Stealing Is Believing

[JSngry]

Further meditations:

Steal This Hook?

Ok, are we stealing songs or are we stealing hooks? Are we writing songs or are we writing hooks? And if so, does this mean that the hook is the money of a song? And if so, does that mean that the rest of the song - all of it - is fair use for anything and anybody, since it's not the money? And does that imply that a song without hooks is a song without money? And does it mean that a song like "Eleanor Rigby" a song that is all hook (go ahead, sing one phrase in isolation that doesn't immediately "sound like Eleanor Rigby"), all money? If so, does this mean that a song is only as valuable as its hook & therefore only hooks should be copyright-able? And if so does this mean that writers should focus more on wiritng hooks and less on songs, or does it meant that anybody who can write an all-hook song like Eleanor Rigby is to be attained for, even if that means good luck on that one, sucker?

Or how about this notion - a hook is actually not about the song at all. It's a little cell of sound that conveys information. The "song" is only the vehicle that delivered the hook, and now the song is becoming obsolete as people seem to only "need" that little cell of sound that conveys information? And how is music being about little cells of sound that conveys information now all that much different in underlying esthetic than when it was "avant-garde" in the jazz & classical idioms not all that many years ago? And if so, then does this mean that for once and for all that "song form" music is no longer - or at least on the way to becoming no longer - the form of music to which most audiences in most idioms (there's always Country & Gospel & Children's Music and such, but...) most readily relate, and if so, does that mean that all the legal hoopla is ultimately, whether consciously or not, about trying to keep alive that - the song form, which in itself sprung up out of no small strictly commercial motivations - which might well be dieing a natural death for the sake of wringing yet more $$$ out of it, in which case, couldn't we just let the poor fucker die and get it over with?

[JSngry]

...they have no money thats why they are singing the Blues.

There's about 35 years worth of BB King & Bobby Bland records that say otherwise...

[ejp626]

Why aren't blues musicians ever sued? They use the same riffs, chords, melodies, and even full phrases from past tunes (lyrics and all) all the time.

What about quoting a famous melody in a solo over changes?

Because they created something new from what they were being influenced by ( or stealing ). Also because they have no money thats why they are singing the Blues.

But these guys are just taking pre-recorded music ....that would be like me ( a photographer) buying

photo books and cutting up all of Walker Evans pictures and than scanning them and presenting them as my Photos/Art.

I have no interest in that i would rather try and create something new on my own ( even though Evans might influence me.)

That to me is more rewarding in the end.

Actually, there is a famous case of a photographer who takes photos of billboards and other commercial photography and suddenly it is a new work (with a minimal amount of cropping and resizing/framing etc.). (This may have already come up.) He makes no attempts to track down the source of these commercial photos. And his "work" has hung in art galleries all over. Thomas Struth may be an even more famous example of a photographer who incorporates others' work in the background of his own large scale photos of crowds. Why is it that the visual arts have few if any hang-ups over this kind of sampling and recycling? Is it because all the starving artists are in it together, or that the stakes in the visual arts are low -- though this is manifestly not the case for some artists. Or perhaps artists know that if the corporate dickheads had their way, someone would copywrite the color green and then they would all be fucked. So they simply don't sue each other over it.

You can get away with a great deal of recycling, even of copywritten images, if you are making a parody. Suddenly this is protected speech. This would seem to be a stronger line of legal reasoning than Fair Use, which has always been ambiguous. Culture is always about hybridization, and I just find it hard to understand how there is so much overzealous protection of a couple of bars of music or a riff in the audio realm and not in these other arts.

[JSngry]

Or how about this notion - a hook is actually not about the song at all. It's a little cell of sound that conveys information. The "song" is only the vehicle that delivered the hook, and now the song is becoming obsolete as people seem to only "need" that little cell of sound that conveys information? And how is music being about little cells of sound that conveys information now all that much different in underlying esthetic than when it was "avant-garde" in the jazz & classical idioms not all that many years ago? And if so, then does this mean that for once and for all that "song form" music is no longer - or at least on the way to becoming no longer - the form of music to which most audiences in most idioms (there's always Country & Gospel & Children's Music and such, but...) most readily relate, and if so, does that mean that all the legal hoopla is ultimately, whether consciously or not, about trying to keep alive that - the song form, which in itself sprung up out of no small strictly commercial motivations - which might well be dieing a natural death for the sake of wringing yet more $$$ out of it, in which case, couldn't we just let the poor fucker die and get it over with?

Or even yet and unto still - how about this one: All this shit is played out as specific entities. The thing I so dig about Monday Michiru is that she's hip enough to intuitively grasp this and salvage all the good shit and turn it all into one music, thus freeing up a big buttload of crucially needed space on the cultural hard drive.

