Category: Music

I’ve long acknowledged on The Archive of Misheard Lyrics that Hendrix sometimes played around with the lyrics to “Purple Haze,” and actually did sometimes sing “‘Scuse me, while I kiss this guy” rather than “…kiss the sky.” The site is probably not actually named after one of the world’s most commonly misheard lyrics at all, since the domain name isn’t technically an example of a mondegreen if the singer sometimes sung it that way on purpose.

A reader recently submitted a brief video clip showing Jimi doing just that. What’s cooler than proof?

Great piece at Slate on the damage being done to the music industry by sample trolls – companies that obtain rights (often under dubious circumstances) to an artists’ catalog and then go trolling for samples of that work embedded in other artists’ work. When they find samples – no matter how brief or how recognizable – they sue the hell out of ’em. The lawsuits are often won because of a decision once reached by the 6th Circuit court:

There’s only one appellate court, the 6th Circuit, that takes the ridiculous position that any sample, no matter how minimal, needs a license. Most copyright scholars think the decision is both activist and bogus.

A sample troll called Bridgeport is a one-man company with no holdings other than music rights, who basically stole the rights to the George Clinton catalog and then launched an assault to find every example of sampled Clinton music, however trivial. That’s kind of like suing everyone who’s ever quoted Shakespeare — and Bridgeport has made millions doing it. If trolls like Bridgeport had been around when Public Enemy was making It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (which includes thousands of samples in a single album), it would have cost millions of dollars to secure all the necessary rights.

What, if anything, can be done? In the big picture, copyright must continually work to ensure that the basic building blocks of creativity are available to artists and creators, especially as new forms of art emerge. We already know what this means for novelists: freedom to use facts, borrow stock characters (like Falstaff) and standard plots (the murder mystery). For filmmakers, it means the freedom to copy standard shots (like The Magnificent Seven’s “establishment shot”). For rap music, it means the freedom to sample. Rap’s constant reinvention and remixing of old sounds makes it what it is; now is the time for the copyright system to get that. Vibrant cultures borrow, remix and recast. Static cultures die.

Even sadder than the fact that parasites like Bridgeport are allowed to hide behind the law is the fact that Congress could put an end to the practice with the enactment of a single law declaring some small threshold of legal sampling length – say, 7 seconds. “With a single line of code, Congress can make this problem go away.”

Just finished watching the 2005 documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston, which has left me feeling both limp and elated. Johnson is a manic depressive singer/songwriter with delusions of grandeur, who has grappled with downward spirals and dangerous encounters throughout his life. His songs are simple and raw, but emotionally complex, sometimes naive, sometimes overflowing with religious fervor, the purest of love (mostly for a girl he was obsessed with 20 years ago). Every song in his catalog of 20+ cassettes is absolutely raw. His drawings and cartoons are as strange and amazing as his music.

In the mid-80s, Johnston became a favorite of the alt-rock scene, and he worked (loosely) with Sonic Youth, Half Japanese’s Jad Fair, Yo La Tengo, Mike Watt, and others. His involvement with the Butthole Surfers ended strangely after the already tottering Johnston ingested LSD at a Surfers show and met the devil head-on. It’s implied that the trip sparked his religious obsessiveness, and that he never quite recovered (Gibby Haynes is interviewed for the film while having his teeth drilled by a dentist). Later in the film, Johnston refuses a bountiful recording contract with Atlantic Records because Metallica is also on the label, and Johnston is convinced the band will beat him up.

In an interview with his parents, Johnston’s father describes how his reading of a Casper the Friendly Ghost comic book led to him taking over their self-piloted airplane and crashing them into the woods. They barely escaped with their lives, but in Daniel’s mind, they became heroes in the Lord’s service. It’s all so fragile and frightening and weird.

Johnston has filmed and taped obsessively since he was very young, and the documentary milks the resulting library of self-recorded material in such a way that you feel incredibly close to his life – and his life’s work.

All of Johnston’s self-released cassettes are available on eMusic.

The Daniel Johnson mural on Guadalupe in Austin, TX. Click for larger version.

Posted back in June about the fact that Devo are touring again. Embarrassing or not, knew I had to get me a slice of that goodie good good Jocko spud gravy. Went with Roger last night to see how the Boojie Boys sounded in their mid-40s / early 50s. Missed start of the show, but arrived in time to hear Smart Patrol / Mr. DNA, Wiggly World, and a few other choice “Duty Now for the Future”-era bits. They weren’t exactly spastic (one could call that a necessary condition for true de-vo), but neither was it the slightest bit lazy, sad, riding-the-coat-tails-of-the-past pathetic. A big chunk of the Devo catalog has real lasting value, and manages not to sound dated (either that or my ears haven’t evolved). And yes, it rocked.

Above: With absolutely no prodding from me, Miles arrives independently at the idea that flowerpots make great hats.

Stephen Colbert on John Zorn’s MacArthur Genius Grant :

Seriously though, congratulations Zorn. No, really.

via eyeteeth