ear whacks by Todd Paul

The Fix is In

A Rosendale family has thrown a new wrinkle into the debate about Napster and similar file-sharing programs. In case you haven’t heard, Napster is a computer program that allows free and easy sharing of music files over the Internet. By loading Napster, a computer user can download thousands of music files from the hard drives of other users. It’s like having the largest, most easily-accessible library of free music in the world. Want the new Kid Rock album? Download it free, in seconds, at home. Want a rare live recording of The Beatles at the Cavern Club? Download that, too. Why buy albums? Indeed, why leave home?
Sick of watching the hard work and creative product of musicians being turned into so much shareware, Michael Fix and his brother, John, developed the Cuckoo’s Egg Project, named after the bird that lays its eggs in other birds’ nests, thus skewing natural selection in its favor. Because Napster used only file names to identify songs, it should be easy, they figured, to slip mistitled electronic files—“cuckoo’s eggs”—into the Napster system. With some help from a friend, Simon Watson, in California, the Fix brothers began spreading a fake version of Bruce Springsteen’s “American Skin (41 Shots)” over Napster. Though the title would lead one to believe the file contained Springsteen’s musical commentary on the murder of Amadou Diallo by New York City police officers—a song that led the NYPD Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association to withhold police protection from Springsteen’s Madison Square Garden concert on June 13—the file actually contained a song by Michael Fix’s wife, musician Stefanie Fix. Other “cuckoo’s eggs” targeted traders of songs by other popular musicians, substituting for the original music silence, noise or the sound of a cuckoo clock. Though the original file containing Stefanie Fix’s song was only resident on Michael’s hard drives for a few days, it is still self-replicating on Napster, due to the virus-like nature of the program.
The Fix family may have been the first to practice widespread “Napster bombing,” as the practice has become known, but already others have duplicated the process. On their website, //www.hand-2-mouth.com/cuckooegg/, Michael Fix explains his stance against the misuse of Napster and similar technologies, and provides simple instructions on how to create and launch a cuckoo’s egg. The idea mainly appeals to two classes of people—those upset with the free trading of copyrighted material, and those who simply want to have fun at the expense of computer geeks. Some cuckoo’s eggs deliver fake “studio versions” or “outtakes” of popular songs—such as the version of “American Skin (Uncensored Version)” that has Springsteen singing “41 shots/41 shots/Kill the fuckin’ cops/Kill the fuckin’ cops.” Others contain unlikely team-ups, such as Eminem’s lyrics laid over a Britney Spears song.
The sudden notoriety of the Fix family has done little to help Stefanie sell her music, though she acknowledges she’s received more hits to her homepage since the story hit the web ‘zines. In any case, she says, the point was never to sell her tunes, but to strike a blow for the integrity of artists’ work. “How do you want artists to survive in this culture? I don’t need a mansion on the hill, but I do need to be supported if I’m going to continue to do my work,” says Fix. In this, she draws a distinction between “artists”, such as herself, and “entertainers”, such as Spears, who are packaged and sold by big corporations. The implication is that it might be ok to rip off the music of “entertainers”, since they can afford it, but not that of “artists”, who can’t. Asked to define these categories, Fix replies, “I think most of us know what the difference is. It’s like love and it’s like hate, you know it when you see it.”
The “I’ll know it when I see it” definition doesn’t work well for pornography, since it depends a great deal on who’s doing the seeing, and it quickly wears thin when applied to art as well. Asked for an example of another “artist,” Fix names Neil Young. Obviously, her husband thinks highly enough of Springsteen’s work to bomb those who would rip off his music. On the other hand, the piracy of Spears’ work, while illegal, doesn’t carry the same emotional charge for Fix, nor, I suspect, for many of us. The point is brought home by a spoof article in a recent edition of The Onion, which laments the “death by starvation” of Kid Rock after a spate of Napster trading reduced sales of his CDs to zero, forcing the singer to sell his assets and live on the street. Clearly, people have less sympathy for millionaire rock stars than they do for hard-working, unsigned musicians who just want to make an honest buck from their efforts. The idea that Kid Rock, Madonna, Spears or Michael Jackson might actually suffer due to Napster abuses seems ludicrous
The freewheeling culture of Napster is likely due in part to the fact that this is an Internet-dependant technology—and denizens of the net tend to feel everything, including speech, software and music, should be free. Just as new abortion and contraceptive technologies fed the era of “free love” and reopened ancient religious and philosophical debates, modern reproductive devices—in this case, Napster—have reopened age-old debates about intellectual property and the ownership of art. If I buy a CD, do I have the right to record it for a friend? If I buy a book, may I copy it?
Historically, various industries have handled these questions differently. Until the mid-1970s, for example, comic book artists actually sold their original artwork to the publishing house, which shredded the originals after publication to prevent competitors from obtaining the images. In the music industry of the 1950s, purveyors of “race records” were famous for appropriating to themselves authorship rights to successful songs. When Chuck Berry’s first single, “Maybellene,” came out, the singer was furious to find two additional names listed as authors on the sheet music. One was the owner of the studio where the song had been recorded and the other was the owner of the stationary shop that printed the score.
Given such a history, it is difficult to feel sympathy for big record companies who claim they lose money due to Napster and other, similar programs. It is easier to sympathize with the musicians themselves, unless, perhaps, you view them as “entertainers” rather than artists. But whether you sympathize or not, it’s probably too late to put the Napster genie back in the bottle. This is the genius of the Fix fix—it aims to educate, or at least frustrate, users of file sharing programs rather than the companies that produced them.
One aspect of the issue not addressed in the online ‘zines—for obvious reasons—is that the entire debate surrounding Napster and related programs is a fixation of the technology elite. How many of us own CD-burners? How many have Internet access, plus the know-how to obtain and install a program like Napster? For most of the planet, such things are far removed from daily life—just slightly more removed than, for example, creating music with a laser and a plastic disk.