But judging by sales, there's no market in that. too fancy. So some more people are going one step further and turning it all into pretty much one song. One endless song where any thing you heard back then you can hear again, but just the hook, because that's all you need to trigger those memories, and this way, when it can be anything, it can be everything, and when it can be everything, that's the only one you'll need.

[Alexander]

I have a couple of Girl Talk CDs, including this most recent disc ("Feed The Animals") and I happen to think that it's wonderful. He makes some amazing juxtopositions in his work (think of this as Claude Levi-Strauss's "bricolage" or akin to Burroughs' "cut-up" technique). I think that's the point. Putting familiar things next to other familiar things in order to create something new and interesting. In one sequence, Girl Talk puts Nirvana's "Lithium" next to Ludacris's rap on Fergie's "Glamorous" right before segueing into "September" by Earth, Wind, and Fire. It's cool!

[Jazzmoose]

If the measure of any creative movement's irrevocable entrenchment in the creative landscape is the appearance of a hack who becomes wildly popular, then perhaps Girl Talk is to sampling what Vanilla Ice was to hip hop (and on backward into perpetuity).

So you're saying he should be allowed to put out his product, but then be shot, right?

[Jazzmoose]

But these guys are just taking pre-recorded music ....that would be like me ( a photographer) buying

photo books and cutting up all of Walker Evans pictures and than scanning them and presenting them as my Photos/Art.

No, it would be like you cutting up all of Walker Evans pictures and created a collage, wouldn't it? A completely different thing.

[zen archer]

Why aren't blues musicians ever sued? They use the same riffs, chords, melodies, and even full phrases from past tunes (lyrics and all) all the time.

What about quoting a famous melody in a solo over changes?

Because they created something new from what they were being influenced by ( or stealing ). Also because they have no money thats why they are singing the Blues.

But these guys are just taking pre-recorded music ....that would be like me ( a photographer) buying

photo books and cutting up all of Walker Evans pictures and than scanning them and presenting them as my Photos/Art.

I have no interest in that i would rather try and create something new on my own ( even though Evans might influence me.)

That to me is more rewarding in the end.

Actually, there is a famous case of a photographer who takes photos of billboards and other commercial photography and suddenly it is a new work (with a minimal amount of cropping and resizing/framing etc.). (This may have already come up.) He makes no attempts to track down the source of these commercial photos. And his "work" has hung in art galleries all over. Thomas Struth may be an even more famous example of a photographer who incorporates others' work in the background of his own large scale photos of crowds. Why is it that the visual arts have few if any hang-ups over this kind of sampling and recycling? Is it because all the starving artists are in it together, or that the stakes in the visual arts are low -- though this is manifestly not the case for some artists. Or perhaps artists know that if the corporate dickheads had their way, someone would copywrite the color green and then they would all be fucked. So they simply don't sue each other over it.

You can get away with a great deal of recycling, even of copywritten images, if you are making a parody. Suddenly this is protected speech. This would seem to be a stronger line of legal reasoning than Fair Use, which has always been ambiguous. Culture is always about hybridization, and I just find it hard to understand how there is so much overzealous protection of a couple of bars of music or a riff in the audio realm and not in these other arts.

I had a Photo teacher once criticize one of my photos,he told me that Walker Evans would have done it better.

Stupid me , i should have taken the bait and cut up a bunch of Evans work and resubmitted it .

Edited August 7, 2008 by zen archer

[JSngry]

You know what's cool? I was listening to some broken-beat mix a few days ago, and this one jam hits and over the drum and bass groove it's got this one little staccato Rhodes "BOINK" and this one little staccato guitar "FLINK", these two sounds widely scattered, not in anyway repetitative or anything, and damn if just from these little (and I do mean little) punches (and I do mean punches) of sounds, I could tell, unmistakably, that what I was hearing there was "Mr. Magic. Unmistakable, just from two bits of sound a fraction of a second each. Now to me, that's somebody really getting to the core of how we as a post-phonographic civilization have been processing information all these years that he/she knows that they can pull two little micro-blips and immediately conjure Mr. Magic. I mean, that's knowing what it is that you know, and I've never been opposed to knowing, no siree, Bob, even though not knowing is every bit as cool so long as you know that you don't know.

[JSngry]

If the measure of any creative movement's irrevocable entrenchment in the creative landscape is the appearance of a hack who becomes wildly popular, then perhaps Girl Talk is to sampling what Vanilla Ice was to hip hop (and on backward into perpetuity).

So you're saying he should be allowed to put out his product, but then be shot, right?

