Friday, December 13, 2013

Censorship


I didn't have a lot of time for music this spring, so I decided to do a little video project. My goal was to take a song I love and match it to a film I love, and try to make the juxtaposition creative, organic, and fun to watch. It was an experiment in adding as much value as possible while changing as little as possible of the original works. Check the video below, I'm pretty proud of this one:





Damn, YouTube, who are all these people? Are any of them named Darren Aaronofsky or Geoff Barrow? I don't give a shit if they are, but that would be awesome if they had watched it.

I don't think there's any evidence that I could hurt any of the copyright holders financially, and sizable evidence that mashups, fan fic, etc, only increases the value of the referenced products, in much the same way that press coverage does. The artists involved may or may not like it, depending on their taste, but once your baby is born, you have no right to censor what other people say about her. This is a form of cultural criticism, however cheeky or referential, and however pitiful or tiny.

Here's one that slipped through the cracks.  The song is me, Evan, and Sean. It's almost entirely stolen. I made the music out of samples, noticeably Johnny Rivers and U2. The video is from the movie "CQ", directed by Roman Coppola. The lyrics refence James Bond and Indiana Jones at length. I don't know why it hasn't gotten busted, I'm guessing because it's too transformative for the bots to catch it. I think the simple act of juxtaposition is transformative but, let me tell you amigos, YOU CANNOT ARGUE WITH A ROBOT.


Aw shit

Yeah, motherfuckers.  The wait is over.  I (re)discovered that I have a blog, and I'll be damned if I'm not gonna post something.

So, apropos of nothing, the best dream I ever had:

I was somehow transported back in time and met Elvis Presely, holding a guitar and wearing a pink shirt like Kurt Russel in the movie. I was starting to explain that I was dressed funny because I'm from the future, but Elvis cut me off:

"It's OK, man. Wear whutcha like."