Recently I had the pleasure of being smacked in the face by the film RIP: a remix manifesto. I’ll leave you to investigate, remix and otherwise alter this film on your own, but it got me thinking about the nature and merits of collaboration. Have you ever been asked: ‘who would be in your ultimate band, dead or alive?’ I think the best response to this question I’ve ever received came from my cover designer, Alex, who simply replied: "Prince. ON EVERYTHING."
The formula for this is displayed below:
The formula for this is displayed below:
I’ve expanded my thinking on this subject to include politics, philosophy and art. I present to you: ULTIMATE COLLABORATIONS!
Barrack Obama / Superman
Barrack Obama, not yet 6 months into his presidency, has already been hailed as the great white…er…black, hope. You only need to turn on the TV to see the radical reforms he has already made in the realms of international relations, human rights, financial and environmental policy. Barrack Obama is an amazing human. But the problem is he is ONLY human. Superman, as a near-invincible kryptonian could easily handle all the laser from eyes ass kicking and thus leave Mr. Obama to be the brains of the operation and turn his attention to saving the world in the political realm. As a sidenote: check out the conservapedia (extreme right wing biased version of wikipedia) entry on Obama. And you thought Fox news was bad…
Chomsky / Dangermouse
Chomsky is a genius. That’s not just my opinion, the man has been named by many as one of the greatest and most important thinkers of our age. He’s also one of the most cited authors in history. The problem? Chomsky is a philosopher, linguist and political activist who writes books and gives lectures. Which is fine, if you are an academic, but his message ideally needs to affect people at all levels of society. People who don’t read anything except tabloids or perhaps ‘the funnies’ in the weekend paper. The solution? Dangermouse. Indubitably one of the greatest producers/collaborators of the last twenty years. Get the ol mouse to cut up and freak some beats to underpin Chomsky’s brilliant diatribe and ‘leak’ it onto the internet, and kids all over the world will be rocking out on their ipods and ‘dropping knowledge’ bout the dangers of hegemony and the merits of anarcho-syndicalism in no time flat.
Banksy / Gundam
Banksy. The man. The artist. The legend. An anonymous genius, Banksy has pulled every art stunt in the book, then written new books on art stunts, then torn up those books and collaged them into new books on how to pull art stunts. He makes the kind of art that isn’t just admired by Dom Perignon swilling aristocrats, but that has lower class English kids hailing him as ‘like batman, but better.’ Banksy is a one-man art army. But that’s still only one man. What this guy needs is a robotic upgrade in the form of Gundam. This would enable him to whisk around the night time streets at lightning speeds and use massive amounts of robotic super strength to achieve even more incredible feats of guerrilla art genius. Perhaps he could remix parliament house to look like an Egyptian pyramid? HINT
Mother Jones / Tom Morello
Mother Jones is one of personal heroes on any number of levels. I first learnt of her through the song ‘Most Dangerous Woman in America’ by Ani Difranco / Utah Phillips (another great collab record). Mother Jones, at the age of 83, single-handedly organised a protest against the Rockefeller Militia in order to allow miners fair working conditions. Theodore Roosevelt called her the most dangerous woman in America. Now, Rage Against the Machine have made a significant impact on the western consciousness in terms of alerting young people to political errors. But can you imagine pairing the guitar genius of Morello with a woman with enough grit and gristle to give the richest family in the world a solid thrashing at an age when most people can barely manage regular bowel movements? The powers that be would be shaking in their overpriced, made-in-china-by-ten-year-old-children shoes.
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