Ladies and Gentleman, the Worst Song Ever Written Ever

Because JAPAN.

slam piece

I tend to jump into situations with reckless abandon and virtually zero forsight.

turbo.

Turbo is faster than regular. It said so in the manual. It was, without a doubt, not a secret.

Janie's new car was a Turbo. And it was faster than a regular car. "My car," she would often be heard to remark to people, "is a Turbo and it is quite fast." Her hair was dark like an oil slick against night sky and she'd often speak to strangers without being prompted. And not always just about her car.

Today Janie walked to the gas station up the street from her apartment. The Turbo was in perfect working condition, but Janie decided that a brisk walk would be in her best interest.

"I walked up here for an iced tea despite the fact that I have a car," she blurted to a portly man beside her at the counter as they each waited for the teenage clerk to end his phone call. She smiled, though the man said nothing and heaved his Sunday paper to the counter. After a few more muffled words the clerk laughed, hung up the outdated handset phone and then quickly blushed and strode over to the pair.

"Just the Sunday Times, sir?"

"And a soft pack of Kent 100s," the man grunted and then looked away. Janie thought that the man looked like an ape that had been carefully shaved to look like a man. Masquerading as a human for news and tobacco? She chuckled to herself almost silently.

"Five dollars even."

The man shoved a crumpled bill to the counter and brushed by Janie as he turned and walked towards the double doors. Janie watched, momentarily ignoring her turn at the register, as the man pulled open the rusted door to his compact car and slumped inside.

"That man brushed against me as he left the store!" she said loudly to the clerk who looked like he really wished he hadn't heard what Janie said. "I believe he did it by design!"

The boy's cheeks reddened again and he shrugged his shoulders dismissively, "Just the iced tea then, ma'am?"

Janie refused to leave without some sort of reaction or sympathy or empathy or anything from the child clerk, "Did you see what happened?"

"Yes, he did brush against you. I saw that, too. What a jerk. Why would anyone do that?" The boy stumbled through his comments as though he'd been reading from a cue card.

"I'll tell you why," Janie said. "He was attempting to derive sexual pleasure from it! He grazed my left breast as he passed and I really think I saw him lick his lower lip as he did it!"

The clerk shifted from sneaker to sneaker uneasily before ringing up Janie's tea, silently placing it in a plastic bag and gesturing to the LCD that read 1.29.

Janie reached slowly to her jeans, forced her right hand into the tight pocket and withdrew two folded dollar bills after digging for a few seconds. She gave them to the clerk who quickly returned to Janie a handful of assorted change to the tune of 71 cents.

"My car has Turbo," she said to the teenage clerk as she turned to walk home. The iced tea was cold and delicious on her throat and she thought, "I'm glad I decided to walk."

RoCOW.

Serious Bike for Serious Children.

For Serious Use Only:

-Should child smile, or begin to smile brakes will engage until such time as the smile recedes
-Child must be under direct adult supervision at all times
-Child must wear full spandex bib with no chamois
-Suggested for hillclimbs such as the Manayunk Wall or Lombard St.
-Suggested use for commutes to dentist, Sunday/Hebrew School, violin lessons, and trips to weird Aunt Patty's only

Warranty is void if:

-Bike is stored without kickstand extended (i.e. "leaning against the wall")
-Top tube cushion is defaced with marker and/or stickers
-tassles attached to handlebar grips (may cause bike to explode)

Warning:
-The souls of those parent of child has wronged in the past will be released upon depressing presta valve on tires.
-Upon release said souls will torment and haunt child until young adulthood. Serious Bikes, Inc. takes no responsibility for a life of lost potential, psychological maladjustment, and blurred vision inflicted upon child.

The World.

Comrades, I don't think that there was ever a time when living in America wasn't scary as fuck, at least for some "minority" or demographic. I suppose that's the price you have to pay for living in Earth's Most Powerful Nation. Or any superpowerful nation, for that matter. I don't think that that was ever a picnic. Not in the Soviet Union, not in the Mongolia of Genghis Khan or anything in between or before. And probably also not in the China of 2020.

