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August 1999

News from the Plagiarist Scene

28.08.1999 / New Resource. Dallas TX web designer Angela Genusa sends the following description to serve as an introduction to her new web site project, ©ut and paste:

‘Jello Biafra asked, “Is plucking someone else’s creation from its original context — to leave it naked, or twist its meaning — a legitimate way to communicate? In an age where it gets harder and harder to tell where the cartoon ends and real life begins, the answer is a billboard-sized YES.”

‘One Dallas-based Web designer seconds Jello’s e-motion with a Web-site-sized YES — ©ut and paste — a one-stop-‘chopping’ experience in cyberspace for cut ’n’ mix culture — from Debord to Deee-Lite, from Hannah Hoch to acid house, from Tristan Tzara to The Tape-beatles. ©ut and paste is dedicated to the proposition that collage is the most important artistic genre of the last 50 years, that existing cultural materials should belong to the public domain, and that artists should be free to use to these materials to create collages or comment with.

‘The ©ut and paste site is a comprehensive gateway to articles, essays, news, d.i.y. info and organizations about the collage aesthetic and related issues, with links to collage/sample-based artists of all genres.’

• Have a look at ©ut and paste.

20.08.1999 / Detritus Site Redesign. In the meantime, Steev Hise has given his anti-intellectual-property web site detritus.net the old visual overhaul. If you haven’t looked at detritus recently, you probably should. Steev says: ‘Detritus is a gallery, a village, a library, a studio, a news service. Detritus is keeping watch on relevant events and developments, and always adding more content to its pages. Come back again and see what’s new.’ While you are visiting, you might want to sign up for Rumori, the Detritus mailing list.

• Visit detritus.net today.

No New News; Only Old

The amusing photograph at left has absolutely nothing to do with the text below, which follows.

14.08.1999 / As the summer begins to wane and vine-ripe tomatoes start to form a substantial part of our diets, our activity level, too, goes into ebb. The dog days are a time, after all, of calming reflection, in part forced by a retreat to our artificially chilled cubicles for frosty beverages and extended lie-downs. ‘Hot enough for ya?’ strangers have the temerity to ask, a new-found sense of pseudo-comradeship brought about by shared miserable experience. Yes, it’s a real scorcher.

Speaking of scorchers, Good Times, the latest CD by the Tape-beatles, is at the manufactory in Austria being brought into solid form even as we speak. (We know we have belabored its introduction past the point of trying our audience’s patience, but really, it’s out of our hands now. It all comes down now to the molasses flow of Staalplaat’s internal machinations.) Truthfully, we expect the disk to be in our hands in a matter of weeks. And then, potentially, yours.

And speaking of potential, a couple of low-lying audio projects are currently in the works by these ‘beatles’ of Tape.

In the near term, Staalplaat will be re-releasing our much-ballyhooed 1993 compact disk The Grand Delusion. For this minor milestone, we will be providing an audio extension to that release in the form of a dozen-minute re-mix of some of the more successful outtakes from those sessions. The working title is Fifteen minutes in search of peace. This task has been assigned to John Heck, recently wed to long-time sweetheart Lucie Coufalová, and now back in the mysterious city of Prague in the heart of historical Bohemia.

Ralph Johnson has been whiling away the endless minutes of his time, one always coming after another, in San Leandro, waiting for inspiration to breathe into his ear with great ideas for an upcoming series of Tape-beatle presentations. Nothing has been scheduled because we haven’t made the show yet — but we spent a lot of time brainstorming it during the Tape-beatle Summit that we held last June. Suffice it to say that it will be the same, only different.

Simultaneously, Lloyd is putting his ear and hand to the task of creating initial compositional gestures for a new work which will be released as 10-inch vinyl on the Elevator Bath label. More details will be given as they become available.

• In the meantime, read 24 Things You Can Say About the Tape-beatles.