Which reminds me...

[Neal Pomea]

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.

Um...his logic is somewhat underwhelming.

Don't know about that. One of the 4 fair use factors to weigh is whether the use is transformative. In this instance it leans strongly in favor of the DJ, IMHO.

AAJ discussed a comparable issue recently: (The Joe Farrell discussion -- I was told I should be ashamed of myself for my views, but I found that argument unpersuasive.)

http://forums.allaboutjazz.com/showthread.php?t=32760

Unfortunately the discussion all too quickly degenerated into condemnation of rap music in general. "Yeah, the rapper was transformative and that's exactly what we don't like!" That thread had a lot of potential to really discuss copyright and culture, but hey, that's the way it goes. Cheers!

Edited August 8, 2008 by It Should be You

[PHILLYQ]

It would be interesting if this ever goes to court- without hearing his material and just based on what I've read in this thread it seems the DJ is right on the legal line of fair use/theft. I could see this decided one way at trial, then reversed repeatedly on appeal. But I'm no lawyer, so...

[Alexander]

It would be interesting if this ever goes to court- without hearing his material and just based on what I've read in this thread it seems the DJ is right on the legal line of fair use/theft. I could see this decided one way at trial, then reversed repeatedly on appeal. But I'm no lawyer, so...

Here's an article on this very topic written by an intellectual property lawyer. It's probably not what you'd expect...

I love the oblique Costello reference in the title...

THERE ARE SOME THINGS YOU CAN’T COVER UP WITH FISH STICKS AND CHOWDER

All eyes are on Girl Talk, a Pittsburgh DJ named Gregg Gillis, who just released his fourth album, titled Feed the Animals. It’s available on a “pay-what-you-will” basis at illegalart.net. Go get it right now, I’ll wait. And do be a sport and throw the guy a couple bucks. Don’t be a freetard. It’s worth it.

OK, be prepared to be amazed. Put it on and turn it up. See?

Girl Talk’s thing is sprawling dance tracks composed entirely of snippits, generally several at once, of recognizable hit songs. Lots of people have been doing this, and you can find thousands of mash-ups on the Internet. Most mash-ups involve just a couple of songs, often the vocals from one song superimposed on the instrumental tracks of another. Hey, who knew “You Light Up My Life” and “Enter Sandman” fit together so well! The archytype of this was Danger Mouse’s 2004 masterpiece The Grey Album, which combined vocal tracks from Jay-Z’s Black Album dropped atop looped instrumental tracks nicked off the Beatles’ White Album. And of course the grandmasters of this are the guys in Negativland.

Feed the Animals may set the gold standard for appropriated musical works. The tracks are not the simple mash-ups built on one or two ideas, but elaborate constructions, using dozens of samples in a single track. They’re incredible, cohesive works that stand on their own. What makes Girl Talk different from the rest is Gillis’s taste and his wonderfully broad reach of source material (a typical track, “Still Here”, includes recognizable samples from Procol Harum, Kanye West, the Band, Yung Joc, Ace of Base, Salt ’N Pepa, Kenny Loggins, and about a dozen others) and his wickedly goofy sense of humor. Gillis isn’t making a point or delivering a punch line; like a good club DJ, he just wants to keep the party going, and have fun doing it. Feed the Animals is a kaleidoscope of endless surprises, one of the happiest albums I’ve ever heard. And if I knew anything about hip-hop, which provides the lion’s share of the vocalizing, I’d probably like it twice as much. If that’s possible.

Girl Talk hasn’t gotten permission for any of the samples of other people’s recordings on Feed the Animals. The law, the way record companies want it to work, would render Feed the Animals an impossibility. There are hundreds of samples on the album, and each would require two licenses: one from the record company and another from the publishing company. Each company would likely demand to hear the context in which the sample is used. Many would then simply deny permission, or not respond at all; the rest would charge thousands of dollars for the usage. FTA would be DOA.

So, the big question is: Will Gillis get sued into oblivion? On one hand, he’s been doing this without interference since 2002; Feed the Animals has been out for two weeks. On the other hand, he’s getting a ton of attention; Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and pretty much the entire music media is raving about Feed the Animals. He’s got to be moving hundreds of thousands of tracks.

