Today FM DJ Tom Dunne has been on the receiving end of a tirade of abusive correspondence from irate Nirvana fans following the airing of a bootleg mix of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ spliced with Destiny’s Child’s ‘Bootylicious’ on his Pet Sounds show.

Of the correspondence hotpress has seen, the most vociferous criticism came in the form of a handwritten missive from Donegal listener Owen McGuire. Under the headline ‘To The Dickhead Who Presents Pet Sounds’, Mr McGuire’s complaint ran thus (grammar and spelling have been left unchanged):

“What the fuck is your problem MAN?! I was listening to your radio show the other night and I couldn’t believe my ears, Teen Spirit mixed with some moronic R and B twaddle. Can I handle this can I fuck. I don’t blame the cocksuckers for actually mixing the song because cocksuckers have to earn a living too. But someone like you in a position of influence? What the fuck is wrong with you? Were you alive in the early 90s. You were obviously listening to new Kids On The Block because Obviously you KNOW NOT WHAT IT MEANS do you Fuckhead? How much do you get paid to play this evil shite. Maby you should give up radio and concentrate on your blowjobing advertising career you Corporate Little Bitch. ASSHOLE. Fuck you and anyone who thinks you are remotely cool because cool is not a new haircut it is not something you can buy in a shop it is something you have to earn DICKHEAD.”

Other less splenetic protests the station received via e-mail ranged from “Turn it off” and “It suck-diddly-ucks, Tom” to “Sacrilage (sic) it should be banned”. There was also a minority number of e-mails praising the mix and defending Dunne’s playing of the track. There were no complaints from Destiny’s Child fans.

The ‘Smells Like/Bootylicious’ track is just one of a plethora of bootleg or “mash-up” mixes to hit the airwaves and music video channels over the last year. Other unlikely pairings include Christina Aguilera and The Strokes (prompting Aguilera’s publisher Warner-Chappel to serve a cease and desist order on a London radio station to prohibit its being played), Missy Elliot and The Cure, Eminem and The Smiths, and a ménage a trois between The Bee Gees, Britney and Shakira. Then there was Island Records’ legal bootleg in the form of the Sugababes’ ‘Freak Like Me’, which combined the vintage electro-pop of Tubeway Army with R&B singer Adina Howard. Kylie Minogue also acknowledged the phenomenon when she performed a mix of her classic ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ featuring the rhythm track from New Order’s club classic ‘Blue Monday’ at last year’s Brits awards.

Mash-ups have their roots in the scratch ‘n’ mix turntable skills of hip-hop pioneers such as DJ Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa, famous for mixing funk breakbeats with elements from Kraftwerk and Toni Basil records. Throughout the 80s and 90s, collage acts such as Plunderphonic and Negativland plus sampladelia experts De La Soul and the Beastie Boys received much critical kudos while causing ethical uproar. More recently, The Verve were forced to hand over a massive chunk of the publishing from ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ for its sampling of Andrew Oldham’s orchestral version of the Rolling Stones hit ‘The Last Time’. Moby’s 1999 album Play achieved multi-platinum success by marrying state of the art electronica with Alan Lomax’s field recordings of acapella blues and gospel singers from the early part of the last century.

Undoubtedly the bootleg album success story of last year was 2 Many DJs: As Heard On Radio Soulwax Pt 2, the brainchild of two Belgians, the Dewaele brothers, who spent nine months obtaining licensing permission for the music on the record (which included an inspired pairing of The Stooges’ ‘No Fun’ with Salt N Pepa’s ‘Push It’), and even then it could only be released in Belgium, Luxenbourg and Holland – import copies became the hipster’s fashion accessory du jour in Britain and Ireland.

The mash-up phenomenon is largely the result of recent advances in technology, with cheap software giving computer literate kids the ability to produce professional sounding recordings at home with the minimum of production or engineering experience, combined with Internet file-sharing services which offer an infinite choice of raw material. In most cases, the aim is not merely to create a collage that sounds like both artists at once, but one that sounds like a new piece of music. Either way, the trend has constituted a major post-Napster headache for record companies and publishers.

Not to mention the odd disgruntled Nirvana fan.