Saturday, November 22, 2008

chillin' with bob dylan

just got back from a two-and-a-quarter hour set from folk/rock/insert-your-genre-here musical luminary bob dylan. or as i like to call him, bob dylan.

have some video from the concert but have misplaced the cord connecting my phone to the computer. yes, i'm as pissed as you. it was the first time i used the video function on the phone. unfortunately, it produces only super-short clips.

my dylan experience forced me to reflect on some thoughts about copyright protection i previously had about radiohead. more specifically, both dylan and radiohead have transcended the normal constraints that most musicians find themselves under - indentured servants to record companies, unscrupulous a & r reps, and garden variety capitalist vultures who pick on the entrails of most creative artists unable to financially sustain their art.

i own a super-duper canon rebel xsi slr digital camera. i didn't even think of bringing it to the concert because it's about the size of a toaster. what surprised me was that the security guards didn't check us AT ALL. i could have easily snuck in my westinghouse 4-slice digital camera. for that matter, i could have brought in an arriflex film camera and d.a. pennebaker to shoot it. maybe even the multiple cameras for a scorcese-like "shine a light" concert complete with mick, charlie and enough j.d. to keep keith elegantly wasted.

in terms of copyright, people like radiohead and bob dylan up-end the gravitational laws of protection. they've succeeded to a point where they can give their work away in a pwyc model (see radiohead's "in rainbows" experiment) or even forgo instructing security guards to frisk civilians for cameras, mp3 recorders, HD cameras, etc. how this effects "the common man" (e.g. the struggling artist), we'll just have to see.

i don't want to make any predictions, but if you don't need to pay radiohead for their album or can openly record bootlegs of dylan, i can make a pretty good guess where the lead singer of "dino sossi's warbling blues band" will be getting his rent money...

"would you like fries with that?"

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