What's special this time around though is that America somehow managed to get scarier for no good reason other than George W. Bush. 911 and the entailing Don Quixote-like Holy Crusade just pushed it over the top. (Terrorists = the new windmills?) The whole housing market/economical crisis thing is really just the icing on the scarycake. I'd figure that losing your job is less scary than being deported because you're an immigrant of Muslim faith, even though you didn't do shit and have been living in America for several years. I mean, this stuff actually happened after 911, and happened systematically. There were blacklists just like during the commie scare and shit like the FBI knocking on people's doors one day after they had cracked jokes about the government at the gym did happen.

It's kind of weird, but, if I look at a world map and try to figure out where a man could live with the least amount of bullshit nowadays, I can't help but think about minuscule yet obscenely rich countries like Andorra, Switzerland, Monaco... Those never seem to get into any trouble. They just let the big boys play the physical power games and have them protect them while they set up their crazy bank or tax systems that guarantees their own wealth and political power. They don't have to deal with any internal social unrest because everybody's rich (enough) and they don't have that many people anyway and thus not much diversity. Government's never going to get big and bloated and menacing because... it's a small ass country, how big can its government get, really, and why should it even care? In the case of war they are no good as targets because it's hard to even find them on the map and they aren't strategically important. Who the hell would ever aim a nuclear bomb at them? It's like: the most secure fortress is the one nobody cares about besieging in the first place. I've only heard about Andorra a couple of years ago thanks to me looking up the world's highest GDPs on Wikipedia. I thought, "What the fuck is Andorra? I could swear we didn't even learn about it in geography when I was in school...".

Guys, everything that's evil in the world today comes from Switzerland. They are playing dirty in everything they do, from agriculture to pharmacy to arms dealing to banking. And they get away with it. Don't get many death threats from Al-Qaida either. Life's just not fair!

You know what to do though, do like the new recruits do: keep your head down and "be the gray man." Always walk the path of least resistance and never get caught up in a power struggle you can't win. That's how them terrorists are beating your boys' asses right now. It's how the Russians beat Napoleon's ass and made him lose a whole army, without them having to fight a single battle. (There may have been a single battle fought, though I'm not sure.) And it's how Ali beat the shit out of Foreman when everybody thought he was going to get his ass royally beat.

The trick is just to let the big man come -- let him come into enemy territory -- territory he can't handle -- lead him into a crowd screaming "Kill him, Ali!, Kill him!" and into a ring with loose ropes for you to lay into -- lead them into a snow desert where they'll suffer the devastating effects of the Russian winter and where they'll be attacked, nay irritated, nay merely annoyed!, by a handful of Cossacks taking singular shots at them like mosquitoes, like guerrilla soldiers, like special forces units, like ... "terrorists" -- let them come into one country and draw them out all over it with little mosquitoes biting them everywhere they go, then draw them over the border into another country, and then further into it and then (to be continued...) -- and once that is done... the big man will be -- not smaller, no, even bigger, even more plain to see, -- yet skinnier, with his strength drawn out -- all over the place and nowhere in earnest -- and he'll seem so fragile then. And maybe he will be.

The beauty and tragedy in all of this is that this shit is older than even Sun Tzu. The workings beneath it have been the same since the fucking Big Bang and while at first there was no one there to understand them, nowadays there are some who do and many more who still don't. The rope-a-dope still works like magic on aggressive brutes. Terrorism still works like gangbusters on a big target. And the big man obviously also still wins the fights against the small man that's dumb enough to fight him head on. When he doesn't though and picks his shots then the big man just can't knock him out. Still, after all these years, decades, centuries, and geological epochs nothing has changed about the strategies. Technology and the times have changed and dressed everything up in different colors, which is why you still need intelligence to be able to adapt the impossibly old yet still valid strategies to the new-looking situations. You have to figure out that an atomic bomb is neither sword nor bow -- it's a hostage. As an obvious example. And you have to figure out that people with towels on their heads that touch their foreheads to the ground five times a day aren't idiots -- they're cunning adversaries.

