Every musician needs their big break. We can’t all emerge fully formed from some weird Disney petri dish and slowly lose our sanity as some other music stars have. But how to separate yourself from all the wannabe Sublime with Romes and Macklemores out there? You could be heard on WNYC by remixing old funny mayoral quotes into one of your songs. Oh hey, good idea.
The Remix the Mayor contest is pretty simple: take any one of the mayoral samples provided by WNYC and build a song around them. You’ve got some good things to pick from, like Ed Koch talking about “guggle muggles,” Rudy Giuliani on his famous ferret rant and John Lindsay saying “I would rather not.” You could even do some weird railroad song about how much different things have gotten since the days of Mayor William O’Dwyer, when the Second Avenue subway was only going to cost $500 million.
After you upload your song to Soundcloud, Evan Gregory (Auto-Tune the News) and Julie Klausner will judge it and declare one remix the winner, with some of the favorites being played for the listeners of Soundcheck. And who knows, maybe some hotshot music exec will hear your remix, like it (people love remixes) and give you a record deal, putting you on the path to being the next Maroon 5. Beats playing at bars with 6 people in the audience.