7/1/07
Amber Tide had a rockin' June. Okay, we had a rockin' third week of June. For all of our determination not to let disability deter us, not to mention the uber-giant steps S has taken towards reattaining her former formidable chops, it's been somewhat more difficult to find work than it used to be. To this add the deterrent that even after we get to the gig, we still have to find some way to get on the (inevitably) non-access stage or into the non-access church or through the non-access, insanely narrow passage into the lumpy, table- and chair- encrusted coffee house whose underpaid staff is blinking in sullen embarrassment because something unusual is actually occurring in their quiet little sanctuary of art and music. God love em for hiring us, but brush up those coping skills. Amber Tide: Testing Universal Access To Destruction Since 1998.

This is exactly why I've fallen into the execrable vice of side-projects. They keep me from totally losing what little patience I have with our endless and apparently incurable disconnects with the Dreadful Profession in all its unorganized, dismissive glory. Every now and again one or another of the gentlemen-farmer groups I dally with actually lands a job and I get the uncommon experience of simply rushing to be on time and worrying about the other members making it and brooding over my preparation, and then just playing the material and getting paid and packing up and going home. Normal gigging, what a concept.

While the bulk of these weekend warriors are seemingly in it for the midlife glory, one at least is beginning to show disturbing signs of going somewhere. Snake Suspenderz, my on-again-off-again partnership with Howlin' Hobbit, sly and rotund master of the two-finger chord on the ukulele, has matured to the point where we're rehearsing regularly with a drummer and standup bassist, both of whom display the symptoms of musicians who want to work (growling stomachs and such), thrusting us relentlessly into the perilous maw of The Business Of Show.

Navigating said yawning chasm requires certain preparations, magickal incantations to draw favorable manna forth. Chief among these are the sacred and very indigenous Demo, Photo and Blurb, that holy trinity of booking. But here a pressing need presents itself: what kind of act exactly are we trying to sell?

Despite my charter membership in Overthinkers Local 442, I'm not convinced this is a trivial question, especially if the questioner has a passing investment in their personal integrity. The material Hobbit and I seem to do best, what we term "Hot jass, hokum and novelty — with a bite!", has been described by one critic as "louche," a word we both had to look up. Hob espouses a Personal Fantasy™ in which he lives a tre louche life of pleasant artistic degeneration in between-war Berlin and Paris, while I myself have been more drawn to the images of Storyville and the Town That Care Forgot so prevalent in the literature vending (gag) Dixieland. Mostly, though, we do this stuff because we like it, we're good at it and we manage to put it across.

Problem is, how do you vend that? Do you embrace lowlife to ensure authenticity, or do you play it safe and bogus and only fake it? Obviously a lotta what me and the Furry Footed One sing about is alien to our personal experience (although a lottavit isn't). In the good ol' American tradition of minstrelry and theater, our lack of dime-a-day addictions or open sores is scant reflection on our artistic integrity. It's a show, folks — artificial is what we do.

Despite that, proponents of the Keep It Real school are not to be lightly dismissed either. If you're the proud owner of an authentic anything, there's a broad streak of entitlement inherent in the system to chase posers off your lawn, particularly if you're a beat-up minority and all the poachers are rich minions of The Man. You can wander through the alternative landscape picking whole gardens of guardians of this or that Tradition, fierce as pitbulls in defending their heritages.

But take this the other way and you're spang in the middle of an RIAA download lawsuit, whinging suits stepping neatly into the hand-decorated moccasins of their forerunners to thunder their moral objection to the unauthorized duplication of Sacred Property. Naturally the Real of this particular Keep It is a deal murkier than that of the indigent indigenous individuals previously cited, with creepy contracts and creepier middlemen to shade everything a delightful crud brown, but if the principle holds in the one case, it can't be summarily dismissed in the other.

It's a problem without a yes/no answer, ie, the nasty kind. It's true that culture as a commodity gets ripped off root and branch, and that ripoff gets challenged all the time. It's equally true that nobody or group of bodies can claim ownership of culture any more than fleas own the dog. Culture is a commons that nurtures all and is exploited only by damaging the social ecology, but even the defense of that commons dings its utility.

In this corner, in the gray flannel trunks, weighing in at eight hunnerd pounds — Properrrrrrrtarianism! And in this corner, in the buckskin loincloth, weighing in at ninety seven pounds dripping wet — Culturalllllll Socialism! Both sides embracing equally valid, equally limited interpretations of the social reality of cultural commodities. Golly Ollie, what would Jeebus do? More's the point, what would (insert your favorite politically-appointed judge here) do? Whose ox is gored worse, the Peepul or the Arteest? Is there even any way to tell?

Welllll, sure. One test might be to measure how close to true originality the infringement in question possesses. After all, even a national-treasure-level practitioner of community tradition is still just another flea on the dog, and while authenticity is admirable, it isn't the criterion of ownership, not in the world of property. Otherwise someone would have copyrighted Da Blooze and we'd all be on the rocks. On the other hand, in the grand tradition of land ownership, the propertarian method would consist of putting all the blues guys in a sack and award title to the last one standing.

So, barring the grim (or is that comic?) prospect of an All Blues Cage Match, you can't copyright a culture. Which, o'course, kills about 90% of plagiarism cases. After all, how original is anyone doing pop music? How far back do you want to take it?

In the end, putting it all in the public domain isn't a totally awful solution. Maybe songs themselves aren't copyrightable, but performances are. And that's all media products are — individual publications of Platonic ideal compositions.

So I couldn't copyright my latest blues song, but I could publish a performance of it. Somewhat similar to that old tavern graffiti: You can't buy beer, you can only rent it. You do, however, get undisputed possession of the bottle.