'Copy our music' urges rock band

A new rock group featuring former members of The Clash and Generation X has taken a novel approach to the issue of piracy by urging their fans to copy their music.

Carbon Silicon make all their recordings freely available online, and actively encourage bootlegging or filming of their gigs.

They even attack the current waves of litigation surrounding illegally copied music in their song Gangs Of England, which includes the line, "if you want the record, press record".

"What we're talking about here is fans who are sharing music," Tony James, formally of Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Generation X - who formed the group with ex-Clash guitarist Mick Jones - told BBC World Service's The Music Biz programme.

"It's just like you did when you were young, when you made a cassette of your favourite tracks you'd love, and would give it to a friend and say 'listen to this.'

"Everyone's going to say, 'hang on - if they've got it already, why are they going to buy the record?' But what we find is actually, people really like buying the records."

The music industry has been grappling with issues of piracy over the last few years, in particular since broadband became popular.

Artists who have backed anti-piracy campaigns, include Metallica, Tatu and Peter Gabriel.

But James said that he considered the internet to be the "most exciting thing that's happened to rock and roll".

In particular, he pointed out that people could now record songs in their bedrooms and make them available to the world, and new artists no longer needed "a label, or a manager, or a BBC Radio playlist".

Carbon Silicon use their website to show the development of their songs. Demos are put on the web so people can track how they came together.

"We feel that it's almost like if I could go and watch Lennon and McCartney in the studio making Sgt Pepper, and watch them on the internet making that record, that would be a really exciting thing," James explained.

"So I think what we'll see in the future is people will pay to be there - to be part of the creative process. That's a really exciting thing.

"Our ideas of copyright, and what constitutes a record, will change in the future."

Here's an excerpt from an interview I did with my musical hero, Scott Morgan. He's from Detroit and played in the 60's band The Rationals, and with Fred "Sonic" Smith of the MC5 and Scott "Rock Action" Asheton of The Stooges in the 1970s band Sonic's Rendezvous Band... He answered some questions for me about the state of the music industry, sharing MP3 files, and recording concerts.

click the picture to check out the whole interview!

click here to listen to the interview as an MP3 file!

Q = question
SM = Scott Morgan

Q- At this stage of your career… you said you’ve been doing this since… 1961 you started playing guitar… What do you think about the music business? I mean, “the state of rock & roll”, or whatever you want to call it… A little sad right now I’d say. What are your thoughts?

SM- I keep hearing the quotes about record sales being down $20 billion a year or something ridiculous… For it to be down $20 billion a year, means that it had to be up really high, like $60 billion, or I don’t know what it was, but... they’re selling a lot of records. They’re making a lot of money. But, I think the problem is, they’re not really trying to make good records, they’re trying to make records that’ll sell. I think that’s the whole problem.

Q- Have you got the solution? Where’s the magic bullet?

SM- After a while, I think people are just going to get tired of paying money for crap. They’re going to want, come on you know! Don’t just give me some cooked up in the studio, expensive, crappy can of Campbell’s soup or something! Come up with something new, something good. Something with some imagination, something with some soul, some heart in it, something you believe in. Whatever.

Q- When do you think this whole trend-

SM- It’s not just the record labels, it’s the whole thing. It’s the radio, and MTV, and corporate media, and corporate agencies. It’s just a big mafia of music business.

Q- I don’t understand, I guess, why things are the way they are.

SM- Well, because for one thing, the people that run the business aren’t necessarily the people that love the music. At all levels. Let’s say you’re a journalist. You might not be able to make money as a journalist writing about what you like, you might have to write about whatever they tell you to write about. If you’re a DJ, you’re not picking those records, you’re not playing the records that you play in your car, or at home, you’re playing what you’re told to play. And I guess if you’re in A&R at a record label, you’re putting out the records that the suits approve of. So the people that really love the music aren’t making the decisions, and that’s a bad development in the music business.

Q- That leads me to another question… what do you think about the internet, and I guess not necessarily specifically MP3’s but the ability for any band anywhere to start advertising their music and getting exposure. What do you think about that?

SM- It’s great.

Q- Do you have any problems with file sharing, of MP3’s?

SM- No.

Q- You don’t have a problem when you go to Napster and look up your songs?

SM- No. As a matter of fact we put our stuff on Napster.

Q- I’m the kind of guy that when I buy a record, I want the whole package.

SM- Exactly. This is the Alanis Morissette theory. And it all holds up, and everybody knows it’s true in the music business, that she makes a record for her corporate record label, she’s going to get a get a dollar for every copy. OK? Fine, that’s all fine, that’s cool. But if she does a concert somewhere, she’s going to make a lot of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and sell maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars of her merch. And it’s all her money. So, to her, and I think the Grateful Dead will look at it the same way, and a lot of other bands, it’s really to their advantage to have people know their music, even if they get it for free, because they’re going to come see the band, they’re going to be fans.

Q- What do you think of people taping shows?

SM- Fine, I just want a tape.

Q- Obviously not for resale.

SM- No, no. We’re talking about sharing, file swapping, that sort of thing. It’s just like if you made me a cassette, what’s illegal about that? If you made a cassette of your favorite music, or I did the same for you, I don’t get it… why should that be illegal? It’s just stupid. It doesn’t make any sense!

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