So Amazing, So Illegal

Jamie gave me a nice writeup of a mashup where the writer shares some random youtube mashup video that you maybe have seen before called the Mother of all Funk Chords. It's a pretty amazing artistic achievement and probably worth at least a quick glance of your time. But the larger point should be taken seriously. He says "If your reaction to this crate of magic is 'Hm. I wonder how we'd go about suing someone who "did this" with our IP?' instead of, 'Holy crap, clearly, this is the freaking future of entertainment,' it's probably time to put some ramen on your Visa and start making stuff up for your LinkedIn page. Because, this is what your new Elvis looks like."

Comments

Awesome.

[Jafafa Hots]

I write music... well, modest little piano pieces. I haven't uploaded any videos of me playing to youtube (yet), but I would be THRILLED to find that my stuff had been reworked into something like this.

Then again, I have considered issuing my tunes as open source (there's some places to do that online.)

Re:But without copyright protections...

[pla]

Future generations will look back on this time in history and wonder why the recording industry was so hot to protect top 40 crap-pop.

Probably not. I suspect future generations will look back and ask, wide-eyed, "Wow, they could just steal arbitrary two-note sequences from other artists dead less than the full millennium required by Disney? Didn't they worry about getting the death penalty?"

Re:Um, what?

[Mr. Slippery]

The band isn't there to perform something they conceived in a dark room, they're there to play the crowd, to react and interact with the people as they get excited, antsy, tired, etc.

Go listen to Frank Zappa and the Mother's 1966 "Return of the Son of Monster Magnet", one of the most groundbreaking tracks of the twentieth century. It's "what freaks sound like when you turn them loose in a recording studio at one o'clock in the morning on $500 worth of rented percussion equipment" -- pretty much something they conceived in a dark room.

I'm pretty sure that Beethoven, Mozart, et. al. conceived some of their music in dark rooms.

Yes, live improvised music, or composed music varied in response to the crowd, is great too. But the fact that live stuff can be great doesn't preclude stuff conceived in a dark room by artists working alone also being great.

Re:Um, what?

[Bemopolis]

It ain't just the chords. Proof. "Best" listened to with headphones.