for stopping by. This is the first entry of the project. 

This project has been 2 years and a month in the making.  However it only took a month and a few weeks to complete the first phase which is codenamed: A♯ (as in the note).

It is not complete by any stretch of the imagination, but eventually, it had to go live and test the waters. As stated in the info-page, this project is borne out of the selfish want to be able to find out anything there is to a specific song, track, artist that I come across — am still far from achieving that, but in time.

© Marahruby22 ( Mara Hruby - Stereolab(Lose Myself) Official Music Video )

But, this is only the begining, so, I thought it would be beautiful to plug all the music that took me from zero to this moment.

With that, it is without a shadow of doubt that, Mara Hrubi's song "Lose Myself" got me through the roughest design blocks ever known to (this) man.

In a few days, I'll plug some more to explain the project in detail. If you do have questions, ideas, thoughts, complaints or you just wanna hang out over beer, a glass of wine, tea or coffee over some mellow jazzy hiphop beats, just say the word: boom@ttby.co.za

Word —