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- New music: Bosco Delrey – 20 Flight Dub
This 'garbage-can Elvis' sounds like Bill Haley reinvented for the bedroom-producer generation
Bosco Delrey – who is signed to Diplo's label, Mad Decent – has been described by his boss as a "garbage-can Elvis", which we assume is meant as a compliment. 20 Flight Dub is taken from his forthcoming album, Everybody Wah, and though its stuttering, metronomic beats and dreamy keyboard washes don't exactly scream "King of Rock and Roll" there's something appealingly old school about the "one flight, two flight, three flight, four, five, six, seven flight, eight flight more" hook that recalls Bill Haley, but for the bedroom-producer generation. Delrey will be playing SXSW as part of the Mad Decent showcase alongside SBTRKT, Toy Selectah and Diplo himself at Friends Bar on Saturday 19 March.
Everybody Wah is out on 29 March
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Ask the indie professor: Is there a link between indie music and Gnosticism?
The idea that you can increase your social status by possessing 'hidden' knowledge could explain indie fans who pride themselves on knowing every chillwave release
On your lecture tour of the UK, what was the best question anyone asked you? Bob Hardy at Mono cafe in Glasgow
I've just finished a series of lectures in the UK and Milan on topics including Gender Inversions: The Role of the Female Fan in the Popular Imagination, Destination Music Festivals, and Audiences at Gigs: Significant Shifts in Activity and Meaning. Yes, I realise that giving different talks in each city is a bit like going on tour and playing a different set of songs each night, but if I wanted life to be easy I would have kept doing maths instead of anthropology.
My favourite question came from one of the participants at Peterhouse Theory Group at Cambridge University. His question was if I thought there was a connection between indie music and Gnosticism. I had just given a paper on the relationship between indie music, Puritanism and pathos (there is a reason why there is a shoegaze revival band called the Pains of Being Pure at Heart). I think finding a connection between religion and aesthetics is a valuable line of inquiry. Gnosticism, from the Greek for knowledge, is where adherents derive their spiritually elect status by virtue of special experiential knowledge. Gnostics teach that a spiritual elite possesses "hidden knowledge" of the divine that places their revelations above the revelations found in scripture. Gnosticism would work with arguments that elitist knowledge of arcane bands confer "cultural capital", the notion that cool is a commodity of sorts. In other words, you can increase your social status by possessing prestigious and abstruse forms of knowledge. Indie fans are often parodied as having wilfully obscure tastes. However, Gnosticism never really matured from a sect. And currently, there is criticism that indie music is just too popular to be considered non-mainstream. A single correspondence doesn't seem to be enough to suggest a generative theory. However, there could be something to the idea that the valorisation of esoteric knowledge could explain members of the indie community who pride themselves on knowing every chillwave release. So, perhaps Gnosticism is a sect of indie. Either way, a great question and creative application of the argument that religious values can generate aesthetic practices.
The best observation was from a student at the University of Southampton who has been researching audience behaviour at dance shows. Spiro Martyr noted the widespread use of earplugs among audience members at the venue. At indie gigs, earplugs are usually worn by older fans who stand at the back. He found by looking at message-boards that wearing earplugs is not looked down on in dance as it is in indie. Rather, he found there is respect for wearing earplugs. In rock, fans who wear earplugs are stigmatised with associations of ageing. Thus, earplugs are often hidden because they are seen as a source of shame that can make an audience member the target of ridicule. Dance fans wear earplugs with pride and see them as a sign of experience. For serious dance fans and professionals, the participation ritual would include putting earplugs in prior to entering the venue, almost like putting on body armour before entering battle. Hardcore participants see taking care of your ears as demonstrating long-term commitment rather than the casual participation of a dilettante just up for a good night out. This would make earplugs within dance something akin to tattoos in Punk – a sign that you are dedicated to the genre for life. In dance, earplugs show you are in for the long haul. As someone who's ears rang for two years after seeing My Bloody Valentine, indie could pull a page from dance's book. But you can't make lovers of youth value longevity.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - SXSW 2011: Welcome to the Guardian's music coverage
This year, we're not just posting reviews – there are loads of new interactive gadgets and pages for you to play with
It's often said that festivals are a great chance to see dozens of bands in just a few days. Austin's SXSW festival is a bit different – wander down past the bars on 6th Street and you'd be hard pushed not to catch dozens of bands in just 15 minutes. And this is all before the music part of the festival has even started (that kicks off on Wednesday, after tech and film).
