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Speaker 1: That's Audible podcast dot com slash stuff. Hey, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always
Speaker 1: as Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and that makes this the
Speaker 1: super sample version of Stuff you Should Know, The super
Speaker 1: Stuff Guide to Sampling. Could that be an audiobook? Let's try.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, if you're listening to this
Speaker 1: right now, just you owe us a dollar. Mail it
Speaker 1: in Yeah, mail it into thirty three fifty Peachtree Road,
Speaker 1: Atlanta and Georgia. Carrot up Josh Clark three oh three
Speaker 1: one three two six s Okay, alright, with that done,
Speaker 1: we can continue on with the podcast. You know what
Speaker 1: we should have gotten really creative and just like sampled
Speaker 1: old podcasts and put them together in two How, Jerry,
Speaker 1: do you feel like doing that? Nod A mash up?
Speaker 1: That's what they call that. Sure, that's what the kids
Speaker 1: call it these days. Yeah, no, we'll just do it
Speaker 1: straight instead boring and guess is what you call it.
Speaker 1: I have an intro. Have you heard chuck of a
Speaker 1: man named Arman Balladian? Arm Intansarian? Nope, no, I have
Speaker 1: not done. Armin Balladian is the owner and sole employee
Speaker 1: of a company called Bridgeport, now I have. Bridgeport is
Speaker 1: a music catalog company, um and like many other music
Speaker 1: catalog companies, they basically just sit on a lot of
Speaker 1: copyrights to popular songs the musical composition of those songs. Right,
Speaker 1: it's almost like owning stock, Yes, like you buy stock
Speaker 1: in these musics and wait for them to be worth something. Sure,
Speaker 1: or you can allegedly shadily get your hands on already
Speaker 1: valuable music. Sure, and then do what Bridgeport did, which
Speaker 1: is uh, start suing anyone and everyone whoever sampled it.
Speaker 1: Um So. Bridgeport made a big flap in two thousand
Speaker 1: five when they m sued Jay Z for his song
Speaker 1: Justify My Thug. Yeah, I want to go ahead and
Speaker 1: add a disclaimer here. I am far too square to
Speaker 1: talk seriously about hip hop, Like I'm really into elevator
Speaker 1: music right now, seriously. Um So, when I say things
Speaker 1: like justify my Thug or jay Z or breaks, I'm
Speaker 1: speaking strictly as an outside observer, an interested outside observer.
Speaker 1: But I'm not. I'm not from the streets. So like
Speaker 1: I was, I was down, as they say, from like
Speaker 1: seven to nine five ish. That was those were my
Speaker 1: big hip hop years and then but these days you
Speaker 1: say jay Z, and I know that's the that's the
Speaker 1: handsome man. Mary did that, pretty lady, Okay, So I'm
Speaker 1: not done with the new stuff. We had a similar trajectory,
Speaker 1: except I used to be into it and it sounds
Speaker 1: like you never were. Right. What in the name of
Speaker 1: God is a waka flaca? You know? Yes? Alright? So anyway,
Speaker 1: Bridgeport sue jay Z for sampling Madonna's justifying My Love.
Speaker 1: Somehow Bridgeport got his hands on the copyright to Justify
Speaker 1: My Love. It's a pretty big song. And when jay
Speaker 1: Z sampled that, they sued him. Now this guy runs
Speaker 1: around suing everybody. Apparently had like seven hundred lawsuits against
Speaker 1: just people who sample George Clinton's work, and big Attorney spees,
Speaker 1: right there it is and but when it pays off,
Speaker 1: it pays off. So this guy has come to be
Speaker 1: known at Bridgeport. People like him have come to be
Speaker 1: nowhere called sample trolls. Remember patent trolls when I gave
Speaker 1: like the absolute wrong definition of that. Well, uh, sample
Speaker 1: troll is somebody who just buys up songs, hangs out
Speaker 1: of the copyrights, and then suits people who's sampling without asking.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, you can make a case that, well,
Speaker 1: these people are breaking copyright lost by not asking and
Speaker 1: getting permission to use samples of this. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: Bridgeport has made it their aim to sue anybody who
Speaker 1: sampled it at all, even if they've taken the work
Speaker 1: and made it unrecognizable, right, which that kind of a
Speaker 1: lot of people around the other side of the aisle
Speaker 1: going like that's ridiculous. That stifles creativity. This is just
Speaker 1: one of the many interesting aspects of music sampling. Wow,
Speaker 1: that was a proper intro. It's been a while, um,
Speaker 1: and that's one, but it's probably the biggest as far
Speaker 1: as uh, what people think about how music is used
Speaker 1: in creativity and ownership. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: you just mentioned was Bridgepoort is some big corporation. And
Speaker 1: if you talk to like Hank Shockley, the former producer
Speaker 1: of Public Enemy, he will say that, you know, we
Speaker 1: don't have any problems paying music to artists who created
Speaker 1: the stuff, he said, but they're about these corporations now,
Speaker 1: and it's just it's greed on their part. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: just not There are two sides to every story now,
Speaker 1: and um, the music industry, as we'll see, kind of
Speaker 1: went on a tear of like suing everybody and protecting themselves,
Speaker 1: and um, now you kind of understand, like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: why no one feels bad about this whole music piracy thing. Well,
Speaker 1: there was a big rush at one point because it
Speaker 1: was a new genre. I mean, we'll get into the
Speaker 1: history of how it came to be in all, but
Speaker 1: it was a new thing and so all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you know, for the first you know, several years
Speaker 1: that was open territory and that's when like that, that
Speaker 1: was the heyday if you ask me, Well, folks nerdier
Speaker 1: than us might be confused at this point because UM
Speaker 1: sampling also refers to digitizing music. Uh. What we're talking
Speaker 1: about is taking a piece of an already established UM
Speaker 1: piece of music, right, a selection of it, and then
Speaker 1: recreating it using it, put maybe putting it back to
Speaker 1: back to back in a loop sometimes um oftentimes actually
Speaker 1: and then creating something new using this. Yeah right, yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's what we're talking about with music sampling, all right.
