May 25, 2001

7:53 PM

Heard an interesting MP3 the other day (4.6m).With about 8 gigs of MP3s in random rotation at home, there are some songs that I have never even heard before. A live Radiohead song I got off of Napster started off innocently enough, but then broke into a sparsely instrumented and gravelly voiced song by someone who professes to love a part of the female anatomy that rhymes with mulva. I was struck by peer to peer's potential for art-thug type abuse, and wondered why I hadn't run into it before. Anyone else find some gems buried within their tunes?
posted by machaus (11 comments total)

I used to intentionally mislabel songs for Napster. I would take a song by an artist I like, say Eugene Chadbourne, or Mercury Rev, or somebody, and attribute it to Brittany Spears or In Sync (sp?). And it was always fun to take a Chomsky speach and label it as if it was an Oral Roberts speach.
Just trying to expand people's minds...or mess with them.
posted by drunkkeith at 8:24 PM on May 25, 2001

sorry to rant...but art bell has mr poop-shoot universe on..and someone(anyone) should post something, my religious beliefs are dissapating by the hour.
posted by clavdivs at 8:39 PM on May 25, 2001

I haven't downloaded any of these, but it is such a good idea. Now I gotta get my hands on some nice sound editing software.
posted by Doug at 11:03 PM on May 25, 2001

The idea of Napster bombs caught my fancy the very first time I downloaded anything from the service. I found a file that claimed to be new and rare XTC, my lovely acquired taste. The person who had it was skeptical, and asked me to listen to it and let him know whether I thought it was authentic or not.

What I got wasn't XTC, but it was great! A remixed collage of Dan Rather, in a sweet, sarcastic setup that got its creators, the Evolution Control Committee, threatened by CBS, written up by WiReD, and defended by the members of Negativland. Their site is wonderful ( Um, this makes noise.) and finding it finally gave me the punchline to the musical joke the ECC played on me, bless their pranky little hearts.
posted by Sallyfur at 11:48 PM on May 25, 2001

There's always good with the bad.

I've found the amount of Napsterish misnaming out there to be quite crap really, while it may be good to get a song out there to people who wouldn't have normally found it(and I have no problems doing it to Britney and N'Sync's name) its also dodgy when the actual credit is lost. Not to mention the band you may think is better than The Beatles may well not be for others. (I recall getting an Oasis track that was named a Lennon rarity. A happy surprise that was not.) We all take different bits of the same music we love, and it's all subjective. And the one redeeming characteristic of distributing free mp3s thus far has been that the credit is not lost, and the artist(s) get their due. It's probably not worth losing that.

You could of course, leave the real credits in the ID3 tag or something, but still... its a bit deceptive and forcing it in people's face. Nobody likes somebody elses' musical tastes forced down their throats.
posted by aki at 12:21 AM on May 26, 2001

A "friend of mine" (ahem) has had an entire Dave Matthews album mislabeled to be some band who was horribly unlike Dave Matthews. I would figure that if your going to try and get your stuff out there by Napsterterrorist methods, you might at least pick someone of a genre that is at least close to yours on the spectrum...
posted by fooljay at 12:54 AM on May 26, 2001

I thought I was getting Soul Coughing, and instead I got Europe's "The Final Countdown."

I was underamused.
posted by dong_resin at 1:58 AM on May 26, 2001

That file you linked to...it sounds like "I need vulva now!"
Any thoughts on this?
posted by modofo at 2:53 AM on May 26, 2001

I was after some songs from the Tea Party, and, not being familiar with their entire catalog, downloaded a song called "Dear World." The next day, as I listened to it, I thought what the hell?! Turned out that it was something from an (assumed) aging children's musical, produced by some of the good folks over in the UK. At first I was incensed that I had mistakenly downloaded it and was tempted to delete it right then and there. But I sat and listened to it, and it turned out to be quite a cool little ditty, so I kept it. Now, when I see someone downloading it from me I smile, knowing that they'll be getting something completely unexpected.
posted by lizardboy at 5:27 AM on May 26, 2001

We did it first!

Wired even reported it..
posted by Leonard at 11:10 AM on May 26, 2001

This article in Flak Magazine describes something in the same vein -- artists "droplifting" their CDs in music stores with the hopes they will be sold as SKU-less items, thus distributing their sound to the People where it wouldn't have been before.


All of this is a great manifestation of Culture Jamming. I say keep it up, dude.
posted by jamesstegall at 7:12 AM on May 28, 2001