Malcolm Humes is a record collector, music fanatic and a musician, and has always despised the notion that music can be classified into simplistic genres. He was a disk jockey in the early 1980's. He likes listening to things that are off the beaten path.
Those of us who go back a ways with Iggy Pop know that he certainly has more than a little “Lust for Life” — even at age 60. He was full of lust when I saw him eat dog food on stage almost 30 years ago.
I’d never imagined that the cruise line travel industry would one day be channeling subliminal messages from William S. Burroughs through The Iguana, carefully masked as a ploy to sell us on the joy of ocean cruises. But for the past couple years, a certain vacation cruise line has been running a snippet of Pop’s “Lust for Life” with a strange edit that aims to soften the song into some kind of hip “let’s party on a ship” message.
The Dylanhearsawho.com site we mentioned a few weeks ago is getting lots of attention this week, with a fresh article on Salon confirming that legal threats took the site (or at least the music) off line.
With luck, archived versions will continue to be posted at other web sites, and the music will survive virus-like for decades to come. But for now, your best bet is to scour file sharing networks, where the tracks will certainly become a cult classic.
While reading the Salon piece, I started thinking that if it’s parody, it should be clear because of the 2 Live Crew scandal some years back where their parody of “Oh, Pretty Woman” got taken to the Supreme Court as a free speech issue. The band Negativland ran with that court case ruling, covering it in their book Fair Use: The Letter U and the Numeral 2 , which became a de facto primer on copyright and digital culture.
The thrust of the book was that Negativland could have won their case if they could have afforded to take it to court, but that their label, SST, backed away. The book also points out The Supremes conclusion that not only is music parody protected as free speech, but that there was no legal grounding at the time requiring music companies to license sampled work. Nevertheless, business practices had evolved based on paying for sample usage, even if that usage would otherwise have been protected as fair use.
In a perverse twist, what became chapter one of the book was orignally published as a magazine, which pissed off SST enough that they sued Negativland.
Page two of the Salon piece explores the legal angles in more depth, and makes the point that it’s hard to think of Dylan Hears a Who as parody when it lifts the Seuss “lyrics” whole-cloth. Humorous vocal delivery alone does not a parody make. A Dylan parody, sure, but a Dr. Seuss parody? Not buying it. In the end, Dylan Hears a Who is just a set of brilliantly executed cover tracks, published without permission.
But wait — what’s this?
How is that Jesse Jackson can read Green Eggs and Ham on Saturday Night Live and get away with it, while this unheard-of musician with a little traction in the blogosphere cannot? Why is Jackson (or NBC) able to lift Seuss’ words in toto and have it remain on YouTube after all this time, while the little guy can’t get his “parody” in edge-wise? Did SNL obtain permission from the Seuss estate? Maybe. But I doubt it.
And where do we even begin with this cover of the theme lyrics to Gilligan’s Island, sung to the tune of Stairway to Heaven?
Truth be known, I’m not much of a Dylan fan, but a friend does some killer karaoke covers of Dylan as channeled by Elmer Fudd. I’ll try and track down some samples of that, and we’ll see how long they stay online.
Via WFMU, wonderful video clip of a youngish and very dapper looking John Cage, appearing on a TV game show to perform his piece “Water Walk” on a motley collection of household objects. By 1960, when this piece aired, Cage was already controversial for his seemingly innocuous idea that “music is a production of sound” and because of his hallmark piece “4:33” (a.k.a. “Silence”), composed a few years earlier. The list of instruments for the game show performance included a rubber duck, ice cubes, a blender and five radios.
Malcolm Humes is a record collector, music fanatic and a 
Those of us who go back a ways with Iggy Pop know that he certainly has more than a little “Lust for Life” — even at age 60. He was full of lust when I saw him eat dog food on stage almost 30 years ago.