Antavio Johnson is in jail. And his mouth is shut. If you knew him, you'd be unsurprised by the former, but baffled by the latter. Because while Antavio's the type of guy you'd expect to find doing time, he isn't wont to be very quiet. For now, at least, he's got no choice.

Several years ago, Antavio Johnson—known street-side by the hip-hop moniker T.O.—released a song entitled "Kill a Cop One Day." Its message is straightforward. Its title provides proper summary.

The sentiment surely isn't novel; Ice T's rap-rock crossover band, Body Count, famously released "Cop Killa" in 1992, much to funders' chagrin. But Antavio went much further. Not just rapping abstractly about killing cops, he rapped definitively about killing specific cops. He named them and included demands: free his friend "Chico," leave him alone. If not, one day…

By an odd twist of statutory fate, Florida had legislation to fit the bill. Convicted of threatening harm against public servants with the intent to influence their official activities, he was handed a two year stint. Though First Amendment scholars barked protestation, the judgment seemed to fit the facts. (If lyrics were protected without exception, conspirators could evade guilt simply by scheming in rhyme.)

Such outcomes should be flattering, really. Rappers tout gangster cred, with the hope they'll be believed. True-to-life hardness is a virtue in the streetwise world of gangsta rap, and Florida police believed Antavio.

His chapter is one-of-a-kind, but part of a larger story, one of artists finding themselves unluckily convincing: too legit to acquit. It's an odd conundrum. Artists carefully construct public personas and seek legitimacy. But in court, sometimes, their only defense is phoniness.

By then, of course, it's usually too late.

In April of 2002, L.A.P.D. officers came upon a man wandering the midday streets. He was naked, covered in blood, and babbling incoherently, with raw meat dangling from his goatee. It was the beginning of the end for a rapper called Big Lurch (née Antron Singleton), and the first step in a self-fulfilling prophecy of biblical irony.

By 8:30 that morning, Antron was already amped on PCP, visiting a female friend, and seeking sexual favors. As you'd guess, things didn't go as planned (certainly not for her).

Though difficult to precisely divine, basic facts are rather clear. Lurch became enraged and stabbed his uncooperative companion. With "angeldust" presumably at the helm, he reached into her freshly lacerated abdomen (possibly while she was still alive), removed a few inner bits, and took a bite or two.

After hastily cleaning the scene, he bolted out the back, and was soon spotted by police.

Amidst an already gruesome trial, Black Market Records released Lurch's debut album, "It's All Bad." His lyrics contained expectable gangland posturing. And much more.

In one surprisingly catchy song, Big Lurch openly endorsed cannibalism. He compared himself to slasher flick villains, vampires, animals, and serial killers, ending verse and chorus with bizarrely appropriate warnings: "If you wake up in a puddle of blood . . . I did it to you." (The latter half supplies the song's title.)

Though not always poetic, Lurch's lyrics are certainly believable—he actually lived them—and YouTubers' comments display an oddly understandable admiration for such legitimacy. "[M]uch respect to mothafuckin Big Lurch," said one, "even if it is some bad unfortunate shit."

At trial, however, believability and respect were the last things he wanted. Big Lurch's YouTube admirers represent us all, to some extent. Something's oddly transfixing about criminality; through adulation we ourselves become "criminals once removed, intimations of crime without the thing itself," in the words of writer John Leland. In fact, long before T.O. and Big Lurch sought stardom through outlawdom, musical fascination with creative goons was long established.

In Georgian England, best-selling popular songs weren't just penned by criminals, but "written by the wretched culprit the night previous to his execution."

American blues artists' sordid lives also met marketplace demand. None illustrate the phenomenon quite like Huddie Ledbetter, known professionally as "Lead Belly."

Huddie's big break came in 1933, during the third of ten years at Angola prison—where he'd earlier gained freedom, well into a thirty-year sentence for murder, by serenading Texan governor Pat Neff—when folklorist/musicologist John Lomax heard in Leadbelly's hardened wail the potential for monetary success. He was right, and a second governor freed the convicted crooner once more.

Spotlighted and unshackled, Huddie himself sought the straight and narrow. But career advisors kept his image illicit, limiting his repertoire to chain-gang melodies, ensuring he donned only prisoners' garb publicly (Huddie preferred dapperness), and even fabricating quotes of crimes past. Noncriminal tendencies worried Lomax, who believed them counter to Lead Belly's "money value." "[H]e will lose his charm," complained Lomax tellingly, and become "ordinary."

Lead Belly's life underlies the unfortunate fates of T.O. and Big Lurch. Because legitimacy sells, it's actively incubated, exaggerated, and fabricated. Artists like Lead Belly—sometimes entire genres—imbue themselves in dastardliness and become slaves to others' expectations. Thus, as Leland observes, they are, in the end, "not in control of their own myth."

But with such impressive profit within reach, losing control mightn't seem that bad.

So the cycle continues, even in the oddest of places.

Gloomy Norwegian winters (springs, summers, and falls, too) produce artistic outlandishness and brutish competition for legitimacy that equals, perhaps outdoes, that in the U.S.

But Norwegian bad guys don't rap, sing the blues, or claim street allegiance. They play "extreme metal". And they worship Satan.

Between 1992 and 1996 over fifty of Norway's oldest wooden churches burned (some to the ground). At least three people died violently; two knifed feverishly without provocation. As media inquiries and official investigations revealed, local "Black Metal" artists weren't merely singing satanic praises, they were living them too.

When a Tolkein-toting 21-year-old musician, "Varg" Vikernes (also known as Count Grishnackh), went to prison in 1994 for church arson and murder—after bragging via newspaper and documenting his handiwork (i.e. smoldering church ruins) on album sleeves—public obsession was unavoidable. The bar was set for competitors to play along.