All this week, the Guardian will be covering the best sounds of SXSW live from Texas. On the hunt for new, innovative ways to cover events like this, we've got a big team at SXSW this year. That team includes lowly music writers like myself but also tech journos and brainiac developers. What this means is we won't simply be writing reviews and running them on the Guardian website. In fact, our coverage will take a myriad of different forms. We'll be posting things to our personal Tumblr pages and Twitter accounts (follow @timjonze, @rosieswash and @paulmac for music stuff) as well as contributing more traditional print articles to the Austin Chronicle. The best bits of all this content will surface on guardian.co.uk – but that's not all. Our recent SXSW hack day resulted in a whole load of exciting new interactive gadgets and pages for you to play with. For example, all the content posted onto Tumblr – pictures, text, video pieces – will all appear on this funky grid.
Elsewhere, there's a live buzz graph that measures the hype surrounding SXSW bands from social media and plots them on a chart (Ellie Goulding currently in the top spot). Head to our SXSW artist pages and you can listen to Soundcloud clips, read biogs and watch YouTube videos of most of the artists playing.
So that's how we will cover things but what are we planning on covering? Well, it might be easier to explain what we won't be covering, as already the place is swarming with rumours and talking points.
Will we be able to catch the free Strokes gig that's happening at Lady Bird Lake?
Will Odd Future live up to the hype?
And what can we expect from Kanye West's last-minute appearance?
This brave-new-world music coverage will kick off on Wednesday when bands arrive in town (at the moment the pavements are being pounded by bespectacled techies carrying Apple devices – the hairstyles are likely to become crazier and the jeans tighter as the week develops – but we'll still post the odd musical thing, such as a review of a panel I went to that offered legal tips for music bloggers.
So stay tuned and, provided we don't all fall at the first hurdle (hey, the bourbon is good here), there'll be some interesting SXSW coverage here.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Behind the music: If I said you had a beautiful body, would you sue me?
Britney Spears's legal battle with the Bellamy Brothers shows that when it comes to alleged copyright infringement it's difficult to draw the line between inspiration and imitation
Last month, attorney Christopher E Schmidt issued a legal statement on behalf of country-pop duo the Bellamy Brothers that made allegations about the "somewhat uncanny" similarities between their 1979 hit, If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me, and Britney Spears's latest single, Hold It Against Me. Schmidt said he's even brought in a "heavyweight" attorney to evaluate whether those alleged similarities constitute copyright infringement.
In response, the songwriters behind Britney's chart-topping hit (Max Martin, Lukasz "Dr Luke" Gottwald, Bonnie McKee and Mathieu Jomphe) filed their own lawsuit accusing the Bellamy Brothers of making defamatory and libellous statements. The songwriters' suit states: "In a publicity stunt aimed to increase their record sales, profit from plaintiffs' successes and to combat their dwindling relevance in today's music industry, the Bellamy Brothers have embarked upon a malicious public campaign in which they have falsely accused plaintiffs of infringing the copyright in and to the musical composition If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me." Ouch.
The action taken by Max Martin et al is what's called the "chilling effect" in legal speak, and it's generally frowned on by courts. Music attorney Tom Frederikse says that such suits send out the signal that no one should sue unless they're 100% certain of winning, as they'd automatically face paying damages if unsuccessful. And when it comes to plagiarism it's almost never clear-cut. So do the Bellamy Brothers have a case?
The ambiguity stems from the fact that there is no set number of notes or words one can use from an existing song before it's considered plagiarism. As the vast majority of these lawsuits are settled out of court (at least 90% of them, according to Frederikse), few precedents are set. Where do you draw the line between inspiration and imitation?
Schmidt says it isn't necessarily the similarity of titles that is of legal concern, but whether or not the exact lyrics "would you hold it against me" are used in the same way. Schmidt says the similarity becomes uncanny if you double the beat of the Bellamy Brothers' song, and adds that Max Martin and Dr Luke have been accused of copyright infringement in the past (most recently for Katy Perry's California Gurls) – though, notably, they've never been found guilty of such infringement – shows "a possible pattern and warrants a more serious look into the matter".
Clearly the issue of similarity is a thorny one, especially when it comes to advertising. In the 1980s, the Ford Motor Company asked to use Bette Midler's Do You Wanna Dance in an ad. When she refused the company used a soundalike. Midler sued, claiming Ford had appropriated part of her identity to sell its product. Despite the company having secured a licence for the song – which wasn't written by Midler but was featured on one of her albums – and not using her vocal, Midler won. Relevant to the verdict was that Ford had initially asked to use her recording of the song, as it proved the similarities in vocals could not have been a coincidence. Tom Waits successfully sued potato crisp company Frito-Lay under similar circumstances.
