What Does It All Mean? 1983–2006 Retrospective

STEINSKI, 2008

Illegal Art

In the liner notes accompanying the What Does It All Mean? anthology, Hua Hsu

makes the point that “many of the new ideas of the 1980s were actually old ones

reconsidered, reordered, slapped around a bit and then reconstituted.” For certain,

when, in 1983, budding advertiser Steve Stein (Steinski) and his sound engineer

accomplice Douglas Di Franco (Double Dee) resolved to enter a remix competition

organized by the Tommy Boy label, the concepts underpinning their “Lesson 1: The

Payoff Mix” did not fall out of thin air. Three decades earlier, Bill Buchanan and

Dickie Goodman had come up with “The Flying Saucer,” snippets of popular songs

interrupted by a radio announcer “breaking-in” with updates on a sudden alien

landing. Later, John Oswald coined the term plunderphonics to describe the

recordings he had been making since the 1960s (such as “Power,” a setting of stolen

Led Zeppelin riffs alongside the sermon of a turbulent priest), while in 1981

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on

the Wheels of Steel” interspersed scratches and spoken-word vocals with the sounds

of, among others, Blondie, Chic, the Sugarhill Gang, and Queen. Nonetheless, Double

Dee and Steinski’s prize-winning effort (along with the follow-up “Lesson 2: James

Brown Mix” and “Lesson 3: The History of Hip-Hop”) proved unique not least for the

fine timing of the edits: they seemed to know exactly when to get in and out at a fast

lick, and, alternatively, when to maintain a holding pattern with the one sample.This retrospective surveys Steinski’s recording career from those breakthrough

lessons right up to the present day. After the initial Double Dee collaborations, he

stepped up his career as an advertising executive (he has since retired), but still found

time to release (as Steinski & Mass Media) “The Motorcade Sped On” and “It’s Up to

You,” two groundbreaking montages that introduced an overt political tone to his

music. The former, recorded in 1986, is a stunning cut-and-paste job, using speech

fragments, radio broadcasts, stray gunshots, and a chunk of the Rolling Stones’

“Honky Tonk Women” to describe the assassination of President Kennedy; it became a

major cult item in the United Kingdom after New Musical Express pressed it onto a

flexi-disc given away free with the magazine. The latter, heard here in its Double Dee

“television mix” version of 1992, vents upon George Bush Senior by combining his

bland sound bites on the first Gulf War with a multitude of competing voices,

including political activist Mario Savio and another dead Kennedy—Jello Biafra.

Steinski has gone on to tackle issues such as sex (“I’m Wild About That Thing”) and

the power of television (“Everything’s Disappeared”), as well as undertaking an hour-

long project for BBC radio titled “Nothing to Fear” (appended to this compilation as a

separate disc). None of this subsequent work, it should be noted, made much of a dent

in an underground music culture that has grown from a trickle to a torrent in the two

decades since “The Payoff Mix.”

658 Audio Reviews

Yet any suggestion that the post-’80s explosion of interest in hip hop, turntablism,

sampling, and found sounds makes Steinski of historical interest only is well and trulyquashed by the appearance here of his most recent composition. In his own words,

“with so many people doing records about 9/11, I wanted to wait until I had exactlythe right sample to build it around. I waited four years, but when I heard it, I knew it.”The result of this patient approach is “Number Three on Flight Eleven,” quite simply

one of the most remarkable pieces of music of this or any year. Interweaving theemergency telephone call of ill-fated American Airlines stewardess Betty Ong with a

deadpan recitation of a wandering, often beautifully phrased paean to New York(“A withered dream in windy fields of memory”), all underscored by a sinister

background rumble, Steinski manages the impossible feat of evoking hope, beauty,sadness, and dread all in the one text. It is as if he has somehow captured for all time

those final minutes leading up to the first plane hitting the World Trade Center, asunsuspecting millions foraged under a clear blue sky that was about be blacked out bythe dark shadows of hate and fear. Anyone ignorant enough to maintain that sound

collagists such as Steve Stein don’t qualify as proper musicians, or, worse still, aredisposed to rate them in the criminal class, should be made to listen to this.

Steinski’s scavenger aesthetic—a considered blend of fascination and dismay in theface of our present cultural circumstances—has been a hugely influential one among

his fellow musicians. De La Soul, DJ Shadow, and Cut Chemist have all paid tribute tothe original lessons, while the likes of the KLF, Coldcut, DJ Food, and Kid Koala, not

to mention multiple mash-up artists, show clear evidence of Steinski discs holdingpride of place in their collections. Anyone with an interest in these and other up-and-

coming sound artists of their ilk, or in innovative and expressive music in general,should likewise make room for What Does It All Mean? in their own CD library.

DEAN BIRON

University of New England, Australiaq 2009 Dean Biron

Popular Music and Society 659