As part of Beatles Week I’m giving you one of the few songs off of Danger Mouse‘s 2004 concept album, The Grey Album, that actually sounds good (although I love the conceit of the album–combining Jay-Z’s Black Album with The White Album–most of it sounds kind of crappy). Here’s what someone smarter than me said about The Grey Album (from Pitchfork’s 7.7/10 review):
Remix albums rarely have purely noble intentions. From underground promotional vehicles to hobbyist experiments for props at local watering holes, the concept of backing familiar voices with unexpected surroundings had been all but lost to simpler production clinics with high profile guests. That is, until Danger Mouse (best known for his work with Jemini and Sage Francis) turned a color inference into an underground phenomenon with his bootleg conceptual assault, The Grey Album, a remix album that pairs the vocals of Jay-Z’s Black Album with The Beatles’ legendary White Album.
. . . .
Danger Mouse was recently issued a cease-and-desist by EMI regarding this project’s Beatle-sampling. While he insists the record was intended only as a promotional item, 3,000 copies are already in circulation, and one can’t help but feel the loom of a forthcoming lawsuit. So the question now is, was the creative payoff of this project worth the possibilities of this potential worst-case-scenario? Well: While The Grey Album is truly one of the more interesting pirate mashups ever done, it ultimately fails at the hands of perfectionism with several pieces sounding rushed to beat some other knucklehead to his clever idea. Additionally, the missing songs and occasionally poor tracking means the project take a few hits. Still, it’s stronger than it ought to be given the disparity between the two artists, and as far as raw experimentation goes, it further proves DM as a wildly imaginative producer. Even taken out of the context of listenability, The Grey Album will end up the trivia answer we’ll always love to submit.
At the time, I remember The Grey Album being a really big deal–it crossed over from the murky shadows of the internet into the mainstream, if only momentarily. Ultimately, Pitchfork is probably right–it’s more of a curiosity than a musical milestone–but even if it existed solely for the magnificent punnery of its title, that’d be reason enough in my book. And if its version of “Public Service Announcement” isn’t as good as Jay-Z’s original (one of the highlights of an incredible album), it is certainly an interesting experiment. Check it out: Public Service Announcement – Danger Mouse
Now let me be clear: unlike the Pitchforkist I cited up there, I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to take a musical work “out of the context of listenability”. And you kind of have to do that to enjoy a song like The Grey Album‘s “Lucifer 9“, which deconstructs “Lucifer” and “Revolution 9” so thoroughly that the result sounds… terrible (although “Revolution 9″ actually sounds terrible on its own, so you can’t put all the blame on Dangermouse). I can appreciate the desire to make a meaningful statement, rather than to just make something that sounds good, but I think you generally need the latter in order to validate the former (caveat: I am not in any way an expert on music or meaningful statements). So it’s safe to say that I wouldn’t hold up The Grey Album as a masterpiece, but as a snapshot of a moment in time, and as an occasionally-inspired piece of mashuppery, I think it’s worth revisiting its best compositions every now and then.
Follow me on Twitter