When it comes to musical, as opposed to lyrical, similarity, it's just as difficult to decipher what constitutes copyright infringement or theft. Most big artists have been approached at least once by unknown writers claiming one of their hits is a rip-off. This is why many record labels won't accept unsolicited demos, in case the composer comes back later claiming their work has been copied.
What is usually debated in court, with the help of musicologists, is how much originality was injected into the original piece of music by the creator – and how much of it has been copied. But how do you define originality? For example, you can use the same chords as another song – just don't use the hook. Even if Madonna had played the keyboard riff from Abba's Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! on her track Hung Up, instead of using a sample, she would have had to seek permission from the composers as the hook was so distinctive and identifiable with their track.
Claiming copyright infringement on lyrics is difficult. There are thousands of songs with the same titles registered with collection societies around the world. Can the Bellamy Brothers prove that they have jurisdiction over a lame chat-up line – one that was occasionally used by Groucho Marx, before If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me became a hit? Probably not. But if they can prove that the line was used in the same way in the hook, they may have a case.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Why I frown upon the Beach Boys releasing Smile
Brian Wilson's unfinished opus is the greatest record almost made. It should be left incomplete, leaving us to imagine an album that would have made Sgt Pepper sound 'meh'
Haven't we been here before? News that the the Beach Boys' Smile is to be released later this year is both confusing and something I really wish they wouldn't do.
Every pop fan knows that the greatest record ever made – or rather, the greatest ever record almost made, which would have shown Sgt Pepper to be a bit "meh" – was the the follow-up to Pet Sounds. But then Brian Wilson lost his way in the sandbox and never got round to finishing it, although Good Vibrations and fragments of other songs surfaced on subsequent Beach Boys albums.
Then, in February 2004, 37 years after it was conceived, Wilson performed a complete version of Smile at the Royal Festival Hall in London. I was there, and yes, it was heaven to hear the likes of Mrs O'Leary's Cow as – presumably – it had always existed in Brian's head.
Next came a record titled Smile. Or rather: Brian Wilson Presents Smile. This was a newly recorded studio album with the keyboard player in Wilson's new band, Darian Sahanaja, together with arranger Paul Mertens and composer Van Dyke Parks basing the arrangements on the original, unreleased Beach Boys tapes. And that, you imagined, was that, with critics by and large loving the record.
Now, however, Capitol Records is planning to release an album called The Smile Sessions, co-produced by two longtime Beach Boys associates, engineer Mark Linett and archivist Alan Boyd. Inevitably, there'll be a limited-edition boxed set containing four CDs, two vinyl LPs, two vinyl singles and a 60-page hardbound book written by Beach Boys historian Domenic Priore. Linett describes the release as "the whole piece as close to as it was envisioned, or as is envisioned, as possible ... and obviously with input from Brian and from everybody else. We have gaps where we are missing some vocal parts. But all the music was recorded, which is heartening."
Here's my problem: it's never been difficult for anyone interested to track down bootlegs of those sessions. I've got the two-disc Vigotone set that, if memory serves, I bought via mailorder, although I've often seen it on market stalls. Now, it's likely that an official release will be of better quality; and, possibly, will feature more material – although probably not the 54-second radio ad for the record on my bootleg, with this cheery announcement: "Smile is the name of a new Beach Boys album which will be released in January, 1967, and with a happy album cover, the really happy sounds inside and a happy in-store display piece, you can't miss ... we're sure to sell a million units! In January."
Not hard to track down, but the delight I felt when I did was immense. Surely some things in life should be worth the extra effort to seek out? A culture in which all music from all eras is instantly available all the time has its upsides, but sometimes it's nice to have to work at things at bit.
Then there's the problem of any release that claims to be definitive. Wilson never did finish the record in 1967 as his mental health deteriorated. (One of the most dismaying stories in his autobiography involves a visit from Van Dyke Parks, who sees that Wilson has built a sandbox in the studio, in which he's placed his grand piano: "'What's that?' he asked ... I looked around ... My dog Banana had relieved himself in the sand ... It wasn't the easiest times between Van Dyke and me.") The album that he produced in 2004 purported to fill in the gaps, but no one really wanted that. It's not yet clear whether The Smile Sessions will see things touched up, but I suspect I'll still far prefer my bootlegs, incomplete and fragmentary as they are, featuring tantalising annotations such as "Barnyard (the real one)". Because the best version of Smile, a really happy record but also one of numinous beauty, a record that did make Pepper sound "meh", is the one that will always exist in our imaginations.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - March's best music from across the MAP
From Argentinian garage-rock to Venezualen country-blues, here are some of the choicest cuts from around the world
Each month, the Music Alliance Pact – a group of 35 music blogs from around the world, including this one – simultaneously post tracks chosen by each blog.
Next month, more tunes from around the globe
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать
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