I thought reading this article was difficult because I did not understand a few words and was struggling reading through it, but I did find it interesting. I think Brian Burton’s Grey Album is good and my opinion on the situation is he does not make any profits, and if so very little, from it so why do people seem to be so opinionated on it. It is the same as if he were a disc jockey, they play other artists music so what’s the difference? For example he used Jay-Z’s The Black Album and the Beatles 1969 work known as The White Album and made a “mash up” of the two. The Grey Album is an act of resistance, by mashing up Jay-Z and The Beatles he highlights that fact that African American hip hop is directly connected to the sixties era British rock and it connected to the early twentieth century African American blues which owes something to Christian spirituals sung on plantations. “The album shows despite the continued corporatization of music, the DIY ethos of 1970s punk remains alive and well, manifesting in sampling and low-budget, “bedroom studio” production values” (page 1). Though to a recording studio it represents the illegal plundering of valuable work in the history of pop music, it is the remixing of recordings with a capella tracks of black rappers and the electronic distribution of an entire album thousands of listeners that appear to be oblivious to the current copyright law. Most artists on the other hand treated The Grey Album as capturing a live performance than as a musical instrument itself. The first copyright was to encourage social advances by giving creators a financial stake in their work and by insisting that intellectual property becomes public property over a certain extinct of time. Control over the music is no longer contingent upon the exchange of cash, in digital communism a song’s exchange value evaporates as soon as that song hits the network.
Secily Thomas 2-10-10 Billy Middleton
Secily, good blog. Some questions to consider when thinking about possible paper 2 topics: I'm glad you mentioned the argument about mash-ups blurring racial boundary lines in music, because I think that's the most interesting part of Gunderson's article, so how does he support his claims there? What kind of evidence does he use? And why does he make this claim? What does he hope to accomplish/prove by showing how these boundary lines are something we've created and that they can be just as easily erased? Another possible topic might be something regarding the digital communism claim Gunderson makes. We generall think of "communism" in a negative light in America, but Gunderson uses it as a positive term. How does Gunderson turn "communism" into a good thing, and more importantly, why does he do that?
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