Well, I’m back in the States for Christmas. The last time I was on this side of the world was in January ‘08 when my brother got hitched. I was only back for 3 or 4 days that time, and I didn’t even make it to my home–only to DC, where the wedding was. This time I did it up proper: 2 weeks home and the hope of seeing a lot of old friends and family.
Anyways, being home after being away for almost 2 years is guaranteed to stir up some old memories. I was sifting through the old bootleg VHS tapes that my parents still keep (yes, they are the most frugal people in the world and would wait for a movie to come on TV and tape it instead of purchasing it) and noticed one of my all-time favorite movies: Stand By Me.
Not only does the movie have a pretty amazing cast (River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O’Connell, Kiefer Sutherland, Richard Dreyfuss, John Cusack), a great coming-of-age story, a fantastic screenplay–it has one of the best soundtracks of last 30 years. Many of the songs are personal favorites because I grew up listening to oldies (until I discovered pop music and then punk rock around age 13 or so). Here’s the listing:
…and those are merely the songs on the OST. Their is so much more great music in the movie (Rockin’ Robin, for example). However, this has to be my favorite song in the movie as well as my favorite song of Buddy Holly’s:
Ok, I’ll add in links to all those artists and update this post when I have a little more time, but right now I have to head out to see some friends. If you’ve never seen them movie, give it a shot, it’s a must-see for some kick-in-the-pants nostalgia.
First, let me apologize to anybody who might be offended by this post (in true Singapore fashion!). I’m having an amazing time living in Singapore, and I’ve grown quite fond of this little red dot. However, I have to get something off my chest.
One of the first things that a foreigner notices when he or she visiting ol’ Singapura is the cleanliness.
Okay, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, the second thing they notice are all the corny advertisements. Granted, a lot of these are public service announcements and EVERY city has their fair share of corny ads of this ilk. However, there definitely seem to be more than usual.
Exhibit A:
The main requirement for these ads is that they rhyme. While this may be very effective for keeping them in our memory (as is their purpose), this technique yields some of the most corny expressions ever.
But the corniness is not relegated only to the public sector, plenty of private, big business ads make you cringe with equal effectiveness.
Now, it wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t so often try to sound hip by trying so hard to appeal to the internet culture. You get so bombarded by “iSomething” and “mySomething” and “something@something” that you want to tear your ihair out.
My completely unprofessional analysis is that, with Singapore, we have a culture that is made up almost completely of Human Resources. We all know how corny HR can be when they try to appeal to employees by sounding hip. Imagine that one a nation-wide scale. EVERYTHING is about PR. Oh, did I mention the fact that you often find yourself drowning in acronyms?
The reason I’m making this post is not to bash Singapore. Again, I love it here and I think it’s a great place in a lot of ways. But I’m returning home to the States for Christmas this year, and I don’t know how I’m going to react to advertisements that do more than make me laugh at them.
Anyways, there’s one particular video that Mediacorp has been playing recently that I will post. However, I cannot seem to find it on the internet, and will update as soon as I do.
When I was in 2nd or 3rd grade, I always imagined that parties were all about making out, drinking, and listening to the Beastie Boys (and my parents wouldn’t let me listen to them). When I was in middle school, I thought the Beastie Boys were about as lame as you could get (and I wouldn’t be caught dead listening to them). In late highschool, the Beastie Boys were suddently hip again because of nostalgia (and I couldn’t stop listening to them).
Actually, it was right before the Beastie Boys became hip again that I was rummaging through my oldest brother’s cassette tape collection, and I found a bootleg copy of Paul’s Boutique. I put it on, mostly for humor’s sake, and found myself listening to it 24/7 soon after. I had only heard their big singles from Licensed to Ill before (you know… Fight for Your Right, Girls, Brass Monkey…) and the production & style of the magnitude that Paul’s Boutique churned out just blew me away.
Anyways, Paul’s Boutique eventually made its way to become (arguably) the Beastie Boys most critically acclaimed album. It was ground-breaking in several ways, but most notably because of the dense layering that their sampling portrayed.
What I want to do here, is show you just how much sampling would go into a single song on that album. For this to work, you’re going to have to become familiar with a number of songs, but most importantly, you have to know this funky jam called “Shake Your Rump”:
Ok, now that you’ve heard the Beastie Boys’ song, let’s find out what other songs went into the mix.
First off, we have the intro drum fill, which comes from the Alphonze Mouzon song “Funky Snakefoot.” It’s also the intro to the song, so you can’t miss it.
Now, at about 00:11, a real funky bass line comes in which was sampled from a Ronnie Laws song that most of us are familiar with… “Tell Me Something Good.” Again, this comes in at the very beginning of the song, so you can’t miss it.
Somewhere around 00:27, there’s a new drum fill. This is a nice mid-drum sound and it comes from a collaboration of Jazz drummers: Paul Humphrey, Willie Bobo, Shelly Manne, & Louis Bellson. The song is calledSuper Mellow. Said drum fill, again, is the intro to the song, so there should be no trouble finding it.
Just before we get to a super low bass part (at about 00:37), the next drum fill comes in. This is taken from a song by The Funky 4+1 aptly named “That’s the Joint.”
Immediately following that drum fill is the aforementioned bass swell (around 00:40). Although I can’t find a free streaming version of the whole song, you can listen to the appropriate sample here. It’s a song called 6 O’clock DJ (Let’s Rock) by Rose Royce. It’s pretty obvious from the sample.
That bass section goes for some time until the next section comes in at 00:56. This drum fill is sampled from none other than Led Zeppelin. The song is called, “Good Times Bad Times” and the sample I mentioned begins at 02:28.
Once again, at about the 01:02 mark, we have that funky bass line from “Tell Me Something Good.”
Now, here I’m not exactly sure if I’m 100% correct, but I believe the sharp scratches from the DJ that come in at 1:12 are from the Average White Band song “Cut the Cake“ I think the horn bellows at 03:47 are what’s being sampled.
The bass line that comes in at 01:18 is from the Rose Royce song “Born to Love You.” Sorry again for the short sample, but it fits nicely because it begins with the section I’m talking about.
At 01:26 we have the Funky Snakefoot drum fill again, followed by the latter part of the Super Mellow drum fill. Again, we have the 6 O’Clock DJ bass swell and the Led Zeppelin drum fill.
At about 02:10 there’s the Born to Love You bass line again, and you can begin to hear the Afrika Bambaataa sample with the woodblock percussion and the “woo-ooh-woo-ooh” noise (yeah, that’s what it is). This is from the song Jazzy Sensation and comes in right around the 5 minute mark.
If you were paying close attention, you’d notice that right around 2:24 there is a familiar section for just a second. Yes, it’s The Sugar Hill Gang with an extremely brief sample of their song, “8th Wonder.”
Then we repeat some bass swells and a small bassline, the basic drum beat and those Jazzy Sensation noises that we’ve heard before until…
THE END
Yes! I know it was a lot of effort to click all those links, but I bet you had some fun if you did. I really enjoyed putting together all those samples so that you can see where they come from. I know I missed out on a few, but when listening to the song, I couldn’t exactly figure out where they were located. If you want to check out the Wikipedia page for Paul’s Boutique, it tells you which songs were ostensibly used… maybe you can find the ones that I couldn’t.
Anyways, I gotta hit the sack, I have a lot of marking to do tomorrow. Take care!