Soon thereafter nearly all "the major Norwegian Black Metal bands were [on] hiatus, their key members facing prison sentences for arson, grave desecration, and murder."

In years to follow, hate peddlers like Mayhem, Burzum, Emperor, and others, segued their onetime miniscule genre into an international mass. Like John Lomax observed with Lead Belly's successes, taboo proclivities can be commercial endeavors to the last.

But when Black Metal antics began resembling "a show [or] a scary bit of theater," wars of words erupted between bands. Accusations of farce met boasts of legitimacy; action was the only proof.

Soon Germans and Swedes produced violence of their own. By 2005, Norway's satanic majesty, Gaahl, allegedly "tortured [one] victim for six hours while collecting his blood into a cup," singing pretty Norwegian lullabies as he worked. Un-coincidentally, Gaahl's band's name, Gorgoroth, literally means "terror."

Like Varg before, he soon faced such sentiments in court.

Thus the question asks itself: to what extent can artists' self-perpetuated myth be used as fodder when, whilst under the heat, they seek it buried once and for all?

Antron Singleton was none too happy to hear "I Did It to You" discussed at the bar. But arguing intoxication deprived him of requisite intent, Big Lurch invited prosecutorial retort and lyrical examination. The government's "drug recognition expert" opined that substances were not to blame; Lurch was plainly keen on gore and more before voluntarily downing PCP. And as investigating officers observed, the lyrics sounded like "a blueprint for the crime."

Varg's grandiloquent media blitz also surfaced as evidence at trial. He too contested, asserting he'd lied about razing churches, seeking P.R. for musical products. But impossibly intimate knowledge, like that of decapitated rabbit carcasses found by authorities on church steps (which were never publicized), forced opposite conclusions. In blaming conspiratorial intermeddling by Jews and Freemasons, his credibility wore thinner.

Others have tried keeping hard-earned reputations out of court, and been equally unsuccessful. Several quick examples suffice.

When rapper Project Pat, facing weapons charges, claimed he didn't even like guns, much less own any, inquiry into songs he'd written extolling their many uses and virtues was held fair game. And as a self-described "gangsta rapper," Pat couldn't prevent prosecutors from repeating the phrase themselves, even if it was, perhaps, prejudicial.

Mac the Camouflage Assassin, on trial for murder, argued that government lawyers couldn't use his stage name during opening and closing statements, nor recite lyrics he'd penned, like "murder, murder, kill, kill." But the words weren't offered as "evidence," and, with or without them, held the court, Mac was clearly guilty.

Though facts and rulings vary per situation, they have much in common. Artists clearly define themselves through lyrics, personality, and public posture.

They simultaneously (though unintentionally) define themselves legally, too.

Antavio Johnson's conviction was an oddity.

When "Kill a Cop One Day" reached City Hall and investigators pinpointed its author, Antavio was already in jail, incarcerated for entirely unrelated reasons and facing rather steep punishment. Pleading guilty to corruption of public officials arguably retrieved lesser reprisal than he'd otherwise warranted.

So unlike comrades discussed above, his lyrical claims served him well, earning P.R., demonstrating legitimacy, and getting the better of the bargain in the process. Normally, of course, artists aren't so lucky.

Antavio is an exception to a very simple rule that can be succinctly stated. Fringe musicians choosing to benefit—monetarily and reputationally—from eviler-than-life appearances, can't simply backtrack when convenience calls. "Just kidding" won't suffice in courts of law. Convicted gangsta rappers like Mac and Pat provide examples.

In short, you can't have your bullets and shoot them too.

Artists understandably want it both ways. They desire success and the freedom to enjoy it, to satiate crowds, but to please themselves as well.

In providing access to villainous "otherness," becoming the people we want to be but are afraid to become (to paraphrase Robert Warshow), Big Lurch, Count Grishnackh, Lead Belly and friends, cede their world, and their fate, to us, to consumers. John Leland noted that the outlaw's mystique "owes its currency to the public." Lomax knew it, and fought to keep Lead Belly in line. Gaahl saw it too. "You cannot put down your sword," he said. "Because then you lose."

Juries, it turns out, and judges, are cross-sections of that same public. Those who condone are, on a macro level, the same as those who condemn.

So once Black Metal murderers and gangbanging rappers win us over, convince us of their legitimacy, they've already, in way, presaged their own impending doom.

But that, of course, seems only appropriate.



Re-Compress ...

Each Christmas, while schoolmates' heads were filled with elves and reindeer, sugarplums and action figures, all I could think about were raisins—juicy, plump, talking, singing raisins. They had hit songs, platinum records, and an all-star lineup fronted by Buddy Miles (Hendrix's old drummer). To this day, the California Raisins' Christmas special was, is, and forever will be, hands down, the best long-form music video ever.

If not careful, however, someone might've ended up with the wrong raisins. Cartoonist Cory Van Rijn's "Raisin People," also comprised of nubby little wrinkled bodies with awkwardly wirey appendages, came first. Rijn was none too happy with the competition, but had no recourse. Humanized raisins, as a concept, aren't protectible by copyright or trademark; there just aren't enough ways to animate dried fruit.

Yet multiple dancing raisins could certainly be confusing. When Alvin and The Chipmunks' former employee started making his own Christmas albums for "The Happy Chipmunks," unwitting parents could've thought they had one thing, but come home with another. Through such confusion, confusers prosper. (The court, by the way, enjoined the dupes.)

