You're looking back in time: Jamglue ran from 2006 to 2010. This page is a retrospective built from the public record.
The showcase banner as it ran on Jamglue, recovered from the still-live static.jamglue.com bucket.
The Coldcut “True Skool” Remix Showcase
In May 2007, Jamglue and Ninja Tune put the multitrack session for Coldcut's “True Skool” on the open web. Eight separate tracks plus the finished song went up under a Creative Commons license, and anyone could copy the mix into the Jamglue Mixer and take it apart. What makes this one different from every other page in this section: it was not a contest. There were no prizes, no deadline, and no winners, by design.
“Even though this isn't a contest, all mixes will be shown below, and the most popular mixes will rise to the top!”
the showcase page, May 2007
About the Showcase
The page opened with three steps. Quoted as they read on May 21, 2007:
“Jamglue is excited to bring you the tracks for ‘True Skool’ by Ninja Tune recording artist Coldcut! You can use these fantastic tracks to create or enhance your own remixes!”
Start a new mix containing one or more “True Skool” tracks. The easiest way to do this is to click “Start Mixing Now!” below and then “SAVE A COPY” in the mixer to create your own version of the song.
Remix the song by adding new sounds, rearranging the clips, etc. Be creative, and don't forget to publish your mix when you're done so that other people can hear it!
Promote your mix by embedding it in your blog/MySpace and emailing a link to all of your friends. Every time someone marks your mix as a favorite, it counts as a vote.
The blog announcement gave the reason the session existed at all: Coldcut were twenty years into their career and had decided to release their album in pieces.
“As part of their 20th Anniversary Celebration, Coldcut plans to release tracks off their ‘Sound Mirrors’ album in remixable, multi-track format. For their first release, they have chosen the song ‘True Skool’ (which I love!). Listen to it, remix it, use the tracks, listen to others' remixes; its all up to you!”
Divya Bhat, “Coldcut Remix Showcase!”, the Jamglue Blog, May 15, 2007
The Materials
“Here's what you have to work with. Knock yourself out!” The page listed the finished song plus eight separate tracks:
| True Skool (the full mix) | not archived |
| Bass - True Skool | recovered |
| Drums - True Skool | recovered |
| Female Vox - True Skool | recovered |
| Rodney - True Skool | recovered |
| sfx - True Skool | recovered |
| Shakes - True Skool | recovered |
| Strings - True Skool | not archived |
| Tablas - True Skool | not archived |
The page carried its own warning about the stems: “NOTE: Some tracks may be silent for the first few seconds, that's because some parts come in later than others.”
Licensing. The official rules stated that the tracks were “licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 2.5 license (and that all rights that are not expressly granted under this license are reserved by Ninja Tune),” and that participants must attribute Coldcut as well as Ninja Tune, for example “Remix using elements from Coldcut/Ninja Tune,” without implying endorsement. Remixes had to be published under the same CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 license.
The Prizes
There were none. Every other page in this section has a prize table; this one has a sentence saying the opposite. The official rules are headed “Coldcut / ‘Sound Mirrors’ Showcase Official Rules” and are the standard Jamglue contest rules with the prize and judging clauses removed: the sponsors are Jamglue Inc. of 214 Summit Ave. E, Seattle, and Ninja Tune of PO Box 4296, London; the offer is “the chance to engage in a creative dialogue with Ninja Tune artist Coldcut”; there is no entry period and no closing date.
One quirk of the archive, in both the 2007 and 2008 captures: the middle of Rule 4 is garbled into nonsense (“pretation, and enforceabihowcasey choicd cause the application of the laws of any jurisdiction other than the State of Washington”). That is how the page was actually served, not an artifact of the crawl, so it is left alone here.
The Dates
| May 15, 2007 | The showcase is announced on the Jamglue blog. |
| May 21, 2007 | The Wayback Machine snapshots the page: nine remixes listed. |
| Feb 21, 2008 | Snapshotted again, still open, now listing 96 remixes. |
| Nov 25, 2008 | A crawl of cache.jamglue.com picks up six of the eight stem files. |
There is no end date because the showcase never had one. It simply stayed up.
The Entries
With nothing to win, the listing was the only reward. The page showed remixes in random order by default, with links to re-sort by most votes or most recent. These nine mixes are the full list as it stood on May 21, 2007.
| True Skool whisper | bert111 |
| True Skool Hustle Mix | DJHustle |
| True Skool Boy Looka Here | Sharif911 |
| True Skool [copy], four separate mixes | wizzkidd |
| True Skool [copy] | hummerh2boy |
| True Skool [copy] | cre8nhavoc |
By February 2008 the same page listed 96 remixes, including titles like “True Skool Gets High,” “True Skool (R.I.Y Mix),” “True Skool DMK Remix,” “True Skool djarronc7 re-mix,” “True Skool boom,” and “True Skool (beastie boys vs cypress hill remix).”
What survives: the page itself in two states, the full materials list, and the names and titles of the remixes. No remix audio survives; Jamglue put mix downloads behind a sign-in, so no crawler ever reached the files. Six of the eight source stems do survive, pulled off a November 2008 crawl of Jamglue's own audio cache: Bass, Drums, Female Vox, Rodney, sfx, and Shakes. Strings, Tablas, and the finished “True Skool” mix are missing.
About the Artist
The bio Ninja Tune supplied, as it ran on the page:
“Most people come into music, do the same thing for a few years, slowly sink back into obscurity and spend the rest of their life collecting publishing royalties and re-forming for tribute tours. Their biographies can afford to be quite short; most of us aren't that interested in golf or angling. The problem with Coldcut is that, despite their veteran status, they act like two unruly children who just won't sit still. Which is why even a brief trawl through their various activities looks like a large chapter of a big book.”
The page linked out to coldcut.net, the Coldcut MySpace page, and the Ninja Tune artist page, and embedded the video for “True Skool.”
Sources
jamglue.com/contests/coldcut a week after launch: the description, the materials list, the first nine remixes, the artist bio, and the full official rules.
The same URL nine months later, unchanged except for the entry list, which has grown to 96 remixes. The garbled passage in Rule 4 is identical in both captures.
“Coldcut Remix Showcase!” by Divya Bhat: the 20th anniversary framing and the plan to keep releasing “Sound Mirrors” tracks in multitrack form.
Six stem files crawled off Jamglue's own audio cache. They are the only “True Skool” session audio known to survive.
static.jamglue.com
The banner at the top of this page, still sitting in Jamglue's original S3 bucket.
Jamglue.com has shut down. Thanks for all your support.
Rebuilt from the Wayback Machine, the original static.jamglue.com S3 bucket, and contemporaneous press · Y Combinator: Jamglue (S06) · the retrospective