Pretty Biased View

I agree with what you are saying. I just finished watching the Documentary. But samplers can sample any sound/music not just someones original music. You can make your one own recordings using a sampler without using someone else's sounds/music. But I do think that rationalization is a weak argument.

- "It's like you gotta be disrespected and thrown out the exit to get the message" - Talib Kweli

the producer in question (steve albini) is actually a fairly popular indie rock musician as well. he plays guitar and sings in the the band Shellac. He's also played in the band Big Black and Rapeman.

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death to any idiot that uses the phrase "jump the shark"

This documentary is a slap in the face to real musicians who bust their asses everyday to master the art of music. Watching this made me REALLY angry!! I've been a musician for decades. I learned how to read music and play brass horns in the high school band and then I taught myself guitar and bass then took intermediate piano lessons. It took a lot of hard work and time I'd rather have been hanging with my friends and girl chasing but I have no regrets. Today I'm still learning to play new instruments. I enjoy jamming with other musicians and learning from them.

It makes me angry to hear these so-called "artists" not only defending the practice of sampling but castigating the real artists and musicians who sue for compensation for music that they spent their time and blood creating. Sampling takes little talent. Ok, you need to have an ear for what fits with what but if you listen to much of the sampling on these records, though they may work rhythmically, they're often very atonal and clashing. And you can't equate the short amount of time it takes to sample a few records and put them together with the time it takes to compose, perform and record real music. Drummer Clyde Stubblefield has been sampled more than any other musician and yet he was only paid one time for each of his performances. And samplers are getting paid multiple royalties from his blood and sweat.

The only way I respect sampling is when it's not used as a centerpiece for a song but as a reconfigured sound. Which is what a lot of the "trip hop" artists were doing; taking a sound here and a sound there and making it work as a whole rather stealing entire verses or passages, wholesale and wrapping beats around that. However, hip hop couldn't be satisfied with that because it still took a lot of time to find all those pieces and then they still had to create some original music out of that. So they just started sampling songs wholesale (which is no different than how the genre started, ie: "Rapper's Delight") and here we are in a new millennium and now everybody is out there just boosting entire grooves from other artists and making new hits out of recycled hits. Kanye West is currently the biggest offender but it's in every genre now, including country music. I've heard a Lynyrd Skynyrd sample, Warren Zevon sample, Sister Sledge, etc. Not just a riff but entire hooks and choruses. So not only are an older generation of legendary artists being robbed but the culture of popular music is in arrested development where the average pop artist doesn't even know where middle C is on a piano while the real talent is out on street corners playing for change. Shameful.

I'm equally disgusted by the patronizing attitude of how hip hop claims to be paying homage to music artists and real musicians by sampling their work and putting it out there for everyone to hear. Why? It's ALREADY out there for anyone to hear on vinyl, cd, or now downloads, iTunes, Rhapsody and YouTube among others. That's the weakest defense and excuse I've ever heard. Face it. These people just want to be musicians but are too lazy to do the work and they want to be stars today and this is the fastest way to do it without breaking a real sweat and if they can do it without crediting the real authors, paying a fee or getting permission, then all the better. They get to claim themselves as musical geniuses and composers.

The truly sad thing is that today's music fan actually thinks this is a viable way to perform music. We have a generation of fans who don't understand the real musical work ethic of musicians or they're no longer awed by real musicianship because they think musicians are just gifted people who born knowing how to play music. It's bad enough the average non-musician thinks musical talent is inherited instead of cultivated. It doesn't occur to them that the guy playing an amazing jazz vibraphone solo in a jazz band, the piano player in at their favorite bar or the pedal steel or banjo player in a hot bluegrass combo had to sit in his/her bedroom or garage for years after school or between work shifts and practice for several hours a day to become as good as they are. To the average young listener today, these people are just circus freaks and trained seals.

I think the industry people they interviewed did cover the other side of the argument pretty well, they just didn't get equal air time.

It's probably not all that easy to get interviews with people from "that side," anyway.

Also, I thought the bit about Rick James and MC Hammer was a pretty compelling argument for the "other side." Seriously, who would give a uck if MC Hammer had gotten his pants sued off by Rick James?

My own 2 cents' worth: Do what you want live or with mixtapes and demos, but once you try to put out a copyrighted record, whether original or sampled, everything from that point on is all in the game, baby.