At the end of the 20th Century, the world was introduced to one of my favorite genres of music, the mash-up.  Wikipedia offers one of the easiest definitions of what a mash-up is: a song or composition created by blending two or more songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the music track of another.

With the rise of peer to peer music sharing networks, people had access to more music.  One thing I loved to do was to play different songs on different audio devices just to see if they could blend.  I would have my stereo playing while I had music playing on the computer for the chance that a pair of songs may blend together and then I could mash them together into one grandiose post-modern musical expression.

I call these songs mashups but they are known by different names around the globe: bootlegs, booties, Smashups, Bastard Pop, Blends, Cut-ups(which I just found out is a tribute to William Burroughs who would cut out sections of one writing and paste it in a different writing), and powermixes.

One of the first bastard pop songs to hit the airwaves was the vocals from Eminem's "My Name Is" laid over the music from AC/DC's "Back in Black".  After this song became a hit the BBC started airing a regular show featuring mashups.  I sometimes would wake up early in the morning and hope my AM radio could pick-up what I thought was one of the greatest things to happen to music.  It was like in grade school when one of my teachers took out the Lutheran hymnal and started playing a different tune for the words we were singing. 

I went nuts with mashups and even created some of my own.  I was a bastard and took the song combos that I heard featured on the BBC show and made my own version.  I added tweaks here and there though.  And the thing was, this was so simple.  Using Kazaa at the time I was able to find anything and everything I needed.  If I felt a music track from The Hives worked great with the vocals from Basement Jaxx, I could log on and find those tracks with just the vocals or just the music.

I sort of grew out of mashups when I had to deal with thesis writing and student teaching and serving in a church.  Lately I have gotten back into it because a vast number of booties have been released in honor of Michael Jackson.  Some are good and some are bad, which is just like regular music.

I am going to try sharing certain mashups that I enjoy on a weekly basis.  It just depends on the response.  Here is the first of what I hope are many mashups.

Can you spot the songs used?  The only hint I'll give is that this mashup features pop music's oddest character mixed with rock music's most reclusive figure.  Enjoy!