I'm passing the following along at the behest of my friend Kembrew McLeod, great scholar and music writer who produced the film advertised below. He's also a bit of a kooky guy in the best possible way, and so has created a video using his alter ego, RoboProfessor, to speak to some of the issues addressed at greater length in the film, which you can access here:

http://www.robotainment.net/musicvideo

Copyright Criminals looks to be a wonderful video on issues surrounding sampling and current copyright laws, a crucial area that deserves all of our attention. It airs Tuesday night, Jan. 19, on PBS as part of their "Independent Lens" series so check it out if you get a chance.

Copyright Criminals examines the creative and commercial value of musical sampling, including the related debates over artistic expression, copyright law, and (of course) money.

This documentary traces the rise of hip-hop from the urban streets of New York to its current status as a multibillion-dollar industry. For more than thirty years, innovative hip-hop performers and producers have been re-using portions of previously recorded music in new, otherwise original compositions. When lawyers and record companies got involved, what was once referred to as a “borrowed melody” became a “copyright infringement.”

The film showcases many of hip-hop music’s founding figures like Public Enemy, De La Soul, and Digital Underground—while also featuring emerging hip-hop artists from record labels Definitive Jux, Rhymesayers, Ninja Tune, and more. It also provides an in-depth look at artists who have been sampled, such as Clyde Stubblefield (James Brown’s drummer and the world’s most sampled musician), as well as commentary by another highly sampled musician, funk legend George Clinton.

As artists find ever more inventive ways to insert old influences into new material, this documentary asks a critical question, on behalf of an entire creative community:

Can you own a sound?

Here's a link to the trailer for the film:

http://www.copyrightcriminals.com/trailer

What follows is not an unbiased review. Bunny’s a Swine is a local Northampton band and guitarist/singer Candace Clement is a friend and former Smith student. I like Candace and her band mates Emerson and Dustin, and it so happens that I also like the music their band plays, not just because they’re friends but because they’re good and play music in a style that I like too.

(Truth be told, I don’t always go out of my way to see friends’ bands play and don’t always enjoy myself when I do. I’ve always enjoyed music more when I have a certain detachment from the players so I can inhabit my own little space as a listener who likes to mix it up with other listeners at shows. This is a big part of the reason why I don’t interview musicians as part of my research method. But I digress…)


Bunny’s a Swine just produced its first CD, Nothing Bad Will Happen. As far as I know it’s self-released and for the time being at least, not something you can find at a store near you if you’re lucky enough to still have a store near you that sells CD’s by non-big label artists in the first place.

With two guitars and a drummer Bunny’s a Swine has the same instrumental mix as Sleater-Kinney. Like that band, the elimination of the bass gives the sound a certain thinness at times but also creates a more democratic kind of musical palette. The two guitars and the voices of Emerson and Candace interweave and overlap in ways that often make designations like “lead” and “rhythm” irrelevant. Drummer Dustin Cote isn’t super flashy and at times he’s a little bit overwhelmed in the album’s mix but he keeps a solid, steady rocking beat that lets the guitarists wander from melody to noise and back again without getting lost.

In the thank yous accompanying the disc, Bunny’s thanks Guided by Voices and the Breeders, adding that they don’t know either band personally. It’s a statement of influence and lets you know that they’re strongly informed by 1990s indie rock and lo-fi (as does the Sleater-Kinney instrumentation). But the band’s proclivity for floating bursts of guitar noise is more reminiscent of the likes of Pavement and at times Sonic Youth. If this sounds like a band that wears its influences on its sleeves, well … is that a bad thing? Not to me, at least not when those influences are great and are all combined in a way so that they’re mixed together with a lot of creativity. This isn’t an album where there’s one song that sounds like Pavement and another that sounds like GBV. It’s an album where the influences merge on every track to make for a band that is more than the sum of its record collection.

Generally speaking, the first half of Nothing Bad Will Happen is a bit slower and more tuneful, and the second half is more riff-laden and rocking. I like the riffy stuff more because that’s where my tastes lean but the opening several songs have some great moments. The biggest surprise for me, having heard the band a few times in concert, is the quality of Candace’s vocals. Usually the “second” voice behind Emerson’s, her singing has an ethereal character unlike what you usually hear in this type of rock, a quality sometimes lost in the mix at their live shows. It makes for a rich contrast with Emerson’s throatier voice, which veers between ironic detachment and an almost unhinged mania that could pass for David Yow of Jesus Lizard.

Fave tracks include opener “Moose-Cow,” which features the contrasting voices of Emerson and Candace to good effect and also has a neat cloud of delay that arises in the chorus; “Vallum Bread,” which opens with a cool guitar line; and “Hatesong/Lovesong” and “Multiple Ex’s,” where the band’s rockier tendencies hold sway. Like any good indie band Bunny’s a Swine has multiple forms of web presence; the curious can visit http://bunnysaswine.wordpress.com, which will lead to other points of interest.

My last post - the last of 2009 - was kind of a bummer, so I'm glad that things are looking up as the new year begins. They've arrested someone for the fires that were set the night after Christmas and while it will no doubt take a while for things to play out legally, it's looking likely that they got the right person. Holly and I are relieved and cautiously optimistic.

