Don’t believe a lot of what you read here.

It’s just wrong. Maybe it has been edited by a few people to self promote; all respect to those people, but they arrived a bit later. Doesn’t it strike you as odd, when the page actually mentions GYBO and Boomselection started in 2001/2002 all the ‘notable’ dates are from 2004/5 on? So apparently we all sat on our hands for 2-3 years doing nothing? Probably posting lolcats and bitching about Weiser/IDC LOL.

I added the first mashup albums/compilations (Parkspliced, I Created A Monster, London Booted – some of the first to mash up a whole album) a while back and they’ve been removed. Why? Well probably cos the wikitrolls and wikimods use Google as a primary source. Extremely sad – but why you should NEVER use Wikipedia as a primary source. Ever. It has some rather glaring omissions/wrongness:

• No Frenchbloke & Son? Esp in Bootleg Albums – no Haggis Trax (1999 apparently, not 2002! Played on JOHN PEEL FFS)
• No Fondue Meltdown?
• No Soundhog?
• No Erol Alkan / Kurtis Rush?
• No Strictly Kev? No DJ Food?
• No Coldcut – they’re rather important re: mashups…Beats and Pieces was seminal as well as the KLF
• Your Woman by Whitetown as good as it is, is NOT a mashup. It has no recognisable 2nd ‘B’ element?
• No Cartel Communique – well Bastard is sort of mentioned…in passing, sad for this is the first ever mashup club, the one that influenced Bootie. So why is it passed over, with a small image credit?
• Soulwax created Blue Monday vs Kylie – really? LOL (it was actually Erol Alkan as Kurtis Rush, Soulwax remade it)
• No mention of how DJ Hero actually started at Bastard?
• Never ever heard of Bonna Music, Good Copy Bad Copy (self promo?), WTF is Glee doing there?, White Panda – WHO?, Max Tannone – ditto, never heard of you, Tom Caruana – ??? and Clayton Counts should probably not be there either – the latter was just doing it as a stunt like his rather sick ‘death’. ‘Punkmash’ != mash.
• Why is Girl Talk on there since he’s said he’s not a mashup artist?
• Love you ToTom but why is there a separate section for your work and GHP and Freelance Hellraiser doesn’t? Or Soundhog or Frenchbloke or Fondue Meltdown or…
• Ditto Legion of Doom – you’re a precursor cos you started doing mashups in 2004? Really? Err…

OTOH, nice to see Phil n’ Dog’s Doctor Pressure getting rather belated props…

As an aside, I heard from John that one of the editor of  an influential 70′s gay rights magazine added it to Wikipedia cos it wasn’t there – to be deleted by some Wikitroll. Why? Well apparently it ‘didn’t have enough Google hits’. *facepalm*

Of course! If  it isn’t on Google it doesn’t exist! I mean it’s not like there is a massive pre-history of the world that hasn’t been digitised yet…oh. And this is recent history that thinks mashups started in 2004/2005 – it’s far worse for say the history of Gay Rights and GLF. Distortion for personal gain of near and nearish history is very common.

Oh and response to those who’ll helpfully say: ‘why don’t you edit it then?’ – I did that for many years correcting the mistakes, they all get reverted back to wrong/self promo/recent stuff. So maybe you should have a go (enough people repeatedly doing it might get the message across). Go to it gang!

Other response might be: ‘who gives a fuck about history’ - well it’s a lucrative & powerful position to write it. Such gatekeepers get appearance fees, book deals and lazy journalists apply them with ‘expert’ status firming up their position and their ‘idea’ of history. It then gets written down as ‘the truth’ til many years later – if ever – someone actually bothers to question it, but by then the damage is done. But recent events have shown it’s worryingly about who shouts the loudest, who shouts longest, and public perception rather than any idea of truth (which I know is subjective, but to abandon any ideal of objective truth even if it is an impossible goal, but an important journey, is worrying).

And no I wasn’t adding Radio Clash – someone did that years ago and it stayed for a while*, ironically when I’d stopped playing purely mashups…more adding those who should be remembered and never were (part of the remit of Radio Clash and the mashup history series, it has to be said – must resurrect the Mashup History because otherwise this will be forgotten and people will think Glee invented mashups LOL).

*It then got removed as teh Wikitroll said apparently podcasts have nothing to do with mashups…okaaaay. Never reappeared on the podcasting page. Being one of the first (I lose count of whether I’m 2nd, 3rd or 4th – not bothered about the ranking, tbh) podcasts in the UK doesn’t count for much it seems

(click for larger)

Yup Radio Clash has made it onto Google Books via Spin, July 2005 I’m already sort of on there (2 pages) of my ‘Make a Mashup’ chapter of Podcasting Hacks.

Yay! Go me! The 15 minutes was so fleeting but at least it’s documented online…just call me “Tim” LOL.

(created with FAT’s great Google Tag script – love the ZEVS style one too)

Apparently Google has deleted entirely several music blogs entirely for infringement of copyright – even the ones that posted tracks with permission from the record label, artists or management.

I commented on this Guardian article, thought it bore repeating (and extending) here – shame the comments devolved into the sad ‘HANG EM COS THEY IS PIRATES’ rantage and many didn’t bother to actually READ the article.

Thing is, very few blogs nowadays post ‘illegal’ tracks. They get sent to them by pluggers and managers and even the artists themselves. If you have an email from the PR company saying ‘can you post this track?’ then why is it suddenly a) illegal and b) killing the music industry when the very industry is asking for blogs for free promotion?