It's kinda sad when you've got people governing you that are oblivious to the facts, maybe because they won't read no stinkin' old books from communist China that don't have Jesus in them. Maybe because they -- even worse -- don't care if they'll win or lose, as long as they won't win while they're still profiting from not winning, and as long as they won't lose before they can profit from losing after their eight years of power are up.

Maybe it will work out for them, maybe it won't, most likely it has already; it's kind of sad anyways.

Or maybe it's brilliant and I'm just jealous.

Big Trickin'

I think the next step for Hip Hop and jewelry is to have it so big they can't even wear it. You follow 'Generic Rapper A' to his garage on "Cribs" and as the door lifts you see (next to the Escalade with Louis Vuitton tires, a Spongebob paint job and faux-polar bear pussy interior) is a necklace so gargantuan it's immovable.

"Yo, son, sometimes I like to just come out here with my teddy bear at night and sleep in the middle of this bitch... just fucking snuggle up with all this fucking ice, B. It's a restful sleep knowing you's the flyest nigga on the planet, kid. Word is bond."

Just how big is that necklace Generic Rapper A?

"This motherfucker is big enough that that Statue of Liberty bitch could wear it to the Source Awards, son. This motherfucker here? Big enough for Missy Elliot to wear BACK IN THE DAY, son! This motherfucking rope right herre in my garage? Big enough that they changed the shits name from Fort Knox to Fort Lighty Taps my nigga!"

Word.

We Love You, P5

I forgot how much i used to listen to Shibuya-Kei in college.

Pretty Bird.

i drilled two holes in my parrot's beak a few weeks ago to shut him up. held Chirpy Boy down and power drilled those holes right in.

but it didn't shut him up (quite the opposite in fact).

i figured he'd be rendered silent on account of lack of air pressure or some such other miracle of modern birdery. that was not the case (though i'd be the first to admit that my foggy reasoning was inspired, largely, by the former liquid tenants of all of these empty cans).

so the beak holes didn't work at first.

but then, after a couple of days, infection (mother nature's enduring back-up plan) set in and shut up ol' Chirpy Boy for good.

whoever decided that a teaching an animal with a brain the size of a cocktail onion to talk was a good idea hadn't ever spent more than five minutes next to one of the the shrill motherfuckers while it rambles incessantly about an unending proclivity towards crackers.

i should have killed the bastard at the pet store too. here all i really wanted was a quiet goldfish under whose rocks i could hide any number of things including (but not limited to) stolen eastern bloc diamonds, a skate key and a tiny waterproof envelope with my super secret ideas for new dried foods.

but this sick petstore employee fucker railroads me into buying a high maintenance bullhorn that says "Pretty Bird" over and over again like a broken record. you'd think they'd at least teach the fucking thing a joke or something... but no, I get the bird who constantly begs for crackers and boasts about itself.

Chirpy Boy really was *DELICIOUS* and well worth every cent I paid for him. looking back, he was like a mouth-watering best friend.

Pi pi pi pi pi

They're honored to be melted into your mayonnaise pizza.

Anchorman

On September 1, 1986, Dan Rather, inexplicably, began signing off his nightly CBS news broadcast by saying simply "courage". America was mystified. Walter Cronkite used to sign off the news by saying "and that's the way it is".

That made sense.

Linda Ellerbee stole from Kurt Vonnegut and used to sign off her broadcasts with "And so it goes". That still made some sense.

But "courage"?

Ted Baxter would sign off "Good night and good news". Jane Curtin would sign off "Good night and have a pleasant tomorrow". Tomorrow was Sunday. That's your day off. It would be pleasant.

But "courage"?

Dennis Miller used to say "That's the news and I am out of here." That was the last thing Dennis Miller said that America generally understood. Charles Rocket said "Good night and watch out" when he hosted SNL news. The last thing he ever said on live TV was "fuck". He got fired. Maybe that took courage. Or stupidity. What's Charles Rocket done lately?

No one fired Dan Rather for saying "courage" and failing to offer America an explanation. America is owed an explanation. "Elvis has left the building" explained why Elvis wasn't coming back on stage. That was an explanation if there ever was one. People understood that. People didn't seem to understand why the house lights were on and roadies in white tshirts and jeans were pulling down speaker towers.

