Known about this for a long while but finally got a flyer etc: Bootie London! A one-off, with The Kleptones, A&D, the Bootie Berlin Mashia and DJ Payroll DJing at Cargo on the 9th April…I’ll be there, definitely. And am planning to meet up with A&D beforehand too. It’s interesting cos last time they were here I asked them if there would ever be a Bootie London – and got a coy response…and now they indeed return with a special Bootie London.

And it looks like most, if not all of the UK Mashuperati will be there…

Yes! A cutup/mashup related post! At last!

I’m really digging I Cut People atm – learnt of them via Skip to the End podcast (which learned of them via Mr Fab’s wonderful Music for Maniacs blog) and it’s a cross between Wayne Butane and Cassetteboy in my mind, with probably a little Negativland thrown in for good measure – all of which I love and have played on the podcast. So expect Parker Tapes style cutup merriment, mediabusting style attacks on culture, Hollywood and BUYBUYBUY attitude (as per the video above which is by I Cut People, the audio is by GITAR (i cut people and ellipse elkshow)) and various other audio anarchy.

Looks like I Cut People does a cutup album every year since 2005 – wow – all of which you can download for free or buy – and my favourites are mostly from the more recent albums such as March of the Monster Squads (purporting to be a film trailer for evil zombie Penguins meets Star Wars and phoney plastic Christian Slater LOL), Kung Fu What Would Jesus Do?, A Few Good Product Placements (YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE BACON!) and Merry Chris…Crisis which certainly is up there for Xmas-cutup merriment.

This video for GITAR’s ‘dead u r’ is not really worksafe nor for the squeamish but is very funny and good.

But where is the Potter’s Wheel?

(Those not in the UK/of a certain age might not get the Pages from Google ref. Yes TV stations here used to closedown with a ’selection’ of pages from Teletext – I miss 4-Tel. Fact fans: I once won a 4-Tel puzzle competition, I won some 4-Tel felt-tip colouring pens. WOO!.)

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.

Also I support them because they are fighting the likes of Apple and co. who are creating anti-competitive closed systems and thus being usually bad for the consumer (AppleVangelists and ‘Geniuses’ should read their rather damning revelation of the AppStore legals that Apple doesn’t want you to see – All Your Appz Belong To Uzz indeed) and fighting DMCA and ACTA which is probably behind the evil Digital Economy Bill, and fighting for free speech and net neutrality online.

Open Rights Group does a similar job but with a UK/European stance – there are things EFF can’t/won’t touch that are specifically UK (the aforementioned DEBill for example, ORG has been campaigning about that). It’s a double handed attack, because what may go down in the US could pop up here, and vice versa. They also cover CCTV and ID card and other security worries where technology is possibly going to infringe on civil liberties and privacy – things that are more specific to the UK.

Pirate Party is also getting bigger here in the UK, I’m a member there too, although not been as involved as I’d like.

So whether you’re a mashup DJ, video remixer, developer, interactive artist, musician, web designer or just concerned about security and the (mis)use of technology and laws around it, I strongly recommend punting some money and support over to EFF and ORG, amongst many others…because they really are fighting for the digital freedoms you currently enjoy.

/soapbox out.

Genius, especially the end…I think as with Brown here, Clinton and Obama we expect the New Labour/Left wing/Democrats to ‘do the right thing’ with copyright and the internet (I’m reminded of my MP Glenda Jackson here – she’s really good and a socialist – apart from copyright; she seems to be siding with the powerful Hollywood lobby as an (ex?) actress) but as we’re experiencing with the Blairite Queen Mandelson and co. and ACTA it’s far from the truth. Not to say y’all should become right-wing gun-totin’ Republicans, but it’s a point of making ourselves heard to our representatives whatever their party…because whatever ‘label’ they have they do have to serve us – and sometimes you might be surprised.

And if we get a hung or *deep breath* Conservative parliament (touches wood, crosses self, etc.) we’re going to have to build bridges with these people, and explain why the Digital Economy Bill is not good for their blessed ‘free’ market at all, neither is ACTA, 3 strikes or any of that – actually the reverse.

via BoingBoing.

I wasn’t going to post the video from those treadmill-botherers OK Go for the HEATH ROBINSON (Rube who? Heath invented the idea before Rube, guys machine video for ‘This Too Shall Pass’ as everyone is embedding it all over the place.

But that’s exactly it – if EMI had their way, you probably wouldn’t have seen it. Bloggers et al wouldn’t have been able to embed it, and OK Go wouldn’t have had this viral hit on their hands. See the State Farm plugs during the video and the end? They sponsored the video so it could be embedded. Nice bit of advertising for them (6 million views on YouTube already) but a reflection of how crazy the industry is and how silly EMI are about embedding even though one of their acts depends on it for their lifeblood and marketing.

As Damian from OK Go wrote in the NY Times last month:

Now we’ve released a new album and a couple of new videos. But the fans and bloggers who helped spread “Here It Goes Again” across the Internet can no longer do what they did before, because our record company has blocked them from embedding our video on their sites. Believe it or not, in the four years since our treadmill dance got such attention, YouTube and EMI have actually made it harder to share our videos…

Embedded videos — those hosted by YouTube but streamed on blogs and other Web sites — don’t generate any revenue for record companies, so EMI disabled the embedding feature. Now we can’t post the YouTube versions of our videos on our own site, nor can our fans post them on theirs. If you want to watch them, you have to do so on YouTube.

