Mommy, What’s a Mashup?
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on July 30, 2008 by admin in Music
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008What do you get when you cross the Black Album with the White Album?
I was surprised recently to find out how few of the young hipsters in my social circle seem to know about Mashups. For the uninitiated, read the overblown, self-important Wikipedia definition here. The concept is simple. Take two or more familiar pop media elements (from virtually any media), and mash them together to pleasing or amusing effect (I’ve never adequately defined for myself how they differ from “remixes”; they just do). The YouTube clip at left is a great example: George Bush covers U2′s Sunday Bloody Sunday, from RX’s “Party Party” mashup. Since mashups involve using large recognizable pieces of intellectual property, they’re often subject to takedown notices by the RIAA or MPAA as soon as they become popular. For that reason it’s often easiest to BitTorrent them. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but some faves of mine include Party Ben and Team9′s Dean Gray -American Edit (Green Day – American Idiot); Danger Mouse’s Grey Album
Should The RIAA Sue The U.S. Military?
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on July 16, 2008 by admin in Music
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008Should songwriters benefit from the use of their music as torture?
What do Rage Against the Machine, Neil Diamond, the Bee Gees, Christina Aguilera & Bruce Springsteen have in common? They’re all forms of torture, at least in the hands of the American military. I’d grant Christina Aguilera this status all on her own, but there is, as they say, no accounting for taste. Mother Jones has compiled the Torture Playlist, a selection of songs used by the military to induce sleep deprivation, “prolong capture shock” (great band name!) and disorient detainees during interrogations. The Groundswell Blog has created a sticker to help raise awareness (at least awareness that there’s a Groundswell Blog), so you can print them and stick them on CD’s at your local record store. I’m not sure what that will accomplish, but the stickers sure are clever, huh? People keep raising the question of whether the artists are receiving the appropriate royalties for the U.S. Military’s use of their songs, but I’ve wondered for some time if anybody’s paying royalties to that poor guy standing on the box.
Record Industry Begs World: “Please Stop Buying Music!”
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on June 25, 2008 by admin in Music, Popular Media
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008Why does the recording industry want radio stations to stop playing music?
In the ongoing saga of the RIAA just not getting it, they are apparently tired of suing old ladies who don’t even have computers and dead people and are now trying to kill their oldest and most reliable channel of cheap promotion, radio. Although the recording industry historically was quite happy to pay the broadcasting industry to play music (illegally, in fact – it was called payola), they now seem to think it should be the other way around. Click on the image at left for a detailed flow chart of how the RIAA decides whom to sue.