Bettered by the borrower - copyrights and music composition

Whole Earth Review, Winter, 1987 by John Oswald

Tenney took an everyday music and allowed us to hear it differently. At the same time, all that was inherently Elvis radically influenced our perception of Jim's piece.

Fair use and fair deafing are respectively the American and the Canadian terms for instances in which appropriation without permission might be considered legal. Quoting extracts of music for pedagogical, illustrative and critical purposes has been upheld as legal fair use. So has borrowing for the purpose of parody, Fair dealing assumes use which does not interfere with the economic viability of the initial work.

In addition to economic rights, an artist can claim certain moral rights to a work. Elvis' estate can claim the same rights, including the right to privacy, and the right to protection of "the special significance of sounds peculiar to a particular artist, the uniqueness of which might be harmed by inferior unauthorized recordings which might tend to confuse the public about an artist's abilities."

My observation is that Tenney's "Blue Suede" fulfills Milton's stipulation; is supported by Stravinsky's aphorism; and does not contravene Elvis' morality.

HITTING BACK THE PARADE

The property metaphor used to illustrate an artist's rights is difficult to pursue through publication and mass dissemination. The Hit Parade publicly promenades the aural floats of pop. As curious tourists, should we not be able to take our own snapshots ("tiny reproductions of the Tai Mahal") rather than be restricted to the official souvenir postcards and programs?

All popular music is (as is all folk music by definition) essentially, if not legally, existing in a public domain. Listening to pop music isn't a matter of choice. Asked-for or not, we're bombarded by it. In its most insidious state, filtered to an incessant bassline, it seeps through apartment walls and out of the heads of Walkpeople. Although people in general are making more noise than ever before, fewer people are making more of the total noise; specifically, in music, those with megawatt PAs, triple-platinum sales, and heavy rotation. Difficult to ignore, pointlessly redundant to imitate: how does one not become a passive recipient?

As oceanographer Bob Ballard of the Deep Emergence Laboratory described their plan to apprehend the Titanic once it had been located at the bottom of the Atlantic, "You pound the hell out of it with every imaging system you have."