Stealing candy from the bowl of genius

Some folks have complained that I haven't been writing about music enough. I looked over my past entries, and they may have a point. And that last entry didn't help matters (nor get a mouse pad sent my way). What I want to write about today are "mash-ups" or "booties." Have you heard of these things? To get an idea what I am talking about, try this out: http://www.djbc.net/mashes/djbc-hotbreaker.mp3. Evidently, some DJ somewhere thought it would be great fun to mix great contributions from the classic rock canon with percolating synth-pablum from Christina Aguilera and Madonna and Britney Spears. Then, like a nasty cold, or pink-eye this idea spread. And everywhere you look you find someone combining monster chords from Led Zeppelin or Billy Squire with Beyonce singing "Wooty wooty wooty/Gonna shake my booty." I hear Beyonce when I'm shopping at the Gap. And that's fine. It helps me get get out of the store faster. But combining this stuff with music swiped from our collective treasury of classic rock riffdom is wrong. It's desecration. People: have we strayed so far from contact with the divine that we have forgotten how to treat what's sacred? Hands off Zeppelin. If you have to do this stuff, use Deep Purple. But not, under any circumstances, Smoke on the Water.