But I like to think at least things can’t get any worse

Fast Car

Fast Car covered by Two Seconds Away

Fuck the RIAA…again…and always

If Downloading A Song Is Just Like Stealing A CD, Why Won’t The RIAA Allow Reselling MP3s?

from the either-it-is-or-it-isn’t dept

When you hear RIAA defenders insist that an unauthorized download is “just like stealing a CD” or something along those lines, it’s worth noting even they don’t really mean it. After all, if a digital file really was no different than a physical goods purchase, then you’d be able to do other things with it — such as resell it. And yet, as you read through Eliot Van Buskirk’s article about new online services trying to create marketplaces for people to sell their “used” MP3s, you’ll see the scenario is quite different. After all, it’s perfectly legal to sell your used CDs, but now when it comes to selling used MP3s you need a record label’s permission? Why? Well, because even the record labels seem to inherently know that a CD is quite different from a download. So when the RIAA claims they’re the same, what they really mean is “only the stuff we like is the same.”

A feel good video

I don’t often write about religion. I’m not going to right now either. I have too many things in my life to settle on the matter. It’s a bit sensitive. Enjoy the nice happy song though.

But then…I guess enough of us care about religious tolerance.

As the song says,

Why do some people say
That there is just one way
To love you God and come to you?
We are all apart of you.

Hey God, since we’re all a part of you…

Sheelan’s Circumcision

FGM predates Islam, so I’m not pointing fingers at any religion in particular. I just..I find so much beauty in religion, and so much anger in this practice. I cannot reconcile the two. It’s not mandatory. It’s highly debated in Muslim communities. I’m not here to add to this debate because I don’t feel comfortable discussing this. In a way, I just thought the slideshow is a reminder. There must be reason why it was the second link that I found accidentally after finding the song. We can sing all the songs we want about religious pluralism in our Western neo-liberal democracies…but when it comes down to it, how accepting are we of certain (not even widespread) religious practices?

Does anyone remember this?

When I first heard it when it came out, I cried.

Mashups

A mashup  is a song or composition created from the combination of the music from one song with the a cappella from another…In full swing at the end of the 20th century, mash ups have been described positively as “ultimate post-modern pop song[s]” or “‘culture jamming in its purest form’” and “display an analytical impulse…we actually hear how these songs resonate with one another, comment upon and affect one another…in a way, the music speaks for itself”.

I know Kanye’s “Stronger” became popular. He spliced his song with Daft Punk’s “Technologic”–also an awesome song on it’s own that was used for an Ipod commercial.

Eminem also did a mashup with one of Enya’s songs:

Girl Talk is a great example of mashups. He’s actually really famous. Although he is in a good heap of lawsuits. Listen to the song and let me know how many songs/rifts/etc you can identity.

“Ultimate post-modern pop songs,” was a line from the above paragraph from Wikipedia. I think that is a beautiful description for this. Girl Talk grabs snippets of songs, lyrics, rifts, beats from other songs in order to create a “new” song. Mashups are the music for the tl;dr generation. There is overarching melody or theme. Only punctuated moments of enjoyment. That after we have them, we don’t remember them, because suddenly we blend into another snippet of enjoyment. We don’t seem to savor the enjoyment, but consume it and quickly move onto another one. Well, in a way then, we don’t actually enjoy. We don’t like things that are too long. We like our headlines. We like our quick sentences. We enjoy our information to be fast and concise. We want to consume it quickly and move onto something else. It seems to be the same style with our contemporary music.

You cannot tell when one song blends into the other. The entire album could have been one track. I’m not saying the music or the process of creating it isn’t complex. The way we experience music, at least mashups, has changed. This is nothing like the long, drawn-out (albeit beautiful) Baroque music, where different parts of the piece will refer back to the larger theme..nor anything like the predictable pop songs where we have the chorus 2 or 3 times, a zenith, and then a fade out, where we know the structure and the length of the song, and we come to expect all of these parts to occur. The Girl Talk songs just do. No theme, just snippets. Sweet, enjoyable snippets. In a way, we can hear many, many songs all at once. We do not have to choose which song to listen to first. “Do I want to hear this…or this…how will I ever decide?” No need to! I think this feeds into our society of enjoyment rather well. Our satisfaction is instant, but not permanent. We don’t really enjoy it, because we keep craving.

I believe we get a delight from (not only the snippets) but also the fact that we have the knowledge of all of these various snippets. That we can identity all the songs that are being spliced and used inside this one song. A type of cultural elite, per say. In order to really appreciate the mashup we need to know what the musician is making references to. So we must amass a large body of knowledge, musical and general pop culture. Sucks for those who don’t.