...

A couple years ago I began cataloging parts of my musical experience in a more thoroughgoing way than I'd ever done before. I typed out a complete list of every record and cd that I own and have continued to add to it as I make new purchases, as well as keeping count. This was mainly to satisfy my curiosity, but also serves as a sort of catalog to my own personal music archive, which isn't super big but it's big enough, and growing.

I also made a list of every concert that I've attended, at least every one that I could remember. This was a very different exercise, since it was as much a memory test as it was a means of record-keeping. As with the list of recordings, I've forced myself to update the list every time I attend a new show, which means it's easy for me at this point to look back over the list and see what I've seen in recent months and years.

I don't go out to see music as much as I used to and this past year was one of the thinnest in recent memory where seeing live music was concerned. I attended some 16 concerts this past year, barely more than one per month. Partly this was because there just weren't that many things coming through town that I was dying to see, and I've never been so inclined to go see music just for the sake of it. But of course it's also a product of now being forty-something and just being too damn busy, or too drained of energy come night time, to go out and see music on a regular basis (regular meaning more like once a week or so, as opposed to once a month).

(I should note, though, that I don't count concerts that I attended where the performers were my colleagues in the Smith music department, of which I saw maybe half a dozen or so over the past year. Those events are often very pleasurable but they also feel like work.)

That said, I did see some great shows in 2009, and it's a decently varied lot.

Here's my top five shows of the year:

1. Isis w. Pelican and Tombs. The best full-on metal show I saw this past year (and one of only two - we don't get enough of it coming through our little town), and it was a blast. I especially dug Pelican, very cool progressive/instrumental metal, short on solos but long on texture and dynamics.

2. New York Dolls w. Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears. I wrote about this show months ago on this blog. Given that only two of the original Dolls are still alive, this was better than it had a right to be.

3. Allan Holdsworth. First time I've ever seen him, even though I've owned some of his albums for over twenty years. Without question one of the best guitarists on the planet in terms of sheer technical ability. Sometimes it sounded like he was playing two different single note lines simultaneously, his fingers moved so fast.

4. Fiery Furnaces w. Cryptacize. Can't say I was super impressed by Cryptacize, but Fiery Furnaces were great. I'd seen them once before about six years ago, in London no less, but I think this show was better. Eleanor Friedberger is a commanding stage presence almost despite herself. Not nearly enough people in attendance though - Northampton, you should be ashamed.

5. Natacha Atlas w. Syriana. I caught this show when I was in Liverpool, due to the good taste and good graces of my friend Anahid. Very cool Arabic pop, great vocals and some decidedly slammin' percussion. Caught me off guard in a good way.

Honorable mention goes to my fave local band of the moment, Bunny's a Swine, whom I've seen on a few occasions (and even played a gig with earlier in the year, at a Smith event that also featured my so-called band the Distractions - this does not count as one of the fifteen; again, it was too much like work) and who are great. I'll be reviewing their new cd in an upcoming post.

Christmas is two days past, New Year's is soon to come, but the festive holiday spirit has been interrupted by some fucker that likes to light fires...

Last night we were awakened around 2:30 am by sirens and commotion, looked outside to see that there seemed to be something pretty serious happening the next block over on Union St., just on the edge of downtown Northampton. It was clear that whatever was going on was pretty serious but the fire department was already on the case so we went back to bed, but as soon as I woke up in the morning I started checking TV and web news sources to see what I could see. I was shocked to learn that the fire that happened one street over was not an isolated occurrence but one of eight (and soon the number increased to eleven) that were reported within the span of little more than an hour, all of which were more or less in my neighborhood. Two people are dead and many more had homes and cars destroyed, including Glenn Siegel, one of the nicest guys in Northampton, whose Union St. home was the one burning when we got woken up. Thankfully Glenn and his son got out unharmed.

Northampton is up in arms, and with good reason. Mysterious fires are unfortunately not so rare in this part of town, and it's hard not to jump to conclusions about how last night's fires might be connected to others that have happened in recent years. At the same time, it's too easy to speculate about such things - we've all seen too many episodes of CSI or The Wire or any number of other police shows that lead us to theorize about the crimes that occur around us whether or not we have any real evidence. I'll admit I have my theories but mostly I just hope that the folks whose job it is to solve these matters don't leave us hanging for too long. And that nothing else like this happens again any time soon.

Daryl LaFleur at Northampton Redoubt has posted a good number of photos and other links relating to the fires. Those wanting more info can go to http://www.valleyadvocate.com/blogs/home.cfm?uid=20.

Today is my birthday - happy birthday to me!

Looking over the blog roll on the right side of this page, I'm reminded that I've had the odd distinction of having two separate rock stars be shot to death on past birthdays. Bryan Kuntz memorializes Dimebag Darrell today at This Ain't the Summer of Love (he took the title for his blog well before I took it for my new book). I'd forgotten that Dimebag died on my birthday, now five years ago. I'm a fan of his playing and of Pantera, and the details of his death were notably freakish - isn't it every performer's worst nightmare to be shot to death on stage?