In line with holiday spirit, I felt an urge to clear up a little consumer confusion, but not regarding stop-motion fruit or pitch-shifted rodents. The industry itself, in which Buddy Miles, Alvin and Simon, and all the others made their marks, confuses us now more than ever. It's a popular topic among filmmakers and authors, but what they've provided are often doctored and derivative histories, leading readers to believe they've got one thing (expansiveness), when really they've got another (narrow-mindedness).

Two works of music history, more than most anything else, are the "real thing." They're the California Raisins (not the Raisin People); they're the Chipmunks (not the Happy Chipmunks). They present history without misleading; they provide clarification, not confusion. Precisely for this reason, they're widely praised, not just by reviewers and academics, but Pete Seeger, ASCAP, the late John Lennon, and many more.

Sure, it's possible some people preferred the Happy Chipmunks. But most won't willingly pay for second-best.

Neither should you.

Originally broadcast between 1976 and 1980 on the ever-lauded BBC, Tony Palmer's seventeen-episode series, "All You Need is Love: The Story of Popular Music" (recently re-released on DVD) is a "real Raisin."

Personal interviews with the most impressive assemblage of interviewees and live-in-the-studio performances by an unmatched assortment of musicians replace traditional narration: from Tin Pan Alley greats like Irving Caesar and E.Y. Harburg, to Bo Diddley, Bill Graham, Sam Phillips, Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Phil Spector, John Hammond, Lester Bangs, Minnie Pearl, Barry Gordy, Eric Burden, Cab Calloway, Cal Perkins, Paul and John…the complete list could fill a hard-drive.

Utilizing unique personalities and perspectives from some of the industry's most-revered experts (blues historian Paul Oliver, music business oracle Russell Sanjek), "All You Need is Love" has long been acclaimed for its scholarship, directness, and comprehensiveness.

But personal touches are its strength. Muddy Waters responds poignantly to exploitation by whites ("I made him a millionaire, but he made me a man"); Jerry Lee Lewis speaks candidly about losing his career to disapproved love; Artie Shaw talks of leaving his "Lower East Side existence" for a life he "hasn't yet become accustomed to" and an audience who "wanted more than [he] was prepared to give."

Rock n' roll doesn't debut until episode thirteen; the majority of the series chronicles popular music's beginnings and endurance, with on-location filming. Cameramen and camerawomen visited African savannahs that birthed banjos and blues; Missouri's Ozarks, where original colonial music—crafted from English and Irish folk songs—are preserved and performed; and Black Oak Arkansas's self-sufficient, family-driven southern compound. They sat in the studio with an utterly intoxicated Keith Moon (flubbing every line), and at the piano next to ragtime legend Eubie Banks and "Stardust" songwriter Hoagy Carmichael. They did a lot more.

Palmer admittedly made some questionable editing decisions, excluding the burgeoning punk movement at the expense of "glitter," for example. And the show focuses (it seems) on males more than females, blatantly prefers Jerry Lee to Elvis, and re-emphasizes whites' exploitation of black expression at every turn. These choices, even if angering to some, might simply be characterized as "historical honesty."

It's important to acknowledge such kinks, but also to cherish its contributions.

Like anything, it's not a one-stop shop. Proper balance is needed, as always.

If Palmer's expansive project is a California Raisin, Richard Crawford's "America's Musical Life: A History" must be a Chipmunk. Equally (if not more) informative, it's less colloquial and has greater focus, not so much entertainment but unadulterated knowledge. Entertaining, however, it is too.

Beginning, appropriately enough, in the beginning, with Native American singing (which baffled European explorers accustomed to age-old musical scales), the book follows religious music—like "psalmody" and "hymnody"—through the broadside ballads of the American Revolution, the rise of music schools and public concerts to Tin Pan Alley and jazz, Gershwin and Schoenberg, R & B, soul, funk, ad infinitum.

Dividing American music into "traditional," "classical," and "popular" disciplines, this 900-page work elucidates nearly every name, place, thing, or idea that shaped the country's unique musical legacy. (Rock n' roll pops up on page 714.)

A thorough researcher, Crawford seems to know it all, even obscurities like the first white man to play the banjo (Joel Sweeney, in the early 1800s). He notes the first American music publisher (Andrew Reinagle, in the 1780s), the first musician to "realize capital from musical work" (Lowell Mason, early 1800s), the first mammothly successful concert tour (Jenny Lind's in the mid-1800s), the first recognized "hit song" ("After the Ball," by Charles K. Harris, which sold over a million copies of sheet music in the 1890s), and many, many more firsts, seconds, and thirds. Chances are, you've never heard of most of them.

Into the twentieth century, stories are more familiar, names more recognizable, but Crawford's narratives and anecdotes treat common topics with added character and charm. Crawford focuses on the lives and careers of those who made American music what it has come to represent, stopping to analyze musical formats, compositions, and approaches, as well as industry practices and economic realities, while he coasts.

Weaving the stories into a cohesive history, he properly presents movements as pieces of a greater musical tradition. His gist smoothly shifts from Pee Wee King's whitewashed country twang to mid-twentieth century black Gospel, flowering among Chicago's south side under the tutelage of Thomas A. Dorsey, "The Father of Gospel."

Through his expansiveness, other attempts are all but obsolete. Russell Sanjek's three-volume "American Popular Music and Its Business" might surpass Crawford's attention to detail, but requires more than 1,700 pages to do so. (I highly recommend it, if you have the time and patience.)

No doubt, Crawford and Palmer, taken together, provide the necessities, and most of the specificities, for understanding American music throughout history and today.

What Palmer and Crawford provide is awareness and expertise. And this matters. Because consumer confusion is intimately tied to consumer sophistication; if we know what we're looking for, likelihood of mistake is minimized.

