robviti

quick! notify the office of muggles affairs!

I wish to hell that my MSN homepage would stop featuring the headline: Spokeswoman: Bernie Mac responding to treatment from 8/7. Like some others here, I wasn't his biggest fan, but he did make me laugh. RIP Bernie.

are you sure he didn't say, "could you pass me the swiss, chris?"

i'm not familiar with that quote, but i do know this one: It relaxes you, makes you forget all the bad things that happen to a Negro. It makes you feel wanted, and when you're with another tea smoker it makes you feel a special kinship.

born and raised there. i've attended the last three, but this year's lineup didn't hold enough interest for me to make the trip. instead, i'm counting the days until chicago. now there's a jazz festival!

The New York Times August 7, 2008 Steal This Hook? D.J. Skirts Copyright Law By ROBERT LEVINE The D.J. Girl Talk has won positive reviews for his new album and news media attention for its Radiohead-style pay-what-you-want pricing, and on Friday night he is scheduled to play a high-profile gig at the All Points West festival in Jersey City. Not bad for an artist whose music may be illegal. Girl Talk, whose real name is Gregg Gillis, makes danceable musical collages out of short clips from other people's songs; there are more than 300 samples on "Feed the Animals," the album he released online at illegalart.net in June. He doesn't get the permission of the composers to use these samples, as United States copyright law mostly requires, because he maintains that the brief snippets he works with are covered by copyright law's "fair use" principle (and perhaps because doing so would be prohibitively expensive). Girl Talk's rising profile has put him at the forefront of a group of musicians who are challenging the traditional restrictions of copyright law along with the usual role of samples in pop music. Although artists like the Belgian duo 2 Many DJs have been making "mash-ups" out of existing songs for years, Girl Talk is taking this genre to a mainstream audience with raucous performances that often end with his shirt off and much of the audience onstage. On a sweltering July afternoon Mr. Gillis, 26, who lives in Pittsburgh, opened his laptop on the bar at the Knitting Factory in TriBeCa and discussed how he builds songs out of samples. Clad in a black T-shirt, jeans and a blue sweatband to tame his long hair, he looked less like a club D.J. than a member of a rock band. Mr. Gillis, who said he saw "Feed the Animals" as an album of his own work rather than a D.J. mix, spent several months testing out ideas during live performances, then several more matching beats and polishing transitions. He estimates that each minute of "Feed the Animals" took him about a day to create. "I want to be a musician and not just a party D.J.," he said, "and like any musician I want to put out a classic album." Mr. Gillis's music is pulled from more sources than most hip-hop hits, which often use a loop of music taken from a single song. But unlike most D.J.'s who see themselves as artists, Mr. Gillis does not radically reconfigure songs or search out obscure samples. Instead he mixes clips of contemporary hip-hop artists like Jay-Z and OutKast with time-tested rock riffs from groups like Aerosmith, Cheap Trick and AC/DC. The first track on "Feed the Animals," "Play Your Part (Pt. 1)," starts with a sample of a rap song by UGK and the ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-DUM rhythm of the Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin,' " among other things. At times the album sounds like a cleverly programmed K-tel compilation that presents catchy riffs instead of full songs, and part of the fun is recognizing familiar sounds in a new context. "I want to take these things you know and flip them, which is something I've always enjoyed in hip-hop," Mr. Gillis said. "This project has always been about embracing pop." But this embrace may be an illicit one, according to music industry executives. In legal terms a musician who uses parts of other compositions creates what copyright law calls a derivative work, so the permission of the original song's writer or current copyright holder is needed. Artists who sample a recording also need permission from the owner, in most cases the record label. Hip-hop artists who don't get that permission have been sued, often successfully. Mr. Gillis says his samples fall under fair use, which provides an exemption to copyright law under certain circumstances. Fair use allows book reviewers to quote from novels or online music reviewers to use short clips of songs. Because his samples are short, and his music sounds so little like the songs he takes from that it is unlikely to affect their sales, Mr. Gillis contends he should be covered under fair use. He said he had never been threatened with a lawsuit, although both iTunes and a CD distributor stopped carrying his last album, "Night Ripper," because of legal concerns. (It had sold 20,000 copies before then, according to Nielsen SoundScan.) It may not be in the interests of labels or artists to sue Mr. Gillis, because such a move would risk a precedent-setting judgment in his favor, not to mention incur bad publicity. Fair use has become important to the thinking of legal scholars, sometimes called the "copyleft," who argue that copyright law has grown so restrictive that it impedes creativity. And it has become enough of an issue that Mr. Gillis's congressman, Representative Mike Doyle, Democrat of Pennsylvania, spoke on his behalf during a hearing on the future of radio. "You have to look at the length of those samples," Mr. Doyle said in a phone interview. "Case law gets built as cases are brought to court, and I think that more case law is going to fall on his side as this becomes more mainstream." Not all lawyers agree. "Fair use is a means to allow people to comment on a pre-existing work, not a means to allow someone to take a pre-existing work and recreate it into their own work," said Barry Slotnick, head of the intellectual property litigation group at the law firm Loeb & Loeb. "What you can't do is substitute someone else's creativity for your own." Mr. Gillis chose to allow fans to decide how much they wanted to pay to download "Feed the Animals" from Illegal Art. (He plans to release the album on CD in September.) Illegal Art puts out sample-based music that falls into a legal gray area because the company's owner, who goes by the pseudonym Philo T. Farnsworth, after an inventor of television, believes that the law limits artists unfairly. "What the Beastie Boyys and Public Enemy were doing, no one could do anymore," he said, referring to groups that made music from densely layered samples when record companies were paying less attention to these legal issues. "We're drawn into this because of the music we support." Mr. Gillis declined to say how many copies of "Feed the Animals" had been downloaded or what fans had paid for them. But, he said, he makes enough money performing that he quit his day job as a biomedical engineer last year. One major expense for him is computers; his live show takes such a toll on them that he went through three reinforced Toughbook laptops last year. So far, Mr. Gillis said, he is mostly concerned with making sure his music is heard, although he's also become well versed in the legal issues. "I get swept up in thinking of it as another album," he said of "Feed the Animals," "but I'm certainly conscious of the issues it raises."