Speaker 1: It's been around for a while too. Yeah. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: you mentioned UM taking a snippet. Let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: just get a couple of examples out there. If we
Speaker 1: want to start out with trying to explain to people
Speaker 1: what a sample is, and as people know this, there
Speaker 1: are no further places to look. Then James Brown's uh
Speaker 1: V song Funky Drummer. Let's go ahead and hear that
Speaker 1: that little break beat. Oh it's like that huh yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, so that's instantly recognizable. So that's funky drummer.
Speaker 1: That's funky drummer, And that was who was the drummer there,
Speaker 1: Clyde stubble Field. Yes, Clyde stubble Field, who has never
Speaker 1: gotten a sent no, but he's pretty cool man. He
Speaker 1: is not trying to see anybody's not seeking anything any
Speaker 1: damage from And this literally thousands of songs have used
Speaker 1: that drum break right, Yeah, James Brown has been sampled
Speaker 1: and this is not just that song, but a lot
Speaker 1: of it comes from Funky Drummer two thousand seven times. Okay,
Speaker 1: so um the leader, and you can make a case
Speaker 1: that Funky Drummer provided the basis for hip hop. Like
Speaker 1: all early hip hop songs, especially in like the mid
Speaker 1: to late eighties, all used that drum brake, right, Um,
Speaker 1: stubble Fields not going after anybody for that. But what
Speaker 1: he did was get together with some documentarians who made
Speaker 1: something called Copyright Criminals, a documentary called Copyright Criminals to
Speaker 1: release a special version of the DVD that has all
Speaker 1: new ready to sample Clyde stubble Field drum brakes that
Speaker 1: he created just for this and if you want to
Speaker 1: use them, he's give him like fifteen of your of
Speaker 1: your sales. So he's like doing it. He's trying out
Speaker 1: a different model. Well. On the other side to which
Speaker 1: we haven't mentioned is is and this is a point
Speaker 1: that a lot of the hip hop producers would make,
Speaker 1: is that some of these people are being pulled from obscurity.
Speaker 1: For instance, the second clip we're gonna play, which is
Speaker 1: the Amen break from Amen Brother and it was a
Speaker 1: B side from a very little known song from a
Speaker 1: group called the Winston's We can hear this one, do yes,
Speaker 1: and We'll hear that right now. So that one, to
Speaker 1: me is slightly better than Funky Drummer. So that's the
Speaker 1: A member that's the Amen break, and do that one
Speaker 1: has been sampled thousands of times, so that one UM
Speaker 1: gave birth to UM drum and based in jungle, like
Speaker 1: all all jungle music is based on the deconstruction of
Speaker 1: the Amen break. If you're interested in hearing about there's
Speaker 1: a really cool movie like a video. It's like eighteen
Speaker 1: minutes long. It's a YouTube video and the title is
Speaker 1: video explains the world's most important six second drum loop.
Speaker 1: So it gave rise to jungle. UM n W a
Speaker 1: straight out of Compton used that. Uh, Cold Cut used it,
Speaker 1: UM and Third Base famously used it as well, and
Speaker 1: hundreds of others. Yeah, I like their base, and that
Speaker 1: was because we want to give due to some of
Speaker 1: these folks who created this stuff. That was Gregory Sylvester Coleman,
Speaker 1: who was the actual drummer that played that lick, and
Speaker 1: that was the Winston's. Yeah, the Winston's excellent Gregory Sylvester Coleman.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think what you're originally saying is some
Speaker 1: producers are saying, like you ever heard of Gregory Coleman? Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: So They're they're bringing some of these folks out of
Speaker 1: obscurity and giving them their due, and I'm sure selling
Speaker 1: some records for him here there. So although that record
Speaker 1: is really hard to find, obviously, well they need to
Speaker 1: press it again, maybe they should. Okay, Uh so you
Speaker 1: take an l O cool j Ladies love Cool James
Speaker 1: for instance. Is that what l else stands for? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You never knew that. Yeah, you even listen to him extensively.
Speaker 1: He was James something, and you know the ladies love
Speaker 1: Cool James or EOS cool Jake Cookies. I'm bad see
Speaker 1: you know, no, I did know. I've just fallen off
Speaker 1: like you. Okay, Um, so you take the funky drummer
Speaker 1: from James Brown song, and you take uh Slying the
Speaker 1: Family Stones, Trip to Your Heart the the background vocals,
Speaker 1: and then basically you loop those over and over and
Speaker 1: over and you have a little song called Mama said,
Speaker 1: Knock you Out. We're about to hear that, well, we're
Speaker 1: gonna hear him separately. Obviously we already played the Funky Drummer,
Speaker 1: and now this is uh the Trip to your Heart
Speaker 1: backing vocals from Slying the Family Stone whom I love.
Speaker 1: All right, So that's it, dude, over and over and
Speaker 1: over with ladies love cool James rapping, and you've got
Speaker 1: a huge, huge hit. Yeah, oh that was a big one.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah huge. I wasn't a big local jag though.