It's that simple. To avoid mistakenly buying Raisin People, not California Raisins, Happy Chipmunks, not Alvin and crew, you simply need to know the difference.

In the world of music coverage, the difference should be obvious. What makes Palmer's and Crawford's efforts so legit, is their simply stated goals. They are, first and foremost, stories of music, not intended to change our world according to one person's specific, individual vision of how music should be made.

For them, history isn't a tool, an argument meant to convince the world of copyrights' evils or downloaders' malice. It's a means and an end. Because modern music and its industry, like all else, is the sum of what it has been.

Downloading may have changed our world, but it was nothing compared to the birth of radio, miraculously beaming music directly into formerly unconnected homes (the internet is merely an extension of this concept). Andrew Reinagle's newfangled music publishing was indescribably momentous, Americans now physically holding pieces of music in their hands for the very first time. Today, touchable music seems out-of-date.

It's all interrelated, part of a longstanding cycle that Tony Palmer and Richard Crawford painstakingly traced for your benefit, and for mine.

If you know someone who loves music and cares about its future, help them to see its past. Don't confuse them with derivations and intentional alterations. Don't feed them pointed, directed histories. Give them the real thing.

As a kid, I'd have been pissed off if someone got me Raisin People or Happy Chipmunks. Of course, I'd have known the difference.

You should too.

Re-Compress ...

Why Stetsasonic's 1988 single, "All That Jazz," is rarely cited or discussed is a mystery. Its Wikipedia entry is uncannily sparse. Google searches return nothing but ring tones, lyrics, and (presumably illegal) "free mp3s." Perhaps the reference is just too obvious? That seems unlikely.

Three years before the Southern District of New York skeptically heard Biz Markie's formal defense of unlicensed sampling (and rendered its famously biblical decree, "thou shalt not steal"), Stetsasonic addressed the virtues of the practice in song. "James Brown was old," they said, out of style until "Eric and Rakim came out with 'I Got Soul,' [bringing] back old [music] people could've forgot." Not thieves, they're artists, historians, and curators at once.

Modern legal scholars seem keen on Stetsasonic's arguments. Sampling recycles music in new ways, creating entirely new, innovative artistic works, and reintroducing outdated artists to new generations. Girl Talk and the flowering of hip-hop are universally cited as proof.

These arguments make sense, and they seem sound. But they're not. Sampled artists are rarely resurrected, despite the gospel's predictions. "All That Jazz," for example, was built on an obscure funk sample: Banbarra's 1975 record, "Shack Up." The song didn't bring them back, though Stetsasonic claimed it should. Banbarra were forgotten anyway.

In this, they are not alone. Like all bands, they're part of a greater story. Commentators spend so much time idealizing the culture of the underdog sampler (like Girl Talk), they've overlooked the culture of the underdog samplee (like Banbarra). This is that story, the untold story of the drummer's beat and Banbarra's forgotten brethren. Of which there are many.

The least (perhaps the most) we can do now, is talk about them. So that's exactly what I'll do.

"Dance to the Drummer's Beat" is not what you'd call a "hit record." Though it sold perhaps 100,000 copies when first released in 1978, today it's an obscurity. It has left no visible mark on music, culture, or history. But it certainly left an audible one.

"The Drummer's Beat" provided rhythmic samples for over forty tracks, beginning in the late 1980s, including those by UTFO, 2 Live Crew, N.W.A, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Run-D.M.C., C+C Music Factory, Public Enemy, DJ Shadow, Fat Joe, the immutable Michael Jackson, and many more.

Herman Kelly, the song's creator, is currently broke, broken, and forgotten, living in Detroit.

Since at least 1991, Herman has kept alive an unprecedented legal effort, suing numerous publishers, labels, and artists (including the early '90s duo 2 Hyped Brothers and a Dog), for copyright infringement. Few musicians appear in court as often. But fewer have such dreadful track records.

See, Herman sucks at litigating.

Not a single case decided by a court of law has ended in his favor. It's entirely his own fault, too. Always appearing "pro se," he tends to ditch scheduled conferences. He presents incomplete legal accusations, and has a penchant for formality disasters; he once whited-out parts of a trial memo so he could use it again in another jurisdiction (look up "res judicata" if you need to). L.L. Cool J's "Mama Said Knock You Out" didn't sample Herman, though he sued L.L., claiming it did, in three nearly identical cases. On multiple occasions he sued defendants holding legitimate licenses.

So if Herman suffers from injustice, it's by his own hand. Legally speaking, that is.

Injustice comes in many forms, however.

When legal scholars and popular commentators speak of sampling, they do so in very specific manners and with specific implications, pushing Stetsasonic's argument by highlighting independent re-mixers with overflowing ingenuity but whose livelihoods are unjustly jeopardized by legal action, like SilviaO, Negativland, Dangermouse, most hip-hop pioneers, and, as always, Girl Talk.

Absurd music company litigation provides extra kindling, of course, like Universal suing the family of an eighteen-month old boy when they posted him dancing to Prince on YouTube, or Bridgeport Music, owner of many George Clinton-related compositions, flaying the industry with hundreds of complaints at once.

An overly litigious music industry is an off-putting thing, and in that way, the Banbarras and Herman Kellies of the world are no different than Bridgeport and Universal, seeking monetary compensation through (sometimes pointless) litigation.

(David Batiste and the Gladiators, a New Orleans funk band, sued P.M. Dawn. South African band Henry Ate, through their music publisher, sued Lil' John. Cymande, a 1970s British funk group, sued the Fugees. The Honey Drippers' publisher sued Run D.M.C. Smokey Johnson and Syl Johnson sued Silkk and Cypress Hill.)

