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Warning to proto-mashup historians – ignore Wikipedia

Don’t believe a lot of what you read here.

It’s just wrong. Maybe it has been edited by a few people to self promote; all respect to those people, but they arrived a bit later. Doesn’t it strike you as odd, when the page actually mentions GYBO and Boomselection started in 2001/2002 all the ‘notable’ dates are from 2004/5 on? So apparently we all sat on our hands for 2-3 years doing nothing? Probably posting lolcats and bitching about Weiser/IDC LOL.

I added the first mashup albums/compilations (Parkspliced, I Created A Monster, London Booted – some of the first to mash up a whole album) a while back and they’ve been removed. Why? Well probably cos the wikitrolls and wikimods use Google as a primary source. Extremely sad – but why you should NEVER use Wikipedia as a primary source. Ever. It has some rather glaring omissions/wrongness:

  • No Frenchbloke & Son? Esp in Bootleg Albums – no Haggis Trax (1999 apparently, not 2002! Played on JOHN PEEL FFS)
  • No Fondue Meltdown?
  • No Soundhog?
  • No Erol Alkan / Kurtis Rush?
  • No Strictly Kev? No DJ Food?
  • No Coldcut – they’re rather important re: mashups…Beats and Pieces was seminal as well as the KLF
  • Your Woman by Whitetown as good as it is, is NOT a mashup. It has no recognisable 2nd ‘B’ element?
  • No Cartel Communique – well Bastard is sort of mentioned…in passing, sad for this is the first ever mashup club, the one that influenced Bootie. So why is it passed over, with a small image credit?
  • Soulwax created Blue Monday vs Kylie – really? LOL (it was actually Erol Alkan as Kurtis Rush, Soulwax remade it)
  • No mention of how DJ Hero actually started at Bastard?
  • Never ever heard of Bonna Music, Good Copy Bad Copy (self promo?), WTF is Glee doing there?, White Panda – WHO?, Max Tannone – ditto, never heard of you, Tom Caruana – ??? and Clayton Counts should probably not be there either – the latter was just doing it as a stunt like his rather sick ‘death’. ‘Punkmash’ != mash.
  • Why is Girl Talk on there since he’s said he’s not a mashup artist?
  • Love you ToTom but why is there a separate section for your work and GHP and Freelance Hellraiser doesn’t? Or Soundhog or Frenchbloke or Fondue Meltdown or…
  • Ditto Legion of Doom – you’re a precursor cos you started doing mashups in 2004? Really? Err…

OTOH, nice to see Phil n’ Dog’s Doctor Pressure getting rather belated props…

As an aside, I heard from John that one of the editor of  an influential 70’s gay rights magazine added it to Wikipedia cos it wasn’t there – to be deleted by some Wikitroll. Why? Well apparently it ‘didn’t have enough Google hits’. *facepalm*

Of course! If  it isn’t on Google it doesn’t exist! I mean it’s not like there is a massive pre-history of the world that hasn’t been digitised yet…oh. And this is recent history that thinks mashups started in 2004/2005 – it’s far worse for say the history of Gay Rights and GLF. Distortion for personal gain of near and nearish history is very common.

Oh and response to those who’ll helpfully say: ‘why don’t you edit it then?’ – I did that for many years correcting the mistakes, they all get reverted back to wrong/self promo/recent stuff. So maybe you should have a go (enough people repeatedly doing it might get the message across). Go to it gang!

Other response might be: ‘who gives a fuck about history’ – well it’s a lucrative & powerful position to write it. Such gatekeepers get appearance fees, book deals and lazy journalists apply them with ‘expert’ status firming up their position and their ‘idea’ of history. It then gets written down as ‘the truth’ til many years later – if ever – someone actually bothers to question it, but by then the damage is done. But recent events have shown it’s worryingly about who shouts the loudest, who shouts longest, and public perception rather than any idea of truth (which I know is subjective, but to abandon any ideal of objective truth even if it is an impossible goal, but an important journey, is worrying).

And no I wasn’t adding Radio Clash – someone did that years ago and it stayed for a while*, ironically when I’d stopped playing purely mashups…more adding those who should be remembered and never were (part of the remit of Radio Clash and the mashup history series, it has to be said – must resurrect the Mashup History because otherwise this will be forgotten and people will think Glee invented mashups LOL).

*It then got removed as teh Wikitroll said apparently podcasts have nothing to do with mashups…okaaaay. Never reappeared on the podcasting page. Being one of the first (I lose count of whether I’m 2nd, 3rd or 4th – not bothered about the ranking, tbh) podcasts in the UK doesn’t count for much it seems 😛

Comments

7 responses to “Warning to proto-mashup historians – ignore Wikipedia”

  1. revy avatar

    Good article! I had initially added my site, MashupCiti to the wikipage about 2 years ago, and since then it has been removed, replaced, removed and now I just ignore it.

    In the beginning, my reasons had to do with trying to get MashupCiti out there to anyone who cared or loved mashups as much as I do. It was suggested by a fellow mashup enthusiast/web geek (like me) to put a mention in the Wikipedia page to get some traffic and exposure. Back then, having 100 people a day visiting my site was a big achievement and I was desperately looking for ways to break the one hundred barrier.

    Eventually though, as traffic and popularity increased to MashupCiti and the entries where being removed by the Wikitrolls, I found this whole mini battle on wikipedia was making me angry. Well, more upset or frustrated than anything. In mashup culture, I hope and like to think that MashupCiti has some sort of historical relevancy in promoting mashups, and every time someone removed its references from Wikipedia, it was like someone was trying to erase that.

    The history of mashups is very interesting subject I find. I was first exposed to it, in a way, by DJ Food and Raiding of the 20th Century. I think it was a re-edit. I’d say you have an opportunity to actually write, from your viewpoint, a series of articles on the history of modern mashups. Anyways, thanks for the thoughtful article!

    Cheers

    1. Tim avatar

      indeed Raiding the 20th Century is a really good intro to early mashup culture 1999-2004 – I highly recommend it. It helps that Strictly Kev was there, DJ’d at Bastard, and followed the major trends…

      I think I added myself years before the ‘don’t add yourself’ ettiquette rule on the Instamatic page – needless to say it got removed since cameras do not relate to mashups LOL. Was surprised that someone added Radio Clash after I’d gotten bored of trying to correct and add the true early stuff, and take off the fake stuff…and that it survived for a few months til the wikitroll edict.

      1. A Plus D avatar

        My gawd, don’t us started. We’ve been talking about updating that damn Wikipedia page for years, basically doing an entire re-write of about half of it. So erroneous, so wrong, on so many levels … quite frankly, it’s infuriating, and ultimately, frustrating.

        1. Tim avatar

          So true.

          P.S. I’ll see you at Bootie SL 😀 I have some tshirts made special 😉

  2. MrFab avatar

    It is a mess, full of irrelevant info (old BBC quiz shows? Frank Zappa? etc etc) Some nice person included me, to my surprise. Then I disappeared.

    But I am still listed on the Bootie page (guess they missed that one.)

  3. ToToM avatar

    Ha ha, I just stumbled on this post and apparently I’m no longer on the Wikipedia mashup page (I guess someone like eternalkhaos added a lot of stuff that got removed, and I know he’s quite fond of my work), instead, I’m on “Space Oddity (song)” and few others, which makes me even prouder. 🙂

    And I agree there is 80% crap on this page minimum.

    1. Tim avatar

      it is completely random who’s there and who is not…you deserve to be there but loads of others do too….but quite a few people don’t. Who goes and who stays, I can’t work out the logic!

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