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When did the remix become a requirement? The Awl puts together a fairly concise history of remixing music.
How did we get to the point where a one-hit-wonder band from the ’90s like Marcy Playground can release an entire album of remixes made by fans?
Imagining Freaks & Geeks season two.
Nick becomes fed up with both disco and Sara, and wishes he still had Lindsay. He slightly re-works the lyrics to “Lady L,” changing “Is your green army jacket keeping you warm tonight?” to “Is your tennis racket keeping you warm tonight?” believing both that she actually went to the academic summit at the University of Michigan and that smart people play tennis. Nick records the track in his basement, and gives the single to a local DJ, who likes what she hears and adds “Lady L” to her radio station’s playlist. It becomes a minor hit, and for an entire week, with the world needing a new question after the riddle of who shot JR was solved, the only words out of anyone’s mouth were: “Who is Lady L?”
Did false nostalgia ruin the taste of a generation? (Or: Why a Tron sequel probably shouldn’t have happened.)
VH1 was but the forefather: once we were trained, Google and Wikipedia and YouTube largely replaced it as a tool for the false nostalgia impulse. But VH1 was the first instance of being told that something in the near-past of pop culture was cool, or at least delightfully campy, and presented these relics in such a way that it was easy to quote and talk about with your friends, instead of actually discussing why Back to the Future was actually an important film. Everything became a giant in-joke that everyone was supposed to get.
How did the Awl become a success?
By August 2009, they had chewed through their savings and had just under 100,000 unique visitors a month, a nice number that was rich with media insiders and hip twentysomethings, but not the kind of traffic that would make a living. When an anonymous donor sent in a few hundred dollars at one particularly stretched-thin moment, Mr. Sicha used it to buy food.
But a funny thing happened on the way to obscurity. A year later, that number had grown to almost a half a million, according to Google Analytics. Revenue for the year will surpass $200,000. The site has spawned a funny sibling site, Splitsider, and on Monday, a sister site aimed at women, The Hairpin joins the family, with its start-up financed by Ann Taylor, the women’s fashion brand.
