SID
3/24/2014
At
the time of this writing…
Last
night I watched a DVR'd replay of Aloe Blacc on the American version of NBC's
hit The Voice. Aloe Blacc was serving as an assistant coach for
"head-coach" Usher. As fate would have it, the song that the
battling contestants were to sing for that night’s episode's head-to-head
competition just so happened to be Blacc's "I'm the Man". What are
the odds? More on this later. Providing a story of encouragement on the face of
high criticism, Aloe discussed how he came about writing the hit song.
He said that after Dr. Dre had slammed his songs, he "…went home and wrote 'I'm the
Man.'"—SSKIRRRRRRCHHHH!!!!! [cue tire screech]. WROTE?!? "…I'm the
Man"?
For
months I have heard this song playing as bumper music on one of my favorite
television sports shows…ESPN's First Take as it was going to commercial.
For those who're not familiar with the phrase bumper music, it's the 10
to 20 sec bit of music that's used to transition into and out of the
commercials. As such, I would hear just the chorus of the song in question. For
those who haven't heard it, the song sounds exactly like Elton John and Bernie
Taupin's (ironically titled) "Your Song"
for the first five words And
you can tell everybody ominously/blatantly/again ironically omitting YS's this
is your song. In this era of broadcasted music, where you seldom hear the
performer named by the on-air radio personality (I'm guessing it's because
centralized programming-fronted spokespersons require very little personality),
it is good to at least see text titles such as those shown when First Take
plays to commercial. For the song in question (phrase-pun probably well intended),
there was added the familiar Dre Beats logo. It turns out that Beats has
expanded its impressive over-the-ear headphone empire into the song download
site arena. Aloe Blacc is a Dr. Dre artist. Draw your own conclusions. I even
have my suspicions that this blatant plagiaristic practice follows the meme
that any press is good press, and is in part a publicity stunt of sorts.
Last
summer, the big song-controversy as such involved Pharrell Williams and Robin
Thicke's strange borrowing of the late great Marvin Gaye's "Gotta Give It
Up". At first I thought it to be an homage resurrection of a decades old
summer hit. But when the PH/RT camp reportedly denied there were any
similarities to works of persons living or dead, well… We all just have to sit
down together and have a talk. Now the song-elephant in the room is the
usurping of a great Elton John classic. If I'm not to call out the emperor as
being buck naked, may I at least be permitted to refuse him a seat on any of
the cloth upholstered seats in the elephant's room?
I'm
often accused by my Hip-Hop supportive peers of being too tough on that
culture—especially its music offerings. What must be understood is that Hip Hop
began as a DJ/emcee/rapper medium. Music for them was not something to create,
but to recycle—first to records playing beats in the background, later to the
sound of records being deftly manually manipulated in the background, then as
sampling technology arrived: looping samples of recordings. Fast forward to
2014, the popular music side of the record industry in American is run on the
creativeness of those whose genre encourages them to create by means of
recreation. Instead of sampling these days, the sign of prestige for a rapper
is to have a live band in a broad sense playing samples or four measure
recognizable motifs from which that which may be called a song is cobbled. The
heroes of today's Pop genre are unapologetically former or concurrent heroes of
Hip Hop. Pharrell came on the scene as a genius beatmaker in his group N*E*R*D.
Aloe Blacc, in the aforementioned The Voice segment made reference to his being
an emcee. And the sampling did not originate with Hip Hop; there was
Devo's use of Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman" on "Whip It",
Vangelis' Academy award winning use of "Born Free" on his Chariots
of Fire theme, and the ever-popular Ray Parker recycle of Huey Lewis and
the New's "New Drug" for Ghost Busters.
Okay,
here's my food analogy: When pizza first made its mark on the favorite foods
scene, it was a wonderful handmade culinary work of fine craftsmanship. There
is the iconic image of a pizza chef tossing and spinning dough. As I am writing
this, Classical WQXR NY is playing one of a collection of dance suites from
George Frideric Handel's opera Amira with a zesty classical Italiano
orchestral piece as my soundtrack; so I feel as if I am on a mission from the
great I Am…amen. Somewhere down the line, in efforts to usurp the throne of
real pizza, quick shortcuts came in forms frozen, literal half-baked quickie $5
K-Mart pies and grocery store shelve "pizza shells". For many the
convenience factor won out over the fullness of good taste, but true disciples
like me would rather hold out for the real thing. Applying the analogy to
music, computer technology provided the usurpers the means to side-step
craftsmanship to the degree that songs are widely judged as good not on their
goodness but on their overall sales. The rationale must be that if so many like
it, it must be good. There's a paucity of critiques that call into question originality
or musicianship. The hypocrisy of it all on the ubiquitous talent shows is
this: I'll see the judge/coaches (whenever it is that they ever do) give harsh
critiques appended with their this is for your own good/gonna hurt me more
than it's gonna hurt you explanations that their brusque and painfully
honest responses are only meant to help the contestants to be all that they can
be. Then the contestants will take those remarks at heart and during their next
performance do a singer-sound-alike rendition of maybe a more classic Pop
piece, and not only not be called on their plagiarism, but be praised and *overly-qualified
for being *very unique in their delivery. Maybe it's more ignorant
than hypocritical; let the to-be-poison, select their own.
Last
words wordplay.
In
the violent side of Hip Hop street culture, "Gotta Give It Up" and
"I'm the Man" reflect the threat of force to take something from its
owner or respectively the customary self-exaltations thereafter. True
creativity goes unrewarded when beholders either do not recognize progressive
originality that moves a genre forward, such as experienced in the late 60's
through the pre-Disco seventies. When the arguably higher old ways are
disregarded as irrelevant by those who are blinded by the shiny newness of the
new, it's like someone saying that the shiny new fresh of the lot Ford Focus is
a much better piece of machine design than the dated not-so-shiny 1999 Ferrari
360 parked next to it. Keep up this trend, and pizzas made of catsup and cheese
powder sprinkled over saltines will be all the rage.
Until
my next words…
SIDizzzouttt!!!
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