If you haven't heard, a number of music critics have listed Girl Talk's Feed the Animals as one of the top 10 albums of 2008. Girl Talk is some kind of computer engineer that has created an album that is composed of samples from 167 different bands and musicians from the past 45 years. I don't believe he plays an original note on the entire album.
It's pretty interesting to see where sampling in popular music is going. Four or five years ago Danger Mouse released the Grey Album, which mashed up music from the Beatles' White Album with Jay Z's Black Album and was very well received. Feed the Animals feels more like flipping through radio stations than it feels like listening to a coherent piece of music. Some of it is whimsical, some of it is annoying, some of it is pretty good. I suggest listening yourself and coming to your own conclusions.
It is free to download the album (click here), but he asks for a donation. If you do download it and listen to it, pull up the Wikipedia page here and follow along.
And perhaps even more audacious, somebody on YouTube has "created" (is that the right word? or just edited? are they the same now?) a video that is a compilation of the videos made for the samples used in Feed The Animals. Below is one of them.
Here's the sample breakdown, courtesy Wikipedia:
10. "In Step" - 3:23
* 0:00 Roy Orbison - "You Got It"
* 0:00 Drama - "Left Right Left"
* 0:00 Jermaine Stewart - "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off"
* 0:30 Arts & Crafts - "What a Feeling" (which samples "Jam on the Groove" by Ralph MacDonald)
* 0:47 Salt-n-Pepa - "Push It"
* 0:57 Deee-Lite - "Groove Is in the Heart" (which samples "Get Up" by Vernon Burch)
* 1:02 Nirvana - "Lithium"
* 1:15 Thurston Moore - "See-Through Play/Mate"
* 1:38 The Gap Band - "You Dropped a Bomb on Me"
* 1:43 Fergie featuring Ludacris - "Glamorous"
* 1:44 Michael Jackson - "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)"
* 1:44 The Spinners - "Could It Be I'm Falling in Love"
* 1:45 Earth, Wind & Fire - "September"
* 1:53 INXS - "Need You Tonight"
* 2:00 Kraftwerk - "Tour de France"
* 2:51 Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine - "1-2-3"
* 2:53 Diddy featuring Keyshia Cole - "Last Night"
* 2:53 The Beach Boys - "God Only Knows"
* 3:16 Snoop Dogg - "Sexual Eruption"
* 3:21 Bizarre Inc. - "I'm Gonna Get You"
Edit - Looking at this post, I'm struck by how oddly music, videos, and information have collided with each other.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
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ReplyDeleteoh yeahhhhh!!!
ReplyDeletethat's was my 2008 choice for my car driving music!
and I used these clips in the invitation for my 30 birthday party :)
schizophrenia, anyone? I kind of feel like my brain was just put into the blender, and someone hit a low-level spin.
ReplyDeleteI also find it surprising that this is still available. From what I understand, this guy hasn't received any legal threats to take down his stuff. Compare that to Danger Mouse, who was threatened very quickly over the Grey Album and his album became only available from peer-to-peer networks.
ReplyDeleteI think that because the record companies are losing so much money, they're reducing their offices to the sizes of indie labels, and the sheer volume of people doing things like this, the record companies are finding it more and more difficult to find loose change hanging around to go after people.
ReplyDeleteWas the Grey album also free?
It is my understanding that Danger Mouse initially pressed 3,000 CDs for sale at his local record shops and on an online music site. From there, it was distributed pretty heavily for free by other people on the internet. EMI, the copyright holder for the Beatles, initiated cease and desist letters for anybody they could find that was hosting the mp3s, free or for sale, including Danger Mouse, of course.
ReplyDeleteSo yes, I think it was for sale, but whether it was for sale or free did not matter to EMI.
I was just talking with Batsauce about this. APparently, if you release a mixed CD of music for promotional purposes only.....it's legal to use samples. SO perhaps that this guy is giving it away as sort of promotion, they can't go after him.???
ReplyDeleteThat's not true. It has to fit within the Fair Use doctrine of US copyright law. There's a multifactor test that is applied on a case by case basis and a judge or a jury makes the decision as to whether it fits under Fair Use or not. There hasn't been much litigation with regard to Fair Use doctrine and music samples as the musicians doing this kind of work are poor and generally don't have the kinds of legal resources to properly litigate this.
ReplyDeleteWhether the artist is making money off of the samples is just one factor in the multifactor analysis and also gives a quantitative measure towards damages. It is more a question as to whether the market value of the sampled work is diminished by the taking of the other artist.
To quote the Supreme Court, "In short, we must often… look to the nature and objects of the selections made, the quantity and value of the materials used, and the degree in which the use may prejudice the sale, or diminish the profits, or supersede the objects, of the original work." Folsom v. Marsh, 9 F. Cas. 342 (1841).