The big one, though, was John Lennon, who died on my thirteenth birthday back in 1980. That one I remember vividly, if only because my friend David Jennings (who would later rechristen himself Diq Diamond and try mightily to get a Chili Peppers-style band up and running) came to school that day wearing a T-shirt he'd redesigned to mark the occasion. It was a plain white T, and he scrawled something to the effect of "RIP John Lennon" or "John Lennon we'll miss you" in what was probably black and colored marker. I can't remember the exact message but I can remember that I'd never seen someone respond to a celebrity's death in such a way, and it was an eye-opener for 13 year old me (Elvis had died just three years before but I was too young then to fully appreciate it). I remember nothing else about that day, just walking to school with David, confused about what it meant to mourn someone I'd never met.

I was recently asked to offer up some reading suggestions to Smith alumnae, to be published in some forum sponsored by the Smith Friends of the Library (any friend of the library is a friend of mine, as they say). Here's what I gave them, short and sweet:

I like to think that I read more about music than 99.9% of the population (unfortunately, I often find myself reading more about music than listening to it). That may or may not be true, but I am never without a book to read, and most of what I read is music-related. Here are three recent titles I’ve read that should satisfy readers with a general curiosity about music.


1. Robin Kelley, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of An American Original. One of the most preeminent current historians of African American life and culture writes a biography about one of the great jazz musicians of the twentieth century. Kelley had unprecedented access to Monk family archives and the evidence shows throughout this impressive work.


2. Jon Savage, The England’s Dreaming Tapes. One of England’s best music journalists, in the early 1990s Savage wrote England’s Dreaming, the near-definitive account of the Sex Pistols and British punk rock in the 1970s. This book presents transcripts of many of the original interviews that Savage did for his earlier work. As much an oral history of 1970s England as a book about punk, it is full of great stories and details you won’t find anywhere else.


3. Elijah Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘n’ Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music. Don’t be dissuaded by the deliberately provocative title. The subtitle is more accurate: this is an effort to rethink the history of pop from the late 19th century to the present, by a journalist and historian who has remarkable command of such a broad subject.

This year has been full of changes in the circumstances under which I listen to music. In January I shipped all the records I had kept for years at my parents' house in California back to my home in Western Mass. Having all those old records to listen to anew was great, and after some 20 years of having my collection split across a whole continent it was gratifying to have it all in one place.

And so it was until some time in September, when one day my turntable decided to die on me. I hadn't had it for all that long - I think I bought this particular turntable, a moderately priced Technics (paid around $200 for it), about 5 or 6 years ago. The problem seems to be with the motor, since it just stopped turning, but I'm no mechanical expert so I have no real idea why it broke.

I knew that I couldn't live for long without a turntable. But I was surprisingly indecisive about what I wanted to do about the situation. My dilemma was straightforward enough: I wasn't sure if I wanted to try to get the broken turntable fixed or just buy a replacement for it. Within the first few days after it stopped working, I explored my options. I went to the local high-end audio store, where I found some really nice looking new turntables that were much more expensive than any piece of stereo equipment I'd ever bought. And I went to the more cost-effective store where I bought the turntable that broke several years earlier, where they had a pretty lousy selection of new turntables but said they could probably fix the old one.

(As a side note, neither of these places are big chains, and I'm lucky that living in a town as small as Northampton, I actually have a choice as to where to look to buy a new turntable without going online.)

Then, I froze. For two solid months I remained undecided as to what I wanted to do. The dilemma became complicated because it somehow transformed into a lifestyle choice, not just a practical matter. Did I want to save money and fix my serviceable old turntable, or did I want to splurge on a new piece of equipment that was probably better than I need for my listening purposes but that would be of higher quality and (hopefully) more reliable? I could afford the more expensive turntable without any great financial strain, but it still seemed an extravagance, and yet at the same time, given that listening to music is both my greatest pleasure and integral to the work I do, would this really be a frivolous expense?

As those two months went by the inconvenience of not having a working turntable at all became more and more apparent. Every time I looked at my records I felt a pang of regret that I couldn't play any of them. It also became a challenge to prepare for my classes, since much of the music I've been teaching this semester is stuff that I own on vinyl. I found myself having to bring things to my office on campus just to listen to them, rather than listen in the comfort of home (one of the perks of being a music prof is that I have a full stereo set-up in my office, including a turntable, courtesy of Smith College).

I finally resolved my dilemma and reached a decision a couple weeks ago, and I kind of surprised myself. I decided to go high-end, after years of resisting the notion that stereo equipment needed to be more than serviceable. So, I bought a Music Hall MMF-5.1 turntable, highly rated by all the audiophile sources I've been able to find, and got it for the princely sum of $800. It's a nice piece of equipment, and there are times when I'm able to convince myself that I can in fact hear a difference listening to records with it compared to my old $200 machine. But I'm playing it through my old, cheap JVC 30 watt receiver that I got back in 1983 (it was my 16th birthday present from my parents), so I'm sure I'm not hearing it at its optimal level of clarity. And there's the rub - it's hard to go just a little high end; one good component deserves another.