But this isn’t how the Internet works. Viral content doesn’t spread just from primary sources like YouTube or Flickr. Blogs, Web sites and video aggregators serve as cultural curators, daily collecting the items that will interest their audiences the most. By ignoring the power of these tastemakers, our record company is cutting off its nose to spite its face.

The numbers are shocking: When EMI disabled the embedding feature, views of our treadmill video dropped 90 percent, from about 10,000 per day to just over 1,000. Our last royalty statement from the label, which covered six months of streams, shows a whopping $27.77 credit to our account.

Clearly the embedding restriction is bad news for our band, but is it worth it for EMI? The terms of YouTube’s deals with record companies aren’t public, but news reports say that the labels receive $.004 to $.008 per stream, so the most EMI could have grossed for the streams in question is a little over $5,400…

In these tight times, it’s no surprise that EMI is trying to wring revenue out of everything we make, including our videos. But it needs to recognize the basic mechanics of the Internet. Curbing the viral spread of videos isn’t benefiting the company’s bottom line, or the music it’s there to support. The sooner record companies realize this, the better — though I fear it may already be too late.

Quite a damning piece from one of their bigger and more visible stars, really. EMI as we know has been swimming on the sea lost for some time, really needs to get a clue re: video embedding, social media and mashups and out of it’s short-term mindset if it wants to improve it’s lot. Otherwise talented people like Damian and OK Go will go elsewhere (I suspect people are already wary of EMI, causing the situation with Terra Firma, as rats leave the sinking ship).

Contrast this with Universal which recently gave it’s blessing to Pheugoo’s Lady Gaga mashup.

70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L'Ogre on Vimeo.

A reader(listener?) suggested this video to me, suggested the video was like a mashup…I’m a sucker for well made videos (although the hype around the OK Go one means I haven’t posted it) but this is a new band Hold Your Horses! and their amazing video for ‘70 Million’ using a massive collection of artworks for their guide. Must’ve taken ages – and if you’re tired of remembering your Van Gogh from your Vermeer the list is here.

I don’t think it’s a mashup though…;-) To mashup would take the paintings and change them, rather than copy them in a different format, closer to a cover…still really clever though. It got me at the Raft of the Medusa, brilliant idea for a chorus!

And here as posted on Boing Boing and other places how they deal with a Section 44 stop and search – politely, firmly, funnily and also with love…but also with all their rights intact. Shame the police haven’t been so respectful in recent shocking cases of art-school students being arrested,  forcefully detained and fined for taking pictures of buildings for their work, journalists being stopped for taking pictures of the Gherkin, filmmakers getting detained for filming their partner’s questioning on a mobile and a man getting arrested for filming Christmas.

More about The Love Police, and the disturbing State of the Nation in Britain which is getting more and more like V for Vendetta and 1984 for my liking. Sadly the ending cuts out but you get the drift.

Chasing Shadows from Charles Veitch on Vimeo.

And remember: don’t be afraid, humour is the best Weapon of Mass Destruction And resist. Nicely.

Sad news I heard via the radio today about the suicide of Mark Linkous aka Sparklehorse. Maybe not a name/band you know of, but Good Morning Spider and later Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot were an important part of my life in the late 90’s. It’s a cliche to say ‘got me through some bad times’ but yes, his music did at a time when really most UK music sucked and I felt little if at all about it…So I got into Sparklehorse, Grandaddy, Radiohead, Super Furries, Flaming Lips et al, as well as a less serious diet of speed garage and drum and bass! But it was Sparklehorse and Grandaddy’s music I’d come back to if I needed someone that expressed that particular confused/down/mid-late 20’s state of mind, where you have the long post-University come-down and realise real life is much harder, and the dreams you had might not be possible. Also wrapped up in that would be coming out and painfully falling in love for the first time…

‘Cause everything beautiful is far away’ ‘I just want to be a happy man’ ‘I’m so sick of goodbyes’ ‘There`s one thing we still got, This one last dance in this parking lot, Oh yeah, I got a heart of darkness’ ‘Summer here kids! Summer here really lies’.

And this comes a few months from the suicide of Vic Chesnutt who with Dangermouse and Mark Linkous worked on the now-to-be-released ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ which last year was embroiled in EMI politics/legals. Sad they didn’t actually get to hear it released while they were alive. Here’s a track off it – certainly was well rotated in my iPod last year when the tracks ‘leaked’ – Mark co-wrote and produced all the tracks and appeared on several, as did Vic, it is a truly collaborative work – the cynical (me!) would say that it’s interesting EMI sorted out their legal problems just as the eagerly awaited and much praised Broken Bells album is released. Hmm.

Here’s The Flaming Lips with Sparklehorse and Danger Mouse with ‘Revenge’ – a beautiful track:

And finally a track off his first LP:

And one that became an anthem of mine – Happy Man (not sure where I heard this – I think it’s a bonus hidden track on Good Morning Spider? Certainly didn’t buy the EP)

I hope now indeed you are a happy man, Mark. RIP.