Jack Mix and authenticity

Rambler

Awanturnik
Yeah, it' s the old authenticity question rearing its head again, but this one has a twist.

Dunno if anyone else remembers them, but one of the first tapes I bought as a kid was Jack Mix '88, a pretty ghastly 'remix' epic in which nothing was actually remixed at all - in fact all the 'samples' were impersonated by the group members, and rejigged into one 45 minute long track. As a kid, who'd heard and loved bits of MARRS and Bomb the Bass here and there, I thought this record was the height of DJ skills until I realised that it was just a long cover version.

Now, presumably such tactics (ie impersonating someone else's breaks or grooves rather than properly sampling them) would be regarded by most here as entirely 'inauthentic', and I'd agree. But that's interesting, because that shows a completely different sort of authenticity to the usual rockist mantra - which would have it the other way around: live performance is always more authentic than sampled/recorded bits.

This only occured to me on the bus the other day, so I'm not sure what my point is, other than pointing up the fact that 'authenticity' is a completely Protean word. We all want authenticity in the music we listen to, but at the same time, we listeners are the very people who decide whether such-and-such is authentic, and according to which rulebook to authenticity. Just some thoughts. Any others?
 
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