As an individual, Joan Rivers has left a legacy. A legacy of crude jokes; a legacy of ill will to the Palestinian people and a legacy of inadvertently making people think it’s ok to look like you’ve had so much cosmetic surgery that you appear to have been born a long time ago, in a galaxy far away.
Now Joan is set to leave the final piece of her legacy in the form of the snare drum sound on the new Roland 808, which is set to be released in time for Christmas this year. The old 808 is to be retired, and a statement from Roland has made it very clear that this is “entirely due to Kanye West using it on every fucking thing he has ever made. We want nothing to do with that egomaniacal shitwit.”
The new 808 will feature many of the attributes of the old machine, and will look quite similar. The main differences between the old and new will be the sounds featured on it. The bass drum will be digitally produced, as it was on the original; however the snare sound will be recorded live by having a Palestinian person smack Joan Rivers in the face with a drum stick.
A spokesperson for Roland explained how the idea came about, “We were looking for a new sound for the snare, and began sending our teams (or our “Roland Rats” as we call them) out to various places to find the tautest surface with the emptiest vessel behind it. We thought a taut surface would produce the proper impact, and the empty vessel would produce a nice reverb.”
He continued with pride lighting his face, “Then the idea hit me… What’s the most taut surface known to man? What’s the emptiest vessel known to man? Joan Rivers’s face and head of course…”
“So we sent the engineers out to her wake, accompanied by the most skilful Palestinian drummer to have survived the inhumane attacks on their homeland, and had him smack her upside the head with a drumstick.”
“The results were perfect,” he said.
“We weren’t surprised by how good the impact was, but the reverb produced from her empty head surprised us all. Truly, she was an empty headed individual.”
The BR808 will be released in November this year and is expected to surpass the sales of the original very quickly, with people everywhere eager to move away from the sound that Kanye has adopted as his own.
