How a record producer's vanity band laid down some hip-hop foundations

June 26, 2015 2:22 AM

It’s a story of a Bronx D.J. making his name with a record that began as the soundtrack for a B-movie called “The Thing With Two Heads.” And it suggests that the two most important drummers in rap history might be a guy who spent his career touring behind Neil Diamond and another who played with John Lennon and Eric Clapton before stabbing his mother to death and being committed to a mental hospital.

The DJ was of course Kool Herc, the drummers were King Errisson and Jim Gordon, the record was Bongo Rock and the song everybody now knows from countless hip-hop samples is Apache.
posted by MartinWisse (20 comments total)

I think the lessons of Apache ( and Amen Brother) are an important one for any prospective artists. There is the idea of the original creators being completely unaware of the core appeal of their work to a future generation. Then there is the significant element of luck in having that appeal realised on such a massive scale: the people making early experiments with decks and samplers would have had boxes full of potential material featuring break beats - but somehow their recordings were the ones which gained immortality in a medium where source-recycling was considered a good thing. Finally there is the whole concept of an artist's work becoming massively well known, entirely within the lifetime of that artist, but of the artist remaining uncompensated and largely unaware.
posted by rongorongo at 3:02 AM on June 26, 2015 [4 favorites]

Finally there is the whole concept of an artist's work becoming massively well known, entirely within the lifetime of that artist, but of the artist remaining uncompensated and largely unaware.


This isn't that different to the lot of the session musician, though. These days, I think that if you're obscure but still alive and your work makes it to the big time as a sample, you'll know about it. Even if you don't hear it, someone who knows you will and will email...

Of course, if you're rich enough to have lawyers or still famous enough to count, you can redress things. I don't know if Steve Reich got a cut of Little Fluffy Clouds (although the story of him finding out is quite famous - music journo:You heard of the Orb? SR: No... MJ: I think you should. Take this CD... (later at home) SR: Fuck me!), but you can bet his record company talked ot their record company. Or it can rebuild you: Gary Numan samples are a big reason he re-emerged into the light and got a second wind. (Music journo: You know the early hip-hop scene in NY sampled the hell out of your stuff? GN: No! Music journo: Take this and listen to it (later at home) GN: Fuck me!)

Good luck if you just got your twenty quid for the session or if you retired to a double-wide.
posted by Devonian at 3:34 AM on June 26, 2015 [7 favorites]

I have to say, I liked DJ Funktual's exposition better.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:51 AM on June 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

twenty quid for the session

I recently learned that Clare Torey got a co-writer's credit for "The Great Gig In The Sky" in a settlement, which is nice. One part really can make a song and it is rare to see that rewarded. Anthony Jackson got a writing credit for his iconic bass on The O'Jays "For The Love Of Money". Andy Summers' guitar on "Every Breath You Take"? Not so much; Sting gets all the Puff Daddy payments.
posted by thelonius at 4:27 AM on June 26, 2015

I read an interview with The Orb once in which they said, roughly, if anyone had figured out all the samples on the record with LFC it could never have been released.

I'm all for sampling. I'm also all for artists actually getting paid for their work when it is used. The entire electronic music community needs to grow the hell up in that respect.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:46 AM on June 26, 2015

The entire electronic music community needs to grow the hell up in that respect.
.

I know what you mean, but it ain't going to happen. The process of permission and payment is not something a pasty-faced youth at home with a laptop and a broadband connection can do. The process of making and releasing a sample-based track can be done in an evening. What, exactly, is the outcome going to be?

And when the industry approach to, say, U2 vs Negativland is "Grind them to ddust!" rather than "Let's solve the process problem and have a fair, accessible system that rewards creativity on all sides", it's at least a debatable question as to whether it's just one community that needs to grow up.

My opinion is that morality will follow pragmatism, after a painful and indeterminate period of adjustment, and that a process will evolve where I can use whatever samples I like and the original creators will be rewarded appropriately without it being my problem. That any such system would inevitably and massively break the existing industry models (and that of many others) is probably why nobody with money wants to do it.
posted by Devonian at 5:10 AM on June 26, 2015 [9 favorites]

No discussion of Apache is complete without the Tommy Seebach cover.
posted by Combustible Edison Lighthouse at 5:54 AM on June 26, 2015

I kind of miss the 80s and 90s and the era of blatant, pround and probably too expensive to use now sampling. These days when you hear a recognisable chunk of something famous you can't help but think of it as a statement about money.
posted by Artw at 5:59 AM on June 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'm very much of the opinion that creativity wise, the breaks put on sampling by having to pay royalties and such have been a bad thing. Whether getting the original artists better compensation for such uses outweights this is another matter.
posted by MartinWisse at 6:22 AM on June 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'd sooner have Public Enemy than James Brown have another house, for sure.
posted by Artw at 6:24 AM on June 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

I feel like this is incomplete without the music as God intended.

It is 27 minutes long, but teaser: They (Rosey Grier + Ray Milland, and the doctor) get on a dirtbike about halfway through. Which is to say that this is possibly the LEAST stupid way you could spend the next 27 minutes.
posted by ernielundquist at 6:58 AM on June 26, 2015

I kind of miss the 80s and 90s and the era of blatant, pround and probably too expensive to use now sampling. These days when you hear a recognisable chunk of something famous you can't help but think of it as a statement about money.


I couldn't even imagine what Paul's Boutique would cost today.
posted by sourwookie at 7:00 AM on June 26, 2015

Sampling law and ethics is complicated.

The law, as it currently stands in the USA, is effectively that any sample requires a license from the copyright owner of the original sound recording, no matter the duration, recognizability, etc.

This is obviously complicated, as in many cases the copyright owner is unknown, or the subject of contention. The owner can also say no, or charge any price they wish.

