This New American

My man SF, who figures into the story about the Whitney vs. Fugazi mashup, has a blog now. You can read This New American here (http://thisnewamerican.blogspot.com).

I'm not ready to take back all the nasty things I said about blogs and those who read them, but you could certainly be forgiven for reading TNA (no entendre intended). It's way more interesting than this, and SF doesn't subject you to advertising, shameless self promotion, and weeks on end without a post (at least not yet...). If anyone could take the "blah" out of blog, it would be SF.

SF gives his take on the aforementioned mashup here. My recollection of our ancient kerfuffle differs slightly. As I recall, the debate (such as it was) went something like, "But dude, Depeche Mode sucks." "Dude, Fugazi sucks." [mutual angry stares] Despite this and other equally mature and relevant fallings out, SF stuck around, cause that's how family do. Besides, now I make Depeche Mode mashups and SF goes to punk rock shows, so I guess we both got the last laugh. Speaking of family, even Monty showed up in this post. What's up, Monty? The blogosphere is a funny place -- you never know who's going to show up.

J, who also figures into the story, is now the future Mrs. SF. Congrats -- I could not be happier for them.

Lastly, I'm not sure who "This New American" refers to. SF's people, like mine, have been here for a minute. Maybe he will grace us with an explanation in a future post.

Dean Gray Tuesday

Dean Gray Tuesday is December 13, one week from today, and I'll be participating. You can read about this to your heart's content elsewhere, but here's the skinny --

Dean Gray is the moniker for a team of producers who created a mashup album entitled "American Edit." Green Day's album "American Idiot" supplies much of the source material. (The name Dean Gray is itself a mashup of the name Green Day.) Ten days after "American Edit" was posted on the Internet, Warner sent Dean Gray a cease-and-desist letter.

Out of protest, for 24 hours, a group of DJs, home producers, and mashup enthusiasts will play the album on the air and post it on the Internet. I'll be one of those posting it on my site. However, if you're interested in taking part in the protest by downloading the album, go to the American Edit home page (http://www.americanedit.org) next Tuesday instead of my page. That way, the organizers get a somewhat accurate count of how many people participated.

I'd like to think I would take part in Dean Gray Tuesday even if "American Edit" were a crap album. It so happens it's not: It's a masterpiece of the genre. To me, this case is about a lot of things -- artistic freedom, corporate control of music, narrow conceptions of art -- but it's not about copyright infringement or piracy. It's obvious five seconds into it that "American Edit" is not "American Idiot," and it's certainly not competing for album sales. "In fact, the only possible profit to be made from the release was a plea from the creators of the album... for fans who enjoyed the creation to donate to one of three possible charities that Green Day have been known to support" (http://www.americanedit.org/home/ae).

In any case, people should be able to hear it and judge for themselves, and that's what will happen next Tuesday. I hope you'll join in.