h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As a fiddler, I know about the Aura Lee-Love Me Tender connection. As far as I know, it's not a coincidence--Elvis knew the song and decided to write (or have someone else write) some new words to it. At any rate, he certainly wasn't trying to get away with anything--Aura Lee had been real popularlike with the generation before him, and the melody was kind of in public memory, the same way something like, oh, "Twist and Shout" or "Da Doo Ron Ron" is today.

But we can't accuse the King of plagiarizing anybody, even though I think folks know who wrote Aura Lee--or it is just an old English folk song or something... Anyway, the King was a rock-'n'-roller, but back then it didn't mean the same thing as it does today. Mr. Presley was, as you know, closer to the blues and gospel, and in those as in almost all American folk traditions, there's no such thing as plagiarization. Consider Bob Dylan's consistent use of old folk melodies, as in "The Wind and the Rain," or Woody Guthrie's "Jesus Christ," written to the tune of "Jessie James." Or the countless blues songs that use the same melody, like "Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor" and "Baby, Take Me Back." It's just the way it used to work, and the way it still works in many cases, or we'd be hauling B.B. King, Eric Clapton, and Led Zeppelin into court for plagiarising Robert Johnson. Plagiarisation only became an issue once the record industry started making oodles of money and wanted to protect their assets.

But the connection sure is interesting. I remember someone teaching me Aura Lee at a fiddling festival, and as I was playing it, I thought to myself, "Hot damn, this is 'Love Me Tender!'"

Who would've thought that Dr. Funk was a fiddler. The name wouldn't suggest a love of folk music, oddly enough. You rise an excellent conversation. I put this entry here, not to suggest anything about Elvis and plagiarism. I put this entry here to invoke thought. Thanks for the reply.

Thanks for the compliment. To be honest, I listen to just about everything. It was not always thus, but thus it is now--basically, if a musician is good at what they do (and by "good" I don't necessarily mean technical skill, but something more like vibe), I like it. And, of course, the more I listen to, the more I see similarities between seemingly disparate musical styles--like between old-time fiddle music, african drumming, gamelan, and yes, funk. I became a fiddler, really, because I was classically trained on the violin but wanted to learn how to get my groove on. Anyway.

I think the plagiarism issue as it applies to music really is interesting, for the reason that before the law got involved, it seemed like there really was an incredible cross-pollination of ideas across musical traditions--and today, that pollination could be so much faster and more interesting if there weren't so many copyright infringements in the way. Also, plagiarism--and indeed the music industry--are such recent developments in the history of music that it's really interesting to look at how old musical traditions are dealing with--or perhaps more to the point, working around--these new laws.

My email address was funkydoug. So I can relate. I agree that copyright laws should be looser on the music industry. However, I think that titles should be able to have copyright laws apply to them. Like one of my favorite songs, "Peace Frog" -by "The Doors" is now a very popular clothing chain of which I utterly despise. I have another question of which I want your opinion on. What do you think of Napster? I absolutely hate it.

A friend of mine has forced me to follow the Napster thing pretty closely, and I think that, right now, my opinion of it is one of guarded enthusiasm. Here's why.

I don't like to see artists get ripped off, so at first I thought that Napster was unfair. I thought to myself, well, if artists are popular, then they deserve to make money off the songs they write. But along with the Napster debate, all kinds of things came out about the record industry and how it works--specifically, who gets the money. The somewhat shocking news, at least the news according to Courtney Love, is that your average dude that signs to a major label kind of gets reamed by the process. As far as I understand it, what happens is that upon signing, the record company gives the band a big old advance. Then most of that advance immediately goes into producing the record, promotional materials, management, etc. This often runs the artists into debt. Now let's say the record starts selling and our lucky boys go on tour. Once again, because the label puts up much of the money for this, the label gets most of the money it makes. The end result is that after all is said and done, a successful album and tour will make the record industry a few million dollars. The band's share of that usually ends up at around $10-20,000--which, split four ways for each band member, comes out to a few thousand apiece for a year's worth of work--as Love put it, they'd probably be better off working at a 7-11. Worse, because the label put up the money to make the record, it is the label that owns the copyright, and therefore the label that makes the lion's share of the money if the record becomes a classic. As a result, popular folks from the 60s, say, whose records sell pretty well as classics now, see very little of that money, while Toni Braxton, whose albums are selling really well now, is filing for bankruptcy because her contract ran her personal finances into the ground.

When I learned that artists pretty much get the shaft from major labels who make them famous but little else, my opinion of Napster changed. In this light, Napster and things like it are the bane of the existence of record companies--and of the tiny handful of artists who rely on record companies to keep their careers going--but it seems to represent, in theory at least, quite an opportunity for relatively unknown bands who are trying to gain wider exposure (of course, the chances of blundering across an unknown band that you like on something like Napster are really small, but that's a different sort of issue)--and for the vast majority of listeners, it's an opportunity to find new music. Of course, this is coming from someone who has never actually visited Napster himself, and I've heard that the selection there is mostly limited to what you're hearing on the radio, and could find in any old record store, anyway.

Whether I like Napster or not, however, I think that it does represent the beginning of a change in how music is bought and sold, and I think ultimately it will be for the better as fewer middlemen are paid outrageously out of proportion to their role in connecting musicians to consumers. More important, I don't think the lives of most working musicians will be particularly affected by it one way or the other. Most musicians don't make their money from albums, they make them from live shows. They tour relentlessly all over the place, make fifty to a hundred bucks a head per shows, plus a little more on the side selling CDs off the stage. If you're not a popular r&b/pop/rock musician--and most musicians aren't--then steady work, a strong fan base, and a good reputation are pretty much the pinnacle of fame. For those artists, Napster is something of a non-issue--if I were in a relentlessly touring band, I would most definitely post my stuff (or at least some of it) on Napster if it wasn't there already, because that might get more people on the mailing list and more people to my live shows, for which I will be financially rewarded.

And not headlining stadium tours doens't mean abject poverty either--many musicians who play full-time do indeed make a living--not a great living, but a get-married-and-raise-the-kids-right kind of living. Consider someone like Tom Waits, a pretty much unmarketable man who nonetheless has made a career for himself as a musician through reputation, word of mouth (I became a fan through a friend), and consistently excellent musical output. Consider that his last album sold better than any of his others even though he'd switched from Island Records to Epitaph, a little old punk label out of California.

But I digress. The main thing for me is that music has been around a long time. Artists have performed it, people have listened to it, and reputations and somewhat decent livings have been made on it for centuries now--before the record industry, recording, or even the printing press, even existed. If the record industry collapses because of further technological innovation, it doesn't mean the death of distributed music for the consumer; it just means it might be a little harder to find the stuff you like. But then again, when is the last time you bought a CD because it was super popular? For me, probably 90%--if not more--of my music purchases have been through word of mouth, or someone sitting down and playing something for me that I thought was groovy. And for the musician, well, home studios are getting better--and cheaper--all the time. Not having major label financial support doesn't necessarily mean that the world will be deprived of great studio albums like Remain in Light or OK Computer.

So the short answer is: it seems like a good idea. I just don't want to see full-time musicians getting the shaft, and so far it looks like they won't. The record industry probably will, but that's fine by me.