Go Home Productions: Everything Must Go!

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Gone Home Productions
The Metallica of bootleggers, otherwise known as Mark Vidler, has posted basically every single thing he’s ever made in a series of grouped “online compilations,” over at his website. This is the guy who made the legendary Blondie-meets-The Doors combo “Rapture Riders,” as well as like 90% of the top 100 best mashups ever made. Full disclosure: I’m a bit player in the, er, “mashup scene,” or whatever, and we’ve had Mr. Productions over to DJ at our mashup club and stuff, but I promise my adoration is by no means logrolling—his astounding work stands on its own.

When you head over to his website, there’s a couple options: first up, for those unfamiliar with Go Home, there’s a link to grab a compilation he’s calling This Was Pop (2002-2007), featuring 20 of his most appreciated and influential tracks. “Girl Wants (To Say Goodbye To) Rock & Roll,” marrying Christina Aguilera to Velvet Underground, is a highlight: Vidler’s work always makes the originals sound tangential, like the new mix is how the music was always supposed to be.

For completists, grab one or more of twelve (!) grouped collections of his work, featuring, in total, hundreds of bootlegs, remixes, and random tracks. It’s all free, but the links are all to file-sharing sites like RapidShare, and demand is high; you might have to keep trying, but I assure you it’s worth it.

Vidler is one of the few mashup artists to score legitimate, artist-approved releases, putting out the album Mashed this year, which featured both his and other producers’ work. But as he seemed to acknowledge in an e-mail message to fans, the time it took for the album to wind its way through the approval process seemed to take its toll, and its release was greeted with little fanfare. The lack of appreciation (or financial reward) for even the brightest mashup artists seems to be taking its toll as well, as many (including Vidler) are making announcements of “leaving the scene;” French superstar DJ Zebra (again, full disclosure: I’m DJing some dates with him in France later this year) is moving on, and Australian Team9 (my partner in Dean Gray) has also made noises about “retiring” from bootlegs in 2008. What’s up, mashups? It’s easy to call the phenomenon “dead,” but then I hear something new from some random guy in Stockholm and I think, “there’s life left in this musical phenomenon yet.” What do you think, oh Riffers: have reports of mashuppery’s demise been greatly exaggerated, or should we go back to enjoying one song at a time like respectable music fans?

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate