…by way of GYBO and a lot of other mashup/bootleg peeps including interview with a lot of the US bootleggers!

Liam McGranahan’s dissertation “Mashnography: Creativity, Consumption, and Copyright in the Mashup Community” as part of his doctorate from Brown University is available here, a ‘mashnography’ study into the ethnography of the bootleg scene. BTW timbearland = me, before my ‘fingertrouble’ namechange (I’ve also been on GYBO as ‘beardie weirdie’, ‘timbearcub, ‘instamatic’, ‘DJNoNo’ and about a million aliases, just to confuse the historians and dissertation writers out there ).

Slightly surprised since it is a ethnographic study that focuses on GYBO as much as Bootie that there aren’t more interviews with some of us original 2002 GYBO crowd, or indeed McSleazy (we are all quoted from GYBO threads interestingly). Also could cause a few stirs re: quoted comments about some people’s love/hate of GYBO (4 comments? really Partyben? Although I suspect that said Eminem mix is the one DJNoNo purloined the ‘Lose Control’ acapella via LOL…) but a pretty interesting read – includes a lot of the mashup politics, internal schisms, aims and ideas – not really news totally to me, but then I live it don’t I?

Although I disagree with the analysis of one of my writings:

“timbearland: ‘I don’t think you’d find many people here having a problem
with what you’ve said. I mean I’ve even worked for Universal Music and I
agree with you. They seem to usually be one of the better ones, so unusual
if they are doing a Warners. Sony BMG seems best and most flexible,
EMI and Warners historically the worst. UMG are usually in the middle.’

It is possible that certain record companies are more permissive of mashups than others,
but there is no discernable pattern. Rather, major labels appear to issue C&D orders based
simply on what catches the notice of the legal department. This may be the result of
media attention, Internet buzz, the objections of a sampled artist, or just random luck.”

I KNOW this to be the case – but it’s the problem of quoting me during a conversation with my peers without past knowledge – I wouldn’t have re-stated the backstory to this info for the 50th time as a long-term GYBO person most people there have heard it before. I’ve spoken to someone within Sony BMG who confirmed that they send out white labels and promos with acapellas and promote DJ remixes as a sort of focus group – at least within the RnB division they did. I know other labels who’ve paid for white label mashups to be pressed. There is a double standard there – some of the labels DO court unofficial remixes and mashups, others don’t, or in the case of EMI put out a Mashed compilation whilst CD’ing most of the mashup community, without understanding the irony. Universal according to one of their staff are ‘pretty clueless’ about the technology and not really aware enough of the internet to start throwing C&Ds around (until NirGaGa that is).

Coupled with the fact that of all the official and unofficial C&Ds out there, they are all mostly EMI, then Warners close by, then Universal – the NirGaGa one being a rare one – and then Sony. In fact only issue I ever had with Sony was ContentID restricting countries that could see a video on YouTube…compared to a C&D I got from EMI for using Kylie (where I had to do what Pilchard did and ‘duck and dive’ for a while) – this is positively benign! Sony being big in the interactive world, owners of ACID and also having a lot of hiphop/RnB/disco remix culture via BMG seem to in small part get it -as much as evil mega corps ever really get it.

That said, next week I’ll probably get a C&D from Sony, LOL.

Self Portrait, originally uploaded by fingertrouble.

..but like Anthony Gormley says, I’m available (this is a euphemism for cheap whore when it comes to me, I am the cheapest model I know!)

This is an experiment with some new gear – Cactus Wireless triggers, which I really recommend, 10th of the price of Pocket Wizards which will set you back £400 (!!!) – I’d heard that the old ones (v2) were 7/10 reliable, whereas these v4 ones seem 9 or 10/10 reliable – only started to fail when the flashguns were getting tired, so it was the batteries…other gear is a Sekonic L-308s meter (it’s a little on the frisky side, light wise, but good) and I already had the two Vivitar 283′s from when I bought Fred (my Bronica SQ-Ai medium format camera, you can see it here http://www.flickr.com/photos/fingertrouble/3738490281/).

Another tip is to never throw out polystyrene boards – I was bouncing the light from the flashguns with some boards I found on the street, smart! Just to prove you don’t need a fancy studio to do this…

And this is note that I’ve created a new Flickr account for my ‘serious’ photography http://www.flickr.com/photos/fingertrouble/ – this is where my portraits and best work will live – I’ll keep the timbearcub account for personal stuff, Second Life and the like…I like to keep things tidy! Note I’ve updated the best-of too http://www.flickr.com/photos/fingertrouble/sets/72157621471979587/

Back to the music!

Oh did I point out how much I hate my face? Ok. Reasoning is, if I can make myself look beautiful or interesting, I’ve probably got a better chance with everyone else

A little voice inside my head said: “Don’t look back, you can never look back.”. Well actually it was Don Henley but in the case of The Asylum, home of the legendary Bastard, one the world’s first ever mashup nights (well that was King of the Boots, also run by Cartel Mike and Johnny, and might have been there too) in London back in 2001 or 2002 until 2006, it’s very true.

This was the club that was so underground (it wasn’t properly licensed!), grungey and accidentally hip, that not only did Chris Morris base the pisstake of the club in Nathan Barley on it, the owners went onto run the Macbeth in Hoxton, where one of them or their staff got into that whole Blake/Amy debacle.

It seems that The Asylum has been kidnapped by Laura Ashley, and forced to wear floral wallpaper, union jack underpants and Ye Olde tourist-trap trinkets. So sad.

History – right there. Or was…

(not pictured behind them is the Ye Olde fireplace, the patio chav-style windows at the end, the union jack chairs, the WI tea cups used as ice holders and the tablecloths. I shit you not. Go look at the pictures from upto 3 years ago and compare!)

After over 2 years (OMG has it been that long?) I’ve stopped the weekly DJ sets at the Parkade in Second Life.

No bad reason, no drama, just need to spend time on other stuff (like: finding work, career, photography). I’ll probably pop back time to time to DJ for the odd special set

I recorded the last set, at some point it’ll be here. Sad to leave ‘Cruise Control’ behind, but after 2 years it’s time to focus on career and paying gigs. I’m clamping down on creating free stuff, it’s great and all, but it doesn’t pay the bills – and the bills are the real problem at the moment.

To see some of the great times we had there, you can view the silliness here.

All you ever need for music, originally uploaded by timbearcub.

You don’t need anything else