no matter how many times it took, it's something bush would never have been able to say. ... The shocking truth ... Wouldn't it be ironic if Paris Hilton ran for office someday (in the very, very distant future)? ... Hey, if George can do it ... ugh...Reagan was president! And both were re-elected! yes, but only if she trades in her pet dog for a chimp

no matter how many times it took, it's something bush would never have been able to say. There's no question about it. Wall Street got drunk -- that's one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras -- it got drunk and now it's got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments. --George W. Bush, speaking at a private fundraiser, Houston, Texas, July 18, 2008

\thanks again. i did what you said and just received confirmation that my $6 cd will be shipped tomorrow!

thanks for the info guys.

great! we can retake that photo with fred, kidd, and me. this time i'll try not to inflate my neck like a blowfish. ..should I post that photo??? only if you want me to post that picture of you with the costa rican midget transvestite porn star.

is this sale price available only to those who receive the email? i don't see any mention of the special price on the label's website.

great! we can retake that photo with fred, kidd, and me. this time i'll try not to inflate my neck like a blowfish.

i think he has:

as far as this kind of categorizing goes, i say "close your eyes, open your ears, and your mind will certainly follow." damn, i'm good after a nap, although i'm sure somebody already said it before me.

pm on the harriot

i'm on my way to see sonny fortune tonight playing in the country's oldest unitarian church. it's part of the annual marblehead (ma) summer jazz series.

from a psychological standpoint, i'd rate the batmans in the following order: 1) michael keaton - the best. no one portrayed the inner conflict/controlled pathology of the character better. 2) val kilmer - conflicted yes, but too smug for my taste. 3) george clooney - i'm a fan of his, but he's too debonair. it's like watching cary grant in tights. 4) christian bale - the worst. no depth, just brooding. maybe my opinion will change with the new film.

convergence, coleman's outing with richie beirach, remains one of my favorite recordings. imo it's far superior to his duo with tete montoliu.

the soundness of your reasoning is eclipsed only by your mastery of the english language

super vocalist?

an online company like this should include a short audio clip so you know what they sound like before you fork over your money.