Jimmy Durante used to sign off his TV show with "Good night Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are". No one really cared who Mrs. Calabash was. Would you? Carol Burnett crooned "I'm so glad we had this time together." If I grew up watching her I would have cried when she sang it for the last time.


It takes courage for me to admit that.

Only one thing ever made sense on TV. "Book 'em, Danno. Murder One." Jack Lord had style.

Kids these days

i know i'm getting older when the media doesn't talk to me anymore. instead of exciting and inciting me, i'm often appalled and disgusted by images and [mis]representations streaming through the cathode tube. bright colors, pounding soundtracks and strobe light graphics annoy me rather than woo me. i view those tactics as cheap and lazy. is this a sign of maturity?

"child at heart" and "immaturity" are two very different concepts. one has the ability to turn off foolishness when needed whereas the other has trouble grasping the concept of responsibility.

reminiscing on my own childhood behaviors, it's amazing to see how far i've come. granted, it's not all that amazing at first glance, but when compared to peers (both familiar and societal) the maturity gap can be quite large. learning right from wrong, making your own choices and sticking with them. actually listening to that/those little voice/s inside your head and working with them.

with each passing day, i become more and more disconnected with prime youth culture...the sort that fuels MTV and major advertising campaigns. the formula is as it's always been: sex, drugs and rock & roll, but in this world of exxxtreme, the elements are increased. i wouldn't be able to go back to my high school without being completely baffled by what i see. i want to throw my hands up in frustration and scream "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?"

and i fear that all this attention toward teenagers, since they are the most profitable group out there, acts as a pump to inflate egos. media culture and ultimately, society, sells to teens, talks to teens, which in turns sends the message that they are important and an integral part of in maintaining order. good and bad. recognition is good. acknowledgment is good. but one has to wonder if we are inadvertently sending the message that America's youth is in control.

a friend of mine brought up this point with sitcoms. sitcoms i grew up with, as cheesy as they were, almost always portrayed the parents as right and the children as wrong. but the tables have turned within a decade of economic fluctuations as well as changing social standards as we see less and less parenting available due to two income households and single parent families. (not to say that the preexisting parenting isn't good, mind you. there is nothing wrong with these arrangements, because i'm sure there are alternative methods of parenting. but hanging on to 1950s ideals isn't going to work anymore.) the image we see on television are bumbling parents who act less like parents and more like children. and poised children who are more often than not running the show.

we forget that these are kids, and how much do they really know? sure, they are smart, but the best intelligence is shaped over time from life experiences. maturation.

stories in the news, a slice of america. remember the 2003 hazing incident in a chicago suburb. the wild teen three day house party which resulted in thousands of orgasms in damages. when did violence and an utter disgard for other people become okay?

everyone was arguing about how these teens should be punished, whether or not the school should be responsible etc, etc, etc. it's all just red tape. caught up in the logistics, we've lost sight of the fact that these human beings have a very fucked up perception of social behavior when they believe there is nothing wrong with their actions. in situations like these, everyone leaps to inspect the details and overlooks the basics.

teenagers misbehaving. using violence. without recognizing it's wrong.

when and how did the abuse (in all forms) of another human being get the green light?

amidst the bullshit, i remember only hearing one good point. if these incidences were committed by inner city kids, their asses would be in through the legal system and in jail so fast their heads would spin. this mere fact, as much as we don't want to believe it's true, frustrates me even more. fuck silver spoons and privileges. but that's a whole other topic to gripe about.

granted, those incidences are extreme examples, but it's not to say that "immaturity" doesn't take on more familiar forms. better luck tomorrow syndrome. boredom in suburbia. disposable incomes (mommy and daddy's boners at that). it's a dangerous combination. sex, drugs, and rock & roll behind white picket fences. and i'll be the first to admit i've felt it (and participated) too. isn't it true that the majority of shoplifters are middle class suburban teenagers? hell, i used to do it. a good amount. but thank god, i had enough sense to stop after almost getting caught.

