hate people like us  |   people like us : 1999.11.23. 250 x 250 pixels

10   |   03.30 plunderphonics . click on image at left to return to mdst 322 homepage maintained by: kennedy, definitely & majkin co-authored by: majkin last modified by: majkin! 25 march 1.35pm checked out by:

.

[events and notes.]

On Tuesday 03.30 at 7 pm, Vicki Bennett, aka "People Like Us," will be dropping some plunderphonic knowledge at the Vinegar Hill Theatre.

the people like us homepage has a wealth of links to performance clips, as well as discographies, biographies, etc. get a feel for Bennett's work before the show--you'll appreciate the experience more...

.

[main readings.]

Cutler, Chris. "Plunderphonics." Music, Electronic Media and Culture. Ed. Simon Emmerson.
    Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2000.

Oswald, John. "Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative".
    The Casette Mythos. New York: Autonomedia, 1990.

Oswald, John. Plunderphonics. Seeland: Fony, 2001.

.

[hear the tunes.]

tracks available in the private folder under the heading "plunderphonics." all tracks are from the 1999 compilation 69/96 by John Oswald.

o'hell electroquotes "sir jim moron," seen here in one of oswald's collages. from a 69/96 interview with oswald:

"Anyway, the intention with o'hell was to make a cynical trite familiar song into a no less cynical trite new song with the added bonus of a medley of the Doors' greatest hits. I think there are thirteen of their songs quoted altogether, including the paranoic critical rebus in the middle."

Pretender electroquotes "Dally Proton." an excerpt from the 1988 liner notes to the plunderphonics EP reads:

"Pretender" (based on 'The Great Pretender' written by Buck Ram) takes a leisurely tour of the interemediate areas of Ms. Parton's masculinity. This decelerando reveals, complete with suggestive lyrics, an unaltered transition between the 'Dolly Parton' the public usually hears and a striking in-camera voice pitched a fourth lower. To many ears this supposed trick effect reveals the mellifluous male voice to be the more natural sounding of the two. Astute star gazers have perceived the physical transformation, via plastic surgery, hair transplants and such, that make many of today's media figures into narrow, bosomy, blemish-free caricatures and super-real ideals. Is it possible that Ms. Parton's remarkable voice is actually the Alvinized [chipmunked] result of some unsung virile ghost lieder crooning these songs at elegiac tempos which are then gender polarized to fit the tits? Speed and sex are again revealed as components intrinsic to the business of music.

Vane elecroquotes carly simon and faster pussycat. [that's her in blue smooshed onto jim morrison above...]

.

[selected texts.]

Holm-Hudson, Kevin. "Quotation and Context: Sampling and John Oswald's Plunderphonics." Leonardo Music Journal: Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology 7 (1997): 17-25. [A short summary can be found here]

Hoshowsky, Robert. "Plunderphonics Pioneer." Performing Art and Entertainment in Canada 31.1 (Summer 1997):
    12-13. [A short summary can be found here]

Leach, Jim. "Sampling and Society: Intellectual Infringement and Digital Folk Music in John Oswald's 'Plunderphonics.'" The Arts, Community, and Cultural Democracy. Ed. Lambert Zuidervaart and Henry Luttikhuizen.
    New York : St. Martin's Press, 2000. 122-136.

.

[links.]

John Oswald's Plunderphonics website

Rick Silva's Uploadphonix

Madeleine Braun's "Copyright and Music: A History told in MP3's."

What's beatmixed and mashed-up?

.

Justin Hampton Cover for Danger Mouse's The Grey Album 2003

Producer and DJ Danger Mouse has caused quite a stir with his plunderphonic extravaganza The Grey Album, a re-mix of The Beatles's White Album and Jay-Z's Black Album. Grey Tuesday, which promoted the proliferation of this effort, took on a life of its own. The folks at Downhill Battle are now poised to launch a site called Banned Music. See what The New Yorker, Rolling Stone and WIRED have had to say about the project. Mainstream news organization CNN gets wise to the Grey album [02.25.2004].

a chronology of plunderphonics

a really really awesome briefing on the deed by Chris Cutler

[interesting nothings.]

1. EP and original CD of the first plunderphonics soundtrack, represented four major music personalities from four genres of music. the CD cover displays michael jackson as a nude white woman. not made for sale and no official distributor, it is now out of print and all remaining copies have been seized by michael jackson and his record company.

2. john oswald has written an essay on plunderphonics as audio piracy, but also a "compositional perogative"

3. the grateful dead asked oswald to plunderize them in 1992

4. who is john oswald anyhow?

5. pierre schaeffer famous for his 'musique concrete' in the days of the gramophone

[issues.]

1. legal: copyright laws- can a sound be copyrighted? - does a plundered composition plagerize others?

a strict legal definition of the constitutional copyright law

musicians against copyrighting of samples

2. conceptual: is a plundered composition original? cutler calls plunderphonics "self-reflexive" meaning it begins and ends with already created material

a radio transcript between don joyce, band member of negativland (charged with plagerizing a U2 song); bruce hartford, who is working on a lawsuit on behalf of writers whose works are distributed illegally; and bob haslam, an attorney with special knowledge in patent, copyright and trade secret litigation, entitled "art and music sampling: the death of creativity"

.

return.