Feed the Animals is the work that sits squarely in the middle of a collision of murky legal principles and conflicting court decisions. A very bad decision out of a Tennessee federal court a couple years ago said that any sampling of a sound recording was infringement, no matter how small, and even when the use was unrecognizable. As this decision has not been adopted in any other federal court circuits, I’m guessing think that if Girl Talk’s gonna get sued, it’ll be in Tennessee. On the other hand, there’s been an increasing recognition by courts, particularly in cases involving the visual arts, that appropriating existing copyright material for a new work is OK if the new work is transformative. And Feed the Animals is nothing if not wildly transformative of the works it borrows. I mean right now I’m hearing Ahmad rapping “Back in the Day” over a groove from Rod Stewart’s “Young Turks” and in a few seconds it’ll move seamlessly on to something else. If that’s not transformative then I’m Rick Astley.

If the “music industry”, hobbling and decrepit as it is, comes out of its spider hole and goes after Girl Talk, watch out. After high profile gigs at major festivals and increasing large venues around the world, Gillis has millions of die-hard fans, most of whom I’d guess understand, to some degree, the legalities involved here. The push-back from this legion of happy lunatics if Girl Talk is sued will be immediate and probably devastating. And Gillis doesn’t need to worry about representation, either. If he gets served with a complaint, dozens, even hundreds of legal organizations and free range attorneys—including me—will be lining up to help defend him for free.

It would be that important.

—Paul Rapp

Edited August 8, 2008 by Alexander

[DukeCity]

Or how about this notion - a hook is actually not about the song at all. It's a little cell of sound that conveys information. The "song" is only the vehicle that delivered the hook, and now the song is becoming obsolete as people seem to only "need" that little cell of sound that conveys information?

Yeah, but the information that the cell is conveying is dependent upon us being aware (on some level) of the whole song. The electric piano BOINK would be just a BOINK if you didn't already know the entirety of Mr. Magic.

The effectiveness relies on a certain amount of "cultural literacy", and that runs both shallow and deep. Sampling a whole phrase of a Ludacris song doesn't require a huge amount of awareness from the listener to "get it". Picking up on a BOINK from a GW, Jr. record from 30 years ago is a little more subtle.

[Shawn]

Good article!

[JSngry]

Or how about this notion - a hook is actually not about the song at all. It's a little cell of sound that conveys information. The "song" is only the vehicle that delivered the hook, and now the song is becoming obsolete as people seem to only "need" that little cell of sound that conveys information?

Yeah, but the information that the cell is conveying is dependent upon us being aware (on some level) of the whole song. The electric piano BOINK would be just a BOINK if you didn't already know the entirety of Mr. Magic.

The effectiveness relies on a certain amount of "cultural literacy", and that runs both shallow and deep. Sampling a whole phrase of a Ludacris song doesn't require a huge amount of awareness from the listener to "get it". Picking up on a BOINK from a GW, Jr. record from 30 years ago is a little more subtle.

I totally agree. My point is just that there's now this entire musical...realm that is built entirely upon this sort of thing, a realm that can accommodate both the subtle and the blatant, the sublime and the ridiculous, the beauty and the beast, the fish and the fowl, the alphabet soup (incorporating the fowl) and the omega-3 fatty acids (incorporating the fish). If this realm not only exists but is organically active and evolving, as it certainly seems to be. then it seems to me that any "questioning of its validity" is little more than backwards looking wishful thinking, and that attempts to create a legislative protectionist environment against it are either doomed to fail out the gate or else can succeed only by the heaviest of heavy-handedness.

Which simply means that this realm is like any other - that there can be both good and bad music made from the same basic tools, and that failure and success in this regard is a function of the artist, not the artist' tools.

Even more simply, this boils down to substance trumping style. Again.

Same as it ever was.

The classics never go out of style!

[DukeCity]

Or how about this notion - a hook is actually not about the song at all. It's a little cell of sound that conveys information. The "song" is only the vehicle that delivered the hook, and now the song is becoming obsolete as people seem to only "need" that little cell of sound that conveys information?

Yeah, but the information that the cell is conveying is dependent upon us being aware (on some level) of the whole song. The electric piano BOINK would be just a BOINK if you didn't already know the entirety of Mr. Magic.

The effectiveness relies on a certain amount of "cultural literacy", and that runs both shallow and deep. Sampling a whole phrase of a Ludacris song doesn't require a huge amount of awareness from the listener to "get it". Picking up on a BOINK from a GW, Jr. record from 30 years ago is a little more subtle.

I totally agree. My point is just that there's now this entire musical...realm that is built entirely upon this sort of thing, a realm that can accommodate both the subtle and the blatant, the sublime and the ridiculous, the beauty and the beast, the fish and the fowl, the alphabet soup (incorporating the fowl) and the omega-3 fatty acids (incorporating the fish). If this realm not only exists but is organically active and evolving, as it certainly seems to be. then it seems to me that any "questioning of its validity" is little more than backwards looking wishful thinking, and that attempts to create a legislative protectionist environment against it are either doomed to fail out the gate or else can succeed only by the heaviest of heavy-handedness.

