Re: collage (was:FNV-RIAA IS CRACKING DOWN)

[Robert Monn <robm@nytimes.com>]

ok.  so this is _my_ question:

what about the chemical brother's recent hit 'setting sun?'

the drum beat in this song is obviously related )closely) to the pounding
ringo rhythm on 'tomorrow never knows.'  in fact, the chems used recycle to
extract the groove from a loop they sampled out of the beatles song, then
thre it into a sampler and replaced all teh hits of the song with other
sounds... differnt kick, snare etc.  But the timing and the structure of
the groove are 'samples' from the beatles.  Anyone that has ever tried to
put a beat together manually will quickly realize that the timing of the
events and the structure of the events (funky drumer and tomorrow never
knows are kick-snare, jungle is very high hat oriented -- the structure as
orchestration, if you will) _are_ the beat these days.  But the chems are
well within the law in what they do as they haven't used any of the _audio_
from the original  track.

I guess it's up to everyone to decide what they would prefer to happen to
their music.  I'd be flattered to be quoted (in the fair use way) and angry
if someone made a buck off selling a song of mine.   BTW:  Beck dealt with
many copyright issues on Odelay by just playing the parts over again...
while it was difficult he still got the result he wanted....  any 'fair
use' of a song that was replayed would be legal while copying a whole song
by replaying the parts would still be CW infringement.  So maybe the thing
is to just replay whatever phrase you want (it make it seem like you did
(smile)).

 _________________________________
/robb monn -- robm@nytimes.com  |