IRONY AT LAST?

I have been led to believe there are humps in this picture.


Yes? I think?

This is a tip from Dial "M" for Musicology, one of the few, er, musicological blogs on the sidebar. I only go about as far as Kelly Clarkson's money notes, though I have been working on some ultracheezy BEATIES DEMOS(!!!!) in GarageBand that I might might might shop around to a few folks who hang out 'round these parts. And before anyone tells you different, yes, that is the elusive BRIAN BETES -- in true Joe Meek fashion -- multi-tracking his SOCIALLY AWK VOICE to approximate that of a 12to19yearold-type girl (or boy who sings like girl, e.g. NICK JONAS, diabetic and teenpop superstar).

Oh, point being, this is a truly wonderful thing.



Now, as much as I do love this mash-up (even beats the Girl Talk Fergie-Ferg/Annie-Ann mix) Phil Ford over at Dial M has unwittingly given himself away as an ANTI-FERGIST, which is a separate but arguably no less pernicious group of naysayers from the War on Lindsay Watchlisted (newest tentative addition: KELLY CLARKSON HERSELF (“I’m young, I’m a rookie, I get that. But when you’re sending me Lindsay Lohan covers to sing, why would you think I’d want your opinion?”).

To wit:

Anyway, in response to my swipe at Dvorak, he pointed out his own remix of the "New World" symphony with the Black Eyed Peas' horrible "My Lumps."

Technical error aside (and perhaps he was referring to the remix, which is, in fact, called "My Lumps"), [EDIT: uh, no it isn't, no idea where I got that notion from], I believe that the blurb should have more accurately read:

Just as Dvorak used local folk music as an impetus to obscure the split between "low" and "high" art and to challenge conceptions of music appropriate for a symphony hall, so do Fergie and the Black Eyed Peas do something of the inverse within their own popular idiom -- an idiom noted in popular music scholarship as distinctive from folk (and art) traditions but often denied entry to the hallowed venues of the "high" on similar grounds to the denial of folk music at the turn of the twentieth century: lack of sophistication, a social stigma of "pandering to the common man," etc. With a keen but subtle tip of the hat to kindred obfuscatory efforts in other artistic fields (note the piano outro on the album version of "My Humps," over which will.i.am cleverly intones: "So real...so real...s'real...surreal," undoubtedly a deliberate nod to the tenets of the Surrealist movement), BEP betray a knowing "high" art-derived conceptual framework to a seemingly inane (or at the very least puzzling) "popular" piece.

This ingenious mash-up brings Dvorak "down" to the level of engagement intended in his assimilation of folk music into his own compositions, while simultaneously raising BEP "up" to the level of the "high," where the group's masterfully, meticulously crafted esoteric work can be read -- carefully -- the way in which it was intended. Prodded into the limelight of the veritable museum that is live symphonic performance, thus encouraging a kind of rigorous analysis and somber contemplation rarely applied to pop radio staples, "My Humps" takes on exciting new dimensions of covert social critique, while Dvorak's music can be enjoyed as a so-called "guilty pop pleasure," a status its austere surroundings so often deny it (indeed it is best heard, failing access to this particular inventive reconfiguration, on the local classical station whilst washing the dishes after a hearty but low-carb dessert of bananas in beer and whipped cream).

Academia, here I come!

EDIT: YouTube here I stay!