Today on the Scroll: Everybody’s talkin’ about Girl Talk — or, at least, that was the idea behind slapping his image on the front of EYE WEEKLY, asking the question “IS GIRL TALK KILLING MUSIC?” concurrent with a sycophantic cover package from NOW. Juxtaposition is the least a publication can do if nobody wants to admit to reading newsprint anymore. Fact is, the most interesting entertainment stories of our time don’t end with a product release or performance. Rather, that’s where the good ones begin. The original notion of interviewing Gregg Gillis, the man called Girl Talk, about just how much the enthusiastic critical reception granted Feed The Animals was about the music — and how much it was merely enthusiasm for the process of appropriating 322 of other people’s hits without permission — was scuttled due to the exclusivity demanded of cover subjects by the other alt-weekly. For a story with more than two sides to it, this town seemed big enough for an entirely different take leading up to Girl Talk’s sold-out hyperkinetic mashup show, Wednesday at Kool Haus. Fact remains, popular music still needs a certain economic machine to become popular, therefore supporting an artist on the grounds that he is showing how that machinery can be broken down — in more ways than one — might be a valid point of view for these End Times, but it also risks pushing every kind of music into the direction of even more unsavoury corporate patronage than the record companies.Gills revealed one of his new benefactors last week: Microsoft, for whom he provided a testimonial that, per the Gizmodo headline, amounted to “I’m a Gross, Sweaty Hipster, and I’m a PC.” The artist statement: "Software and computers are the most punk rock thing that's happened, ever." But, even for the company that gave you the Zune, not a note of Girl Talk’s copyright plundering is audible in the viral endorsement. And then there was more from Idolator blogger Mike Barthel, continuing his contemplation of the subject by running through four factors to conclude, “Girl Talk is Not Fair Use.” When the purpose and character does not actually comment on the work and the samples are long enough to be identified as substantial — not to mention the staunch refusal to acknowledge existing copyrights to begin with — the American doctrine ain’t in his favour. (Today, an actual entertainment lawyer gave Barthel’s observations a sympathetic spin.)Responses to the consideration of Girl Talk from a perspective that isn’t entirely dismissive of the value of a pro-copyright recording industry — in light of the recent pre-election debate over the merits of Bill C-61 and any future proposed Canadian equivalent to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act — found the approach wrong in one way or another.First, from EYE WEEKLY Books columnist Brian Joseph Davis, whose own newest project Original Soundtrack appropriates endlessly looping cues from 20 different commercially available DVDs, a wish for a more honest consdieration of why artists end up feeling burned by overprotective corporations.“The future never comes as well packaged as a ‘new model’,” writes Davis. “The future is, whatever works. The Great Depression drove radio use through the roof and established the habit of listening to recorded music as a transmission. I have no doubt that the current economy will create the conditions for the answer both musicians and fans have been looking for. And it’s the job of the moneymen to find a way to make money off that, not to issue lawsuits to listeners whose only crime is continuing to promote the product. The market will "take care" of a many things but democracy is not one of them. “We must also be vigilant in maintaining basic moral rights of artist, listener and maybe — just maybe — even those poor, woe begotten media executives.”From one Hank Ford — evidently an occasional commenter on Michael Geist’s blog based in Ladysmith, BC — a couple of stickling points. Regarding the argument that Girl Talk theoretically foreshadows a scenario where there is no new music popular enough to plunder: “How are you so certain of that? Logically that doesn’t hold up. Culture will be produced with or without copyright in place. Did music only come into being because of copyright? That’s the substance of your inane conjecture.”Moreover, suggesting that MP3-submission talent contests designed to promote a product were not going to produce future hits worthy of Girl Talk-style infringement rankled Hank, given how there was no evidence. Well, of course there’s no evidence — it’s never happened. Feedback from Jonathan Culp of Toronto wondered if describing past samples that flew beneath the copyright radar as “ultra-obscure” indicated an ignorance of the work of both Dickie Goodman and Grandmaster Flash. And what’s with the encouragement of a business still required to cultivate hits? “Would Arcade Fire, say, continue to exist without multinational midwifery as an excuse?,” writes Culp. “Did Stalin 'cultivate' Sergei Eisenstein?”Further reading: “Why I Copyfight” by Cory Doctorow (plus an Idolator response to overblown rhetoric). Further listening: “Who Owns Ideas?” from CBC Radio’s Ideas (Canadian Recording Industry Association president Graham Henderson mentioned it was the rare broadcast forum that let him have a proper say). Further viewing: RiP: A Remix Manifesto trailer, the National Film Board production starring Gregg Gillis without his headbandana (available for download someday soon, price not specified).And more coverage of the issues covered in the cover story, “Loose lips sink ships,” in the days and centuries ahead — by which point this website should look a bit new and improved, with greater acknowledgment that arts, culture, media coverage at its best has become more than just a two-sided deal.
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Toronto pop culture, updated weekdays. scroll@eyeweekly.com