A decent chunk of these suits are frivolous. But the plaintiffs' roster brings Stetsasonic's broken promises to mind. Samples were alleged to help those sampled, to "bring them back." Yet these artists are mostly known only to people who only know them mostly as samples. That's exactly the opposite of how "All That Jazz" said it would go down.

Should we be surprised? No.

Stetsasonic's claim that "sampling benefits the samples" is a nice theory, but a bit like Reaganomics. Drizzle some fame on samplers, and it "trickles down" to sampled masses below. That never works. Celebrity is hoarded by the upper echelon, and—as with Reaganomics—nothing of substance ever reaches the intended recipients.

Hip-hop historian Greg Tate calls sampling—perhaps the entire rap genre—a form of "ancestor worship." Colleagues agree, it's "a vehicle to recover, reclaim, and pay homage to earlier DJs, recording engineers, and African-American performers" (just like Stetsasonic said).

But ancestor worship isn't about using the past for our own purposes. It's about benefiting others, working to "ensure the ancestors' continued well-being and positive disposition."

In the ancient Levant, families would literally preserve the skulls of deceased kin, plaster on fake faces (using seashells for eyes), decorate them, and then display the heads in their homes. Egyptians took ancestral veneration to cultic extremes: families with proper means ritually provided necessities and set up fully-stocked, lavish dining tables for famished corpses. Even nearby statues remained well fed.

The "ancestor worship" analogy is weak at best. Unlike families living amid continual reminders, obscure and un-credited samples keep forebears out of sight. And while mummies slept beside a glutton's dream, samplers make no similar provisions today.

In 1996, when the Fugees released "The Score," their sextuple-platinum sophomore album, they had no intent on letting anyone—neither Cymande, who they sampled, nor the listening public—know where the beats and melodies originated. For over ten years thereafter, the Fugees and their label actively sought to suppress Cymande's legal bout for undeniably deserved acknowledgement.

That's more like "ancestor abuse" than anything else.

Never receiving credit for creative contributions is one thing. And it's bad. But losing control of artistry altogether is worse.

Much time is spent discussing the artistic visions and transformative contributions of "remix culture." Theirs is an act of defiance, taking "somebody else's expression of reality"—in the words of KRS-1—"mutilating it" and giving it back. It's like a higher calling.

This rings true to many, because making music isn't just for fun or money. It's a purpose. John Coltrane, timeless innovator and godfather of "cool," speaks for anyone who's ever created anything artsy: "it's a spiritual expression of what I am—my faith, my knowledge, my being."

Better yet, it's a chance to "speak to listeners' souls."

Throughout history, artists have sought to express themselves in carefully crafted ways. For this reason, they've gasped at loss of control. Girltalk wants his music to be understood, appreciated, and legitimated "as is." What's so odd about his samples wanting the same thing?

Jaron Lanier—pioneering technological guru, "father of virtual reality," and proud musical composer—certainly does. Making music, he writes, is about artist and listener having "a chance at a connection." So when third parties plug the result into some "compound product" without consideration for his artistic motives, it deprives him—never mind the masher—of his chance to reach an audience with his own voice. Heart and soul become bit and byte; "it is no longer an expression of [his] life."

Fifteenth century composer Josquin des Prez pleaded for musicians not to alter his scores. In the 17th century, Miguel de Cervantes killed Don Quixote rather than have him "re-mixed," after an illicit Quixote sequel surfaced in Tarragona. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle knocked-off Sherlock Holmes for precisely the same reason.

Everyone runs into problems, both samplers and samplees, hoping to reach audiences with their own, unique voices. And that's not really an economic concern. It's an artistic one.

Oddly, they're alike in that way.

The story of "The Drummer's Beat" isn't a conclusion on its own. If anything, it's a counterpoint, a necessary balance to trumped-up claims of salvation through sampling. When dealing with mash-ups, re-mixes, crowd-sourcing, the whole "2.0" thing, people tend to get carried away. Commentators—particularly of the legal variety—polarize and pick a side.

One noticeably heated reply came from William Patry, well known legal scholar and copyright expert. In his recent book, "Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars," Patry sought to illustrate how corporations utilize hyperbolic moral accusations to ensure public sympathy, by using words like "pirate," for example. But he was comically unable to stop from doing exactly what he condemned in others. Bad guys don't just get carried away with analogies, he writes: "In their religious zeal to claim every tot and tittle of culture, copyright dwarves can see no further than their own megalomania, impoverishing all of us in the process." I counted the overblown metaphors in that sentence, and I recommend you do the same.

Stetsasonic's discussion back in 1988 was necessary. With a new genre gaining public appeal, soon to overtake popular culture, their place in music history—including "All That Jazz" and its message—was irreplaceable. But with twenty years' hindsight and new sample-based musical stylings filling iPods worldwide, what we need isn't vehemence. It's honesty.

Sampling doesn't boost obscure funksters' careers, especially when they're never given credit. The story is more complicated than big corporations suing indie geniuses. It's not about "ancestor worship," either. And while unrestrained borrowing may give 2.0 artists freedom to create, it doesn't honor everyone's artistic intentions.

There are positives to the spike in re-mix culture, and there are negatives, just like everything else. Emotional pleas drive idealistic movements and ensure book sales. But they do nothing for real, living people, like Herman Kelly, who know first hand how ideals fall short.

Sure, making sense of the future (personally) can be done theoretically.

But making the best of it (collectively) requires objectivity.


Re-Compress ...

Philosopher and scientific revolutionary Robert Hooke knew the potency of music. Soothing music soothes people, he observed, while conflicting, inharmonic music accomplishes quite the opposite. In Denmark, it was said, court musicians' dissonant melodies once launched their king into a violent, murderous rage. Only when "soft, mild and effeminate" music resumed was the King "reduced to himself again."