what makes one person's (as cliche as it is) "wake-up call" more effective than the next? is it the drugs, is it the parenting, or is it society that turns off consciences and wills repeat offenses? or even more horrifying, has the "conscience" disappeared through constant youth affirmations? or perhaps, not disappeared but merely evolved into a form foreign to cultural common sense ideals.

i don't really know where i'm going with this. i guess working with children in the past has caused me to think about these topics. observing their behavior and realizing one error now could affect their whole life down the road can be quite daunting at times. it's the ultimate form of creation.

and the funny thing is, at 31, i'm old enough to be the parent of the people i'm ranting about, although i can be damn immature too. but i know that i still have a hell of a lot of growing to do as a person and i'm welcoming it with open arms.

peter pan's fucked up.

The White Album

what's worse than the sinking feeling of hearing the first chords of "Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground" on the White Stripes "White Blood Cells" when you're expecting "Exactly Where I'm At" from Ween's "White Pepper"?

plain white cds anger me greatly.

Protein.

Once, back when I used to do tai chi on the beach before school (when I lived in Costa del Mar), I was holding out my right leg to a perfect 90 degree angle from my torso in the "Descending Pendulum" position and I was so serene and motionless that a pair of lesser sand pipers took a break from their morning of flight and perched on my leg.

I found the moment so beautiful that a single slow tear trickled down my face as I ate them, feathers and all.

If you ever wanted to see what I look like at a free vodka promo . . .

Philadelphia | Picture - Cavanaugh's Rittenhouse- Photos by Marie Rodriguez | Philly2night.com

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I. Am. Red. Cyclone.

I decided to do some studying out of sheer boredom.

In various instruction manuals released with the various versions of Street Fighter II that have been released since 1991, it was stated somewhere that Zangief learned his signature Spinning Piledriver Attack on accident.

According to the legend, he was sucked inside a tornado while out in the Russian wilderness while he was in the process of piledriving a bear, as he always has done previously.

Zangief's stats say that he is 7 feet tall and weighs 350 LBS. To give you an idea how large that is, his closest real life counterpart in terms of height and weight would be Paul Wight, also known as The Giant and The Big Show in various professional wrestling circles. The current stats have him listed as 7 feet tall and weighing in at 485 LBS. Anyone who has seen him perform (including myself) can testify that his size is almost unreal.

Now, the most common species of bear in the Soviet Union/Russian Federation would be the Eurasian Brown Bear. A full-grown male usually comes in at 460 LBS at most and 8 feet tall standing on it's hind legs. Assuming that Zangief would be facing off against a bear of that size, their combined weight would be 810 LBS.

Zangief has been shown in every single game that he has ever been in that he is able to piledrive his opponents far beyond his own height. Since it's extremely hard to calculate exactly how much, we'll say just for the sake of argument that he usually piledrives his opponent up to 17.5 feet. That's two and a half times his own height.

Now, here comes the part I need help on. I don't know what formula to use to determine how much force it would take to launch 810 LBS up to 17.5 feet in the air. Math has never been my forté.

Can The Internet solve this?

All-star.

My mom just let out an audible groan when Obama spoke at the game. It's amazing that she has so much venom for the guy when she can't even recall any of his talking points she directly opposes.

Vivid.

I just had a dream where i was captured and about to be electrocuted, car-battery style by some mafia guy for breaking into his base and taking out several of his men. I got into his base using a "cloaking watch" like The Spy in TF2. I stabbed a whole bunch of people in the back. I could also change disguises. One of them resembled Chris Eccelston and that was what eventually lead to my capture. I was blackmailed into doing it. I was supposed to get some kind of information about an experiment. I was captured by "The Rock" although he feigned knocking me out. Apparently my former co-worker Lo'An was going to bust me out. I woke up right after the criminal mastermind guy asked about growing up in Langhorne and then telling me "this is going to be painful." He already shocked me twice and asked me which part of me I'd rather have amputated first.

Here's a paper I recently wrote about Biz Markie

The way in which a piece of information technology, such as a computer, works, limits, and opens new possibilities in the way we makes sense of our culture; is by no means neutral. There are glaring philosophical and political issues, which are at stakes as a result of copyright use in an age of reproductive technologies.

