MUDDA, I BARELY KNOWA... ehh, sorry

FROM February 3, 2004

The headlines keep getting more like the Onion:
"US Father Names Son 'Version 2.0'" (BBC)
"David Brent Quotations better Known than Shakespeare, Wilde, and Wordsworth" (Independent)
"Saddam's Spider Hole to be Sealed" (CNN)
Artists who Demand Freedom From Record Labels Go on to Produce Rubbish" (Guardian)

Actually, the last article is a column about MUDDA, the Magnificent Union of Digitally Downloading ARtists ("magnificent" sounds grandiose until you realize without it, it's UDDA). It's a UK musician's union spearheaded by Peter Gabriel, meant to embrace the internet and eschew copyright law/paradigm in any form whatsoever. The author of said article, Alexis Petridis, believes this idea is "daft," and could possibly "hobble pop and rock music for good" (?!). Strangely, and unlike the RIAA, he thinks it's a bad idea because, if P. Gabriel and Dido and Janet Jackson all start releasing their music on the internet willy nilly, QUALITY CONTROL WILL PLUMMET. The logic is something like, "If there's no A&R guy around, who will tell you that 20-min. guitar solo makes you look fat?"