No wonder the "tri-tone" musical interval—now common in atonal compositions and horror movie accompaniment—was long banned by the Catholic church and branded the diabolus in musica. Indeed, when classical composers first snuck discordance into public performance, Debussy's "Prelude to 'The Afternoon of a Faun'" and, shortly thereafter, Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" caused riots at their early twentieth century Parisian debuts.

Today, "our own contemporary music seems designed to produce the same agitated effect on audiences." At ill-fated Woodstock '99, it was Limp Bizkit's song "Break Stuff"—typifying their musical genre's intellectual bounds—that was fingered as catalyst for the unacceptable crowd behavior that followed.

Limp Bizkit would surely deny intending or expecting such a result. But that's ridiculous.

Igor Stravinsky denied it too. Following as he did Debussy's similarly violent debut, he nevertheless rejected having foreseen any potential upheaval, "[s]trange as it may seem." He was admittedly "unprepared for the explosion," which begs the question: should he have been better prepared?

(Legally, that is.)

Negligent harmonies, like those that enraged Denmark's king, offer an introduction, but not an answer. Answers require a little exploration and a quick story.

Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, frontman and lead guitarist for Aerosmith, were once known—and proud to be known—as the "Toxic Twins." But as addictions grew, hit songs and celebrity faded, band members left, and it became apparent their careers—like their daily lives—lacked substance (uncontrolled, that is). In the late 1980s (to the surprise of many), they cleaned up, turned around, and regained their lost limelight.

But just because the band watered down and started thinking positive, doesn't mean the audience did too.

According to Linda and Vinnie Matarazzo, Aerosmith—whether sober, sloshed, asleep, whatever—still appealed to drunkards and "crazies," shady types prone to attend rock shows featuring "toxic" anything. Moreover, Aerosmith appealed to these people on purpose. "Crazies" make dedicated fans, and Aerosmith knew it.

So when a few nogoodniks assaulted the Matarazzos at Aerosmith's Madison Square Garden appearance, the couple sued. They didn't sue the offending fans, of course, but the band, venue, security provider, even Warner Bros. Records, who released Aerosmith's music. Perry, Tyler, and the whole crew—nestled comfortably behind the First Amendment—would likely have been exonerated. But the case was settled, bypassing annoyance, motions, depositions, etc. (they usually are), so we'll never know.

The point is nevertheless intriguing. Weren't the Matarazzos kind of right, after all?

It surely can't be sheer coincidence that bands intending to rile their audiences end up doing just that. Trapt and Shinedown were pinpointed by one set of plaintiffs. Creed too. No coincidence; assholes in the audience, in some genres, are standard operating procedure.

At a Metallica concert in Ohio, an enthusiastic fan injured himself and others stage-diving onto unwilling patrons. Not just intoxicated, he recently drank "from a mysterious 'blue bottle' being passed around the crowd." Coked up and drunk while watching Motley Crue, another fan sued concert promoters for personal injuries after picking a fight with security personnel. (The first case settled, the second was laughed out of court.)

Other outlandish examples abound. Most of the time, they're equally unsurprising.

That's because they're not just predictable, but natural. When listening to music—particularly loud, thumping music—human minds pump natural opiates, our own internal "mysterious blue bottles." Activity in our amygdalas and frontal lobes intensify emotional responses and impulsivity. We've known this effect for millennia. Throughout history drum-heavy accompaniment was instrumental (pun intended) in waging war, used both as preparatory stimulants before raids and as chemical excitants during combat. Human reaction to music is ingrained, it's evolutionary. And it can be easily and intentionally manipulated.

To Robert Hooke, the momentarily-maniacal Danish king proved it. Today, we have an advantage: more than 300 years additional experience. By now, audience members, like coked-out Crue fans and Aerosmith's "Crazies," respond exactly as everyone expects, as science predicts, and—perhaps most importantly—as artists intend. Because visceral mass behavior testifies to the power of shared musical experiences, it is desirable to performers. Calmness means failure.

Knowing this, "tough guy" hardcore bands put "breakdowns" in every song and actively coax nonmoving crowds. So couldn't they be liable when someone inevitably gets hurt?

Like Stravinsky, shouldn't they be prepared, perhaps?

Unpreparedness may or may not imply negligence, depending on circumstances and exceptions. Intentional acts of third parties, for example (like assaults and crimes), are often held "unforeseeable," giving no rise to affirmative duties or liability. So goes the classic rule, concert promoters and musical artists shouldn't be liable to audience members like you for meatheads in circle pits (or Stravinsky haters lobbing chairs).

They might, however, be legally required to anticipate commonly-occurring behaviors. One lower Michigan court, thinking along these lines, held concert promoters liable for inadequately anticipating audience melees that broke out during shows, noting that outdoor concerts featuring bands like Danzig, Ramones, Suicidal Tendencies, and Metallica, commonly devolved into large-scale "sod throwing" soirees.

The state's highest court, however, disagreed; injured attendees were owed nothing. There was no duty to anticipate crowd misbehavior, even if expected with near certainty. (There were duties to respond appropriately, of course, which the promoters met.)

Across the lake in Illinois, courts might rule differently. One single incident of "crowd surfing" at Stone Temple Pilots' 1994 concert (combined with the band's pro-moshing stance) constituted sufficient warning for promoters, giving rise to an affirmative preventative duty at subsequent gigs. The same held true for fireworks in Jefferson Starship's audience; knowledge of previous incidents required promoters to adopt preemptive measures.

Thus, courts go either way. They agree that fans act in predictable, even if idiotic, ways. But they don't agree whether artists and venues need to be ready for it when they do.