Which simply means that this realm is like any other - that there can be both good and bad music made from the same basic tools, and that failure and success in this regard is a function of the artist, not the artist' tools.

Even more simply, this boils down to substance trumping style. Again.

Same as it ever was.

The classics never go out of style!

mmmm...Soup!

[.:.impossible]

gumbo?

[catesta]

Or how about this notion - a hook is actually not about the song at all. It's a little cell of sound that conveys information. The "song" is only the vehicle that delivered the hook, and now the song is becoming obsolete as people seem to only "need" that little cell of sound that conveys information?

Yeah, but the information that the cell is conveying is dependent upon us being aware (on some level) of the whole song. The electric piano BOINK would be just a BOINK if you didn't already know the entirety of Mr. Magic.

The effectiveness relies on a certain amount of "cultural literacy", and that runs both shallow and deep. Sampling a whole phrase of a Ludacris song doesn't require a huge amount of awareness from the listener to "get it". Picking up on a BOINK from a GW, Jr. record from 30 years ago is a little more subtle.

I totally agree. My point is just that there's now this entire musical...realm that is built entirely upon this sort of thing, a realm that can accommodate both the subtle and the blatant, the sublime and the ridiculous, the beauty and the beast, the fish and the fowl, the alphabet soup (incorporating the fowl) and the omega-3 fatty acids (incorporating the fish). If this realm not only exists but is organically active and evolving, as it certainly seems to be. then it seems to me that any "questioning of its validity" is little more than backwards looking wishful thinking, and that attempts to create a legislative protectionist environment against it are either doomed to fail out the gate or else can succeed only by the heaviest of heavy-handedness.

Which simply means that this realm is like any other - that there can be both good and bad music made from the same basic tools, and that failure and success in this regard is a function of the artist, not the artist' tools.

Even more simply, this boils down to substance trumping style. Again.

Same as it ever was.

The classics never go out of style!

Yeah, that's all fine and dandy, but his name is "DJ Girl Talk" and for that reason alone, HE MUST GO DOWN!!!

[catesta]

And by "go down", I mean "GO DOWN!", not "go down" as in....., well, you know.

Edited August 8, 2008 by catesta

[John L]

My point is just that there's now this entire musical...realm that is built entirely upon this sort of thing, a realm that can accommodate both the subtle and the blatant, the sublime and the ridiculous, the beauty and the beast, the fish and the fowl, the alphabet soup (incorporating the fowl) and the omega-3 fatty acids (incorporating the fish). If this realm not only exists but is organically active and evolving, as it certainly seems to be. then it seems to me that any "questioning of its validity" is little more than backwards looking wishful thinking, and that attempts to create a legislative protectionist environment against it are either doomed to fail out the gate or else can succeed only by the heaviest of heavy-handedness.

I would change "doomed to fail" here to "doomed to be highly imperfect." Success has to be measured in a relative sense. As I argued earlier, the dilemma is that the complete absence of copyright legislation is not an optimal solution to the problem. So we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. All we can do is try to do our best. And, yes, the fact that it will inevitably be heavy-handed means that we should be careful about applying it too liberally.

[JSngry]

Definitely no argument from me about the need for copyright laws, as well as the need for them to evolve & continue to offer protection to intellectual property.

Might be an argument, though, about how effective that's going to be unless and until the legal conceptions of "it" in all its forms catch up with that of the reality, not the perception.

Progress in real time is a bitch-and-a-half sometimes, doncha' know...

[.:.impossible]

I may be wrong, but I don't think he goes by "DJ Girl Talk". I think its just "Girl Talk". I thought it was a funny name when I first heard it. I didn't hear his stuff for another year or so... honestly, one mix was plenty. I got the point.

If I were in college and he came to town, I'd be there, but I'm not going to buy an album.

[JSngry]

And by "go down", I mean "GO DOWN!", not "go down" as in....., well, you know.

[randyhersom]

So what is the present state of court precedents? A couple historical blips:

Kinky Friedman satirizes Okie from Muskogee in a new song called Asshole from El Paso. Buck Owens owns Merle Haggard's publishing rights and blocks release of the song, not sure if by actual court order or just the threat of legal action. Some years later, perhaps after Buck Owens' passing, the song finally comes out.

Early in the sampling days Apple Records has a high record of success in keeping the Beatles from being sampled in major label releases.

It's something of a natural law that smaller scale copyright infringements are generally not challenged or even discovered because of poor return on investment for the effort needed. Therefore it's after a hit product occurs that the challenge is usually made.