Speaker 1: I like the one I don't remember it's called. But
Speaker 1: it had like the boom box on the cover of
Speaker 1: the tape, like the album artwork was a boom box.
Speaker 1: Yeah that was good. It had I'm bad on Okay. Um,
Speaker 1: it's not always songs that you're sampling. Uh. Sometimes you're
Speaker 1: sampling stuff from like a TV show or a movie,
Speaker 1: or like the Living Color song called the Personality. Remember that?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they had like an FDR speech I think
Speaker 1: it was. Kennedy was FDR had Kennedy took but that
Speaker 1: that was Kennedy, but he said the only thing we
Speaker 1: have to fear is fear itself. Yeah, uh, doubting Thomas.
Speaker 1: They were like a skinny puppy off shoot. They exampled UM.
Speaker 1: I think the Day the Earth Stood Still UM extensively
Speaker 1: throughout this one album that they created. It was pretty good.
Speaker 1: Well and guns and Roses on their song Civil War,
Speaker 1: remember at the beginning of that they played the cool
Speaker 1: hand Luke bit uh over the you know, guitar, and
Speaker 1: then Axel's Weasley Little Boys comes through. Oh and Metallica
Speaker 1: is one oh yeah, yeah sample Johnny got his gun.
Speaker 1: That's right in the video too, Right, So those are
Speaker 1: all samples. You might just think, oh, that's a snippet
Speaker 1: from a movie, but it's a sample, just like you
Speaker 1: would use uh the amen breake. Okay. Um. The first sampler,
Speaker 1: if you want to go back in time a bit
Speaker 1: um was the melotron. Yeah, the actual not not the person,
Speaker 1: but the machine that someone used that was created for sampling, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it was. It was the first time that
Speaker 1: they had ever. You know, it's basically a little keyboard.
Speaker 1: They're very basic. I wish I had one. They're really sweet,
Speaker 1: and it has a volume, a tone, and a pitch
Speaker 1: control a low and high octave you can switch between.
Speaker 1: And then three samples um uh, A, B and C flutes, violence,
Speaker 1: and cello. And it was the first time that they
Speaker 1: basically it ever sampled anything like that. So you press
Speaker 1: the keyboard key and it plays back a prerecorded loop
Speaker 1: of a single note of that single note on a flute,
Speaker 1: let's say, which seems you know, you take that for
Speaker 1: granted now when you buy these keyboard where you can
Speaker 1: do a million different things. But back then, the melotron
Speaker 1: was huge. Oh yeah. And even before that, people would
Speaker 1: take magnetic tapes like real real tapes and and literally
Speaker 1: cut and splice them to create their own samples. Well,
Speaker 1: and if you want to hear a classic example of
Speaker 1: the melotron, flute and uh, listen to this little clip
Speaker 1: right here, is it? Aqual no? Ready, aqualung no. That
Speaker 1: was the intro for the Beatles Strawberry Fields. And that
Speaker 1: was Paul McCartney playing the flute sample of the melotron
Speaker 1: on the melotron. I always thought it was just lutes
Speaker 1: and then like King Crimson and yes and Genesis like
Speaker 1: they went crazy with the melotron. Yeah, Genesis was awesome
Speaker 1: early on, awesome, but in a different way, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: a very different way. Okay, So you talked about the
Speaker 1: origins with the tape splicing. Yeah, yeah, I mean you
Speaker 1: you can go back even further than the melotron. It
Speaker 1: was at the sixties. Yes, there were these two dudes.
Speaker 1: They were the two Piers I call them, um, Pierre
Speaker 1: Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, but probably Pierre amri Um. And
Speaker 1: they were I guess what you would call a couple
Speaker 1: of um avant garde musical artists, and they created what's
Speaker 1: called music concrete spreaky stuff. Did you hear any of it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I did. There's UM again, the YouTube factors in heavily
Speaker 1: in this episode. UM. If you want to find out
Speaker 1: a little bit about music concrete, UM, check out the
Speaker 1: nineteen BBC documentary The New Sound of Music. That is
Speaker 1: very awesome. Actually, yeah, that guy was a really great
Speaker 1: host down so he talks about musique concrete where it's
Speaker 1: basically like these people before they were tape recorders. Even
Speaker 1: I don't know how they were doing this, I guess
Speaker 1: real the real and then these guys were doing splicing. Um,
Speaker 1: they would record the sound of a can falling or
Speaker 1: the sound of a metronome or you know, a piece
Speaker 1: of music off of you know, the radio, and then
Speaker 1: they would splice it all together into something that's like
Speaker 1: barely listenable. But it was. It was electronically reproduced music,
Speaker 1: and it formed the basis of everything that came after
Speaker 1: it that had anything to do with electronic from like
Speaker 1: Pink Floyd to all electronic music, to the Residents to
Speaker 1: Silver Apples, to all these people who craft work who
Speaker 1: created electronic music. It's all based on this, these two
Speaker 1: guys creating this in or something like that. Did you
Speaker 1: see the part of the video where they took the
Speaker 1: tape by hand and we're dragging it through. That ended
Speaker 1: up sounding like and I think was sort of the
Speaker 1: origins of record scratching. That's what it sounded like to
Speaker 1: me as well. Of course it was produced back in
Speaker 1: the day, so they didn't say it was before record scratching.
