It’s Very Simple

The Wullums Show is trying to do too much and expecting too much from people. You know what they say, shoot for the stars and it could really fuck up a quinceanera. Mostly, The Wullums Show is an expression of humanity’s achievements and limitations.

It all started in 1877 with the first audio recording. Since sound could be played back in real time, the recordings took on a life of their own. As time went on, they could be broadcast to wider and wider audiences and be manipulated in ever increasingly bizarre fashions. With the advent of turntables and samplers, entirely new genres such as disco, dance hall, hip-hop, techno, and edm were being created. In 2008, a new style was ready to burst forth. Girl Talk released “Feed the Animals” and mashups had finally turned recorded sound into a never ending playground.

Mashup artists were not the first to play one song’s lyrics with another song’s composition. Jam bands had been doing that since the 60’s and, while I am not a music scholar, I’d be willing to bet that wasn’t the first time musicians had such an idea. However, Mashups offered something new that has yet to come to fruition: a mashup set with live vocals performed by the artists who created them. So, with that, we welcome you to the Wullums Show.

We are two brothers standing at the edge of current history with access to all knowledge available publicly on the internet, smashing it all into chunks of audio mayhem. We have but one question to ask: Will you join us? Humanity has achieved this wealth of knowledge and the ability to transport it across the globe, but we are just two working dudes like anyone else. The dream is to have other talented people on stage spitting fire and singing louder than sirens while recorded sound and live instrumentation vibrate packed rafters of people. That being said, the world does not revolve around us.

We’re just two people. I can only rap what I know and A-Wullums can only DJ what he finds. We can’t be multiple places at once, playing multiple instruments and singing multiple parts. Surely we could get looper peddles or something, but if that’s your deal, see if Reggie Watts and Goldfish want to do a collaboration. Let’s say we do get multiple people on stage and do an OFWKTA/BROCKHAMPTON type thing. It doesn’t work if the people in the stands don’t know any of the words or aren’t ready for them to be sung to different melodies. Heck, one of the main problems with mashups is you get so used to the album version, it’s a let down when you don’t hear any of the same two songs paired together. That means we have to get hundreds if not thousands of people familiar with multiple artists work and content with the fact that they’ll hear it in new ways almost every time. Then, we have to get those artists in the same place and have them check their egos enough to not hog the mic and instead share that collaborative musical headspace. Then, we have to find venues for it to take place in several cities, staff the venues, and exchange money in such a way that everyone who participated leaves feeling like it was all worthwhile. This isn’t even taking into account copyright or how to support the artists that make the beats we buy/steal. Furthermore, it must be said that we’re standing on the shoulders of giants, many of whom struggled way more and didn’t have white male privilege to let them fail upwards. For us to put our name on their achievements feels like we’re slapping them in the face, but such is life in the world of brand recognition and I hope most understand that we want to participate rather than co-opt. The Wullums Show is simply too much to ask of the world and yet it’s really not that hard. We just hook up turntables and a microphone to a PA and we’re off.

Maybe the Ultimate dream is out of reach. Live rap vocals rarely sound good. Most people sing to a backing track anyway. This is really fucking fun though. Even if people leave during the middle of the set, even if we have technical difficulties, even if the mix is off, and especially when we’re too stressed to think, the Wullums show is a damn good time because that next song might be the one where it all comes together for a moment or it could be a train wreck. The only way to know is to keep the music blasting and stick around to see what happens.

Welcome to the Wullums Show. We hope you’ll join us.