I had a ton of photos to edit and sort, tag and upload, so what better thing to do than download a bunch of new music.
It started on “Surviving Grady,” my favorite Red Sox blog, where co-blogger Red expounded on a few of his favorite albums, citing The Killer’s Sam’s Town, which contains the Guitar Hero classic When We Were Young. That sparked a visit to iTunes where I was immediately diverted by the banner announcing the release of Metallica’s Death Magnetic. Bought that, downloaded it, then moved onto The Killers. Pluged in the iPod, synced it up, hit play on Metallica’s first tune, That Was Just Your Life, and gave up all thoughts of going to bed early tonight.
So while cranking some head banger music directly into my head at high volume, I was browsing through Google Reader and saw the hyperperceptive Jon Udell point to Andy Baio’s masterful analysis of Girl Talk’s Feed the Animals.
For those unfamiliar with Girl Talk — it’s a dude, Gregg Gillis who makes mashup albums from heavily sampled music — stuff the New York Times once called a lawsuit waiting to happen since its entirely comprised of other people’s music. Think of M.C. Hammer’s Can’t Touch This taken waaaay further.
Baio broke out the Mechanical Turk and analyzed the source, duration, era of the tunes that went into Feed the Animals.Intrigued I bought a copy directly from the label —
Baio blogs: “Girl Talk’s Feed the Animals is one of my favorite albums this year, a hyperactive mish-mash sampling hundreds of songs from the last 45 years of popular music. Gregg Gillis created a beautiful, illegal mess of copyright clearance hell, which you should download immediately. (It’s free, but I kicked in $20 for Gregg’s legal fund and a copy of the CD.)”
Girl Turk: Mechanical Turk Meets Girl Talk’s “Feed the Animals” – Waxy.org.
PS: Metallica’s That Was Just Your Life, just became a staple of the Power Erg playlist for rowing entertainment and inspiration.