Speaker 1: This is about this. Actually it was coming out at
Speaker 1: the same time, So that was nine nine, and that's
Speaker 1: been like DJ Cool Hirk and Grandmaster Flash. We're starting
Speaker 1: to get really good. They were playing high school, so
Speaker 1: people were taking notice. That is true. So jumping back
Speaker 1: again in nine, James Tenney uh took Blue Swede shoes
Speaker 1: from Elvis Presley and have you heard this thing? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It's very avant garde, is the way to put it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good way to put it into collage number
Speaker 1: one was what he called it. And it is in
Speaker 1: many many parts virtually unrecognizable. Yeah. Oh yeah, it's really
Speaker 1: hard to listen to. It is very hard to listen
Speaker 1: to it. It's a it's a a piece of electronic
Speaker 1: music that deconstructed. It's so it's Blue Swayede. She's deconstructed time.
Speaker 1: And I mean if you look back and you're like,
Speaker 1: holy cow. The video on YouTube shows like the guy
Speaker 1: sitting in front of his setup and it's like pretty
Speaker 1: extensive and like I was obviously, you know, out of
Speaker 1: his mind. Um, lots of drugs, wasn't he. When you
Speaker 1: look back at and you're like, oh that was what
Speaker 1: That's pretty impressive work, Yeah, exactly. Um. Dicky Goodman and
Speaker 1: Bill Buchanan in nifty six had a more commercial version
Speaker 1: of of I guess you would call it music Concrete
Speaker 1: with Flying Saucer. Did you listen to that one I did.
Speaker 1: That was the stuff we heard on FM radio growing up.
Speaker 1: Remember all that matchup stuff they used to do, like
Speaker 1: Bette Miller's from a Distance with like the during the
Speaker 1: first goal four. I don't know what to remember that now.
Speaker 1: I mean, like when the radio stations would do these
Speaker 1: um well, let me go and say what it was
Speaker 1: and play a snippet um flying saucer. They took rock
Speaker 1: and roll hits from that era and mashed it up
Speaker 1: with a fake news report about aliens landing from outer space,
Speaker 1: and it sounded a little something like this, we interrupt
Speaker 1: this record to bring you a special bull of them.
Speaker 1: The reports of a flying saucer hovering over the city
Speaker 1: have been confirmed. The flying saucers are real. That was
Speaker 1: the Clatters recording to real We switch you now to
Speaker 1: all on the spot reporter Dom Tom take it away.
Speaker 1: So that's the stuff that we heard on FM radio,
Speaker 1: like they would do. I remember when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: They would say like, we're gonna call so and so
Speaker 1: right now, and and they would say, hey, how are
Speaker 1: you feeling, And all of a sudden you'd hear but
Speaker 1: couldn't sleep at all last night. And then they would
Speaker 1: ask him another question to be like an interview, and
Speaker 1: the answers were snippets from from rock songs answering, which
Speaker 1: is really like, I mean, it had to say in
Speaker 1: the seventies and eighties. For sure. I don't have a clip,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna have to describe it. But the Bette
Speaker 1: Midler thing was slightly different. It would be like Bette
Speaker 1: Miller's from a Distance, interspersed with patriotic speeches. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember that. Remember that? Yeah, that that was sampling,
Speaker 1: I guess. So it's most jingoistic form at the very least.
Speaker 1: It was a mash up right those Oh by the way,
Speaker 1: those flying saucer guys, Um Buchanan and Goodman, they went
Speaker 1: on to do a lot of those things, like they
Speaker 1: did one during the energy crisis of seventy four crisis
Speaker 1: of seventy nine. But it'd be like, um, how much
Speaker 1: gas will be ration? Just enough for the city, dude,
Speaker 1: I remember that, That's what I was remembering. Yeah, Oh,
Speaker 1: I was not cognizant at that time. I had a
Speaker 1: lot of like poop, my own poop on my hands
Speaker 1: from like playing with it at that when you were thinking, wow,
Speaker 1: this is really neat stuff. Yeah, I was a little
Speaker 1: radio kid back then. Also, I want to say one
Speaker 1: more thing, Um, I went a little deeper in the
Speaker 1: music concrete thing, and apparently Phillips right the manufacturing concern Um.
Speaker 1: They tried to get into electronic music in like the
Speaker 1: late fifties and had this whole little wing that was
Speaker 1: that let a couple of guys just go to town
Speaker 1: like trying to make popular electronic music. And if you
Speaker 1: search Acid House from nineteen eight on YouTube, these guys
Speaker 1: did a pretty good job of it. It is very
Speaker 1: clearly like the predecessor of like it's listenable. It's not
Speaker 1: just like just it's not it's not even avant garde.
Speaker 1: It has like a beat to it and a melody,
Speaker 1: and it's just it's really neat interesting. I don't have
Speaker 1: that clip either. We should do a podcast on the
Speaker 1: mogue that should Okay, that'll that'll be coming. Didn't you
Speaker 1: guys do that on the B side? I think so,
Speaker 1: But well, we'll do it up. But we've gotten requests
Speaker 1: for more music stuff. That's why I picked this one up.
Speaker 1: So you flash word a little bit and you mentioned
Speaker 1: cool DJ Hirk Graham, DJ Grandmaster Flash who a lot
Speaker 1: of people think that was the group. It was Grandmaster
Speaker 1: Flash and the Furious Five if you remember, and uh,
Speaker 1: they hit it big in nineteen eighty with the song Freedom,
Speaker 1: which sampled Get Up and Dance by the band Freedom
Speaker 1: pretty straight up. Well that that kind of took this
Speaker 1: whole thing into mainstream. Well, and that's when scratching started
Speaker 1: to wouldn't it. Yeah, Grandmaster Flash definitely started scratching. DJ
Speaker 1: cool Hirk started sampling very clearly like he's the guy.
