While we often think of sampling as being central to Hip-Hop, the techniques of sampling and remixing have been adapted to other genres as well. I present to you “Madagascar” by Guns N’ Roses. The song features an extensive collage of samples from speeches by Martin Luther King, as well as dialogue from the films Braveheart and Casualties of War.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbFmXK5I0rc
This live version of the song is from 2001, a full seven years before the recorded version would see the light of day on Chinese Democracy (2008). The sample collage remains the same on the recorded version as it does on the live version.
I used to listen to Guns N' Roses all the time in highschool and never knew of this song until it was released in 2008, two years after I had graduated. I find it funny how even though a song was performed live and exposed to audiences a multitude of times, it wasn't produced on a record for consumption until 7 years later. Do you think that Guns N' Roses didn't record this song for so long on purpose as a way to escape the capitalist mentality of society? Do you think that because they didn't record this song right away that that found a way to work around the economic consumption of music and just share their music freely instead? Or, was what they did just a ploy to get more people to buy tickets to their concerts because they knew non-recorded music was going to be played?
ReplyDeleteMany books will be written on why Chinese Democracy took so long to come out. I don't think it had anything to do with making money though. Surely most of these future books will focus on the immense amount of money lost on this record.
ReplyDeleteThe recorded version of "Madagascar" actually leaked online over a year before the album came out. One of the leakers was investigated by the FBI and put in a jail. So I don't think they are into the whole "spreading free music" trip.
Amongst the many rumors that surround this album's delayed release, one that struck me as interesting was that it took a long time to clear all of the samples for this song, specifically the Martin Luther King ones.