Segue: 'se-(")gwA,
Function: verb imperative
1 : proceed to what follows without pause – used as a direction in music
2 : perform the music that follows like that which has preceded – used as a direction in music
Oddly enough, a quick search of Cafe’ Society Thread Titles drew a blank.
What the hell, if there’s any feedback, this thread could become a CD-R burning / radio programming resource.
I’ll give it more thought later, but I heard a great segue on the way into work today:
New York Dolls “Jet Boy” => Plastic Bertrand “Ca Plane Pour Moi” => The Damned “Jet Boy, Jet Girl”
I love Phish’s transition from the meandering, mellow “Catapult” to the ass-kicking “Tweezer (reprise)” on A Picture of Nectar.
I’m good at transitions on my mixes, but I don’t usually do them for thematic purposes; usually I aim for musical synergy. My favorite recently was Aerosmith’s Love in an Elevator into Keller Williams’ Freeker by the Speaker. Listen to one right after the other, and it’s hard to debate that the outro of the former and intro of the latter don’t go amazingly well together.
As for really mixing a transition, there’s a version of “Welcome to the Jungle” out there that has Howard Dean’s (in)famous YEAAARGH speech dubbed over the intro. Imagine the long, slow build-up of his speech, all those descending minor scales, and as it builds to a low boil, Howard begins rattling off state names. Then it gets to the bit with the drums, right before that one “kicker”, and he’s winding down the list of states, and it goes…
“dun dun dun dun
DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUNT! YEAAAAARGH!” and goes right into the song.
It’s priceless. If taking away the crowd noise made him sound like an idiot, adding GN(FN)R to his speech makes him sound like someone possessed simultaneously by the ghosts of John F. Kennedy, Henry Rollins, and Hulk Hogan.
…and you can always put the Barenaked Ladies’ “Be My Yoko Ono” right next to Dar Williams’ “I Won’t Be Your Yoko Ono” on a mix; if you want to add “The Ballad of John and Yoko” you’re more than welcome to.
Just realize that it’s been done. More than twice.
When I was in college radio, I discovered that any song you choose segues smoothly in to Led Zepplin’s “When the Levee Breaks.”
The best I ever said was totally accidental. I had a show of . . . eclectic . . . music. With thinking, I played “Leader of the Laundromat” with a recording of the Lone Ranger radio show theme (yeah, the William Tell Overture, but this was directly from the show). So the songs segued thusly:
“Who’s that playing the piano?”
“The Loooone Ranger!”
Rush’s ‘By-Tor & The Snowdog’.
= Oh will you excuse me, I’m just trying to find the bridge… Has anybody seen the bridge? (Have you seen the bridge?) I ain’t seen the bridge! Where’s that confounded bridge? => Across the River Styx, out of the lamplight. His nemesis is waiting at the gate.
One tape I made had a really nice sequence. They’re not thematically connected, but the feel of the songs and the way they ended and began seemed to fit together well:
The Move : Mist on a Monday Morning
Thunderclap Newman : Wilhelmina
Adrain Belew : Adidas in Heat
Queen : Fat Bottom Girls
On the album version of Start The Commotion by the Wiseguys, the song ends (“Guh-roovy! Hey!”) then you hear applause, and someone says, “Is everybody happy?” [cheering] “We’ll soon change that, heh heh heh…” and it goes right into the next song, which is much darker. If you mix that into an mp3 playlist, you get some very strange segues. It’s kind of funny.
I also kind of like the “Ataraxia” segue on the So Much For the Afterglow album by Everclear.
My proudest moment making mix tapes was when I recorded all the songs that get obsessively stuck in my head mixed in with snippets from the audiotape that comes with the Nicotrol patch. It was glorious, and will be missed. ::sniff::
My favorite iTunes playlist so far is “Fire and Rain”, starting with the Me First & The Gimme Gimmes’ cover of that song and building up eventually to:
Every Time You Say Goodbye - Alison Krauss & Union Station
Kaneda - AKIRA Soundtrack
Rain - The Beatles
Gimme Shelter - Rolling Stones
Sunless Saturday - Fishbone
The Rain Song - Led Zeppelin
She’s a Rainbow - Rolling Stones
The Sea - Morcheeba
Beyond the Sea - Bobby Darin
On the Root’s Things Fall Apart album, there’s a great 4 song set, starting with te end of #60 (Without a Doubt) to #63 (Act Too-Love of My Life). I especially like the segue from “Double Trouble” (#62) to “Act Too”. Drives me crazy every time. The Roots have a shitload of really good segues, but those stand out to me.