Speaker 1: He's from Kingston, Jamaica, and he moved to New York
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty seven, I think, and started bringing like
Speaker 1: his turntables to block parties and he would just he'd
Speaker 1: find like a drum break or something, and then a
Speaker 1: drum break from another song, and he just keeps like
Speaker 1: putting him together. So it was like one long drum break,
Speaker 1: maybe bring in a little bit of a bassline. And
Speaker 1: I went back and listened to some of it and
Speaker 1: it was good stuff, man, was it? And he's doing
Speaker 1: this in like the mid seventies, and uh, yeah, he
Speaker 1: started sampling as we know it, like turntable sampling. Crazy yeah,
Speaker 1: innovating Josh. That's even better than Crazy Marley Marl is
Speaker 1: someone else we should mention if we're talking about. But
Speaker 1: the early heyday he was a house producer for the
Speaker 1: Juice Crew, which was Big Daddy, Kane and Bismarcki among others,
Speaker 1: but he also produced Eric B and rackiem uh Ellow
Speaker 1: cool J. And he was like he's often cited, is
Speaker 1: like the early leader. What about Redhead Kingpin? I don't
Speaker 1: know that. What's that he's He's like in there somewhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Big Daddy came in. You just blasted me with the nostalgia.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, remember the hat where the gumby haircut? Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, the what they call that, the high high right.
Speaker 1: I always thought it was called the gumby. That's what
Speaker 1: you call it. Huh, Well, they may called it gumby, heiric.
Speaker 1: I don't know until it's a fade essentially, um the
Speaker 1: Beastie boys, see what I was talking about, Like back
Speaker 1: in the day, in the in the eighties, late eighties,
Speaker 1: they were constructing full songs from dozens of samples. And
Speaker 1: this was before you had to pay permission rights and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. So you get a song like Hey
Speaker 1: Ladies from Paul's boutique, which is he asked me the
Speaker 1: pinnacle for the Beastie Boys. Ladies, Paul's boutique, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's the pinnacle, it's well, I think
Speaker 1: it's one of several pinnacles. We'll check. Your head was
Speaker 1: great too, but Paul's boutique was great. Hey, ladies use
Speaker 1: sixteen samples and that was not on the low side.
Speaker 1: But uh, Terminator X of Public Enemy and the Beast
Speaker 1: Boys would craft songs out of dozens and dozens of samples.
Speaker 1: And that's that's DJ Hurricane you're giving props to. He's
Speaker 1: the Beast Boys. J was he always I believe, so okay,
Speaker 1: but I think they all like wrote the stuff together.
Speaker 1: Um as we'll find out because the the court case
Speaker 1: against the BC boys was Newton versus Diamond Ouch, and
Speaker 1: we all know who Diamond is, Dustin Diamond, Mike The's Brothers,
Speaker 1: No no, no, uh, groups like day Las Sole Public
Speaker 1: Enemy in the BCS were crafting these songs whereas nowadays,
Speaker 1: partially because I think they're not as good and creative,
Speaker 1: and partially because you have to pay rights. You'll get
Speaker 1: like a kid rock who just plays this one loop
Speaker 1: over and over and that's the sample he uses in
Speaker 1: a song. So it's not like he's crafting these songs
Speaker 1: out of dozens and dozens of samples. Well, Public Enemy
Speaker 1: even said, like, after all these lawsuits and threats of lawsuits,
Speaker 1: if you're crafting a song out of seventeen other songs,
Speaker 1: you basically have to like figure out something else because
Speaker 1: you can't do it anymore. And I mean, what a
Speaker 1: buzz kill two to make a song and then take
Speaker 1: it to the to the your record company overlords who
Speaker 1: say like, Okay, we can get this cleared, we can
Speaker 1: get this cleared. This one we can't clear no way
Speaker 1: wherever clearing this. Yeah, so you have, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: two thirds of your song is intact, but the other
Speaker 1: third is it has holes in it. You know, that's
Speaker 1: it kind of takes away from the whole thing. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, yeah, I mean again, it's breaking
Speaker 1: a law. It's a copyright law, and it's not an
Speaker 1: arbitrary law. It's not as it's not a superfluous law.
Speaker 1: There is validity to it. You know, Well, let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and talk about it. Then, Okay, copyright law the
Speaker 1: one that changed everything. It wasn't It was not the
Speaker 1: first copyright lawsuit I think those guys um who did
Speaker 1: the flying saucer thing were the first to start attracting
Speaker 1: copyright lawsuits yea um. But the first one as far
Speaker 1: that that changed hip hop, I guess it was Bismarck
Speaker 1: Key landed a beef from one Gilbert O'Sullivan who wrote
Speaker 1: the song alone Again naturally for you Got what I
Speaker 1: Need or whatever? No Alone Again his song from I
Speaker 1: Need a Haircut. Um. That album it's called Alone Again,
Speaker 1: and um, bismarckis lifted pretty heavily from that, and he
Speaker 1: was signed to Warner Brothers, and Warner Brothers got sued
Speaker 1: by the owners of Alone Again naturally right, and the
Speaker 1: judge ruled in um the copyright holders favor against Warner Brothers.
Speaker 1: So all of a sudden, Warner Brothers, big business, big company,
Speaker 1: starts circling the wagons like, okay, whoa wa wa, whoa there,
Speaker 1: we're really exposed right now because all of our hip
Speaker 1: hop artists are running around sampling anybody they want to,
Speaker 1: and now we can get sued for it. And the
Speaker 1: judge caught a lot of flak because he said, and
Speaker 1: not only not only am I ruling in your favor?
