Culture Bully's Top 15 Mashups of 2008

This is Culture Bully's 15 Top Mashups of 2008. The fact that 2008 was the year that remix culture broke into the mainstream --for better or for worse-- places these tracks at the heart of the zeitgeist

.zip archive here. Go to Culture Bully for a track by track breakdown.

Holiday Cheer: Memories of Rome

Since many of you who have been following BuyTheTickets are heading back or are already home here's a special holiday issue of the Weekend Tunes. Something to help you remember how Rome was with you here. Provincial, alive and always ready to take on the best you had to offer. Like these Italian bands covering songs by the great US and UK bands in the 60s. Call it spaghetti rock'n'roll or call it Italian Ethno-Beat. It's very similar to what the film directors were doing with something so quintessentially non-Italian like the western. Whatever they were up to, it definitely is the best way to keep your Italian going. And you can dance to it. Enjoy.
(Most of these songs were posted on the great world music blog Benn Loxo Du Taccu so a tip of the hat to them for digitizing these memories of my childhood.)

Happy Holidays.
It was great to have known each and everyone of you. See/talk/hear from you in 2009.

Caterina Caselli - Sono bugiarda (I'm A Believer)
Fausto Leali - Lei ti ama (She Loves You)
I Dik Dik - Senza luce (A Whiter Shade of Pale)
Gianni Pettenati & The Juniors - Come una pietra che rotola (Like A Rolling Stone)
Gli Uragani - Con quella voce (I Can't Explain)
I Corvi - Bang Bang
I Dik Dik - Sognando California (California Dreamin')
The Little Boys - Lei t'ama (She Loves You)
The Ravers - Tanto carina (California Sun)
Davide e Sara - Facciamo l'amore non la guerra (Good Vibrations)
Caterina Caselli - Paint It Black
I Jaguars - Barbara Ann

Bonus Tune:
The Supremes - L'amore verrà (You Can't Hurry Love)

Holiday Cheer: RIAA to Stop Suing Music Swappers

Yes, you read correctly. The RIAA is not suing individual on-line music swappers anymore and is abandoning it's practice of 'mass lawsuits'.

Read about it here on p2pnet. Recording Industry vs. The People has an exhaustive collection of links to blogs and news stories about this. RIvsTP is also cautious in celebrating too quickly as it reports that the RIAA's claim of not having filed cases 'for months' is false.

Something to think about before going overboard with too much enthusiasm is the ominous statement that the RIAA, while dropping the individual lawsuits, is "looking for more effective ways to combat copyright infringement". While dropping the lawsuits is undeniably a clear indication of the record industry's complete disconnect with society and their lack of vision for a new business model that adapts itself with the changed rules on the ground, there's a feeling that the 'more effective ways' they are talking about involve getting ISPs to do their dirty work for them --remember the cases of disappearing blog posts and the strange letters that services like Blogger have been sending to the blogs they host? Are the ISPs about to be turned into rogue enforcers of the law? Certain service providers have already agreed to help the music industry and their quick denials about blacklisting file sharers is deeply suspicious. Bob Lefsetz is aware of the problem but he is too happy dancing around the bonfire of the majors to be concerned. Let's hope he's right.

Winter Break Mode

Enjoy the holidays. As we enter the winter break, not having any immediate stuff related to classes, I'll be posting irregularly on random stuff. Weekend Tunes will continue.

Foxtrot

Click on comic to enlarge

Inspiration For Exams

40 Inspirational Speeches in 2 Minutes @ Yahoo! Video

Broadband Universal Service

Given that President-elect Obama has always been a strong proponent of the idea of a democratic access to broadband, there might actually be a chance that this will happen sometime in the near future. The fine print of the deal should be read carefully.

Big River

For those enjoying the privilege of seeing the Tiber spilling out. Stay safe.

The...Web Sheriff

"So here's the newest soldier in the other Bush-era war with no end in sight: the arbitrary and unseemly battle over music piracy. What began with Metallica calling out Napster (and the Recording Industry Association of America suing a 12-year-old for illegal downloading) has now led here, to a London-based organization of "Internet policing specialists" whose website claims to combat everything from libel to pornography. But the Sheriff has become most notorious for unusual efforts to prevent album leaks, which, until recently, mostly involved leaving ominous comments on personal blogs."

If the majors have the RIAA and the IFPI pressuring ISP's and blogger services directly to do their bidding for them, the indies have the "web sheriff". The Village Voice tells all. Make sure you take a look at the web sheriff's own web site and check out the 'Outlaws Gallery' which will tell you all about the things that you're doing on the web that the sheriff finds 'disturbing'. If it weren't real, this would have been a perfect Yes Men prank.

Visualization

(click on the image)

The artist Andrew Kuo dissects every moment of the new Kanye West single, "Love Lockdown".
(from The New York Times)
Posted using ShareThis

(Viva La) Rip Off?

Is this the difference between sampling/mashup/remix culture and ripping off/stealing/plagiarizing? This has nothing to do with copyright issues. Coldplay are in trouble: legally and morally.
How embarassing.

Exam Coming Up

Study Guide.

Filippo Minelli, Contradictions

"what i want to do by writing the names of anything connected with the 2.0 life we are living in the slums of the third world is to point out the gap between the reality we still live in and the ephemeral world of technologies."

("Facebook", spray paint on scrap-yard, Bamako - Mali, 2008 )
("Microsoft", Paint on barrels, Bamako-Mali. 2008)
("Flickr", Paint on wall, Phnom Penh-Cambodia. 2007)
("Myspace", Paint on wall, Phnom Penh-Cambodia. 2007)

More pieces in this series and artist's statements here.
More of Filippo Minelli's work here.

