Using tapes to make music?

When a musician inserts pre-recorded bits into their music, I think it's called sampling. Usually they insert bits of music but the line gets blurry sometimes. For example, Primitive Radio Gods sample Ray Charles in the song Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand - but if you didn't know who the inserted clip was, you might think Ray was a preacher, since the sample is more "hollered" than sung.

Artist that are famous for sampling include:

Moby - Natural Blues, Honey, Another Woman

Massive Attack - Lately, Safe from Harm, Teardrop, Heat Miser

Tricky - Pumpkin, Council Estate

Fat Boy Slim - Praise You, Right Here, Right Now

LL Cool J - (just about everything)

Madness - My Name is Michael Caine

Emenim - My Name is, Mosh, Crazy in Love

Madonna - Sanctuary, Human Nature

Negativland - Lots of talking samples, old radio shows - cool stuff

You also might like some of the songs from the soundtrack to The General's Daughter - which were sampled from Library of Congress files. (Check out Seal Lion Woman, in particular)

Here's a great wikipedia entry that has lots of examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(music)

WhoSampledWho - is a user created database that keeps track of what used who, where: http://www.whosampled.com/

Here's a compilation of source songs (many are better than the songs they were sampled into!): http://www.amazon.com/Sampled-Various-Artists/dp/B...

And finally, oblique to your question, but related to the homeless guy and the cello, here is a really cool new music documentary that's being made - where they have musicians from all over the world connect and sing different parts of the same song: http://www.playingforchange.com/

Cheers

Edited:

Sampling is to cover as collage is to sketch...

When an artist samples a piece, they insert the original recording (sung or spoken by someone else) into their new song. When an artist covers a piece, they re-sing it with their own voice.

But this definition doesn't help you to find music with spoken bits inserted. Here are two discussion threads about songs that have bits of spoken samples, along with links: http://www.last.fm/group/AFTER+THE+POST+ROCK/forum...

http://www.last.fm/user/VeryFuzzyBunny/journal/200...

Also, you might have a listen to negativeland - nearly everything they do is based on tapes of speakers. Here's an iTunes link for them: http://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/...