Speaker 1: I think that this should go to some sort of
Speaker 1: criminal prosecution, right, because this is their defense. Warner Brothers
Speaker 1: defense was it's rampant. Everyone's doing this and we've been
Speaker 1: doing it for ten years, Like what's your problem. And
Speaker 1: the judge was like, well, if that's the case, then
Speaker 1: we we need to really start looking into this, and
Speaker 1: that shut everything down. That's when sampling went from art
Speaker 1: to business. Yeah, I'm surprised it took that long for
Speaker 1: people to catch on. And it was money that is
Speaker 1: what did it as sales and when you know, it
Speaker 1: was just like DJ's and Queens was no big deal
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies and early eighties, but all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, these artists, these hip hop artists were making
Speaker 1: money on work from that was previously recorded by other
Speaker 1: people and people saw green. Essentially, it's true they saw
Speaker 1: dollar signs. They do um, But let me ask you this,
Speaker 1: should the original people, the original artists, like I can
Speaker 1: understand just hating on corporations because they didn't create this
Speaker 1: at all. This happened to own it or whatever, but
Speaker 1: it should the original artists expect some sort of compensation
Speaker 1: for somebody who's making millions of dollars by taking some
Speaker 1: of that original work. Do they what do they deserve
Speaker 1: any kind of consideration? I think I agree to depending
Speaker 1: on how like what degree the work has changed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I say, used the crap out of it, but get
Speaker 1: permission and pay royalties. Yeah, Like, if if that's the
Speaker 1: genre you're if that's what you're choosing to do, Like,
Speaker 1: no one's forcing these people to do that, that's what
Speaker 1: you're choosing to do, then you've got to play by
Speaker 1: the rules. That's what I think, and then go wow
Speaker 1: with it. Well, I guess that's kind of like the
Speaker 1: status quo now, and that's not working necessarily. It's leading
Speaker 1: to like your beef with Kid Rock, Well, my beef
Speaker 1: is that he's just not very good. It's large. It's
Speaker 1: larger than that. You'd be careful, man. He gets in
Speaker 1: fights and stuff. Yeah, waffle house is in Atlanta, so
Speaker 1: he knows where we live. I saw BISMARKI the airport
Speaker 1: one time. By the way, you be hung out with
Speaker 1: Bismarck Key wants played PlayStation. Yeah, saw I'm on the
Speaker 1: on the little internal train and I was like, is
Speaker 1: that yeah? That is I mean I thought for about
Speaker 1: a half a second and I was like, then I'm
Speaker 1: worrying that gray curly powdered wig now and he didn't
Speaker 1: with uh all right, so let's talk about what the
Speaker 1: cost of it is. Um ten dollars No, not ten
Speaker 1: dollars um. At first it was something it was called
Speaker 1: a buy out, so you purchased rights to sample a song.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that much money. But like I said, as
Speaker 1: sales grew in the rap and hip hop world, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know rock band said it too, they started pay
Speaker 1: rollover rates, which is you gotta pay per your sales, right,
Speaker 1: which all of a sudden, you know, the bill got
Speaker 1: larger and larger and larger, and you're not necessarily just
Speaker 1: paying one person. No, No, you might pay the copyright
Speaker 1: owner of the composition of the music. And if you
Speaker 1: use a specific recording rather than record that composition yourself
Speaker 1: and use it right, then you have to pay the
Speaker 1: owner of that particular recording, which aren't necessarily one and
Speaker 1: the same, right, and they both might want equal amounts
Speaker 1: of money rather than giving you a deal. You know,
Speaker 1: or if you're Vanilla Ice, you would just slightly altered
Speaker 1: Queen's famous baseline from under pressure, not even so much
Speaker 1: as credit them on your album. Forget asking for rights.
Speaker 1: He didn't even say like special thanks to to Queen,
Speaker 1: and uh settle out of court eventually for an undisclosed
Speaker 1: sum of money. He raises jet skis now under the
Speaker 1: name Vanilla Ice. Does he he also? He has a
Speaker 1: home renovation show too, Does he really? Yeah? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: he flips houses. Yeah yeah, it's pretty weird. It's not weird,
Speaker 1: it's weird for him to do it. Uh. Mc hammer
Speaker 1: very famous for his sampling of h and Can't Touch
Speaker 1: This and his pants super freak? Oh yeah yeah did he? No,
Speaker 1: he did that was all on the up and up?
Speaker 1: Is he really? Yeah? He was back then? Well he's
Speaker 1: got you gotta pray just to make it today. So's
Speaker 1: run from run dmc huh and and I s ized
Speaker 1: baby is out there flipping houses. They all got to
Speaker 1: do something. And Dustin Diamond from Saved by the Bell.
Speaker 1: Uh it was not. He was evicted. He was in
Speaker 1: the process of being evicted, and he had he launched
Speaker 1: a web campaign to save his house. I remember that.
Speaker 1: I wonder whatever happened. I don't know. Um. The drum
Speaker 1: intro for led Zeppelin's When the Levee breaks, That thing
Speaker 1: has been sampled dozens and dozens and dozens of times.