Well it’s not really cool, but I think there’s magic powers involved when Junior Senior’s Move Your Feet segues into Justin Timberlake’s Rock Your Body. Also, on the pop front, with a bit of beat matching Ludacris’ Hands Up will meld almost seamlessly into Missy Elliot’s I’m Really Hot.
The mention of Spoken Word + Audio Segues opens up the whole topic. Some I’ve done that have come out really good - with the assitance of Swedish DVD audio ripping software and Magix Sound Lab:
[ul]
[li]Pink Floyd’s ‘Money’ with Ned Beatty’s ‘The World is a Business’ dialogue from “Network”.[/li][li]Limp Bizkit’s ‘Break Stuff’ with Jack Nicolson ‘Chicken Salad on Wheat Toast’ dialogue from “Five Easy Pieces”.[/li][li]Luminaire’s ‘Flower Duet 99’ (Trance Mix) with Dennis Hopper / Christopher Walken ‘Sicilian’ dialogue from “True Romance”.[/li][li]Tool’s ‘Ænema’ with Peter Finch’s ‘I’m as Mad as Hell’ dialogue from “Network”.[/li][li]Wolfsheim’s ‘Once In A Lifetime’ with Robert Shaw ‘Black Eyes, Like A Doll’s Eyes’ dialogue from “Jaws”.[/li][li]The Strangler’s ‘Peaches’ with Robert Duvall’s ‘Big-Titted Hit’ dialogue from “Network”.[/li]Roula’s ‘(You Gotta) Lick It (Before We Kick It)’ with Samuel Jackson’s ‘I Eat Everything’ dialogue from “True Romance”.[/ul]There are plenty of other more obscure ones that no one would no…So I’ll stop here.
This brings to mind one of the great seamless transitions from my DJ days - from one of the old U.S. Army recruitment promos (“You can really get it together in today’s U.S. Army…the Army wants to join YOU”) into “The Battle Hymn of Lieutenant Calley” by C Company*. A truly great moment in radio.
*You think My Lai? Nope, there really was such a song.
"My name is William Calley, I’m a soldier of this land
I’ve tried to do my duty and to gain the upper hand
But they’ve made me out a villain they have stamped me with a brand
As we go marching on…
While we’re fighting in the jungles they were marching in the street
While we’re dying in the rice fields they were helping our defeat
While we’re facing V.C. bullets they were sounding a retreat
As we go marching on…
When all the wars are over and the battle’s finally won
Count me only as a soldier who never left his gun
With the right to serve my country as the only prize I’ve won
As we go marching on
Glory, glory hallelujah glory, glory hallelujah"
The best spoken word/music segue ever occurred on KLOS radio on May 15th, 1972 when the DJ segued from the report on the attempted assassination of Governor George Wallace with into the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Pure guerilla radio.
Without a doubt, the best segue is The Jam’s Town Called Malice to Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life. When the drums start back up it really sounds like it’s just another verse to the song.
[After talking about John Wayne war movies]
“I want to start talking about airplanes, but there’s no logical way I can tie in what I was just talking about to that subject. So I’ll try this. In the John Wayne war movies, they always have scenes showing dogfights with the airplanes. Speaking of airplanes…”
– Bob Newhart, “The Grace L. Ferguson Airline and Storm Door Company”, from the album The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back
Plus, okay, it’s not quite a segue, more just laying one track completely over the other, but try looking for a track called America (Closing Time) by Tom Waits and Allen Ginsberg on one of them file searchy thangs. It’s a mix I did almost 8 years ago, but somehow it still manages to pop up now and then. (I remember turning into an mp3 and sending it via ICQ in the pre Napster days. I did it only once, but somehow it ended up on thousands of computers.)
Anohter segue - The Doors - The End into Black Sabbath’s Sleeping Village