The first few notes of Steely Dan's "F.M." still have an unnerving effect on me. My pulse quickens, my muscles tighten, and I sit up straight in my seat. The sense of anticipation is palpable. It's a little Pavlovian. But the anticipation is not necessarily for the treat of the song. I can think of many better ways to spend my time.
No, I get this way because the first 20 seconds of the song served as the opening theme to Flyer News, my high school's television news show. I often played a role in this production, both in front of and behind the camera. While this may "out" me as the nerd that I was (and still am), it also reveals something else. Though I heard the beginning of the song many times throughout the year I worked on the show, I almost never heard the actual song, unless by way of some screw-up — if the words "Worry the bottle, mama" made it to our ears, and the ears of the school, it meant someone had failed to cut the sound fast enough. Since I was rarely in a situation where Steely Dan was likely to be playing, I had no idea that the song was something of a classic rock staple. Years later, when I came to know the song well (yes, I had a Steely Dan phase), it all made sense: Mr. Devlen, the teacher who picked the song, was a "cool" guy in his 30s — clearly, he had been a huge fan and likely reveled in the fact that he got a little of his music into a high school show.
My abbreviated experience with songs didn't end there. Just as I was throwing around quotes from Zoolander before actually seeing the movie (I just thought "so hot right now" was common parlance), I've hummed many melodies before hearing the full songs from which they originated. I'll admit, indie music lover that I am, that I hadn't heard any of the Walkmen's music until the piano intro to "We've Been Had" was featured in a Saturn commercial. When I actually heard the song in its entirety months later, I was surprised at how the image of a car still dominated any other association I could have with it. Heck, Volkswagen even awakened my previously dormant love for Nick Drake. It would seem that I owe the car industry some thanks for expanding my musical taste.
But when it comes to blowing my associations with music completely out of the water, I have to give all the credit to hip-hop. Thanks to its incessant sampling, I've experienced both new and old music in ways that fundamentally alter the original songs. Take, for example, the Beastie Boys' "Root Down". When I first heard the song, the only jazz I really knew was Benny Goodman (score one point for my dad). But damn if I didn't love the organ trills in that song. It wasn't until a few years later that I heard about Jimmy Smith, and listened to his original version. Though I'm now a fan of Smith in his own right, whenever I hear his instrumental "Root Down (And Get It)", I can't help but imagine Beastie Boy Ad-Rock on top of it. The same thing has happened with countless other songs mined for their beat potential and presented to me first in this admittedly bastardized form, David Bowie's "Under Pressure" and Diana Ross's "I'm Coming Out" being the most memorable. Sometimes, I'll be in a record store or elsewhere and hear a familiar chord progression or lyrical phrase, only to realize that I'd first heard it sampled on a hip-hop track.
Hip-hop's ability to make old music relevant again is perhaps its biggest selling point, but it can also be a source of frustration. Though I enjoy the vitality of the new versions, I realize that this experience means I'll never be able to negotiate with the music in the way it was originally created. This is something of an empty argument, because chances are that not many of the sampled songs would otherwise have a chance of reaching my ears except through hip-hop. But still, I wonder what it would be like to hear the opening strains of "Under Pressure" without Vanilla Ice immediately popping into my head. In fact, if Vanilla could stay out of my head altogether, I'd prefer it.
Ironically, as my musical knowledge has grown thanks to hip-hop, I've begun to recognize more and more music that I already know in hip-hop songs. As I became more of a Jimmy Smith aficionado, for example, I heard his melodies in a number of tracks from Quasimoto (or Madlib), an artist who often uses samples as the main focus instead of the background, forcing listeners to acknowledge their existence. I even began to notice how several songs would use the same sample, only in slightly different ways. "Drive Slow", Kanye West's collaboration with Paul Wall and GLC, features a slowed-down version of the same Hank Crawford sample used by the Dynospectrum on "Anything Is Everything". While I enjoy demonstrating my musical knowledge by picking out samples, I think I prefer not to be able to — in this way, I can appreciate the song as it is, and not as a reworked version of some other tune.
However naïve it might be, I like to pretend that hip-hop exists on its own, and not as a construct of musical history. The vitality of the music stands out more for me in this way. I've often said that I couldn't ever imagine liking a cover song more than the original. Why, I wondered, would anyone choose a copy of a song rather than the original version, which clearly holds so much more meaning when performed by the artist who created it in the first place? While I have since realized the hypocrisy of such statements (did you know that Tiffany wasn't the first to do "I Think We're Alone Now"?), and see how other artists can present an equally — or even more — effective reading of a song, I'm still a little wary of negotiating with songs not presented in their original form. Like a sound bite on the news, I feel like I'm not getting the whole story.
When it comes to songs I'm intimately familiar with, I worry about how their piecemeal sampling will be ingested by others. Like when I heard about Gang Starr's use of the Band's "Up on Cripple Creek" for 1991's "Beyond Comprehension". Though I understood DJ Premier's obvious infatuation with the filthy guitar hook that dominates my onetime favorite song, I wondered whether Gang Starr's version would do the Band justice or simply dilute the meaning of the original by playing up one of its elements. Even worse, I feared that future generations, upon discovering the wonder of the Band, would say, when hearing "Up on Cripple Creek", "oh...it's that song that Gang Starr did" instead of the other way around. I'm very protective of my legacies. As it turns out, "Beyond Comprehension" was not half-bad; though I still can't listen to it often because of my fascination with the song that it samples, I'm able to accept its reworking of what I consider to be a classic. I have no beef with Premier, so long as he stays away from "The Weight".
Our initial reaction to a certain song is the one to stick the most; many critics will tell you that some of the greatest albums take a few listens to really take in, but it's that first involuntary response that is likely to keep you coming back. We all hold onto our favorite songs as though they were our own, and want to believe they hold the same importance for everyone. The likelihood of this is compromised when the songs we love exist in other forms — it is possible for others to view them in very different ways. This is why baby boomers get so upset when "their" songs are sold to the highest bidder, transmitted to the next generation largely through car advertisements. Maybe this is the beauty of music: it can be experienced and loved in multiple formats; it can be recycled to inspire new generations and demographics. Still, some might say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Chances are Mr. Devlen didn't think of what he was doing as sampling when he chose our news show's opening song. He was actually willing to deconstruct a song that he likely loved to serve an admittedly lesser purpose, and to be fair, it filled that role admirably. I should probably go back and thank him for his bravery in this matter, but alas...I already promised that I'm never going back to my old school.