Speaker 1: But it's so massive and it's so immediately recognizable that
Speaker 1: it takes over a song. You know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think it's a It's just it's
Speaker 1: basically like, oh, this this is a led Zeppelin sample,
Speaker 1: rather than like that's a great thing about um. Amen, brother,
Speaker 1: It's like no one ever heard of that. But it
Speaker 1: was a perfect drum break that leads that level when
Speaker 1: the levee breaks, it's it's too led Zeppelin, so too recognizable,
Speaker 1: and you're off of it. Yeah. I just started thinking
Speaker 1: of about Robert Plant right. I think they were down
Speaker 1: with it. Though. Jimmy Page I remember, was totally cool
Speaker 1: with it. Yeah, yeah, with am using that. Of course
Speaker 1: it wasn't his lick it. Uh, he's not around to
Speaker 1: say anything. No. In two thousand three, the Best Boys,
Speaker 1: I said, the landmark case Newton v. Diamond Um, they
Speaker 1: did a sample and we'll hear it right now. The
Speaker 1: very beginning of past the mic contains this six second
Speaker 1: flute stable. Do you hear that? It's like three notes
Speaker 1: on a flute. And they got the rights, the sample
Speaker 1: rights um for the sound recording, but not the compositional
Speaker 1: rights because they were like, you know, this guy played it,
Speaker 1: so we'll pay him, but it's three notes on a flute, Like,
Speaker 1: we don't feel like we should have to pay compositional rights. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've always thought it was something like eight notes was
Speaker 1: the cut off or something like that, like there's a
Speaker 1: center number of notes. I remember that from being a kid.
Speaker 1: I don't know why that would have come up when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, but I seem to remember that. Well.
Speaker 1: The BC Boys won their case, actually, and the judge
Speaker 1: said that the brief composition um, consisting of three notes
Speaker 1: separated by a half step, is not sufficient to sustain
Speaker 1: acclaim for copyright infringement. So that was we already played
Speaker 1: the clip, didn't we here? So that was it. And
Speaker 1: also you can not only hear at the very beginning
Speaker 1: of that song, but you hear underlying the entire song.
Speaker 1: It's the best sample of all time, best best use
Speaker 1: of a sample. Uh, your favorite? How about that doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be best? You know what my favorite is
Speaker 1: from the BC Boys? Um, hey, ladies, remember when um,
Speaker 1: it's it's from Ballroom Blitz. You know that song, Ballroom Blitz? Yeah, terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible song that's sampled. BC Boys sampled that song and
Speaker 1: hey ladies, when they break that one part down, it
Speaker 1: goes she thinks she's the passionate one that's from Ballroom Blitz.
Speaker 1: Huh wow. Yeah, so that's my favorite one. I definitely
Speaker 1: wouldn't have ever ever caught that. I you still love
Speaker 1: the BC Boys back in the day, have you ever
Speaker 1: heard um uh uh the pop will eat Itself? Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: back in like the early nineties are kind of tronic.
Speaker 1: They had a song there, well, they're one big song.
Speaker 1: Psycho Sexual actually sampled um a classical composition Eric Sati's
Speaker 1: Jina pet It's really awesome. I'd heard I love Jinna
Speaker 1: Peeny and I love psycho Sexual, and then one day
Speaker 1: I just heard it just where I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, that's that. That's that's one of my favorite favorite,
Speaker 1: like probably of all time was um ice Cube's Good
Speaker 1: Day using the Isley Brothers Footsteps in the Dark, and
Speaker 1: then Dr Dre's The Chronic was like that was just
Speaker 1: the soundtrack of one year of my college life and
Speaker 1: that was a lot of George Clinton and Andre was
Speaker 1: actually one of the first people to stop sampling and
Speaker 1: start recreating uh stuff with live musicians himself, which is
Speaker 1: called producing. Yeah, you're right, And now he has his
Speaker 1: own line, I've had funds. Should we talk about Danger
Speaker 1: Mouse real quick? Sure? The Gray Album? He famously in
Speaker 1: two thousand four did a mash up of the Beatles
Speaker 1: White Album and jay Z's The Black Album and called
Speaker 1: it the Gray Album. Very creative and h E. M I,
Speaker 1: who owned the Beatles recordings. Even though Jay Z and
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney were totally fine with it, they shut it
Speaker 1: down and said, you're not selling this. No, but it
Speaker 1: made his career. Yeah, and it got around on the
Speaker 1: internet such that he was like, fine, I'm not selling it,
Speaker 1: but everyone's gonna hear it. Anyway. I'd go hang out
Speaker 1: with CLO and do some stuff and MF and we'll
Speaker 1: just make some money from instead. Oh chuck. What about
Speaker 1: cover songs? Yeah, since nineteen o nine, you can cover songs.
Speaker 1: You can play a song faithfully, especially live, uh, and
Speaker 1: not pay the owner of the composition assent, as long
Speaker 1: as you don't alter it, like played in a different
Speaker 1: language or something like that. Um. And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people who say, well, wait a minute, that's like
Speaker 1: that's a sample in its entirety. This is crazy. What
Speaker 1: is the deal? And everyone has said, we don't know,
Speaker 1: we'll figure it out in another ten years. You know
Speaker 1: what bugs me is when these new country artists will
Speaker 1: cover a song that's like a year old, like another
Speaker 1: song and release it's a great acclaim. Well that that
Speaker 1: used to happen like a lot um like more than
Speaker 1: one person would record the same song and they get
Speaker 1: released about the same time, like in the fifties and
Speaker 1: the sixties. Um, so just be glad you don't live then,
Speaker 1: because you'd be going crazy. That's true. And uh, just
Speaker 1: so you guys know, the reason we're able to play
Speaker 1: these clips is because something called fair use, which we've
Speaker 1: talked about a lot with Jerry, So you just put
Speaker 1: your pens down, lawyers, because we know what we're doing.
Speaker 1: It's only in the United States, and it is the
Speaker 1: exclusive right granted to us to play a snippet of
Speaker 1: something without acquiring permission, as long as we use it
Speaker 1: as commentary, criticism, research, teaching, or news reporting. Well wait
Speaker 1: a minute, this is what we're doing. Does that mean
Speaker 1: that if this has heard in Australia though it is,
Speaker 1: are we still covered by fair use that. I don't know. No,
Speaker 1: we'll find out. All right, Well, let's it for music sampling.