Musicologist John Shepherd once proposed that music could be analyzed with the use of semiotics as a form of communication, which for purposes of abbreviation can be designated as 'text' [Shepherd, 1991]. You could regard a modern electronic music track as a text, which is created on a sequencing device. Using a program like Cubase or ACID Pro is equivalent to writing text with Microsoft Word. The sequenced results can be likened to a montage of other texts. This occurs because other texts within a particular piece are a source of “inspiration”, leaving traces in the structures of the new text. Since a text is written in a particular tradition of communication, it follows that no text can be entirely original as a text always refers to other texts, otherwise it could not be understood. The use of a sampler has made this intertextuality more apparent since a song can be created from the sequencing of snippets of a sound as well as from recognizable fragments from other recordings. This practice has led to accusations of theft. [Lawrence, 2009]

The kind of definition of an origin of meaning and therefore of authorship may indicate some of the problems concerning the definition of copyright. Cultural critics such as Michel Foucault have an interest in the empowerment of an audience and ultimately the masses. Modern electronic music is a good example of the kind of music that could achieve this. On the other hand, current copyright law is informed by an ideology that ultimately keeps hierarchical structures, which are based on ownership, intact. Institutions which traditionally capitalize on musical products such as record companies and publishing houses, have an interest in the current status of copyright law which protect the rights of ownership or intellectual property by institutions and of individuals. The “moral right” of the individual author was first recognized in the U.K. with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act of 1988. However, the right of this type of author is a rather fragile one and seems to be defined in terms of capital power rather than in terms of origin or “authenticity” [S. Jones, 1999]. Even so, with the widening and shifting of the definition of the author, one may doubt the practicality of the implementation of current copyright law under the Orphan Act. Either more needs to be included, which may ultimately stifle creativity, or otherwise concepts such as plagiarism need to be reconsidered [“Matt”, 2009].

In regards to music there are essentially two types of copyright: the copyright of the sound recording, which is usually owned by the record company, and the copyright of the composition that is owned by the composer and writer but often shared with a publisher. Compositions are usually defined in terms of notation in the tradition of Western European classical music, even though one does not need to register the copyright with physical notation sheet paper. [Wardzinski, 2009] Musical forms which are based on a genre that stresses textures and rhythms, or what can be referred to as a “groove” or “beats” do not have the same level of copyright protection as those that are based on genres, which stress lyrics and melody. A lot of music produced under the umbrella name of “club music” can be described as “groove based.” This means that the genre is financially vulnerable. Important parts of these tracks are unprotected while being endangered by lawsuits concerning the use of samples [Lawrence, 2009]. In addition, copyright law is biased towards those who can afford to file lawsuits rather than those who may need more protection. Ironically, copyright law has economically affected composers more favorably than performers and therefore recording studio technologies over performing technologies. By not fully recognizing the creative performing qualities of the use of affordable studio technologies such as samplers or the use of record deck, an entire section of artistic endeavor is ignored and perhaps even endangered. Perhaps if users of these technologies had a greater access to capital investment, entirely “new” and “original” works could be created, using “real” instruments and “real” performers. Yet, although DJ and hip-hop culture may have their roots in economic resourcefulness, they have resulted in the creation of culturally valid texts, within the context of a popular cultural tradition. It seems clear that developments in digital technology, as well as in the production and consumption of music are outdating copyright law at a fast pace. [Ahern, 2009]

