Hey kids, there’s a fresh def new musical phenomenon doing the ’rounds’. Just imagine if you will the rapping from Get Ur Freak On by Missy Elliott (unpleasant I know but bear with me), and then – get this – imagine that rapping over the music from George Michael’s “Faith”. My God what an incredible musical mindmeld! Then! Imagine that this hilarious pairing was called “George Gets His Faith On” – do you see? – and that it was setting the underground clubs on fire with its witty pop juxtaposition.
Got all that? Good. Now imagine me actually setting the underground clubs on fire with a huge tankerload of flaming hot tar, and then dancing with glee as the Freelance Hellraiser, Osymiso, DJ Frenchbloke, DJ Shitgibbon, and DJ Piece Of Piss Mate all suffered a terrible boiling death. Can I make myself clearer? One of these is the acceptible future of dance music, one is a bootleg.
There was a time that when a bootleg was a tape sold to you by a dodgy bloke after a gig which had been recorded on a dictaphone and I was frankly all in favour of these. Here you were getting a tape of hateful music that you could not hear properly over pissed people trying to give “Dave a tenner to get shome Lahger at the bar”. My reasoning was that buying such a shoddy product may well turn people off listening to music for life – or at least render them listening to the Grateful Dead stoned under hiss forever and out of my way.
These days the word bootleg – a word derived let us not forget for the thoroughly honourable profession of beating prohibition – has taken on an even more sinister meaning. These tracks are the worst idea since the tape recorder and if you like them then you are like a bootleg of King Kong and a Cunt. Why so bad? Because fundamentally they involve playing at least two records at once. A one handed friend of mine used to do as he couldn’t start a record and mix it at the same time. I soon solved this problem by using Islamic law and cutting the other hand off. The principle of two unrelated tracks ‘fitting really well together’ is the same principle invoked by the sort of pot-stricken fuckwits who play Pink Floyd over the top of The Wizard Of Oz. The name is apt however since they make me want to place a boot – a very pointy steel-capped one – upon my leg and connect it with the arse of the people responsible.
Bootlegs are squarely in a tradition of half-arsed medley records which includes Stars On 45 and Jive Bunny. The difference is that the Mastermixers didn’t live in Hoxton and didn’t have any Missy Elliot records. At least 50% of bootlegs, you see, involve Get Ur Freak On. This is because Missy Elliot is such a dreadful rapper that she sounds the same i.e bad over any beat in the world. If Missy were killed in a car crash tomorrow the scene would implode overnight. Or it would were it not for the fact the bootlegs are the easiest records in the world to make. Forget all that nonsense about CoolEdit and ProTools – all you need to be a master bootlegger are a pair of decks with a broken crossfader stuck in the middle: the results will be the same, to wit a grisly mess. And boys in bakers hats will stare at you while you are DJ-ing as if you are the cleverest man alive for supergluing an REM and Maddonna track together and calling it “Losing My Virginity”