Also take a look at the Wooster Collective's website: A Celebration of Street Art

Nollywood Credit Crunch

We talked about Nollywood, the thriving Nigerian film industry, working in an alternative 'copyright' regime a while back. Here is an article from Modern Ghana about the credit crunch in that national film industry. Love the comparison of the cash crunch to a biblical plague --can you imagine the New York Times leading a story with this paragraph?

"Though it is cheery news that the cash crunch invading the world like the biblical plague in the time of Moses is showing signs of subsiding, the effect of the global cash crunch has, however, changed the power equation and landscape of the Nigerian movie industry otherwise known as Nollywood."

Text

Jay-Z on iLike - Get updates inside iTunes

On The Media Bits

(click on image for readability)

Some interesting features on this week's On The Media as usual courtesy of the good people of WNYC and the listeners (like you) who live there.

An interview with James Boyle on his new book, The Public Domain:Enclosing the Commons of Mind. See previous post on Boyle and his chapter on mashups.


The insanity of "terms of service agreements" that we all accept without ever possibly having the time to read them. Did you know that they turn us all into prosecutable hackers?



A reflection on the ways in which Indian media covered the Mumbai attacks. If you are looking for an analysis and an image of a particularly complex media system with a characterizing history look no further.


On a related note, the role of Twitter and other social media in reporting the crisis in India. Be sure to look at Gaurav Mishra's Gauravonomics Blog where he reflects on "The Role of Citizen Journalism in the Aftermath of the 11/26 Mumbai Terror Attack"
The flipside of course is how the attackers used an array of commercial technologies --from Blackberries to GPS navigators to anonymous e-mail accounts-- to organize their deadly attacks.

Weekend Tunes

Little Joe & The Thrillers - Peanuts
The Del-Vikings - When I Come Home
The 4 Deuces - WPLJ (White Port Lemon Juice)
The Cadillacs - Speedo
The Chips - Rubber Biscuit
The 5 Royales - Dedicated To You

Bonus Doo Wop:
Slick Rick with Doug E. Fresh - La-Di-Da-Di

Critical Race Studies and Digital Media

"This imagery has a history."

"Like many white liberals, I had viewed the absence of explicit racial markers in cyberspace with some optimism-seeing the emerging "virtual communities" as perhaps our best hope ever of achieving a truly color-blind society."

Henry Jenkins reflects on the myth that the online world is essentially color-blind. In this article he reflects on what is wrong with this argument. He also interviews Sarah N. Gatson (Part One & Part Two") on why the myth carries such persistent force.

Plus on the gaming side, Black Professionals In Games: N’Gai Croal Talks Stereotypes, Finding Video Games’ Spike Lee + More N'Gai Croal: Interview on the Resident Evil 5 Trailer.

"This imagery has a history. It has a history and you can’t pretend otherwise. That imagery still has a history that has to be engaged, that has to be understood … If you’re going to engage imagery that has that potential, the onus is on the creator to be aware of that because there will be repercussions in the marketplace.

"The point isn’t that you can’t have black zombies. There was a lot of imagery in that trailer that dovetailed with classic racist imagery. What was not funny, but sort of interesting, was that there were so many gamers who could not at all see it. Like literally couldn’t see it. So how could you have a conversation with people who don’t understand what you’re talking about and think that you’re sort of seeing race where nothing exists?

"There was stuff like even before the point in the trailer where the crowd turned into zombies. There sort of being, in sort of post-modern parlance, they’re sort of “othered.” They’re hidden in shadows, you can barely see their eyes, and the perspective of the trailer is not even someone who’s coming to help the people. It’s like they’re all dangerous; they all need to be killed. It’s not even like one cute African — or Haitian or Caribbean — child could be saved. They’re all dangerous men, women and children. They all have to be killed. And given the history, given the not so distant post-colonial history, you would say to yourself, why would you uncritically put up those images? It’s not as simple as saying, “Oh, they shot Spanish zombies in ‘Resident Evil 4,’ and now ‘black zombies and that’s why people are getting upset.” The imagery is not the same. It doesn’t carry the same history, it doesn’t carry the same weight. I don’t know how to explain it more clearly than that."

More reactions to these images here and here (make sure you read --some of-- the comments section and relate them to Croal's comments above on 'those who can't see it') and here.

N'Gai Croal's Blog on Gaming: Level Up
Resident Evil 5 Trailer


Related: A copy of DS title Animal Crossing Wild World sent out to media yesterday by Nintendo came loaded with most of the game's secrets unlocked, it also included a surprise: a racial slur.

(m)Apple

Mapple - The Simpsons
by aarplane

OutMSNBCed

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

MSNBC Replaces Fox News

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

For those who have seen Outfoxed: there's a new lap dog in town...

The Public Domain

James Boyle's The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License. It available for download from Yale University Press here.

"Musical styles change over time and so do their techniques of appropriation. Sometimes musical generations find their successors are engaging in different types of borrowing than they themselves engaged in. They do not always find it congenial. It is striking how often musicians condemn a younger generation’s practice of musical appropriation as theft, while viewing their own musical development and indebtedness as benign and organic. … [Sampling] is a different kind of borrowing than the adaptation of a chord pattern from a gospel standard to make an R&B hit. But which way does the difference cut as a matter of ethics, aesthetics, or law?"

This is good material for people working on copyright and appropriation for their final papers. Chapter 6 ("I Got A Mashup") is especially pertinent. Read it together with Matt Mason's "We Invented the Remix" chapter from The Pirate's Dilemma posted a few weeks back. Chapter 6 is here, from the 'annotatable' version on the website of Boyle's book.