Thursday, February 26, 2004

If I had known of Grey Tuesday prior to the event, I certainly would have participated.  I'm enjoying the Grey Album tremendously - listening to it in my car, my computers, my home stereo.  For my readers who are unaware of this subcultural phenomenon (although I can't imagine anyone I know who hasn't heard about this, because I've been talking about it for weeks), the Grey Album is a musical collage comprised of the vocal track to Jay-Z's Black Album, and samples taken solely from the Beatles White Album, created by a musician named DJ Danger Mouse.   It's a bit difficult to explain this record - I think those who haven't heard it imagine hip-hop lyrics pasted on top of Beatles' songs, but it's not like that at all, really.  It's a true hip-hop album, with the Beatles' stuff used as the source to create melodies and beats absolutely within that genre (yet somehow quite cutting edge).  The amazing thing about the record to me is the poignancy that hearing little snippets of these well-known melodies adds to the songs.  I've had the Black Album for a few months, and I think it's an awesome record - everything Jay-Z does is great, and I believe him when he claims to be "the best rapper alive" (which he does about two dozen times over the course of this album).  He just has tremendous flow, and his lyrics are incredible.  My current favorite: "Like Che Guevara with bling on, I'm complex/I never claimed to have wings on/N*gga I get mine by any means on whenever there's a drought/Get your umbrellas out because that's when I brainstorm."   I'm sorry, but that's just awesome.  But I think the Grey Album trumps Jay-Z's original.  I can't explain exactly why I find this music so moving and poignant, but I do.  If you like hip-hop at all, I strongly encourage you to get yourself a copy.  It's not for sale, of course, but you can download it from Kazaa or Soulseek, I'm sure.  And get it while you can!  The other side to this story is that EMI has sent cease and desist letters to just about every party involved in the creation and dissemination of this record.  The Beatles do not allow their music to sampled under any circumstances, apparently.  I do think it would be incredible if the surviving Beatles came out in support of this fair-use sampling of their music, but I can't believe that will happen, given that these songs are probably tied up in so many legal and financial arrangements that it would be simply impossible for them to do so.  The Grey Tuesday event was designed as a protest to EMI's actions, and apparently it was a tremendous success. On the 24th, the Grey Album was the most popular album in the country, with an estimated 100,000 downloads, which sends a powerful message to corporate record labels who attempt to limit artistic expression.  I don't understand it - just imagine if 50,000 of these hip-hop kids who downloaded this record yesterday are turned on to the Beatles, and purchase The White Album.  Rap and hip-hop artists seem to understand the nature of this cross-pollenization effect intrinsically; Jay-Z's label, Roc-A-Fella records, released a vocal-only version of the Black Album to faciliate just this sort of thing, and there are dozens of remixes and reimaginings out there in addition to this much-lauded version.  And really, this is just making explicit what artists have always done, which is borrow liberally from every possible source out there, in an attempt to expand expression.  Even in my own little band, I can name three examples of this borrowing, right off the top of my head:  we have a song based on the chord structure of a Miles Davis tune, one based on the chords from a track on the American Anthology of Folk Music, and when we were designing our album cover, we lifted a old wallpaper design from a textbook as our starting template.  Very, very few people create from whole cloth, and it is fun and exciting to feel oneself part of an artistic tradition, even in the smallest way.  Music is transcendent, social, and collaborative, and therein lies a tremendous amount of its beauty, and promise.  1:02:44 PM