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Title:
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Description:
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The term 'remix' originally applied
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to music.
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It rose to prominence late last
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century during the heyday of hip hop,
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the first popular music form
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to incorporate sampling from
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existing recordings.
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Early example:
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Sugarhill Gang samples the base riff
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from Chic's 'Good Times' in the 1979 hit
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"Rapper's Delight".
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Since then, that same baseline
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has been sampled dozens of times.
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Skip ahead to the present and anybody
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can remix anything - music, video, photos,
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whatever - and distribute it globally almost
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instantly. You don't need expensive tools,
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you don't need a distributor, you don't even
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need SKILLS. Remixing is a folkart - anybody
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can do it. Yet these techniques - collecting
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material, combining it, transforming it - are
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the same ones used at any level of creation.
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You could even say that everything is a remix.
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To explain, let's start in England in 1968.
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Jimmy Page recruits John Paul Jones,
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Robert Plant, and John Bonham to form
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Led Zeplin.
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They play extremely loud blues music that
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will soon be known as - wait. Let's start in Paris,
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in 1961.
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William Burroughs coins the term 'Heavy Metal'
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in the novel "The Soft Machine" - a book
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composed using the cut up technique, taking
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existing writing, and literally chopping it up
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and rearranging it. So in 1961, William Burroughs
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not only invents the term "heavy metal",
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the brand of music Zeplin and a few other groups
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had pioneered, he also produces an early remix.
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Back to Zeplin.
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By the mid-1970s, Led Zeplin are the biggest
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touring rock band in America.
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Yet many critics and peer label them as
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"Ripoffs".
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The case goes like this.
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The opening and closing sections of
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"Bring It On Home" are lifted from
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a tune by Willie Dixon entitled,
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not coincidentally, "Bring It On Home".
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"The Lemon Song" lifts numerous
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lyrics from Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor".
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"Black Mountainside" lifts its melody from
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"Blackwaterside", a traditional arranged by
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Bert Jansche.
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"Dazed and Confused" features different lyrics
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but is clearly an uncredited cover of the
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same titled song by Jake Holmes.
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Oddly enough, Holmes files suit
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over 40 years later, in 2010.
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And the big one, "Stairway To Heaven"
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pulls its opening from Spirit's "Taurus".
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Zeplin toured with Spirit in 1968,
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three years before "Stairway" was released.
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Zeplin clearly copied a lot of other people's
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material, but that alone isn't unusual.
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Only two things distinguish Zeplin from
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their peers.
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Most British blues groups were recording
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lots of covers, but unlike Zeplin,
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they didn't claim to have written them.
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Many bands knock off acts that came
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before them, but they tend to emulate the general
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sound rather than specific lyrics or melodies.
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So these two things: covers - performances of other
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people's material, and knockoffs - copies
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that stay within legal boundaries, these
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are long standing examples of legal remixing.
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This stuff accounts for almost everything
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the entertainment industry produces
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and that's where we're headed in part 2.
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Wait, one last thing.
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In the wake of their enormous success,
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Led Zeplin went from the copier, to the copied.
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First in the 70s with groups like Aerosmith,
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and Heart, and Boston, then during the 80s
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Heavy Metal Craze, and on into the era of sampling.
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Here's the beats from "When the Levee Breaks"
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sampled, and remixed.
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In Zeplin's defense, they never sued anybody.
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Uh, hi, I'm Kirby. I made the video
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that you just watched, "Everything Is A Remix".
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If you enjoyed the video, please head over
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to everythingisaremix.info and donate
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a little money. Anything you can muster
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would be greatly appreciated and will
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help me dedicate time to completing the
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remaining three episodes - it's gonna be a 4 part
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series. The site has plenty of complementary
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information that I think you might find interesting
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as well, and you can also find links to songs
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and videos and stuff from the video if you
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happened to like them, you can go there an purchase
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them. It's also a good way to keep up with the
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latest of what's going on with the series.
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Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.
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♫I said a hip hop
Hippie to the hippie
The hip, hip a hop, and you don't stop, a rock it out
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♫Bubba to the bang bang boogie, boobie to the boogie
To the rhythm of the boogie the beat