Why My Morning Jacket are Jackasses

This is just so enraging, I had to say something.

One of the coolest things the internet has allowed, just as a personal interest, is access to amazing music from the 1940’s-1970’s across the world. I have dug through tons of artists, collections, and compilations over the past 6 or so years, and have carefully curated huge sets of playlists of this music, ranging from the amazing Ethiopiques ethnographic work to Ponytone.com’s wonderful and wonky styles.

One thing that has bothered me, though, is the unresolved nature of whether or not this music should be put out by these sites in a way that lends them some form of benefit at the expense of these artists. In most cases, these artists are completely MIA and no one is really handling their copyright. In the worst cases, as with the Cambodian works, the artists were killed precisely because of their work. The conclusion I ultimately come to, however, is that the attributed, faithful reproductions of these rare pieces and their re-integration into the culture is worth more socially than the potential loss for the artist, who, if they do want to chase down content, should certainly do so, and should list places where we can remunerate them for their work.

But my generation, man, fuck my generation. First, Beach House fucks over this incredible band, Tony, Caro, and John by taking their “Snowdon Song,” copying it lyrically and musically, changing the name to “Lovelier Girl”, giving no attribution, and then placing it on their self-titled debut. That’s legal, I think, because the song is completely copied, but the part that’s fucking shitty is that they just change the name and don’t even care to recognize the artists they steal from. The other part that sucks is that Tony from Tony, Caro, and John spoke out and kind of gave the “WTF” hint.

Now, this:

Is a complete rip off, with the lyrics changed, to this:

I am not a legal expert. I am not particularly available to write the paper that needs to be written here, but I know exactly what it needs to be about. These songs have no one (ostensibly) to care for them, but that doesn’t mean our generation of artists should just cannibalize them – this not only hurts the authors of the original work, it stunts our society’s creative growth. The root problem here is the ease in dissemination of these orphaned works, and the question is what we do about these jackasses, and whether or not this fits into the whole “Remix Culture”, or if this is really a sign of the detrimental effects of the Internet.