Less than twenty years ago, copyright law had no specific provisions to deal with the act of sampling. In 1991, a case concerning the use of sampling technologies in hip-hop is what set the mood for future proceedings. A precedent was set on the use or rather “misuse” of samplers, when Gilbert O’Sullivan took Biz Markie to court in New York [Baran, 2002]. Biz Markie, a rap artist and therefore steeped in DJ culture of hip-hop, had “lifted” eight bars of the introduction of the song Alone Again (Naturally), by Gilbert O’Sullivan (MAM, 1972). Using this riff as the basis for his song, he also used some of the lyrics (a samples of three words) and adapted the title, calling it Alone Again. Biz Markie’s argument was that he had meant it to be a “parody”. In other words, this is a type of comment on another text, which is quite legitimate within the limits of current copyright law. Nevertheless, the label of the artist, Cold Chillin’, as a subsidiary of Warner Bros., should have had the legal expertise to recognize the dangers should a substantial part of a song be used without copy clearance in advance. The case appeared when 250,000 copies of the album I need a haircut, which contained the song, were already available on the market. Since the song was not a “straight” cover, Gilbert O’ Sullivan did not give his consent. As a result, Judge Kevin Duffy, Federal Judge of the United States Court for the Southern district of New York, who, it is alleged, has no experience in these kind of cases, ruled that Biz Markie’s album should be taken off the shelves by the following Monday. The case ended in an out of court settlement although a criminal prosecution was considered [Schumacher, 1995]. In Britain the Copyright Designs and Patents Act of 1988 section 107, which is a section used to tackle piracy, could also be used to put sampling under criminal proceedings. Since 1956 in Britain the copyright owner has to give permission in advance for the use of a substantial part of a work.
This case had set the mood in the US for a precedent on what can be considered to be a “substantial part”; the criminal offence of “theft” is now defined as the use of a sample of a part of a song as the basis of a “new” piece of work, whilst adapting the title and the lyrics for one’s own purposes. Although producers are more careful now in clearing the material they use, often the beginning and the underground artists have not got the capital or the knowledge to do so. [Wardzinsky, 2009] In addition, there seems to be unwillingness amongst club producers to give into the whims or the major record industry:

There’s always an anti-sampling feeling going through the record
industry and it’s not the artists but the record companies and
publishing houses. Even if the original artists say (sic) go
ahead use my record, their record company can just turn
around and say no or charge you ridiculous amounts of money
for it. It’s ridiculous because there’s 10,000 reasons why you
should be allowed to sample and only about two why you
shouldn’t. [Ahern, 2009]

From an artistic point of view, Foucault’s taunting question: “What difference does it make who is speaking?” [Foucault, 1984], makes sense when one accepts culture as a common good. However, in the context of a capitalist political economy of music, copyright of ideas is given a higher priority. The difference in who is speaking is determined by who has the money, knowledge and willingness to assert the exploitation of a cultural product.
As the concept such as the author is redefined, so is the issue of authenticity. The authentic is tied to ideas of original of a work of art as a fixed point, a “presence in time and place” [Benjamin, 2005]. In Foucault’s notion of the author, coherence is found within the realm of a discourse, its procedures legitimizing only certain acts of “Truth” and therefore authenticity. However, in being aware of these procedures, one has to doubt forever an absolutely true reference point to which the notion of authenticity has been tied. As Foucault points out: “The political question, to sum up, is not error, illusion, alienated consciousness or ideology; it is truth itself.” [Foucault, 1988]

Therefore, it would only be when an alternative discourse, as with this example DJ and hip-hop culture, becomes accepted amongst “mainstream” culture that it becomes possible to argue for a different type of copyright legislation as the Orphan Act.













Works Cited
Ahern http://www.1217Design.com, Sean C. "Interview with Sean Ahern, multimedia designer." Telephone interview. 02 Feb. 2009.
Baran, Madeleine. "Copyright and Music: A History Told in MP3's." Illegal-art.org :: a project of Stay Free! magazine. 2002. 31 Jan. 2009 .
Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Marxists Internet Archive. Ed. Andy Blunden. Feb. 2005. 30 Jan. 2009 .
"Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (c. 48)." Office of Public Sector Information. 28 Jan. 2009 .
Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge : Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon, 1980. p. 133

Foucault, Michel. The Foucault Reader. Ed. Paul Rabinow. New York: Pantheon, 1984. p. 120

Lawrence gregaudio@gmail.com, Greg. "Interview with Greg Lawrence; professional Sound Engineer." Telephone interview. 1 Feb. 09.
Markie, Biz. "Alone Again." I Need a Haircut. By Biz Markie. MP3. Biz Markie, 1991.
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