Stravinksy and Limp Bizkit said they never saw it coming. So must audience members hoping to trade injury for income. The circumstances present a conundrum.

Allowing venues and artists to feign ignorance (like sod-field proprietors and metal bands ignoring the past) gives assholes and crazies free reign without anybody, really, being made to pay. But validating disingenuous fans' unbelievable lawsuits (like "blue bottle" drinkers' personal injury claims) lends credence to opportunists, which is undesirable. No one—neither Stone Temple Pilots' and Aerosmith's fans nor Parisian promoters and Madison Square Garden—can honestly expect anyone to believe they didn't see it coming. We all saw it coming.

And we've seen it coming for hundreds (if not thousands) of years.

Thus, whether judges hold promoters and musicians accountable for being "unprepared for the explosion" when fans act in ridiculous (yet predictable) riotous ways, boils down, essentially, to one central inquiry: Whose interests do they want to promote, opportunists or assholes?

It seems either is a loss.

So when "tri-tones," disharmony, and pounding, driving rhythms overcome the musical masses, when mayhem erupts around you, and you're given the chance to grab a chair and participate, stand aside, or walk away, ask yourself whether you want to join the fun (be an asshole) or hope to get hurt and sue (be an opportunist). One brings pleasure, the other, potentially, profit.

Different courts say different things. Settlements are never guaranteed.

You might as well just play it safe.

Do both.


Re-Compress ...

"There is something deeply antisocial about the snob," writes cultural critic Joseph Epstein. "He is, in a profound sense, in business for himself."

Regardless which form of snobbery embraced—BMW bragging rights, childhood tales of destitution—being unabashedly self-promotional is likely to come in handy. In musical "scenes," for example, you need it all: overpowering and unwavering self-congratulation, back-patting thanks (to yourself) for saving the masses from ubiquitous musical plop. (Things were so wrong before you showed up.)

The high price of snobbishness, however, is hypocrisy. Setting unrealistically high standards is, unsurprisingly, endemic, and since presenting oneself as an ineffable artistic savior is key, falling short is all but inevitable. And our musical heroes do, every single day.

This story, the story of the Dead Kennedys, of "fiducianarchy," as I'll call it, is just one example.

But it's a good one.

Snob expert Joseph Epstein would call the band virtucrats. "Smug about the righteousness of [their] views," he'd say, they stand "for art, the environment, the oppressed, and against violence, hunger, war, the big corporations," which describes pretty much every politically-minded, underground movement in twentieth century music.

The Dead Kennedys are part of a pattern. They discovered—as did leftist folkies before them—that damning the man can be monetarily rewarding. Virtucrat-ic ideals make economic sense. But when success arrives, divvying the reward presents problems incongruent with artists' well-advertised ideological cores.

People do odd things—un-virtucratic things. They go into business for themselves.

By the late 1990s, over ten years after the band's swan song and around twenty since their meager beginnings in San Francisco's local dives, the Dead Kennedys were still selling over 100,000 albums per year, which, retailing at $11.98 each, is an easily-calculable and impressive sum. Jello Biafra, their most vocal and recognizable member, continued running Alternative Tentacles Records, the label they'd started as a band seeking independent (i.e. non-corporate) distribution for their releases.

Seems like four working class kids from the East Bay should be overjoyed. Success, the kind that so very few musicians experience, was theirs, no thanks to corporate America.

And they'd never written a pop song.

But all was not well. In October, 1998, the three instrument-playing members of the band (East Bay Ray, Klaus Flouride, and D.H. Peligro), sued their frontman and unmistakable spokesperson, Jello Biafra, for numerous business-related economic torts, such as fraud, interference with business relations, and breach of fiduciary duties. Biafra was not only hoarding royalties, they learned, but also calculating the as-yet-undelivered income at rates less than other artists on the label (and concealing this fact from the three of them). The members were understandably shaken.

Finding success among the punk rock intelligentsia on his own, releasing more than fifteen solo albums himself (typically standard-fare virtucrat commentary), Biafra had completely ceased promoting the band's catalog, asserting the fame attached to his own name, which the label still actively pushed, was sufficient. He'd even passed up a sweet chance to put their best-known song, "Holiday in Cambodia," in a Levi's TV spot.

Worse, perhaps, he was claiming to own the songs he'd written, though their agreements said the whole band did.

Sounds kind of like…you know…what Jello says corporations do.

It's not that the Dead Kennedys were the first band to experience this sort of betrayal from within. Intra-band quarrelling is very, very common, even amongst the oldest of friends. There's the infamous backroom ultimatum Axl presented Guns n' Roses—just hours before a brimming stadium expected their arrival—demanding the band's trademarks, else he'd walk away. They agreed. He walked away anyway, not that night, but many others that tour, and eventually for good (with the name).

It seems stiffing the side-guys is classic rock star maneuvering.

Even grand-pappy Charles Berry, the pride and joy of St. Louis, snubbed longtime back-up musician, Johnnie Johnson, throughout their extensive relationship. Riffs and ditties Chuck formed into songs sometimes came from Johnnie, not Chuck, but Berry paid session fees (for recording and gigging) alone. Legally, Johnson deserved co-authorship. But his causes of action—based in songs recorded in the 1950s—had long since run their course, and Johnson's chronic alcoholism—debilitating as it was—didn't excuse his fifty-ish year lag in legal activity.

Shirley Goodman (of Shirley and Lee), co-writer of the 1956 song "Let the Good Times Roll," received similar treatment from Lee (also of Shirley and Lee) throughout the duo's thirty year professional and personal relationship. She overcame Johnson's snag—years of inaction—by arguing she'd not been aware, as Johnnie had.