Speaker 1: This turned out better than I thought. You got anything else? No,
Speaker 1: I mean you got any more samples? Keep you I'm
Speaker 1: putting my turntable back in my pocket and h you
Speaker 1: know they had those little iPhone turntables now, which is
Speaker 1: come on, yeah, um Jerry instagatism. If you want to
Speaker 1: learn more about music sampling, you can type that into
Speaker 1: the handy search part How Stuff Works dot Com, which
Speaker 1: means it's time for listener mail. Before listener mail, Josh,
Speaker 1: I want to point people, um who are into sampling
Speaker 1: in the history of sampling to go to who Sampled
Speaker 1: dot com. I'm glad you mentioned, as I'm meant to
Speaker 1: mention it too. It's a really awesome website and it's
Speaker 1: um allows you basically you can you can search for
Speaker 1: artists who have sampled and who have been sampled, and
Speaker 1: uh search for songs and they basically throw them up
Speaker 1: side by side as two turntables like the original sample
Speaker 1: or the original uh you know, break or whatever, then
Speaker 1: how it was used. It's pretty cool, you complain, I'm
Speaker 1: simultaneously Yeah, that's awesome. So that is who Sample dot Com.
Speaker 1: All right, Josh, I'm gonna read this. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a long one, but this is about spies and this
Speaker 1: is from Tom and he said that his family has
Speaker 1: a strange tendency of being arrested on suspicion of being
Speaker 1: Kiwi spies New Zealand spies in France. They all were
Speaker 1: Trench coats. The first story concerns my parents on their honeymoon.
Speaker 1: It was immediately following the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior
Speaker 1: in Auckland Harbor by French saboteurs. My parents were traveling
Speaker 1: into France from the UK when they were arrested and
Speaker 1: detained on suspicion of being New Zealand counter terrorists. Nothing
Speaker 1: could be further from the truth by the way they
Speaker 1: were held in separate holding cells for two days, when
Speaker 1: French agents would come inside to sell smoking cigarettes and
Speaker 1: yelling at them in French. It's pretty terrifying for my mother,
Speaker 1: who was only twenty one at the time. And after
Speaker 1: two days they were released and dropped off at the
Speaker 1: New Zealand embassy where they learned of the incident back
Speaker 1: in Auckland. So that's one incident. The second story is
Speaker 1: my comes from great great Auntie Anne, or Sister Marine.
Speaker 1: She's a nun with the Order of the Little Sister
Speaker 1: to the Poor, and she is ninety eight years old
Speaker 1: this year and is still going strong. Her story originates
Speaker 1: with the Nazis. She had been with her fellow nuns
Speaker 1: in rural France looking after the elderly who had been
Speaker 1: abandoned as the Nazis approached. They were also sheltering three
Speaker 1: to four British airmen who had been shot down nearby.
Speaker 1: When the Nazis arrived, they rounded up the nuns, and
Speaker 1: the airmen accused the nuns of being spies. She and
Speaker 1: her fellow nuns, of which she was mother superior, were
Speaker 1: taken to a pow camp interrogated by Gestapo officers He's nuns.
Speaker 1: Eventually she was marched into the commandant's office told she
Speaker 1: was being taken away. Believing she was going to be shot,
Speaker 1: she told them she would not cooperate unless her nuns
Speaker 1: were also set free. Turned into a pretty hostile negotiation,
Speaker 1: and she stuck to her guns, even though at one
Speaker 1: point she was looking down the barrel of one. The
Speaker 1: commandant finally agreed and bundled all the sisters together on
Speaker 1: a freight train where they believed they were going to
Speaker 1: be executed together. Sadly, the train stopped. The guards on
Speaker 1: the train threw the nuns out one by one into
Speaker 1: the snow, the doors closed, and the train sped off.
Speaker 1: Sister Marie eventually led her nuns to the convent, where
Speaker 1: they spent the last two years of the war, not
Speaker 1: only helping the elderly, but also sheltering and competing members
Speaker 1: of the French resistance. So she he said. Tom said,
Speaker 1: if I could read this on the podcast, I know
Speaker 1: Auntie Anne would really appreciate the airtime for the convent
Speaker 1: in which she has dedicated over seventy years too. And
Speaker 1: I would appreciate letting people know about why nobody and
Speaker 1: my family feel safe in France. Me so year old
Speaker 1: Auntie Anne, the nune. We thank you for all your
Speaker 1: work over the years, and I hope you make it
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty Yeah waited four the Nancy's Yeah.
Speaker 1: How about that? That's from Tom. Are thanks a lot,
Speaker 1: Tom for letting us know that we appreciate it. Um. Wow,
Speaker 1: I guess if you have a cool family story, we
Speaker 1: want to hear that we're all always are always up
Speaker 1: for those. Uh, there's a plethora that's entirely on true,
Speaker 1: there's actually just three, but there's three ways you can
Speaker 1: get in touch with us, yes, electronically. One is through Twitter.
Speaker 1: Our Twitter handle is uh s y s K podcast
Speaker 1: all one word. If you're not following us on Twitter,
Speaker 1: you're missing out. Believe me, I agreed. Um. Also, you
Speaker 1: can hang out with us on Facebook. We're on there
Speaker 1: pretty frequently, all right, Yeah, uh Facebook dot com slash
Speaker 1: Stuff you should know, and you can send us an
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