The majority of artists who sample still don't get licenses, and deliberately focus on obscure samples...and then, of course, they don't provide any attribution of said obscure samples. There's something to be said about "aren't musicians supposed to get paid for their work?" and the irony of other musicians being the ones causing this kind of economic harm, but we can leave that for another time. The main takeaway is that it is at best difficult and expensive to clear a sample, and at worst you don't even know where to start.

This is a far cry from just covering someone's entire song, which you can do easily, or even recording and selling said cover -- there's even a website for clearing the rights for that.

Then there are the people who use deliberately recognizable samples for their collage/associative value, or just because they're lazy.

In between, there is a small industry that cranks out sample packs or CDs or CD-ROMs, filled with loops, hits, one-shots, and more. Many of these are ripped from records or other sample packs, and many (incorrectly) try to claim that either you must pay royalties or you don't have to pay royalties. It's easy enough for someone to end up with a loop and not know where it came from.

As a musician, I think current sampling law is pretty messed up. I have used samples before, but only in ways where I transformed them enough that I was obviously not leveraging the original source's "value" or brand (except secretly in my own head). I stopped using anything remotely like that almost 20 years ago, because of the hassle and potential liability.

What's REALLY messed up is now artists will write with a loop, and then re-create that loop themselves. And then the original loop artist will STILL try to claim royalties...and in some cases succeed.
posted by Jinsai at 7:17 AM on June 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

Nardwuar vs Sample This (the movie)
posted by philip-random at 8:13 AM on June 26, 2015

Devonian, your characterization of Steve Reich's reaction to discovering that The Orb had sampled his composition in "Little Fluffy Clouds" as "Fuck me!" is at odds with the description and citations on Wikipeida.

In particular

Reich was "genuinely flattered"[8] by The Orb's use of his work and instructed his record company not to sue.[9]

posted by mistersquid at 8:14 AM on June 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm all for sampling. I'm also all for artists actually getting paid for their work when it is used. The entire electronic music community needs to grow the hell up in that respect.

as Jinsai suggests, it's not just the artists, producers etc that need to grow up. The Orb seem to the example here. If they'd been "responsible" way back when, I think it's safe to say that none of us would likely ever have heard one of the best, most hopeful buoyant and fun singles ever released as it would never have been released, because there's no way a small crowd of independent fringe techno-hippie types could have begun to afford (or even sort out) all the relevant permissions and clearances.

We have the culture we have because, thank all available gods, certain artists etc back in the day were mad enough for sampling and the creative universes it unleashed that they just didn't care about things like legalities -- they just had to make their records and get them out to people.

I have an ex-DJ lawyer friend who maintains that eventually the culture will grow up, that there will be some kind of international agreement in place (and a registry to support it) that stipulates basically two things:

1. nobody can stop somebody from sampling their stuff and effectively doing whatever they want with it,

2. nobody can sample anybody without them instantly getting a pre-determined share of the revenues.

What's missing, of course, is the means to make this kind of thing happen (ie: a cheap, easy way to identify who/what is being sampled, and what their share of the pie should be, and how to actually get the money to them).
posted by philip-random at 8:38 AM on June 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

There are now companies that you can go to that will recreate a sample for you so you can avoid all the legal hassle and costs of paying the originators. Mark Summers - who did the Magic Roundabout sampling Summers Magic back in 1991 - now runs a company called Scorccio Sample Replays that did the soundalikes for The Shapeshifters' Lola's Theme and Duck Sauce's Barbra Streisand amongst many others.

If you're an unknown artist then you can put out a limited release of a track with the original sample knowing that you're unlikely to get sued because there won't be enough money in it to make it worthwhile. Then if it does take off and gets picked up by a major label you can get it replayed for the full release.
posted by kerplunk at 9:04 AM on June 26, 2015

I have an ex-DJ lawyer friend who maintains that eventually the culture will grow up, that there will be some kind of international agreement in place (and a registry to support it) that stipulates basically two things:

1. nobody can stop somebody from sampling their stuff and effectively doing whatever they want with it,

2. nobody can sample anybody without them instantly getting a pre-determined share of the revenues.

Isn't that how live covers work? There are automatic royalties but the creators can't stop you from covering their songs.
posted by Octaviuz at 9:07 AM on June 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

Mistersquid - not, I hope, so much. The version I know is that SR was actually a bit put out at first, but on reconsideration thought it a Good Thing (this is from a half-remembered radio interview from a long time ago, where he was talking about his initial reaction, and his introspection on that. Who you gonna believe, Wiki or the broken memories of a decaying mind?). In any case, you are free to read that "Fuck me!" as a delighted ejaculation. It certainly was, in the case of Gary Numan, who has always been charmingly amazed that anyone so cool would find his gaucheness worthy.

I certainly don't know anything about Reich's record company's actual reaction, but the fact he had to tell them not to sue must mean they had some inkling so to do. Even if a record company is happy to listen to the wishes of its artists, it has lawyers in-house who get the first word.
posted by Devonian at 12:18 PM on June 26, 2015

I know what you mean, but it ain't going to happen. The process of permission and payment is not something a pasty-faced youth at home with a laptop and a broadband connection can do.

This is true, but it does sound like the kind of problem where a single online, internationally accredited solution would benefit all parties. Put a Shazam-like front end on it that identifies the music and its composers. Then get artists to stipulate how they are willing to licence their work in advance. This is pretty much the same as photographers uploading to Flickr, say, do. My guess is that most composers would be happy with a deal that said "Take what you want as long as you let me know in advance, give me credit and pay be royalties at a rate which is zero up until you have sold X many units but rises to Y after that".
posted by rongorongo at 1:12 AM on June 28, 2015