RECOMMENDED LISTENING
Stefanie Fix—Survival
Given what she says she wants—not a mansion, just enough support to keep going—Stefanie Fix’s CD on her Hand-To-Mouth Recordings label is appropriately titled. It’s a good CD, in the genre Dylan fans once dubbed “folk rock.” Dylan, in fact, is paid homage by Fix’s version of his song “Oh Sister,” the only cover on the album. It speaks well of Fix’s songwriting abilities to note that “Oh Sister” makes a good fit with her own songs.
Fix sometimes wears her influences on her sleeve; “The More I Become” brings to mind Joan Armatrading and perhaps Ferron, the opening riff to “Girls Like Me” sounds very like a Neil Young song, etc. But Fix writes, sings and plays with passion, and her obvious debt to some of the best songwriters of the age only puts her in good company. She’s backed by a good company as well—Larry Campbell, Bob Mayo, Al Hemberger and Ted Hemberger lay down the basic groove, with Fix leading on acoustic guitar. If you like the aforementioned artists, you’ll probably like Survival. Order from www.stefaniefix.com.
Big Sister—So Hi How Are You
There’s good news and good news for fans of the dues-payingest all-woman band in the Hudson Valley. Big Sister is about to reap the first fruits of a two-year-old, seven-album deal with Capricorn Records, an teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy subdivision of Universal. Lara Parks, Lisa Wexler, Shelly Prior, Denise Parent, Jen Leigh and Desiree Williams release their first major-label album with a party at The Joyous Lake August 4. The 13 original songs on the album represent the band’s strongest material in years.
Big Sister began a decade ago as a 4-piece blues band. The group has grown both musically and in membership, becoming a two-drum, three-guitar ensemble (Williams holds her own on bass) and creating their own brand of blues-infused rock that sounds by turns like vintage ‘60s psychedelia, modern alternative pop and jam-band extended-play rock. Always a great live band, Big Sister has finally found in John Siket (Dave Matthews, Phish) a producer who helps them capture their strengths in the studio. “Pocket” and “Dawn,” the albums two strongest tracks, have gotten play on WDST-FM in Woodstock. The CD has been reviewed in Rolling Stone and Billboard, and the band expects some coverage in other mags as well. A gig at the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland has been scheduled for August 23.
This could the longest-awaited case of “I knew them when...,” except Parks says the band has no intention of moving to L.A. The deal with Capricorn is a “development deal”; there’s no single being promoted, and nobody’s angling for MTV, but the label will take a long view of the band, helping them develop their sound and their market. Hopefully, one side effect of all this development is that Parks and Prior will be able to quit their day jobs. “I’ll be so much happier when I actually stop cleaning houses,” explains Parks.
Artie Traum—Meetings With Remarkable Friends
If you like your acoustic instrumentals varied, this is the disk for you. Artie Traum pairs with musicians he’s known over the years—The Band, Adrian Belew, Bela Fleck, David Grisman, John Sebastian and others—to create a crystalline series of songs without words. Beautifully recorded, the album is jazzy, bluesy and worldly as Traum himself. What’s interesting is how clearly the players come through in each piece. The sophistication of Tony Levin and Adrian Belew is easily discernable in “Mean Low Water,” while The Band’s slap-dash signature is all over “Yankee Swamp.” The CD is out on the Narada label.
Meetings With Remarkable Friends has been named Best Acoustic Instrumental CD of 1999 by New Age Voices Magazine, and made the year’s best list in the Jazz Times. Traum, his band, and special guests will appear at the Center for Performing Arts in Rhinebeck on Wednesday, August 30, at 8 p.m.

OmU—Improvising
Another mystery disk. People send me these things with no explanation. This one is a mix of jazz drums, Indian drones and Hendrix guitar. Four extended instrumental jams, composed and recorded live at the Stone Ridge Center for the Arts by Umo Aki, Mark Marinoff, Rob Norris and Tilman Reitzle, and published on the OmU/Solar Ram label. There’s a lot of space in these recordings. Very jazz underground. Improvising is available at www.theorchard.com, Jack’s Rhythms in New Paltz and Woodstock and Abram’s Music in Kingston; or by calling the Stone Ridge Center at 687-8890.