THE NEW MUSICAL BOX

PARODY AND MASH, ANYONE? 

October 1st sees a significant change in legislation here in the UK that will allow the parodying of copyright works. 

Prior to this, the copyright owner could take legal action against, for example, use of a musical or cinematic clip without permission. In practice, this rarely happened, but with the explosion of creativity and distribution that the internet has fuelled, parody has become a widespread activity that is difficult to police. Some musicians took parody to a very high level indeed - such as Weird Al Yankovic who has built his career out of it. Even he, though, has taken care with some of his works to ensure that they're not too close to the original. Others - comic and songwriter Neil Innes for example - have fallen foul of litigious copyright owners. Innes was a member of The Rutles, a Beatles parody band which had the blessing of band members themselves but not ATV Music, owner of many of the song publishing rights. Indeed, one song from the original 1978 TV special "All You Need Is Cash" was deemed to be too close to its inspiration and thus Get Up And Go ("Get Back") was omitted from the subsequent vinyl soundtrack release. 

You Tube Clip: The Rutles - Get Up And Go

Weird Al Yankovic
(Not Michael Jackson)

The Rutles - Get Up And Go

The new legislation - derived from the European Copyright Directive - will allow the use of parody material provided that "it is fair and does not compete with the original version". This will inevitably lead to the odd sight of the courts - and in particular, judges - deciding upon whether or not a song meets those requirements. In practical terms, this change should benefit the huge range of gifted amateurs who produce a myriad of parodies as well as those who turn their creativity to song "mash-ups". A mash-up is usually the splicing together of elements from two separate songs which then produces a "new" entity which retains the spirit of the originals, but also adds something new. TV shows and movies tend to be the principle inspirations for these works - just check out any cult TV series on You Tube and you'll see what I mean - but there are a handful of rather special practitioners. 

One such is Cassette Boy who has built up a huge on-line cult following for his TV-show and musical mash-ups. His careful editing and jump-cuts are almost a work of genius and yet even he has found major difficulties with posting the end-results on-line. He has complained that he has a minefield of legal issues to negotiate sometimes and told the BBC that sometimes it's like "being a painter in a country where paint is illegal".   

You Tube Clip: Cassette Boy Versus The News   

Perhaps the best known of recent musical parodies has been Bart Baker's "homage" to the 2013 Miley Cyrus song (and video) Wrecking Ball. If this had come to court in the UK under the new legislation, what would our judiciary have made of it? Perhaps you might think that they'd be more than familiar with such visual and aural content, although of course, I couldn't possibly comment.

You Tube Clip: Bart Baker - Wrecking Ball Parody

Radio 1's Greg James -
Wrecking Ball Parody

Miley Cyrus - Wrecking Ball

Over fifty-two million hits and counting - and that degree of traffic illustrates the impossibility of containing the parody genie in the legal bottle for much longer. It'll be a fascinating few months as creative types get to grips with the legislative change and with luck, we'll see further clever and witty mash-ups abound across our smart phones and iPads.

Alan Dorey

30th September 2014