*cough* i would to add. that jesus's tomb is only "good" cause it totaly fuks with the bible. i personally believe, all beliefs are wrong.
that's my belief. thank you.

Yeah, George Duke - "I Love You More" one almost killed me. My girlfriend was like, "うっそー!!"

"Digital Love", right?
You know, it's hip-hop.

Welcome to 21st Century.

But we can have a boring 21st century or interesting 21st century. If the author is dead, then we shouldn't be complacent to just bury the body. It at least should come back as a zombie or some other unexpected plot twist.

Haha, more Daft Punk hoax hypothesis! Love it!

That January 26, 2005 post makes me lol up all over myself. It's got everything - leaked goods, deep faith, conspiracy theories, betrayal that begets inspiration and the line "I am listening now - way less drunk than last night." A+

I almost feel cheated, but it's not like I (or any other of the unwashed masses) would have come across these forgotten disco songs otherwise and Daft Punk has given their versions a life of their own. And now that they've been "exposed" I can listen to the original songs, which are pretty awesome too.

This is making the rounds on various blogs? I could have sworn I saw more or less the exact same song/sample comparisons over a year ago... perhaps this is a case of pakuri reporting, eh?

Anyway, it didn't come as a huge surprise to me, since I was one of those nerds that actually read the liner notes to Discovery. Hey, a 13-year-old needs something to do on the car ride from Georgia to Destin, FL other than play Gameboy Color while listening to the sweet vocoded croonings of Thomas Bangalter.

Oh and I guess if anyone ever bought their albums they might see the samples listed in album liner notes.

I was expecting you'd post on this!

Kransom, Yeah I remember a pretty solid collection of sampled tracks on some French or UK site soon after Discovery had come out. Wonder if there's a 12" for Cola Bottle Baby?

Even more scandalous would be the rumors of them using on-tage-substitutes in robo-gear apeing along to a prerecorded performance (as "reported" in the dubious Popbitch).

"Georgia to Destin, FL"

Nice Destin reference.

"bought"

You can BUY albums? Huh.

Most Daft Punk releases have just ripped of entire segments of old Disco Tracks. They just did it very cleanly. Everyone does it. And it's not going to stop anytime.

we MUST stop it!
From now on, I will only dance to original pressings of original tracks.

But yeah, I mean, this is just the way that house/club artists often use samples.

That said, I both totally understand peoples' surprise or dismay at hearing the source material for the first time.

Also, I really like Daft Punk's records.

Just earlier I was shocked to fine that the words used in the song-title "One More Time" all existed in my dictionary. Where will these guys draw the line!?

Yes even you sampled your site after that song that went plink, plink, plink bleep bleep bleep from the early electro days. ; )

I'm still feeling this classic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdYs0iaI5ro
Glaring omission from Gondry's DVD.

Whatever next, "Three Feet High and Rising" declared to be only two feet high after all?

Cute post, but the problem is that there's no problem (after all).
The samples were listed on the album liner notes (you bought those CDs right ?), Discovery is a genius work of recontextualization and the debut album (you know this classic of course) is almost sample-free. Human after all is an interesting piece of work too, but maybe not for the Avalanches / Plus Tech Squeeze Box crowd. I love how people (not you, the blog re-posting the samples list from years ago) think they 'discovered' some hidden truth and then we can all be vaguely disappointed at how 'easy' Daft Punk music is. But at least it gives some people great (ironic?) opportunities to play the original tracks. Just don't try this shit on me.
(and for those who cares about MUSIC, check Thomas Bangalter latest work, Signatune edit for DJ Mehdi. Great composition).

van Beirendonck was mentioning some missing helmets somewhere.

”Whatever next, "Three Feet High and Rising" declared to be only two feet high after all?”

and

"Cute post, but the problem is that there's no problem (after all)."

From both an ethical and a practical angle, yes, this is not a big deal - at least in the context of how most music is now created. But popular music exists in the relation between artist and audience, and therein lies a form of contract. When it comes to De La Soul, the audience never expected any sort of original composition, because the members are MCs and DJs and not "musicians" as construed by being instrumentalists.

Daft Punk on the other hand nominally play instruments, produce, program, sequence, posses a studio full of synths, and make neato original sounds. They are (were?) viewed as skilled producers who may lift the occasional sample. But I think most of their audience (wrongly?) assumed that the sounds and phrases on their album were original. Especially with "Robot Rock," where (correct me if I am wrong) they did not credit the sample and on top of that claimed to play all the guitars on the record. At best, they just cut up the entire hook of the other song and added one vocoded vocal.

But again, it's not about their production thievery as much as the fact that their (naive?) audience expected this sounds to be original. So they did let this segment down.

The employment of "fake Daft Punk squads" to appear at public events is a different, but more humorous subject. I saw them at an event at Ageha launching the DVD for Discovery in Japan, and now that I think about it, there was no way it was actually them.

> play all the guitars on the record

wouldn't that have been a (quite creative, rather) joke and a point in itself ? i mean everybody can play guitar.

I would also be a creative joke to claim that "Alin" is actually a sock puppet I use here to make things more interesting. (I feel bad about outing myself here, but it's not like anyone will actually believe me!)

The author is dead, but the rights-holder . . . LIVES!!!!

And it wants to feed on your brains, full of its lovely creative content...mmm...memes...

> "Alin" is actually a sock puppet I use here to make things more interesting.

well, i for one would have to agree that to be largely true. the 'Alin' here though he does share something with my own character is very much something YOU are creating here. You won't really find him anywhere else either on the internet or in the real world. some semblances maybe.

"When it comes to De La Soul, the audience never expected any sort of original composition, because the members are MCs and DJs and not "musicians" as construed by being instrumentalists."