This blog gets these ALL the time…I rarely ever post single tracks here, not ‘legal’ ones (mashups yes, but they almost never can be legal) but I still get deluged by these people. So I’ve expected to get hassle, never have in over 5 years (one polite request for a takedown from management – not a DMCA cos I’d just laugh), but I do self-host and use WordPress, which to be honest if you’re running a blog on Blogspot or Blogger you are a fool, and should at very least have daily backups for when a post get pulled, or crosspost to another backup blog. Also only 3 of the 100 top blogs run on Blogger – note that more than a 3rd use self-hosted blog software such as WordPress or Movable Type. No-one trusts free hosted blogs such as Blogger or Blogspot (or even WordPress.com) for precisely this reason…it’s not like we haven’t been here before (but a few posts is different to an entire blog).

I do feel like Tangina in Poltergeist saying to the poor spirits still using Google and other free hosted blogs – come into the light! Come into the light! Really self-hosting is the only way to go if you are serious about blogging, also it makes the DMCA process less automatic and harder – hosting companies won’t be able to pull individual posts – you’re a paying customer who they don’t want to lose so will usually ask you first unless it’s something criminally illegal (child porn, wares etc), you can backup easily, and can separate your domain from your host so you can setup elsewhere easily if you do get the site pulled – but that is rare because to be brutally honest record labels aren’t going to expend that sort of lawyer time and energy. especially when at the click of a button some untrained oik can file a DMCA request on a hosted site.

I DO think there should be more transparency in blogging…far too many veiled PR and re-cooked press releases and dodgy dealing behind those script fonts and pictures of zero-size models. I’d rather people said ‘yes this was officially sent to me’ than pretend to be guerilla and underground and oh-so-radical (and ironically get burned for it). It would reveal the double-standard of the industry so clearly – they WANT DJ whitelabels, they WANT mashups, they WANT podcasts to play their music, they WANT blogs to blog it…but then when the official spotlight comes on then they pretend they didn’t. It’s bullshit. I’ve had industry A&R peeps tell me they court unofficial remixes – why do you think they release acapellas and instrumentals?

Blogging is exactly the same…they want the underground niche cred and free promo…but don’t want to officially admit that, or blame their online/viral PR company. Hypocrites indeed.

With all of that said – Google shouldn’t get off the hook…they are being evil again (such a surprise). The bloggers were unwise but putting out DMCAs for people posting THEIR OWN music? Same thing happened with the YouTube debacle – Warners and other companies putting out DMCAs to their own acts who wanted to post the videos. Google does need to sort out some way of checking if the bloggers have permission, or at least act within their OWN guidelines and give the bloggers warning. Until then, I strongly advise anyone to avoid Blogger and Blogspot and boycott them.

And in other news, we can +5 Warners in the ‘Suckiest Stupidest Copywhore Record Company OF ALL TIME’ stakes (head and head with EMI, folks!) cos they just decided there’s no future in streaming music services like Spotify.

Either a) trying hard to not be in the charts later this year b) thus wanting to go bust due to more head-in-the-sand policies c) want to win the much envied Radio Clash SUCKAR award (it’s a standing golden statue of Gary Glitter and Lars from Metallica in a ***CENSORED*** position). Who knows.

Interesting what you read sometimes. Logic fight!

That YouTube Uk video pulling rights thing that starts tonight?

Yes it’s all YouTube’s fault, they are teh evil and deserve a quick thrashing:

The body, which represents music publishers, added: “Google has told us they are taking this step because they wish to pay significantly less than at present

oh not it isn’t, it’s PRS’s fault, they are teh evil and deserve a quick thrashing:

Mr Walker told BBC News the PRS was seeking a rise in fees “many, many factors” higher than the previous agreement.

Hmm they can’t BOTH be right can they? Whatever happens I’d not piss on either if they were on fire…PRS are evil and have cease and desisted me back in the day; YouTube pulls my videos. Die.

Really despite the articles online slanting against YouTube it does look like that old 1-2 ‘it’s shiny! it’s on t’internets! WAH I WANT MORE MONEY, FATHER!’ scam again. Looks like YouTube doesn’t want to play ball. Looks like I hate both of them.

There really is space for a decent video site with a lot more users that doesn’t attack it’s userbase – but then again bodies like PRS are the problem and not the ‘squish squish darling’ emotional ‘why don’t you think of the poor starving artists’ drama they make out. Very few artists make anything from their work, partly because of the byzantine and labyrinthine organisations like this wasting their money on playing one-upmanship games with YouTube, or pestering bloggers and mashup artists like that old wascal get-off-your-milk-and-drink-your-horse Web Sh3rrif. So the next one will have the same problems too, as people migrate, comes successful and like radio the industry tries to destroy it. Really we need to change the law to make modern-day copyright pedants like this history. They help no-one, least of all the artist.

Can you hear that Fergal?

Something I missed probably because I was either in deepest Shropshire or deepest Surrey…but the only ever London pirate tv station Network21 transmitted in 1986 just under ITV for a year in 1986…and the program was arts based and they lobbied (unsuccessfully, although nighttime TV and cable/satellite probably answered some of those needs) for community access to TV, and even got city funding…remember this is a time where Kiss was a successful pirate, it could have been possible.

Genesis P even pops up at some point, and Brion Gysin in this clip, along with EVP phenomena, Rolling Stones in drag, pop performances and Warhol’s Trash, amongst many. This is truly experimental, weird, funny, odd, dated, amazingly good and amazingly low-tech TV.

TV COULD have been like this, instead we get the shit that is X-Factor and Big Brother. Sigh.

Sadly it got raided on it’s first birthday.

(I would usually say thank you to Boing Boing for this, but weirdly their post about Mr Gysin doesn’t even mention the amazing and very interesting source of the video, which I tracked down after a short hunt. Like hello? Maybe Pirate TV grows on trees in Cory’s world? Or he can’t receive it up in his balloon )