Other examples abound. Marilyn Manson, in the height of success, tried unilaterally overriding the band's partnership agreement, converting partners (band members) into at-will employees. Puddle of Mudd's Wes Scantlin dropped his entire original band—one he'd joined, not founded—by signing record contracts alone and replacing the rest. Megadeth's Dave Mustaine runs his band with unflinching resolve, keeping even original members in check through limited ownership and contractual demands.

These situations arise often.

Jello Biafra was, in a way, only honoring a time-tested tradition. But coming from such an established anti-corporate spokesman, someone who's actively campaigned on and for Green Party platforms, pettiness and money-squabbling seems so inappropriate. Like the Grateful Dead suing stores for selling bootlegged concerts, which they've done. Yeah, the law is on their side. But…they're the Grateful Dead.

In fact, the Dead Kennedys belong to another tradition, that of musical virtucrats doing remarkably un-virtucratic things, artists whose stances weaken as successes grow.

Cutesy punk-folk indie darlings, the Violent Femmes, were allegedly subjected to Jello-style treatment by their own singer, Gordon Gano, who purportedly forced them into signing new, less favorable, contracts, threatening to abandon outstanding tour obligations lest they do so.

Or take Biafra's old friends, the Butthole Surfers, a raucous pseudo-neo-psychedelic punk/metal circus-rock outfit with longstanding indie cred. They're well known—at least in the circles in which they're well known—for breathing fire and raising hell live, doing the type of stuff only underground artists can get away with. Which can get pretty expensive.

So when the Surfers got calls from people with enough money to fund the types of things the Surfers liked doing, they'd've been crazy—from an economic stance, at least—to stick with teeny-tiny Touch and Go Records. They demanded 80% on the dollar, and once rebuffed, hired lawyers and jetted.

Leaving was easy, too. Like other small music companies, Touch and Go didn't use written contracts, providing a quick way out for ex-indie artists with newfound corporate pals. Punk rock act Against Me! sought to avoid contractual obligations to their original manager for much the same reason: the little guy didn't make the band sign a thing.

When you've got big-money corporations footing legal bills, amateurism is easily bested.

These lawsuits shouldn't be surprising, because clear-cut boundaries created by people like Jello Biafra—delineating us and them—aren't real. Among the great ironies of popular music is that "many music icons of the so-called counter culture of the late 1960s…signed contracts with major labels," while the Monkees, picked and pruned for television stardom, "interestingly enough were produced by the independent label Dimension."

And disco music, so well known for how much everyone who didn't love it hated it, arose from New York's nightlife subculture, and was largely propelled by Casablanca Records, run independently until after "Saturday Night Fever" and Donna Summer already topped the charts. Punk rock, on the other hand, was essentially a straight-to-radio phenomenon. Ramones first album stalled just outside the top 100 and Sex Pistols were legitimate pop stars at home. The genre owes its success, in no small part, to record executive finagling and Malcolm McLaren, the businessman/sex-shop operator who gave the Pistols a full Monkees-style treatment, handing them fashions he'd picked up in New York.

The reality is, despite whatever sentiments artists may cram into lyrics, the music business—in any capacity—must convert lyrics into songs into recordings into dollars. Running out of money is running out of music. This is not a problem. It's simply a reality of industry. And Jello Biafra knows this. He, himself, is a successful music executive.

But what Biafra did wrong—hiding partnership profits, neglecting payments, miscalculating royalties—is a problem. It's a problem objectively: the court held Biafra liable, finding he'd breached fiduciary duties, committed fraud, withheld payment, and wrongly claimed ownership of songs and artwork properly belonging to the band partnership. It's also a problem subjectively: Biafra's virtucrat-ic public image belies the truth. He is not only a businessman, he's a corrupt one. Like a white collar criminal, punk rock style.

The Dead Kennedy's "fiducianarchist" practices tell us nothing new, really. They've always been there, since the beginning—elephants in the circle pit wearing $50 spikes, 800-pound gorillas waiting in line at the merch booth. In 1978, at the close of the Sex Pistols' one and only U.S. tour, Johnny Rotten (birthed and coddled by shrewd businessmen like Jello) looked up at the audience and asked:

"Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"

By propping themselves as political cognoscenti, righteous virtucrats, standing up for the underclass and against aristocratic overcast, the Pistols (like Jello and the Kennedys) put themselves in positions demanding political admiration. But they're not only not better than the lot of us, they're worse. Because they misled everyone into thinking they were different.

Johnny Rotten knew that. His face plastered on lunchboxes, he'd been cheated most of all.

Joseph Epstein acknowledged the difference between the virtucrat and the honest activist: "for the latter, politics is about how society ought to be organized, and it isn't so personal, so much about setting oneself apart from the swine who aren't as sweet natured as oneself."

The Dead Kennedys, through their sheer loudness and politicism, established themselves as above the muck, part of something different, unique, respectable. But like the Sex Pistols before them, they're just salable snobs—virtucrats selling virtucracy.

The problem isn't that they wanted money. It's that they pretended they didn't. Which is how they made money in the first place. (Like the Butthole Surfers, Against Me!, the Violent Femmes.)

Jello did work hard for recognition and rightfully felt possessive about his output. East Bay Ray and company only wanted to hear themselves in Levi's commercials. That's all understandable. As Epstein acknowledged, in seeking to define snobbery once-and-for-all, "the problem here is that at one time or another, and in varying degrees, [the definition] may well include us all."

We all do snobbish things. And we all contradict our own intentions.

True enough.

But we're not all anarchists in bands called the fucking Dead Kennedys.


Re-Compress ...