You must be working with different definitions of "original" and "composition" than I am. For me, "Three Feet High And Rising" is a highly original composition. It is possible to "sample" while playing real instruments, you know. You just play riffs people have heard a million times before. That doesn't automatically make you "more original".

What about the high crime of using the same chord progressions and arrangements of another artist?!?!?!

Boom, there goes the Blues!

As we all know, Cobain actually ripped off Boston's More Than A Feeling in Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Are we really going to leave this thread thinking that Marxy considers Bazza Manilow a more "original" artist than Daft Punk? And that "we can have a boring 21st century or interesting 21st century", with the interesting one consisting in us all becoming a bit more like Barry and a bit less like Bangalter? Say it ain't so!

I thought stealing hooks was essentially the point of house music, so this doesn't really surprise me very much. It was curious, however, to see how little they manipulated the loops from the original sources (I'm not convinced their frauds, though). Appropriating other people's work for your own purposes seems common enough these days (just look at pop art, etc.), and so I guess there's nothing really new to add to this debate. Critics of sample-driven music seem to have exhausted the subject-- at this point, most younger people seem to accept it at face value.

On a small tangent discussing the post rather than the content:

I am also kind of concerned how this sort of thing can be regarded as new or original reporting when the same sort of things were pointed out when the album was initially released. (see this link for an example from March 2005 http://yet.another.linux-nerd.com/2005/03/30/rip-ro-bot-rip/)

I mean, there already were hundreds internet posts about this, and yet you write, quite ostentatiously, like this is something brand new.

I thought alin was Momus's sock puppet...

"quite ostentatiously, like this is something brand new. "

Okay, this is the second wave.

Maybe Marxy should try something more original. Like a post on Japanese English perhaps?

http://www.friedchickenarcade.com/2007/02/18/more-japanese-english/

Glass houses, John.

Who needs to worry about glass houses if we are not throwing rocks, right? (Stop throwing rocks.)

"Boom, there goes the Blues!"

I find it interesting here that Momus and I have switched positions. He is essentially claiming that there is a universal position on all genres in terms of audience perception of creativity and originality. In other words, the Blues' use of three chords is a similar action to Daft Punk just cutting up Breakwater and calling it their own song.

Again, I think the "is sampling art/original/creative?" debate is over or at least played out, but we still have to explain why a certain set of Daft Punk fans felt betrayed. I don't think it's quite fair to just say, "Because they are idiots who don't understand how music works."

Each genre has conventions and expectations of where "creativity" is being added into the form and content. This may be a very pre-postmodern way of looking at art, but regardless, these conventions are what create and tie-together works into genres. For blues, no one expects innovation within the chord progression. That's not where the content lies. It lies in the lyrics and the riffs and the mood, etc. While 60s psych broke open the staid chord progressions of old, there are still conventions of what "psych chord progressions" sound like (lots of chromatic half-step shifts, if that is a word.)

So with Daft Punk, had they been "just a house music act" this level of sampling would have been understood as part of the conventions. The problem here is that a lot of fans came in thinking that Daft Punk is "pop music" not to mention the fans who believed that their innovation happened on a sound production level. So you can just call these fans "wrong" or you can notice that they got confused in the implicit conventions of the music.

"Are we really going to leave this thread thinking that Marxy considers Bazza Manilow a more "original" artist than Daft Punk? "

But isn't this Rockist to claim that Barry Manilow is unoriginal? A true relativist would claim that Barry Manilow's music is as important and innovative as Daft Punk's.

I agree that the word "original" is loaded, but there must be a positive - not normative - way to describe the difference between creating sounds from pre-recorded audio and creating sounds from acoustic and digital instruments. We don't have to call it "original," but there is a difference in process. There are implications built into these processes, and listeners can felt tricked when they believe one process is at work and find out the opposite.

"Because they are idiots who don't understand how music works."

I dunno, this kinda works for me.

bringing it back to Japan, as well as previous blog entries...

So, how about that how new Teriyaki Boyz joint, Heartbreaker?

"A true relativist would claim that Barry Manilow's music is as important and innovative as Daft Punk's."

To claim that everything is relative is not to claim that everything is of equal value. Relativism merely situates value judgements, puts things in a cultural context. As you say, the cultural context here is a very tired debate about sampling-as-composition.

Almost nobody alive -- rockist or anti-rockist -- would call Barry Manilow as innovative as Daft Punk. Critically, he's lost out to the people sampling him. You do realize "Yacht Rock" is a joke, don't you?

I don't think Barry Manilow is innovative, and I know you don't. But someone must. And I don't want you making value judgments for them.

Wait, I thought "Yacht Rock" was a documentary. The film is all scratched up. And their acting is too terrible for it to be fiction.

I gotta agree with Rory. As Digiki implied (I think), Daft Punk basically switched audiences after their first album, right? I don't know many "serious" house-heads (I mean people who would know the names checked in "Teachers") who dig their later stuff.

I think the shocked and alarmed are probably rock(ist) latecomers who feel the need to have someone on stage to stand and stare at, rather than dance and enjoy the loopy/squelchy/bangin' tracks that are just "faceless techno bullocks" to them...

...and Guy-Man's Crydamoure stuff was way better than the later Daft Punk albums, in my book. One could think of the "Waves" mixes as the "real" second and third Daft Punk albums...

Whoops, that should be "faceless techno bollocks," of course.

I'd hate to hear what you guys think of DJ Shadow.

Daft punk is swell. Shut the fuck up. Who the fuck cares where they got their music from? Are you that anal? Can you produce that music yourself? If you do no like them, then do not listen to them, dipshit! LOLOL

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