Can We Create Real Live Concert Mashups?

The debut album of Los Angeles afro-pop collective Fool’s Gold erupts with an exotic mix of African rhythms, percolating rock melodies and purring synths. Instantly the urge to dance grabs you. Then the fantastic fusion of music and lyrics (sung mostly in Hebrew) sends you on an ancient journey that’s majestic, yet intimate, as the songs unfold with a spiritual subtext of adoration and celebration.

Sitting backstage with the band’s two front men vocalist/bassist Luke Top and guitarist Lewis Pesacov—moments before their show at Chicago’s Bottom Lounge—it’s obvious why the album sounds so warm and genuine. As we start to talk about the band’s origins, I instantly get the feeling that Fool’s Gold eclectic hybrid of joyous world rhythms is simply the result of a strong friendship that’s developed over time.

That’s a snippet from my forthcoming interview with Fool’s Gold for Popmatters.  I interviewed them before their show at the Bottom Lounge in September and during the interview I got a great feel for what makes the band and their music so warm, fun and genuine.

And it’s a show that might have been very different had what I’m going to share with you been possible.

Fool’s Gold/Mariah Carey Mad Decent Mashup

I started to think about how we remember concerts differently when I came across this Stereogum post featuring a mashup from Mad Decent’s Wallpaper of Fool’s Gold’s “Surprise Hotel” with Mariah Carey’s “Emotions.”

It’s an odd paring that I’m still getting used too and definitely puts a new sonic spin on what I’ve loved about Fool’s Gold so far.  Hopefully it will get them into more ears and hearts as the year in music wraps up. You can compare it to the original “Surprise Hotel” via the video (below) released earlier this year on IAMSOUND.

But then all this mashup business got me thinking about something I haven’t seen before:

The Historical Live Concert  Mashup

Now, when I say  “live concert mashup” I’m not talking about what Papa Roach/Xzibit or Kelly Clarkson and Reba McEntire did.

Those concert mashups involved both artists coming on stage together at the same time in the flesh.  What I’m talking about is more  sci-fi and virtual and would involve a lot more technological advances and wizardry to make it happen.

But what if we could create Historical Live Concert Mashups?

For example, what if we were able to merge Woodstock 1969 with Woodstock 1994, or two of your favorite concerts?

What if we were able to take both the performances of the artists and the emotions of the fans and merge their the collective “concert experience” DNA together?

It seems that we’ve begun to do it with other forms of entertainment like movie posters and even movies themselves with a little editing trickery.

For now, I see there being two types of Live Concert Mashups:

1) The type we create with expertly spliced photos and produced video footage of  classic concerts.

2) The type that’s more sci-fi and virtual where we take the emotional “concert experience” DNA of fans and artists who attended and performed at two different classic concerts and merge them together to create a mega live concert mashup. This type would also appear to have the most impact on our brain’s memory storage design and chemistry.

The future evolution of the live music experience?

Is this  Live Concert Mashup where the live concert experience is headed?

Will you enjoy mashing up your favorite concerts with fellow fans and their favorite artists in a virtual world?

If we did do something like this would it create a wonderful concert experience epiphany?  Or would it create a scary hybrid, or even a terrible mutant live music fan–like Dr. Frankenstein or Dr. Moreau did–that we’d regret ever thinking about or creating?

So now you can bet I’m watching both videos below with a whole new perspective on mashups.

For starters, I had Colleen do a photo mashup (above) of three of my favorite concerts (Fool’s Gold & Talib Kweli and Miike Snow) from this year.  The photo is just a start to exploring this idea because there are many ways we can create Live Concert Mashups. And this photo illustrates how I stored and recalled these three shows as seperate events (verticle lines) in certain parts of my brain, while I recalled other favorite moments of the concerts as more blended together and “mashedup.”

How ’bout you?

Which concerts would you choose to mashup?

And remember that I’m still defining what a Live Concert Mashup is, so I’d love to hear what you think defines such a creation.

Surprise Hotel

Fool’s Gold at Bottom Lounge