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CounterPunch
September
11, 2002
Sampler's Delight
by Dave Marsh
September feels like harvest time for records.
I've got here new ones by Peter Wolf, America's most under-rated
rock singer; Steve Earle, which is spiritually kin to The Rising,
politically kin to The Coup; Cedell Davis, maybe the best Mississippi
hill country blues album I've ever heard; stuff by Alvin Youngblood-Hart,
Buddy Miller, Bobby Bare Jr., David Baerwald, Gov't Mule, Todd
Thibaud and Jason & the Scorchers whose surfaces I've barely
scratched; and who knows what I didn't immediately recognize
and slipped into the "it'll wait" pile.
Yet the new music I most want to listen
to came anonymously in the mail, and you'll probably never be
able to hear it at all.
The label on the CD said nothing at all.
On the back of the jewel box, it just said "nothing to fear.
A rough mix by Steinski. Produced for Solid  Steel / BBC London." A set of tracks
with titles like "lolita (burning mix)" and "swan
lake (beat poets)" and "the art of getting jumped."
At the bottom the legend: blame steinski for everything.
Steinski. It'd been years since I'd heard
anything new by that master of early hip-hop mixology. The best
record he and his partner Double D ever made, "The Payoff
Mix," never even got released commercially, because clearing
the samples would have been about as easy as rebuilding the Tower
of Babel.
"nothing to fear" operates
at the same level. Over 59 minutes, it hits you with Ed Sullivan,
Dion and the Belmonts, James Brown, fuzz guitar licks, Rocky
and Bullwinkle, the Marx Brothers, synth riffs so elusive you
can barely remember them, and anonymous singer you know you'll
never forget. Beneath all of it the beat, the beat, the beat,
stuttering, stomping, chattering, clattering, scratched and battered
back and forth among turntables and samplers and who knows what
other technological wonders. Gene Krupa beats. Clyde Stubblefield
beats. Afrika Bambaataa beats.
Steinski didn't make "nothing to
fear" to make money; he made it because he's impelled, every
once in a while, to concoct a soundscape that tells you who he
is and how he sees the world, and what that has to do with how
we dance our dances. He made it to be played on the BBC's Solid
Steel radio show, hosted by Coldcut and DJ Food. On the air,
the mix was intertwined with interviews with Steinski and Double
D.
How it got pressed in CD form remains
somewhat mysterious. Apparently, the bootlegger initially took
a master to a U.K. pressing plant, intending to create the Great
White Wonder of hip-hop. But the machinery rejected it. Seems
there now exists a technology called the "major label waveform
CD database," which is capable of recognizing materials
allegedly owned by the record label cartel. I thought this was
a hoax, just something added to spice up the story, until I read
a story in J@pan Inc Magazine (June 26) about a company called
Gracenote, which specializes in "music recognition service,"
the software that lets your CD player tell you which artist and
track are currently playing. It's pretty easy to see how the
RIAA and its international counterpart, IFPI, could use the same
technology to track "bootleggers"--or get pressing
plants, which they have been known to raid, to do it for them.
Fortunately, not all pressing plants
operate under RIAA scrutiny. Anyway, Steinski's work should be
protected by fair use, because it is fair comment on the cultural
artifacts deployed. But the major labels contend that there is
no fair use, and get away with charging so much money per sampling
that their greed has almost entirely devoured one of the most
important aspects of hip-hop artistry.
It's pretty easy to see who was robbed
here: Not the artists who wouldn't get paid even if the labels
did, not the labels, not even Steinski so much as you and everybody
else without access to the bootleg. Maybe we should make the
destruction of artworks for commercial gain a felony.
DeskScan
(what's playing in my office)
1. Nothing to Fear, Steinski and Mass
Media
2. The
Rising, Bruce Springsteen (Sony)-Why do you think this
essentially apolitical emotional depiction of the aftermath of
9/11 gets attacked every week in the right-wing press? Why are
liberal Springsteen authorities afraid to engage its ideas even
in rags like The Nation?
3. Jerusalem,
Steve Earle (E Squared)-Jumpin' Jack Flash as political conspiracy.
4. Adult
World, Wayne Kramer (MuscleTone)
5. White
Lightnin' Struck the Pine, Cedell Davis (Fast Horse
Recordings)-The most rockin' record Peter Buck ever played on,
for sure. Maybe the deepest musical statement of the Mississippi
hill country blues aesthetic, too.
6. King
Anthology of Risque Blues (King)-Pick hit: "Butcher
Pete, Pt. 1" by Roy Brown, especially the part where an
imprisoned chops meat with his cellmate. Much dirtier than "Rocket
69" by Todd Rhodes and Connie Allen. Although maybe not
Fluffy Hunter, whose "The Walkin' Blues" rhymes "fuck"
like a censored Eminem.
7. Plenty
Good Lovin', Sam Moore (2KSounds/EMI)
8. My Name's Not Rodriguez, Luis Rodriguez
& Seven Rabbit (Dos Manos)
9. Fattening
Frogs for Snakes, John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars
(Okra-Tone/Rooster Blues)
10. Down
in the Alley, Alvin Youngblood-Hart (Memphis International)
11. The Very Best of Freddy King, Vol.
1-3 (Collectables)-Shitty packages but the best collection of
the great R&B/bluesman's King label sides. For me, Freddy's
the most fun of all the Kings, the most like a rock'n'roller.
12. Freedom,
The Golden Gate Quartet and Josh White (Bridge Records)-"A
Concert in Celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the 13th Amendment
to the Constitution," at the Library of Congress in 1940,
with tremendous harmony by the Gates, and hilariously profound
comments on the blues and "social" songs from poet
Sterling A. Brown.
13. It's
All Relative: Tillis Sings Tillis, Pam Tillis (Epic/Lucky
Dog)-That means she gets to sing "Detroit City" and
"I Ain't Never," as well as another 11 songs by her
daddy.
14. Comin'
On Home, Richard "Groove" Holmes (Blue Note)-Soul
jazz with powerful avant-garde touches from 1971.
15. 1000
Kisses, Patty Griffin (ATO)
16. Viva
El Mariachi: Nati Cano's Mariachi Los Camperos (Smithsonian
Folkways)
17. American
Breakdown, Troy Campbell (M. Ray, )
18. Stax Instrumentals, Booker T. &
the MGs/The Mar-Keys (Ace UK)
19. Just
One Moment-The Vintage Female Gospel 1945-1949 (P-Vine)-Starring
the Georgia Peach (12 tracks), a legendary and rarely heard Golden
Age giant, and Kitty Marie, whose "This Train" blows
away Rosetta Tharpe's, if you ask me.
20. Ray
Charles Sings for America (Rhino)-O.K., so who's your
favorite Republican singer?
Dave Marsh coedits
Rock and Rap Confidential.
Marsh is the author of The
Heart of Rock and Soul: the 1001 Greatest Singles.
He can be reached at: marsh6@optonline.net
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Bush and War
Peter Linebaugh
Levellers
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William McDougal
September 11 One Year On:
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