de=da=duh=D'OH/ belize and schoonery

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

At 16.27 -0400 99-10-08, DASLUD at AOL.COM wrote:
>In a message dated 10/8/99 12:02:35 PM, cea20 at CUS.CAM.AC.UK writes:
>>I am noting the parallels between their taking
>>material from a song composed by another and recomposing it to some extent,
>>and the way traditional musicians (in various cultures) commonly work. Such
>>a process is currently in our society illegal and viewed as immoral unless
>>one give appropriate credit to the owner of the copyright (assuming there
>>is one). That's legal and moral issue, and is not connected with the
>>process of using pre-existing material itself. I'm interested only in
>>observation of the process, not in judging it by one set of standards or
>>another. >>
>========
>well, there are <<better>> examples of those parallels than led zeppelin.
>witness "louie louie".
>it's just-just-...your parallel seems to suggest guilelessness on their part,
>as if they were "common traditional musicians". and they werent.
>my only problem w/this socio-cultural parallel is your choice of ledzep.,
>contemporary music as a product in demand notwithstanding.

Well, I'm not sure it matters so much from the processual point of view.
Nor have I suggested Zep were guileless--but whether or not they knew what
they did was illegal is irrelevant, as far as I am concerned: moral and
legal judgements are not what I am talking about.The process may or may not
be illegal in a given society, and so the relative legality is a seperate
issue.

There are, of course, all kinds of examples of the process. Zep's case is
simply a very visible one--if they hadn't ripped the songs off, they
wouldn't make such an example

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
mailto:cea20 at cus.cam.ac.uk
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~carl/